The Daily Egyptian is published by the students of SIU at Carbondale. Except during vacations and exam weeks, The Daily Egyptian is published Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters and TWThF during the summer semester."

Little Rocked

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Call it rust, call it a letdown or call it an off game.

Whatever the reason, Tuesday was a disaster for the SIU men's basketball team.

Almost a week since their last game in Hawaii, the Salukis were simply not themselves, and the result was a 70-53 loss at Arkansas-Little Rock.

The Salukis seemed sluggish and were off their game all night, turning the ball over and allowing plenty of easy baskets at the other end. The Trojans and their full-court press had SIU out of rhythm, causing 16 turnovers by the time the game finally ended.

There was a long pass off the bottom of the rim here, a post feed out of Josh Warren's reach there - and the Salukis quickly found themselves out of sync everywhere.

No one on the team really knew exactly what happened, but there was one prevailing theory - lack of energy.

"When you don't come out, you're not fired up and you're not ready to compete, you can't do it on the road," said SIU head coach Chris Lowery, who was perplexed by his team's mysterious lethargy.

"Sometimes you can get away with that at home, but on the road you got to have a different mindset."

SIU's 2-of-16 from three-point range didn't help matters, either. For you math majors, that's 12.5 percent.

Jamaal Tatum came into the game shooting 47 percent from behind the arc, but was 2-of-6 Tuesday night. He was the three-point shooting star on the night - the rest of the team was 0-of-10 from three.

Stetson Hairston was 0-of-6 from downtown and shot 1-of-9 from the field in by far his toughest outing of the young season.

"We haven't shot that bad in a long time," Tatum said.

Because he managed to hit a few shots, Tatum was the only Saluki in double figures with 11.

LaMar Owen pulled down 10 rebounds, mainly because SIU threw up a ton of long-rebounding bricks. He shared the lethargic theory with the rest of the team, and said they just weren't as sharp as they usually are.

"We just got nervous at points and threw the ball away," Owen said.

From the beginning of the night, one could sense harbingers of doom, especially when the other team was playing better defense, of all things, than SIU.

In the first half it was somewhat difficult to tell which team was the Salukis, and it had nothing to do with both teams wearing maroon.

The Trojans played tough defense like SIU usually does, switching from zone to man-to-man defense periodically. That threw the Salukis out of rhythm, forcing 11 turnovers in the first half.

Also like SIU, Arkansas-Little Rock's best defense came from its point guards. SIU shot a respectable 52 percent in the first half, mainly because they converted a ton of high-percentage shots inside.

The Trojans' guards had the outside sealed, and SIU scored only five of its 25 first-half points on outside shots and converted only one of six three-point attempts.

Unfortunately for SIU, little changed in the second half, and the Trojans ran away with the game in front of 5,380 of their fans.

Forward Richard Hardman scored a season-high 18 points on 8-of-9 shooting, more than making up for Brandon Freeman's continuing scoring slide.

Freeman was 4-of-8 for nine points.

The nail in the coffin came with 2:28 remaining when Zack Wright hit a three-pointer as the shot clock wound down. Not only did he hit the shot, Wright's foot came down on a horizontal Owen, just missing giving Owen a dose of pain only males understand.

It was a microcosm of how things went for SIU in a forgettable night in Arkansas.

"It was just an off night all around," Tatum said. "We didn't play hard, and we didn't execute on offense or defense."