By Tom Weber siusalukis.com

CARBONDALE, Ill. — Southern Illinois (1-0) hosts Illinois-Springfield (1-2) in its regular-season home opener on Saturday at 7 p.m. at SIU Arena. The game is classified as an exhibition for the Division II Prairie Stars, who play at home on Friday evening against Robert Morris-Peoria.

Salukis head coach Barry Hinson holds a 12-0 career record against non-Division I opponents during 17 seasons as a collegiate head coach. He’s 4-0 while at SIU with an average margin of victory of 24 points — Benedictine-Springfield (+38), Missouri S&T (+22), Olivet Nazarene (+16) and Missouri Southern State (+21). Southern Illinois is 48-5 in home openers since SIU arena opened in 1964. Four of the losses have come in the last seven years — Northeastern in 2010, Ohio Dominican in 2011, Saint Louis in 2013 and Wright State in 2016.

Head coach Barry Hinson met with the media prior to Thursday’s practice.

Opening Statement
I don’t think Armon (Fletcher) is going to play. Armon hasn’t practiced this week. It looks like he is not going to play on Saturday. I have no intentions of playing him Saturday. I will tell you this as  precautionary measure, we will suit him up. Or at least, possibly at least have him on the books in case we get into foul trouble.

Is he worse than he was before the game at Winthrop? 
I thinks it’s going to be an ongoing situation with Armon. I can’t answer if it’s worse. It’s bad enough it’s where we’re going to have to hold him out of the game. I will say that. Yes, yes, I would say it’s worse than what it was going into Winthrop. I think that’s the best way to answer. So what we’re going to do is we’re just going to hold him out.

Do you have any updates on the other injuries? Maybe Austin Weiher?
Well, we played Austin (last Friday). How long did we play him — one minute at Winthrop. He came in the game twice for us. He has practiced. We expect him to be able to play. Well, shoot guys, he’s gotta play saturday night. So, he’ll be one of the eight guys that we suit up. So I expect him to play quite a bit on Saturday night. Thik (Bol) was actually just in the office and said that his rehab is is going well. We anticipate, my gut is, we try to have him back for our first game in Las Vegas. So, he would get to play two non-conference games before our opening game at Northern Iowa. As far as Marcus Bartley is concerned, Marcus will go to the doctor on Monday and have another eval looking at his hand. We’ll make a decision whether or not he can shoot that week, but hopefully we can have Marcus back, hopefully by San Jose State.

I know you haven’t seen (Amadou Fall) play in a game, a high school game,  AAU game etc. What gave you the incentive to sign him?
We saw him practice. I don’t want anybody to think we haven’t seen the kid play because that would be false. We’ve watched the kid, I’ve watched the kid play live. Coach (Brad) Autry watched him play live, Anthony Beane watched him play live twice, so we’ve seen the kid work out, and with each work out he continually got better. I just told Mike Reis and, guys, this is something that I’ve been around this game a long time. I can’t teach a kid to be 6’9 and have a 7’1 wingspan. And we just felt like this was a no-brainer. And I will say this, if we had not signed him early, there’s no way we would have gotten him late.

With the shortened roster, I thought maybe it would put some pressure on the defense at Winthrop, but you really stepped up to the plate. How happy are you about that?
I was. I was happy especially because they did what we challenged them to do at halftime. I thought it was really important that we came out of there and had a sense of urgency defensively because we did not in the first half and we gave up 41 points. My goodness, that’s a lot of points to give up in the first half, but at the same time, lot of jitters to work out, lot of first-time guys playing Division I basketball. If you would go into our locker room right now, you’d see what we’ve done with our team. We’ve taken the stats from the last five years of all the teams that have won a Missouri Valley championship, and/or played in the NCAA Tournament and we have established what is the standard for those five years. What was the standard, what it was defensively, what it was 3-point, field goal percentage defense, all the way through the offensive stats. We have a goal going into each game; this is what we want to accomplish, and at Winthrop, we did not do that in field goal percentage defense. We did it in steals, we didn’t do it in blocks, we did it in our field goal percentage, we did it in our 3-point field goal percentage, but we didn’t do it on the rebounds. Our offensive rebounds were down. We didn’t have enough assists. We had way too many turnovers. There’s a lot of room for us to make improvement, and consequently, I think we’ve made improvement this week at practice, but we’ll certainly see how much improvement come Saturday night.

We made them uncomfortable watching on the computer. They were clearly uncomfortable.
Yeah, we really did. Not in the first half; they were very comfortable in the first half. But the second half, we made them very uncomfortable. We changed something we did at halftime and it helped us. I was a little bull-headed, a little stubborn in the first a half. I wouldn’t change, and we did at halftime. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I just felt like we needed to guard Cooks in a certain manner and we changed how we guarded him in the second half and it helped us to turn it around.

