Saluki Men’s Basketball plays at No. 18 Louisville on Tuesday

CARBONDALE, IL — Southern Illinois will look to extend its winning streak to three games when it plays at No. 18-ranked Louisville on Tuesday, in a rematch of a non-conference game SIU lost by 23 points at the KFC Yum! Center last December.

The Salukis (2-0) are 2-4 lifetime against the Cardinals (2-0). In last year’s meeting, Louisville scored the game’s first 13 points and led by as many as 25. Mike Rodriguez and Sean O’Brien led Southern with 15 points apiece.

Since 2000, the Salukis are 4-15 versus nationally ranked non-conference opponents. The wins came against No. 24 Indiana (2001), No. 23 Georgia (2002), No. 13 Butler (2007) and No. 24 Saint Mary’s (2007).

Louisville was a member of the Missouri Valley Conference from 1963 to 1974. During that timeframe, SIU beat the Cardinals twice. The win in Carbondale on Jan. 11, 1967 was especially memorable. SIU was a College Division program at the time, and Louisville was ranked No. 2 in the nation among University Division teams. Dick Garrett had 18 points to lead SIU, while Walt Frazier added 16. The Salukis went  24-2 that season, won the NIT title, and finished ranked No. 1 in the nation among College Division teams. Southern Illinois, which moved up to University Division status in 1967-68,  joined the MVC for the 1975-76 season.

The Salukis are 10-18 all-time against current members of the ACC. The last win against an ACC team came against Virginia Tech — a 63-48 victory in the NCAA Tournament on Mar. 18, 2007. Since then, SIU has lost to ACC foes Clemson (2011) and Louisville (2016).

The Salukis have won nine road games against Power Five teams in their history. The last time SIU beat a Power Five team on the road was at Colorado on March 16, 2000. The only other road meetings verus Power Five teams since then were losses at Indiana (2000, 2006), Illinois (2010), Missouri (2014) and Louisville (2016). 

SIU played three Power Five opponents last season. The Salukis lost to Arkansas, Minnesota and Louisville. The last time the Salukis beat a Power Five program was in 2008, when they defeated Oklahoma State at home  in the first round of the NIT. Since that game, they have lost 10 straight. 

Head Coach Barry Hinson met with the media prior to Monday’s practice.

Opening statement
“Well, I hope it opens better than what it did last year, because the shock and awe hit us last year and we were down 13-0 to start the game. But, we have a game plan, I’m not going to be open about what we’re going to, but actually on the way over we’re going to hound them again about what we’re going to do defensively and what we’re going to try to do offensively. Now we all know what the elephant in the room is, we have to handle their length, and we have to handle their athleticism, and we have to be able to make really good decisions offensively. Anybody that’s going to have a chance against these guys has to rebound and has to handle their length on the offensive end, and that’s a pretty big challenge. I don’t know if you remember last year, but they switched to all ball screens, and seven-foot guys were guarding Mike Rodriguez, so it’s the same thing we’re going to see this year. I don’t think we have to play perfect, I don’t think any team has to play perfect, but I don’t think we have room for big margin of error, we can’t make a lot of mistakes and have any success at all. Especially because we’re short-handed, it really puts an emphasis on everything we do on the half-court.”
 
On defending the taller Cardinals
“I think there’s two things you can do, you can either go get them, or you can back off a little bit and certainly we’re not a back-off type team. The big thing is when you go after their guards, you have to be able to contain their penetration, and we’ve gotten better at that. Our defensive numbers are the reason we’re 2-0. It’s not what we’re doing offensively. Our defensive numbers have been pretty good in the first two games and specifically in the second half at Winthrop and the entire game against Illinois-Springfield, I thought we did a good job defensively.
 
On the matchup for Salukis center Kavion Pippen
“I think it’s a huge test not only for Kavion, but for Rudy (Stradnieks), maybe Austin (Weiher), but for all of us. Can you get shots at the rim? When you do you have to take advantage of them, which we didn’t do the other night. How many shots you get at the rim is limited because of their size, so going into this game you have to make outside shots. If you don’t make outside shots, which we didn’t the other night, it really puts you behind the 8-ball, and you got to find a way to spread the floor and open it up a little bit.
 
In Kavion’s defense, and even in our players’ defense, every time we had the ball on the perimeter there were five guys surrounding them. I don’t think Louisville will quite play us like we’ve seen, I don’t imagine they’re going to double Kavion because, why would they? They’ve got 6’11”-7’0″ guys that can guard him so he’ll be alone by himself. Now If they double him, that means it’s a good thing for us.”
 
On Armon Fletcher’s knee
“I want everybody to understand, we will never, ever, play a player if we feel like we’re doing any damage to his body. Yeah it (pain) can improve with possibly strength and conditioning, we got to do some stuff outside of basketball in order to help him, but this is not something that we can continue to hurt him. His mother informed me that she has the same issue and this is a genetic, a family thing, but his pain tolerance was pretty good at Winthrop because he didn’t even tell anybody, he didn’t let anybody know. I think that speaks volume about Armon and his pain tolerance. I said this morning, I called myself “Vegas Charlie” I took a huge gamble this weekend and we obviously know the gamble was putting him on the bench (against UIS), but that just shows you how much I care about these kids, that even in the point of losing a game, we don’t want to hurt our guys at all and we will help them as much as possible.”