A Modest Proposal For Cougars?
Kevin Stallings seems to be giving mixed signals about the chances his Illinois State men’s basketball team has against Washington State in tonight’s second-round game of the National Invitation Tournament.
“We’re not the most imposing team athletically and we’re not a great shooting team,” Stallings said of his Redbirds (20-12), who confounded many experts by finishing in a tie for second place with Southern Illinois in the Missouri Valley Conference.
“We’re not a great defensive team, either. In fact, we don’t do anything great in my opinion. We don’t scare anybody, I’ll tell ya that.”
But in the next breath, the second-year Redbirds coach compares his team’s style of play to that of Kansas, where he served for five years as an assistant under Roy Williams before taking the ISU program last season.
“And we have played our best basketball here at the end of the season,” he added. “Actually, we’ve become a fairly solid basketball team over the course of time, because our kids have worked really hard and bought into what the coaching staff has tried to teach them.”
What it all means is anybody’s guess. And WSU coach Kevin Eastman is guessing the Redbirds will give his Cougars (17-11) all they want when the two teams tip it off at 5:05 PST.
Especially in their own 10,600-seat Redbird Arena, where they have won 12 in a row.
What catches Eastman’s attention is the fact that ISU was 12-2 at home during the regular season and has won 11 of its last 13 games. Among the teams the Redbirds have beaten are MVC champion Tulsa, co-runner-up Southern Illinois and Utah State, which they knocked out of the NIT last Thursday in Logan, Utah.
“They’re the best movement and screening-type team we’ve played all year,” Eastman said. “The single biggest thing I’m impressed with is how well they move and how well they screen.
“They get guys open.”
Maurice Trotter, a 6-foot-4 junior guard, scored 29 points in the 93-87 overtime win over Utah State, but Stallings insists that was an aberration.
And the numbers would suggest as much.
Trotter leads the Redbirds in scoring, but he averages only 11.5 points a game. On the other hand, Chad Altadonna and Dan Muller each average 10.3 and three others - Brian Kern, Kenny Wright and Marcus Franklin - average between 9 and 9.9.
“We’re a team of balance,” Stallings said. “We’re kind of unusual in that we don’t know where our points are going to come. But what’s important is that our players don’t care where they come from.
“They don’t care who scores and they don’t care who plays. They just want to win, and that’s probably the main reason we’re so successful.”
The Redbirds, who were picked to finish sixth in their league, push the basketball up the court when the numbers are in their favor, but hardly qualify as a run-and-gun team.
Eastman said he thinks both teams will want to play at about the same tempo.
“I would expect the score to be in the mid-80s,” he said.
ISU averaged 76 points a game during the regular season and shot 46.7 percent from the field. The Redbirds like to shoot the 3-pointer, but their percentage from that range in a so-so 36.0.
Still, they have managed to win, despite the fact, which helps account for ISU’s 3-5 start, that seven of the 11 players Stallings has available are in their first year in the program.
“We got off to a real slow start,” Stallings admitted. “Since then, though, we’ve made some pretty good improvement and become a solid basketball team.”
And then, as if to make sure no one could get a handle on just how good his team really is, he added:
“Once you see us play, you’ll see why we were picked to finish sixth in our league.”
xxxx GAME TIME WSU meets Illinois State at 5:05 tonight