This is me personally, I thought Aaron Cook had some bad turnovers. Are you thinking of starting (Eric) McGill?
No, I mean we’re going to play Eric as much as we…guys, everybody is going to play to the point Saturday night where they’re going to want to come out of the game. There will be times, like there was at Winthrop, where I told Eric McGill, “You can’t come out. I don’t have anybody right now. I don’t have anybody.” Aaron did not have bad turnovers until the end of the game. Just three really bad possessions, and it was kind of hard. Once again, it goes back to maturity, it goes back to experience, you have a 22 point lead, and you don’t understand or realize the importance of keeping a hold of the basketball. We didn’t do a good job and I didn’t do a good job. I should have put him in a different position and said, “we’re going to play the clock out and go for the last second shot and just make them foul us.” I just felt like we needed to continue to play at that time.

They’re a Division II Team. They have some guards that can score and they have a 6’10” guy who will play probably Saturday.
Hey guys let me tell you this, we have eight guys. You read about Division II teams beating Division I teams all year long. It happens all the time. This will be a tight game just because of what we have on our squad. I don’t want to lose this game; this is most important game we play all year long. Period. I went on the radio Friday after the game and I told our fans, we need all the help we can get. We need all the energy we can get. I don’t want to make light of this, but when you’ve got eight guys, you can’t fathom all the problems you could possibly have in a game: team gets hot, you get foul trouble, you get a sprained ankle, or injury, or whatever. We’ve got to be ready to play and our guys will be ready, I’m confident.

Any ideas who will start in Fletcher’s place?
We’ll start Tyler (Smithpeters). I anticipate we’ll start Tyler and that automatically makes us smaller, but Tyler’s a senior, he’s been in this arena before.

Actually, I thought he had a pretty good influence, he helped the team a lot just by being there.
I’ll tell you guys what, I think Tyler Smithpeters has matured in ways beyond measure. Tyler made plays on the floor at Winthrop that he has not made in the past three years: shot fakes, got guys up in the air but didn’t take bad shots, release the ball, make shots, passing. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again; he’s our best passer. He’s absolutely our best passer and he’s gotten better defensively. He’s actually guarding now and wants to guard, so I’m impressed. I’m expecting Tyler to have a good year.

I don’t remember that little fake at the 3-point line and going for the jumper. I don’t remember that from last year.
No, well matter of fact, what he would have done last year, he would have gone all the way to the basket and turned it over or got it blocked or whatever. He’s not doing it now. He’s still driving baseline and going out of bounds. He’s got one of those in him every game. We need to threaten removal of body parts or boogers or something if he does that. We need to do something. I don’t even know what I can say anymore legally, but that bone-headed move he makes on the baseline. I mean he dribbles out of bounds once a game; you just account for it. He must think that’s the way to Harrisburg. He must think the only way you can get to Harrisburg is the baseline.

In your experience, when you break a bone in your wrist does it take some time to get the feeling back and the shooting and the rhythm?
Yeah, we’re being overly optimistic about that we can bring him back. Tim Jankovich, that is very well documented as being one of my very best friends, and his son, Michael, had a broken wrist and he was out eight weeks. We’re not even to the third week, so we’re all being optimistic. It was a different bone than Michael had, but certainly we are being optimistic.

There wasn’t any ligament damage?
No.

The rerun on after this on Fox Sports Midwest is Edwardsville and Valpo, and you play both of those teams this year. Do you afford that luxury… I know it was a gameless night. I was wondering if you saw it?
I try to watch. I go home every night this time of year… I don’t watch basketball all the time because if I do, I get depressed. I’m that type of guy that I start saying, “We need to do this better, we need to do that better.” I watched the entire game last night and I watched a little bit of NBA basketball last night and of course I always watch the Jayhawks every time they play. I watched them the other night when they played Kentucky, but if there’s a Valley team on, this morning I watched Illinois State, what a good win for our league today beating South Carolina. What a great start for our league, guys, what a great start for our league, and I thought Valpo was extremely impressive last night. I tell you guys it was great, and I’ll answer this question right now. I pull for any Valley team to win non-conference. I want all those guys to win all their games. Unless they’re playing a friend or buddy of mine, I want our Valley teams to win every game.

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS (0-0) at WINTHROP (0-0)
Nov. 10, 2017 • 6 p.m. CT
Rock Hill, S.C. • Winthrop Coliseum (6,100)
First Meeting (H: 0-0, A: 0-0, N: 0-0)
Series vs. Winthrop/Big South
Friday marks the first meeting between the Salukis and Eagles. SIU is 2-0 all-time against current members of the Big South Conference with wins over Charleston Southern in 2010 and Radford in 1992.

