Bears v. Salukis

I braved the leftover snow and ice and made the trip Thursday night to Carbondale for the MSU-SIU game.  First, quick thoughts from the game.  Bears played good enough to win.  The missed free throws were absolutely killer.  Cooks played awful.  I was expecting a lot more from him.  It look like he had no passion.  Weems did not play very well either.  He was in foul trouble early and never got in a rhythm offensively.  To his credit, he played with four fouls for a good five or six minutes during the Bears comeback and stifling defense of SIU.

The Good: Wade Knapp and Wil Creekmore played fantastic down low.  SIU did not have an answer for them.  Creekmore hit outside shots and also battled in the post.  Once Knapp got the ball, he always put up a good shot even though it may not have gone down, or was fouled (needs to work on FTs).  Generally, the defense played very well.  SIU's final total of 68 was inflated at the end of the game and not reflective of the quality of defense.  Also, I very pleased to see that MSU actually has a post game.  They just did not throw up three after three and pray that the shots fall.  They ran an offense, stuck with it even when it wasn't working, and had success.  Overall, my first impression of Coach 'Zo and this year's team was a good one.

A final note on the game: the refs were awful.  They called 28 fouls in the first half and 22 in the second half.  My friends and I got there about six minutes into the game and counted at least seven clear travel calls and three close travels that were not called.

SIU Arena:  While it has an intimate feel to it (not a bad seat in the house), it is an old glorified high school gymnasium.  It looks like a sale barn from the outside.  On the inside, there is only three bathrooms that we could find and only two concession stands.  Every seat except the lower bowl seats going the length of the floor are benches.  Capacity is somehow 9400.  There is no way.  The place is a lot smaller than what it looks on TV.  It can't be much bigger than MacDonald Arena.  SIU is in the process of raising money to renovate it and construction cannot start soon enough. 

The only thing I have to complement SIU about is, at halftime, they print out the game stats and distribute them to everyone.  That was very convenient and nice to refer to during the second half.