Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Southern Illinois Continues to Spiral Downward

Just days ago, Drive and Dish noted Southern Illinois' recent struggles on the hardwood. Last night Southern Illinois, fresh off of an embarrassing loss to Saint Louis, fell to Western Michigan 57-41. On Sunday, Drive & Dish discussed the Salukis' dearth of scoring. Against Western Michigan, SIU only managed 41 points. That's pathetic for any team, let alone for a team that was ranked #18 in the AP Top 25 a few weeks ago and was widely expected to win the Missouri Valley Conference.

As we stated on Sunday, this Southern Illinois team isn't as good as recent SIU teams have been. SIU lost it's two best guards (and their leading scorer and "go to guy") to graduation. But they still have three very good starters (PG Bryan Mullins, F Randal Falker and F Matt Shaw) from last year's Sweet Sixteen team. Some fall off was to be expected, but the Salukis shouldn't be this bad.

What's worse, Southern Illinois needed to beat Western Michigan in order to start turning their season around before conference play begins. Now SIU appears to be falling into the abyss.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

This is Bruce Weber's fault. Just like Weber's Illini, the Salukis don't have anyone who can get his own shot, their 2g can't shoot, their point guard is plays great defense but can't score and their big man can't score reliably from the post.

It's like Chris Lowery learned how to build a team by studying at the feet of his mentor ...... Bruce Weber.

This is Weber's fault. He's destroyed two great programs ..... first Illinois, now SIU.

S.K. said...

Billy Ray,

How can you blame Bruce Weber for Southern's failings this year? Bruce built that program. They had a great six year run with players that Weber recruited to Carbondale. Mullins, Falker and Shaw are the first group of upperclassmen in the post-Weber era who weren't Weber recruits.

And Chris Lowery was still running the system that Bruce Weber had implemented when the Salukis got to the Sweet Sixteen last year.

I think you're drunk.

Anonymous said...

SIU is like a dog in need of a flea collar