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Season on the Bubble

Center gets last laugh with bigger role at SIU

Sylvester Willis setting career highs in each game as he fill the shoes of his All-MVC predecessor.

By JOHN C. COTEY, Times Staff Writer

© St. Petersburg Times
published December 12, 2002

Sylvester Willis could have used any number of reasons to explain why, unlike his All-Missouri Valley Conference predecessor Rolan Roberts, he doesn't block a lot of shots.

There's his previous life as a guard, then forward and finally center thanks to a late growth spurt. There's the technique, which he never learned as a perimeter player. There's the mind-set, which Willis admittedly doesn't have.

But to explain it in such an abstract way wouldn't be Willis.

So you want to know why blocking shots is not Willis' forte?

Genetics.

"Come on, I have arms like a raptor," he said.

And then he laughs, and you laugh along because you've never heard it put that way.

A raptor? That's good.

And he keeps laughing.

"Can't even put my hands in my pocket," he says, and now he's rolling.

He's laughing, and it's easy to imagine Willis, struggling to get his hands in his pocket to fish out change for a soda.

Hey, can you help me out here?

This is Southern Illinois' 6-foot-7 center, described by one teammate as goofy and another as the team cut-up, clearly one willing to exaggerate to get a laugh.

Because if his limbs are as nubby as he says, he has to be one of the best short-armed players in the country. He is setting career highs nightly and answering the biggest question facing the Salukis this season: What are we going to do without Roberts?

The answer, so far, is keep winning.

When the dream season came to an end in April and the Sweet 16 was but a memory, Jermaine Dearman knew exactly who would be filling Roberts' big shoes -- his roommate, Willis.

SIU was counting on adding size with 6-11 junior college transfer Levy Jones and 6-10 redshirt freshman Stefan Jabkiewicz. Certainly they would be the ones to fill that hole in the middle, right?

"Nah," said Dearman, almost defensively. "We all knew it would be Sly."

Dearman was right. As the summer came and went, so did Jones and Jabkiewicz. Jones failed to meet academic standards, and Jabkiewicz quit. Described by some media as devastating losses, Dearman shrugged them off.

He had come in with Willis as a freshman, seen the Calumet City, Ill., native struggle his redshirt season, watched him develop as a freshman and then begin to blossom as a sophomore. There was no doubt that Willis had earned the spot. And for those wondering what might have been had Jones and Jabkiewicz made it to the fall?

"I think Sly would have been the man. Sly would have had that spot anyways," Dearman said.

"I mean, I've been with him since we came in as freshman together, and I knew he had the potential and had a good body (for the game). His redshirt year really helped him a lot. ... Sly's been through the wars. And what Rolan did, Sly has the potential to do all that."

In Willis, coach Bruce Weber hopes he has a player who will become an inside force. Though he has only two blocked shots this season, Willis has raised his scoring average from 2.6 to 11.5 and his rebounds from 2.8 to 8.2.

Last season, Roberts averaged 13.8 points and 7.1 rebounds.

"It was sad to see what happened with those two (Jones and Jabkiewicz) not making it," Willis said. "You don't want to see stuff like that happen. On the other hand, coach said you have to use it for your advantage. That's what I'm doing."

Weber recruited Willis in high school based solely on potential. He estimates that during the past four seasons, he has used about half his recruiting trips on junior college centers, to no avail.

"It's always a crapshoot with big guys," Weber said.

So Weber takes chances on guys like Willis, who was 5-foot-6 as a freshman in high school before sprouting, or 6-8 John Warren and 6-9 Brad Korn, both former redshirts now contributing.

Will they ever be dominant centers like Roberts? Probably not. But the closer they come, the better the Salukis will be.

"I remember when I saw Brad Miller, who's now in the NBA. I saw him as a junior in high school, and he didn't even start the first time I saw him," said Weber, who was an assistant at Purdue for 18 seasons before coming to SIU in 1998. "But 16 months later, he's starting for (the Boilermakers) and we're playing for the Big Ten championship."

In one practice this season, the Salukis were running last-second shot drills, and Weber looked at Willis and asked what he was doing on the court.

"You would have fouled out by now," Weber told him.

The message was clear.

"Of course I'm going to laugh at that, but you really do have to think about it," Willis said.

If anything held Willis back, it was his habit of picking up fouls. Last season, he had 22 fouls and 17 points his final eight games.

Willis has yet to foul out this season and has had four fouls once.

"For Sylvester, it was just about getting more minutes and in more games," guard Kent Williams said. "He definitely seems more relaxed now. He knows he's in the right spot."

The center-by-committee, with Willis as chairman, has been a success. Korn and Warren have combined to average 9.8 points and six rebounds.

Weber says the Salukis never will replace Roberts, particularly on defense.

Dearman and Williams say with improved team defense, they don't need to.

"We've always talked about how replacing Rolan was a group effort and it would take a special effort from top to bottom," Willis said. "As far as me replacing him, I always felt that I was a guy they looked toward. Everybody's been stepping up though, and me, I'm just trying to do some good things right now."

SIU 85, Southeast Missouri State 69

RECAP: Kent Williams broke out of a slump to score a season high 25 points as the Salukis beat the Indians for the ninth time in 10 games. The Salukis never trailed, and also got 17 points from Stetson Hairston, which helped earn the sophomore guard Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Week honors.

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