Hinson vs. Winthrop
Salukis head coach Barry Hinson is 1-1 lifetime against Winthrop, having played the Eagles as part of the BracketBusters tournament while coaching at Missouri State.

Salukis in season openers
The Salukis won their season opener 11-straight years from 1999 to 2009. Since then, they are 2-5 in season openers, with victories coming at New Orleans on Nov. 12, 2012 and versus Air Force on Nov. 13, 2016.

Division I starting experience
The Salukis have seven players who have a combined 178 games of starting experience at the Division I level. Tyler Smithpeters (63), Thik Bol (33), Armon Fletcher (30), Sean Lloyd (20) and Jonathan Wiley (1) have all made starts at SIU. Transfer Marcus Bartley made 18 starts at Saint Louis and Eric McGill started 13 times at SEMO.

Veteran roster
• Ten of the 12 players are upperclassmen.
• Half of the roster (six players) are in either their fourth or fifth year of eligibility.
• Nine of the 12 players are at least 21-years-old. A 10th player turns 21 in December.
• The team enters the season with 498 games of Division I playing experience combined.

Thik Bol named Preseason 
Second-Team MVC Team
F Thik Bol (6-8, 202, Sr.) was named preseason Second-Team MVC Team. In his first season at SIU last year, he blocked 76 shots, which ranked third-best in a single-season in school history. That mark also put him 11th all-time at SIU. Bol started every game last year, averaged 9.1 points and shot a team-best .533 from the field.

Fletcher on Most Improved Team
G Armon Fletcher (6-5, 207, Jr.) was named to the MVC’s Most Improved Team last year. He was third on the team in scoring (11.1 points) and reached double figures 19 times. He was second on the team in 3-pointers made (47) and ranked seventh in the conference in steals (1.3). Fletcher missed three games in early January with a foot injury.

Tyler Smithpeters returns
G Tyler Smithpeters (6-4, 203, Sr.) Injured his knee in the season opener against Wright State last year and was granted a medical redshirt. He led the team in 3-point shooting percentage (.405) as a junior in 2015-16 and ranks sixth all-time at SIU in career 3-point shooting percentage (.395).

Sean Lloyd settles in as starter
G Sean Lloyd (6-5, 210, Jr.) made 20 starts last season with his first start coming on Dec. 14 versus Saint Louis. He averaged 7.6 points and 2.8 rebounds off the bench, but improved those numbers to 8.7 points and 3.3 rebounds as a starter, while shooting 19-of-47 (.404) from 3-point.

Dawg Bites
•G Marcus Bartley (6-5, 193, Jr.) was diagnosed with a broken bone in his right wrist on Oct. 25 and is expected to miss six weeks.
•F Thik Bol (6-8, 202, Sr.) had knee surgery on Nov. 3 and is expected to miss approximately six weeks.
•F Austin Weiher (6-8, 206, Jr.) missed all of preseason with a foot injury.
•Of Thik Bol‘s 129 field goals last season, 57 (44 percent) were dunks.
•In SIU’s wins last year, it averaged 77.6 points and was +3.9 on the boards. In its losses, it averaged 58.8 points and was -7.3 on the boards.
•Tyler Smithpeters has made two or more 3-pointers 29 times in his career.
•SIU has gone 82-consecutive games with at least one 3-point field goal and 990-consecutive games with at least one free throw (dating back to 1986).
•Hinson is 14-16 overall in non-conference road games at SIU.

Coach Hinson Press Conference Transcript
What is it, in A Few Good Men, when Tom Cruise said ‘the hits keep coming’? Armon Fletcher dislocated a knee at Tuesday’s practice. The initial response was that he’ll be out for up to two weeks. Thinking back to that now, we hope to make a game time decision. We will travel with him this weekend, but we don’t know if he’ll be able to participate in our first two games. We’ll make that decision literally right before game time based on our medical staff.

There was no damage in the xrays?
This is a non-surgical injury but it’s a re-occurring injury that he has had in the past. He is not going to be practicing this week. I would like to have a presser next week that we won’t talk about injuries, so hopefully that’s the case. I’m sorry to start off with that again this week. But right now we know we have eight guys we can take to Winthrop, maybe nine.

How did the injury happen?
All these injuries have been freakish. It was during a block-out drill. If you were watching film and you had a six year-old daughter, you would’ve thought that she could’ve hit you harder than how he got hit. It was just a freak deal.

