Season on the bubble

Salukis ready for NCAA run

Coach Bruce Weber thinks if SIU can limit Missouri's 6-9 junior center-forward, teams will match up well.

By BRUCE LOWITT, Times Staff Writer

© St. Petersburg Times
published March 17, 2003

As midnight approached Saturday, Southern Illinois coach Bruce Weber was in a frenzy.

"For two days people kept telling us, 'You're in,"' Weber said. "Then I started getting squirmy because suddenly a lot of people were saying, 'Maybe you're not in.' And the guy on ESPN, the bracketologist, Gerry DiNardo, he took us off the board at 11:30. Now I'm panicking."

Confusing DiNardo, the Indiana football coach, with ESPN's Joe Lunardi was understandable. The panic had been supplanted by exhilaration and relief as SIU appeared on the TV screen Sunday, an at-large team picked as the No. 11 seed in the Midwest Region of the NCAA Tournament -- the last pairing in the next-to-last bracket announced.

SIU plays No. 6 seed Missouri on Thursday at Indianapolis. The Salukis, who won the Missouri Valley Conference regular-season title, would have earned an automatic bid had they beaten Creighton in the MVC tournament championship. But an 80-56 loss put them among the bubble teams and left them unsure whether they would make the 65-team field.

"I was really sweating it out, me and the players. No doubt about that," Weber said. "When I saw Butler and Alabama and Auburn, I knew all those teams were in the mix, and there were only so many spots. I started squirming. We're getting down to the last brackets. But it looks like the way the seedings went, we weren't the last one in. BYU and Butler (each a No. 12 seed) probably went after us.

"But right now I'm just happy we're in. There are some good teams, obviously, Boston College, Seton Hall, Texas Tech, that didn't get in. For a mid-major (conference) to get back-to-back at-larges, that's an unbelievable accomplishment." This is SIU's sixth trip to the tournament and its fifth in 11 years. SIU was an 11th seed a year ago and reached the Sweet 16. It made the field in 1977 and 1993-95.

Missouri was 9-7 and tied for fifth in the Big 12 Conference, 21-10 overall and, like the Salukis, an also-receiving-votes school in the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls before the conference tournaments. The Salukis are 1-5 against the Tigers, their most recent game a 72-56 loss in 1994.

"We feel we can compete with them," SIU senior guard and scoring leader Kent Williams said. "We've got a lot of guys from St. Louis who probably have competed against them at one time or another, so there might be some friendly rivalries there."

Weber said he has followed the Tigers closely because the schools are so close.

"Arthur Johnson (a 6-foot-9 junior center/forward) is a monster. Ricky Clemons (a 5-11 junior) is a very good guard, and Jimmy McKinney (a 6-3 freshman) is from St. Louis. All our guys know him."

The Tigers lost to Oklahoma 49-47 in the conference tournament final after trailing by 22 with 15:05 to play.

"Other than the big guy -- he gives them a major advantage because he's so wide -- I think we match up well. If we can limit him, the other positions, sizewise, we're not in bad shape."

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