SIU Loses Out To ISU (Red) For Prized JUCO Prospect, Now What?

A long time ago in a newspiece somewhere buried in the Internet, I made mention of one available scholarship on the SIU men's basketball team.

Long story short: It came down to JUCO stud power forwards Torye Pelham and Tony Lewis. Short story long: Lewis is off the board.

Bloomington-Pantagraph beat writer Jim Benson reports one of the Midwest's worst-kept recruiting secrets as Lewis will join former teammate Osiris Eldridge and former Phillips High School (Chicago) head coach Paris Parham, who currently serves as an assistant on Tim Jankovich's staff at Illinois State.

Lewis said even though Southern had the scholarship space, he did not want to be buried on the depth chart:

“I think I might have a chance to start (for ISU). It’s something I can work on. Illinois State has a better academic program. Southern has two, three and four people at my position. I felt I could come to ISU and come in and play.”

Had Lewis chosen Carbondale over Bloomington-Normal, he would have been fighting freshman prep-school transfer Eugene Teague, Jr., and sophomores Nick Evans and Anthony Booker for playing time as the post presence. Despite his 6-foot-8-inch frame, Carlton Fay plays more like a "3" and is more of a matchup problem on the offensive end in the Valley as a tweener.

The $750,000 question in Carbondale is what will head coach Chris Lowery do with the last remaining scholarship.

C-Lo and his staff want to fill out this last schollie, as it would love to avoid being shorthanded at any point next season. Lowery could begrudgingly go back to the high school straits, but unless John Wall is walking through that door, the prospects immediate impact will be questioned by a fanbase expecting a JUCO standout to fill out its roster.

But with a boatload of talent coming out of Illinois high schools in 2010 and 2011, maybe rolling the scholarship over wouldn't be the worse thing in the world.

Tim Jankovich is standing up for the little guy

While Bracketologists went back-and-forth on whether or not Creighton should have earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, I (among many others) wondered where was the love for Illinois State.

The Redbirds beat the blue out of the Bluejays by 24 points in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament semifinals. Yet, the Redbirds, who lost by three in overtime in the finals to Northern Iowa, settled for an NIT bid. And head coach Tim Jankovich, the Valley's most quotable coach, wasn't necessarily happy with it.

"The trend right now is that we're moving toward eliminating as many non-BCS [conference schools] as we can from this tournament. That's the discouraging thing to me."

But wait ... there's more:

"It's a national sport to beat up the non-BCS schools," he said. "It's a joke that [analysts] say those things because obviously they've never coached nor scheduled. ... You can never satisfy that. We can never get the Lakers on our schedule three times a year. It's not going to happen. So if that's the criteria, we cannot win that game."

Coach Jank makes a great point. Damn Phil Jackson isn't willing to take time out of his busy schedule to play a 2-for-1 with Illinois State. Maybe Kobe fears The 'O'-Hawk.

And I think the Redbirds boss' best point is this whole RPI mess. It's clearly a double-standard. It's like having googly eyes for the drunk chick at the bar, but being too nervous to talk to her. But Jankovich puts it in more relavant terms.

"They all talk about Top 50 wins like those are not subjective. You don't have a Top 50 win unless there's RPI. That's how you get a number. They use those like crazy for someone like Syracuse, for example: 'Syracuse has six Top 50 wins.' But Creighton's 39 RPI you should ignore because RPI's irrelevant? Well, if it's irrelevant, then you have zero Top 50 wins because there is no Top 50 without RPI."

Jankovich once coached at Kansas and Illinois under Bill Self before going to Bloomington-Normal. So he should have a foot in the door to get a KU-ISU game, right?

"First he'd start laughing, which is what we get a lot," Jankovich said, chuckling. "It's comic relief for a lot of [BCS coaches]."

Don't feel too bad, coach, SIU is still waiting for Ron Guenther to call back. Maybe someone should remind him of the difference between SIUC and SIUE.

I feel that down the line, Jankovich will be a BCS-caliber coach. Wonder if he'll be singing a different tune down the road.

