View from the Sidelines: Assessing the Cougars exhibition opener
Allan Lewis
Issue date: 11/5/09 Section: Sports
Admittedly of senior guard Aamir McCleary, the SIUE Cougars were not rolling on all cylinders when they took the Vadalabene Center floor for the first time this season Wednesday.
SIUE crawled through the first half of their exhibition opener against MacMurray College, making mistakes that would make you think they had not played competitive basketball since say, March.
"We started pretty dead, and had no energy," McCleary said.
Maybe it was nerves, with seven new faces on the floor. Maybe it was the missing presence of sophomore guard and last year's leading scorer Mark Yelovich who sat this one out for what men's basketball Head Coach Lennox Forrester said was "violating team rules." The Cougars just didn't have that swagger when the gates on a new season lifted before them.
Tiny MacMurray, a school of 518 went push for pull with the Cougars through the early minutes. SIUE finally took control of the contest and the lead for good at 20-18, isolating the notion the Cougars could once again fall to a Division III school, as they did last season at home against Millikin University. This coming a day after No. 25 Syracuse University faltered against Division II's Lemoyne College we are reminded anything can happen in college basketball.
Once SIUE got the lead, their swagger returned. The rookies started to click and everything fell into place for a 94-64 blowout victory in front of a smaller, yet enthusiastic crowd.
When the smoke had cleared, six players ended up scoring in double-figures, including bounce-back efforts from Saint Louis University transfer Anthony Mitchell and freshman guard LeShaun Murphy, whom both scored just four points in the first half.
Perhaps the biggest star of the night for SIUE was sophomore guard Kevin Stineman.
Throughout the game, Stineman was the first one to race to all the loose balls and was making dazzling layups in traffic. The only hiccup in his game was his 1-4 performance from beyond the arc, but Stineman showed tremendous strides from last season, when he averaged just 2.5 points a game.
SIUE crawled through the first half of their exhibition opener against MacMurray College, making mistakes that would make you think they had not played competitive basketball since say, March.
"We started pretty dead, and had no energy," McCleary said.
Maybe it was nerves, with seven new faces on the floor. Maybe it was the missing presence of sophomore guard and last year's leading scorer Mark Yelovich who sat this one out for what men's basketball Head Coach Lennox Forrester said was "violating team rules." The Cougars just didn't have that swagger when the gates on a new season lifted before them.
Tiny MacMurray, a school of 518 went push for pull with the Cougars through the early minutes. SIUE finally took control of the contest and the lead for good at 20-18, isolating the notion the Cougars could once again fall to a Division III school, as they did last season at home against Millikin University. This coming a day after No. 25 Syracuse University faltered against Division II's Lemoyne College we are reminded anything can happen in college basketball.
Once SIUE got the lead, their swagger returned. The rookies started to click and everything fell into place for a 94-64 blowout victory in front of a smaller, yet enthusiastic crowd.
When the smoke had cleared, six players ended up scoring in double-figures, including bounce-back efforts from Saint Louis University transfer Anthony Mitchell and freshman guard LeShaun Murphy, whom both scored just four points in the first half.
Perhaps the biggest star of the night for SIUE was sophomore guard Kevin Stineman.
Throughout the game, Stineman was the first one to race to all the loose balls and was making dazzling layups in traffic. The only hiccup in his game was his 1-4 performance from beyond the arc, but Stineman showed tremendous strides from last season, when he averaged just 2.5 points a game.
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