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Salukis prepare for Tom Davis led Drake

SIU faces early-season conference road game

Robert Lyons ~ Daily Egyptian SIU junior guard Darren Brooks puts up a shot against a Southeast Missouri State defender Wednesday at the SIU Arena. Brooks scored 12 points on 5-for-10 shooting.

Saluki fans don't have to retire their Korver chants just yet.

Though Kyle Korver, a perennial thorn in the Salukis' side, exhausted his eligibility at Creighton last spring, little brother Klayton is just beginning his career at Drake.

The SIU men's basketball team will get its first peek at the 6-foot-6 freshman, a key reserve for the Bulldogs, when the two teams square off in an early-season Missouri Valley Conference match-up Saturday afternoon in Des Moines, Iowa.

"I hear he's a little pudgy," SIU senior center Sylvester Willis said of the younger Korver. "I heard he ain't like his big brother. I heard he's more interior, but if he's anything like his brother, I'll be tired of him."

Much like his older brother, who began his career as mainly a spot-up shooter, Klayton Korver is expected to take time to develop his all-around game.

"I think he's got a chance to be a good player, but it's gonna take him awhile," first-year Drake head coach Tom Davis said. "As is probably true with a lot of freshmen coming into the Valley, it just takes awhile to make that transition from high school to the college game, and then this is a pretty good level of the college game."

Davis, one of the nation's winningest active coaches, will only help Korver fulfill his potential, though.

The longtime Iowa head coach decided to come out of retirement for the challenge of turning around a Drake program that hasn't had a winning season since 1987. But Painter and his staff are prepared to spoil his conference debut and win their ninth straight against the Bulldogs by utilizing their familiarity with the Davis system.

During his playing career at Purdue, Painter faced Davis' Hawkeyes numerous times, while assistant coach Paul Lusk spent the first year and a half of his collegiate career playing at Iowa under Davis before transferring to SIU.

Painter expects Drake to utilize an up-tempo, full-court pressing style of play. In their last game, a 73-64 win over Western Illinois, nine Bulldogs saw 13 or more minutes of action.

"The main thing when you face a Tom Davis team obviously is to be able to handle their press and not turn the basketball over," Painter said. "They will bring waves of fresh people in the game. He subs at every dead ball, and they just are trying to wear you down, trying to get more opportunities for themselves through their press."

After a Nov. 29 defeat of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a team that also relies heavily on its press, Painter expects his charges to be well prepared.

And while Painter has had the problem of not having enough playing time to divvy up among his four productive post players, Davis has the opposite problem at Drake.

"The guys that we're playing inside, No. 1 are not very big and then No. 2 are not very experienced, so we got some work to do there," Davis said.

Asserting their dominance over lower-division MVC foes is the first step for this bunch of Salukis competing for the regular season-ending prize.

"Coach Painter emphasized the fact that this is a Missouri Valley Conference game and that we have to get that win so we can help out our conference standings and hopefully win the conference," freshman guard Jamaal Tatum said.

Saluki notes ... the game starts at 3 p.m. Saturday and will be televised live on Fox Sports Midwest and Fox Sports Chicago.