Illinois State coach Tim Jankovich says non-BCS schools get burned in NCAA tournament selection process [Chicago Tribune]

Peaks, Valleys and a fantastic finish in St. Louis

Why don't these pens come with spell check?

Team triumphed over talent in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament championship game.

But it was not because of a lack of effort by said talent.

And by talent I mean Illinois State guard Osiris Eldridge.

After a scoreless first half that saw the Valley's preseason player of the year chuck shots left and right and come up empty, Eldridge played like a man possessed. He scored a game-high 21 points and drained five three-pointers, all in the second half. A couple of "O's" three-balls came from beyond the NBA's 3-point line that was painted on the Scottrade Center floor.

Three things came to my mind during Eldridge's stellar performance:

The MVC has to deal with this guy for one more year. Good luck with that.

He reminded me of what Drake did last year. He was a "sticker shooter" ... a player that could make a shot from the stickers on the floor.

It made me yearn for the days when Jamaal Tatum used to do that for SIU.

Eldridge took the game into his hands on both ends of the floor. He grabbed six rebounds, swiped two steals and collected two blocks -- one of which came against UNI's 7-foot-1-inch center Jordan Egelseder.

Yet, his performance was not enough to propel the Redbirds to a win which would have secured the team's first auto-bid to the NCAA Tournament since Rico Hill wrecked havoc on his Valley foes in 1998.

Despite the "M" on my credential, I became a fan of Osiris Eldridge as he drained jumper-after-jumper and made defensive stops one after another. Still wearing a pair of retro Air Jordans, Osiris invoked the memories of His Airness as he soared and scored when his team needed it the most.

But unlike the six storybook endings M.J. wrote in Chicago which ended with a Grant Park rally, Eldridge came up painfully short.

Panthers, Redbirds should provide quite a show

It's not the game that I wanted ... kinda hard when your team gets knocked out in the first round.

Even then, the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament title game will not square off the league's co-champions. Instead, the game between No. 1 seed Northern Iowa and No. 3 seed Illinois State could answer an age old question of college basketball.

Which team has the edge: the team with the better individuals or the squad where the sum of its parts are greater than the whole.

The Panthers' meteoric rise to the top of the Valley standings came this season because they played team basketball. UNI features solid post play from starting 7-foot-1 inch center Jordan Egelseder and MVC Sixth Man of the Year Lucas O'Rear. Its guard play features Kwadzo Ahelegbe, Ali Farokhamesh and Johnny Moran ... any of which could light up defenders from the perimeter at a moment's notice.

The Redbirds, well, they're a whole different story.

Illinois State will be making its second straight conference final appearance, looking to avenge last season's blowout loss at the hands of Drake. The Redbirds feature the conference's most talented player (Osiris Eldridge) and super-transfer Chamberlain "Champ" Oguchi. Either guard can carry his team's offense for lengthy stretches of the game.

So, who's it gonna be?

You'll find out at the same time I do. The only difference is that I'll be in under the Arch for one more day.

Illinois State: So much for your perfect season

It's the dog days of the college basketball season and no team is immune to the crazy crap that happens this month.

Bracket busting upsets. Big time blowouts. Nail biters and so forth.

Well, you can add player defections to that list.

SIU had two players leave the team earlier in the season and has really come together since. Now, Illinois State point guard Lloyd Phillips is leaving the team.

That's a tough blow for a team once considered to be invisible. Oops.

Phillips is an interesting case, though. It's got to be tough when the team's starting point guard just up and leaves in the heat of the conference season.

But allow me to read between the lines of a post-game presser in which LP talks about how ISU (Red) would be able to overcome its inefficiencies.

Phillips said the team encountered trouble when individual players went their own separate ways and attempted to carry the team on their respective backs.

Like I said in a recent blog, the Redbirds have a bunch of individual talent, but it ain't worth squat if it can't work as a cohesive unit.