But you’re still traveling with him? 
I don’t play possum with you on injuries. I don’t do that. I’m not one of those coaches. If we can play him Friday then we’re going to play him Friday. My gut is right now that probably won’t take place, but we’re going to do everything we can. It will be a decision made by our training staff, but more importantly by Armon himself. It’s not like we have to have an NFL Injury Report on Monday. We don’t need to start that.

Does he have crutches? 
No, he doesn’t have crutches. He’s walking around, but he looks like Herman Munster. I’ve got two of those right now, Thik (Bol) and Armon.

How’s the endurance looking for the season opener? 
I think there’s a lot of different things in here that will give us a challenge as a coaching staff and as a team. We look at play, at rotation, changes that we can make offensively and defensively. You know, how the game’s being called early on. It’ll be tight and lots of fouls. We’ve got to be able to handle that. We’ve looked at a lot of different scenarios over the last couple of days. We don’t feel like we’ll go into this unprepared. But you can’t prepare for the unknown. I think that’s the scary thing right now. There’s 351 programs right now in college basketball. I don’t think any of them that would enter their first game of the year without three starters. I think we probably win that race. Hopefully we’ll get this down here pretty quick.

Will Tyler Smithpeters start if Fletcher can’t go?
I think Tyler would start because he deserves to start. I always look at what’s the next best addition for us. A lot of that has to do with that he has experience. He’s played in games like this, he is a senior. I tend to always lean towards guys that have experience. Tyler’s done that, he’s played in big games and season openers. I think that has a lot to do with it as well.

How’s Austin (Weiher) looked? 
I think he’s looked okay. I don’t think he’ll play. I think it’s not fair for us to have a kid who was cleared on the 6th to play on the 10th. I think that’s awful hard to ask that. When I say we’ll be down to eight guys, that’s because I don’t anticipate Austin playing.

How have the injured players helped support their teammates?
The one thing about leadership is when these guys are out, they’re not gone. It’s not like  they’re going somewhere. Marcus has been on the bench over there and every day and getting after our guys telling them this and that. You know Thik is not a vocal leader. He just leads by example. Those guys are still around. Sean Lloyd is going to lead this team. If you ask all the guys right now who they’re going to listen to and a majority of them are going to tell you Sean.

Talk about the new signees, Darius Beane and Sam Shafer.
When you look at the following year, we have seven seniors. When you have a seven-senior team, you want to make sure you get a mixture of high school (freshmen) coming in that these guys can mentor for an entire year. We really wanted to make that prevalent, so we have have four scholarships and we really wanted to see if there was a point when we could sign some high school kids if we could. We have two young men signed. In those two, we felt like we needed to sign specifically a guard to play the point. I have always told you the more we can play point guards on the floor, it does not matter with height. Marcus is 6’4 and Darius comes in at 6’2. Darius is a different player than Anthony. He is more of a point guard and comes out of a very tradition-rich program at Carbondale

High. He plays for a guy that I think is a phenomenal coach so we are getting a well-coached kid. I know I am getting a kid that has been raised right because I know the parents personally, so I am excited about that. So this is a basketball family. The father played at the highest level possible. Oldest boy is the third all-time leading scorer in our program’s history. Then we have the youngest one coming in as the fourth-best player in Illinois. I think you will see Darius make changes in strength and conditioning. I think he has the chance to be one hell of a player.

Over the years in this program, we have seen guys like Carlton Fay, Matt Shaw and Sean O’Brien have all had unbelievable success. We have wanted to find what fits that hybrid position that can pass, dribble, shoot and has a high basketball IQ. One of the things that we did was that we went out and got a guy like Sam. Sam fits that mold of those three guys and I think that is really important for our program. I know I have been giddy about this season, but I am giddy about the two guys that signed with us today.

Will you consider redshirting either player?
We do not ever talk about red-shirt publicly. We always talk about that with the family. Red-shirting has always been part of our DNA since I have been here. Times have changed. I do not red-shirt kids anymore. If the NCAA rules do not change regarding transfers, if they go where I think they are headed, I think it is going to be very difficult to red-shirt individuals. I think the NCAA rule is going to go to where guys can transfer and be automatically eligible and not have to sit out a year. If they come to this deal, you can shut mid-major basketball down.

Was it his shooting that most impressed you about Shafer?
I do not want to say shooting. I think his basketball IQ. The first time I saw Sam he reminded me of Sean O’Brien. It was a cross between Sean and Matt Shaw. He shot the ball a little bit like Matt. Matt was a better shooter than Sean. Sean had a little bit higher basketball IQ on the floor for us than probably what Matt had. I just saw those three guys in Sam and thought “that’s what we want”. That position as we all know has been very prevalent and very, very precocious in The Valley. We have signed a point guard and a hybrid and we hope to sign a couple of bigs if we can. If we do that, we are adding to a good class.