Salukis Can Name Drop Now
The Southern Illinois Salukis’ historic run to the Sweet 16 has been part geographical, remarkable, fanciful, unpredictable and, if you can believe it, biblical.
Of course, getting the story out of Carbondale to the big-city papers hasn’t always been easy.
“They forget about us,” Coach Bruce Weber says. “There’s too many schools along the way. You got Northern Illinois, then you got Bradley, then you got Illinois State and of course the U of Illinois in Champaign. There are so many other schools. It is frustrating at times.”
Southern Illinois, living large after its at-large selection from the Missouri Valley Conference, now has our undivided attention. Victories in Chicago against Texas Tech and Georgia have advanced the Salukis and their cause.
Southern Illinois, a No. 11-seeded team, will face No. 2 Connecticut today in the East Regional semifinals.
So far, the team has impressed observers with its tenacity, defense and nickname.
Lack of respect? One reason Southern Illinois gets overlooked in the Chicago papers may be because the school is hardly in Illinois at all. Carbondale is a five-hour drive from Lake Michigan, much closer to St. Louis than Chicago.
In fact, with a slight tweaking of state borders and a referendum to return to the school’s old nickname, we could easily be talking about the Northeast Missouri Maroons.
Granted, Southern Illinois has some basketball history. Led by Walt Frazier, the Salukis won the National Invitation Tournament in 1967.
Yet, Sunday’s victory over Georgia marked the first time Southern Illinois has won a second game in the NCAA tournament.
The excitement in Carbondale, a community of 30,000, is palpable. The declaration “Go Dawgs!” has replaced “God Bless America” on strip-mall signs.
Kent Williams, a Saluki junior guard, described the trip home in a diary he is keeping for the school’s Internet site.
“All the players got to sit in first class,” Williams wrote of the plane ride home. “Once we got to Marion there was a ton of people going nuts. We had police officers escorting us through all the wildness. Everyone was going crazy. I couldn’t hear a thing. My ears were just ringing.”
After years of relative obscurity, Southern Illinois is a blip on the NCAA radar screen. As much as what makes the team tick, people want to know about the school’s unusual nickname, Salukis.
It certainly is a story with legs. In the early 1800s, the yarn goes, northern Illinois was plagued by terrible drought. Wheat fields and streams dried up.
Plenty of rain fell in southern Illinois, though, and people came from the north seeking corn and wheat “as to Egypt of old.” The region became known as “Egypt,” referring to a biblical passage in Genesis “and all countries came to Egypt to Joseph to buy corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands.”
In 1951, Southern Illinois sought to change the team’s nickname from Maroons. The student body of 2,000 overwhelmingly voted in favor of “Salukis,” a purebred Egyptian dog with paw prints dating back to 3600 B.C.
The dogs are known for speed and hunting skills.
And, now, Salukis are known for defense.
Southern Illinois has been led from “Egypt” to basketball’s promised land by Weber, completing his fourth year after 18 seasons as an assistant to Gene Keady at Purdue.
You wonder how a guy could spend almost two decades as a second wheel in West Lafayette.
“As an assistant, everyone said how can you stand it?” Weber said. “I loved being an assistant coach for Coach Keady at Purdue. We had tremendous success.”
In 18 years, Purdue went to 14 NCAA tournaments, won six Big Ten titles, made the Sweet 16 twice and in 1994 advanced to the round of eight.
“The only thing I regret there is not helping him get to the Final Four,” Weber said of Keady. “That’s the one thing he doesn’t have on his resume.”
Suddenly, Weber is two victories from achieving that goal.
Make no mistake: Southern Illinois has been built with the same blueprint Keady used for Purdue.
“We didn’t always have great talent there, but we found ways to win and found ways to battle people,” Weber said. “At Purdue, other than Glenn Robinson, we always lived off the other players we’re living off now.”
Solid defense has allowed Southern Illinois to neutralize more talented teams.
In the first round, Southern Illinois trumped Bob Knight’s Texas Tech team with relentless pressure. Weber said Knight told him after the game it was “one of the best defensive efforts against his team that he’s ever seen.”
Georgia Coach Jim Harrick was skeptical Southern Illinois could keep up the effort against his athletic Bulldogs.
Harrick suggested Texas Tech wasn’t all that talented.
“Bob Knight did an unbelievable job getting a No. 6 [seeding] out of that team, that’s all I’ll say,” Harrick said.
Well, after spotting Georgia a 19-point first half lead, Southern Illinois turned the defensive screws, rallied for a two-point victory and sent Harrick packing.
Like all projects, Weber’s rebuilding project at Southern Illinois took time.
Last year’s team finished 16-14 and Weber suspected Keady would not have been proud of the defense the Salukis played.
“I didn’t get them tough,” Weber said. “We made the switchover at mid-January and I told the coaches and players that next year is going to be different. And we went hard all spring, and we went hard all summer, and none of them flinched.”
The Salukis have become solidified. They have won a school-record 28 games this year. How? Weber recruited two freshman guards, Darren Brooks and Stetson Hairston, who are tremendous defenders.
Weber also coaxed a last-chance senior season out of center Rolan Roberts, a transfer from Virginia Tech. Roberts left Virginia Tech in the aftermath of a sexual assault scandal.
Roberts sat out last year under NCAA transfer rules and this year has given the Salukis a muscular defensive presence. Roberts, though only 6 feet 6, blocked five shots in the opening-round victory against Texas Tech.
“I put him on a year probation, basically,” Weber said. “I said, ‘Rolan, if you screw up you’re done. It’s up to you.’”
Roberts has taken advantage of his opportunity.
“This means a lot to me,” Roberts said. “It’s my first time in the NCAAs, and it’s going to be my last.”
Southern Illinois has gotten steady play at guard from Williams, the team’s leading scorer at 16 points a game, but it has been the emergence of 6-8 junior forward Jermaine Dearman that has propelled the Salukis into the Sweet 16.
Dearman, barely averaging double figures in scoring this season, had 17 points and 11 rebounds against Texas Tech and 25 points and eight rebounds against Georgia.
Dearman grew up in Indianapolis, but never thought for a minute he had what it took to play for Knight at Indiana.
“I don’t know if I would want to play for him,” Dearman said. “I know he gets frustrated with his players.”
Knight might have busted several gaskets on Dearman.
“He has talent,” Weber said. “He can run, he can jump, but his skills are a little erratic. He takes fadeaway shots that drive me nuts. But when he gets determined he’s a big-time player.”
Free spirit?
“He’s more worried about his braids,” Weber said, “about how he looks than how he plays. He’s more worried about hitting a jumper than going in and getting a dunk.”
Dearman’s inspired play of late, though, has made some people think anything is still possible for Southern Illinois.
The Salukis have already matched their preseason hope of making it to the Sweet 16.
“We’ve realized all our previous team goals,” Dearman said. “Our new goal now is to beat Connecticut.”