Out Of Step Charlie Presents: Illinois State Ain't That Good, Should Be Better

Unlike a majority of my cohorts, I have walked away from two games between Southern Illinois and Illinois State unimpressed with the Redbirds.

I came into the season with high hopes for Bloomington-Normal's Birds. They had the Missouri Valley Conference's best player (Osiris Eldridge) a standout transfer from a BCS program (Champ Oguchi) and an up-and-coming head coach (Tim Jankovich) and coming off a 25-win season, that's usually the recipe for conference title.

And at 19-4 overall and 8-4 in Valley play, there is no doubt the Redbirds are a good team.

But they're not an NCAA Tournament team, and the thing is that there is too much talent on that squad where missing the Big Dance for two straight years should truly be a disappointment.

On the offensive side of the ball, they've got a bunch of guys I would characterize as "chuckers." They take some of the most difficult off-balance shots I have ever seen taken, and it almost caught up with them against an under-manned Saluki squad.

They've got two legit stars, but as point guard Lloyd Phillips said after the first meeting between SIU and ISU (Red), players need to not take everything on their own shoulders. And that's what it looks like at times with the Redbirds offensive attack. Five guys going in five different directions.

And the thing is it is not as if the Illinois State isn't well coached. I just think their players lose focus, that's all.

To recap:

• Champ Oguchi, good player.
• Osiris Eldridge, damn good player.
• Tim Jankovich, coaching star in the making
• Team chemistry, questionable.
• Chuckers, aplenty.

Talent and good coaching can take you far, but a lack of cohesion as a unit might be why a team that has 25-win potential might miss out on the March Madness fun for the second straight year.

Perfection, thy name is ... Illinois State?

Last season, the Illinois State men's basketball team was snubbed from the NCAA Tournament after finishing in second place to Drake in the Missouri Valley Conference regular season standings and in the Valley tourney in St. Louis.

This season, a few Redbirds seem to have found a way to get around a selection committee snub.

Perfection.

The all-knowing John Mullin of the Chicago Tribune has the scoop:

"I would be lying if I said we weren't thinking about an undefeated season," said [Champ] Oguchi, a redshirt senior guard-forward leading ISU with averages of 16.2 points and 6.8 rebounds after sitting out last season because he transferred from Oregon. "Every team wants to go undefeated. We're starting to think undefeated, but you never know what's going to happen. Teams are going to play their best games against us. We are now the hunted."

Back in October, ISU (Red) was predicted to finish third behind Creighton and Southern Illinois. And by virtue of their 11-0 start against a pretty weak out-of-conference schedule (ranked 323 of 341 D-I schools), the Bloomington Ballers are already thinking about getting on Mercury Morris' block.

Led by superstar junior guard Osiris Eldridge, who is averaging 15.2 points and 6.6 rebounds per game, who's to say the Birds are bonkers? Besides, having the Valley's pre-season player of the year isn't going to hurt.

But what will hurt is counting out the rest of the MVC.

• Creighton is deep and is coached by Dana Altman, the conference's longest standing coach (as long as you don't count that weekend trip to Arkansas).
  
• Defending Valley champ Drake is a quiet 9-3, but recently put a whoopin' on Iowa.
• Evansville is 8-2 and in search of the glass slipper Drake wore last season.
• Missouri State (7-4), Northern Iowa (6-5), Bradley (6-5) and Wichita State (6-5) are all above .500 and could put up a fight against any Valley team.
• Indiana State is 2-9 and is looking into its record books to see if Larry Bird has any eligibility left.

Oh yeah, and don't count out SIU. I know the Salukis' 5-6 record isn't good (trust me, I've seen a few of the losses live and in living color) but if you want to count out the Egyptian Hunting Dawgs, you can do it at your own risk.

Casting away head coach Chris Lowery's talented mixture of youth (Ryan Hare, Nick Evans and Kevin Dillard included) and senior star guard Bryan Mullins would be foolish, to say the least.

So, a word to the wise for Illinois State: before you start popping champagne like you won a championship game, you probably should take care of business in the Valley before you start talking about your peaks.