DawgBlog

Dinner? Outside? In November? Only SIU men’s basketball coach Chris Lowery and Illinois coach Bruce Weber could draw that kind of crowd.
And they’re going to try. Earllier tonight, the two Saluki family members announced a charity dinner at Rent One Park that will take place Monday, Nov. 9, at 6 p.m. Tickets are $50 for individuals and between $800-$2,500 for corporate tables of eight. The event will take place on the infield, under a heated tent, with a catered meal. It’s unique, with some heavy hitters, and should be a big success for the Coaches vs. Cancer Fund, which is where the proceeds will go.
“Since I’ve been up there, we’ve always done a fundraiser with Bradley in Peoria, and I really don’t like Bradley, and I still do it because it’s a good fundraiser, and then I started up with Matt Painter when he arrived at Purdue,” Weber said. “It’s kind of a crossover, kick-over for the basketball season, and Chris and I had been talking last year about doing something.”
The two couldn’t come up with a date last season, but were able to find one during the exhibition season this time. The event will come the night after Illinois hosts Quincy at Assembly Hall. SIU plays former associate head coach Rodney Watson and Southern Indiana Nov. 7 in an exhibition, and then opens the season Nov. 14 in Carbondale against Tennessee-Martin.
The event will ring a few personal bells for both Lowery and Weber. Lowery lost his father-in-law to cancer two years ago. Weber lost his grandmother, a few aunts and uncles, and a former high school teammate recently to brain cancer.

SIU’s most complete game of the season put it near the top of the Missouri Valley Football Conference standings Saturday.
The Salukis got big plays from all three units in their 24-14 win over North Dakota State in both teams’ league openers. Chris Dieker found Jeff Evans for a 61-yard touchdown to open the scoring. The defense hunkered down after the Bison got the ball in Saluki territory and were going for the go-ahead score. On special teams, punter Scott Ravanesi put one on the Bison 4-yard line and was named MVFC Special Teams Player of the Week. Although the kickoff coverage still needs some improvement, Ravanesi, kicker Kyle Dougherty and the punt return unit is playing pretty well right now.
That’s all good news as SIU looks toward its road trip to Macomb this weekend.
The offense wasn’t really able to run effectively, unless you look at the end result. Deji Karim had more than 100 yards. Is the end result the most important? Or the consistent, quarter-to-quarter performance? In this case, it’s the end result. Karim and the rest of the Salukis struggled rushing the football for the first two quarters, but in the second half, the yards came a little easier. All of Karim’s big runs came in the second half.
That’s encouraging. So was Joe Allaria’s performance, as he continues to be a viable option at wide receiver.
We’ll see if it carries over to WIU in Macomb. The Leathernecks are changing head coaches, as Don Patterson stepped down this week due to health concerns, and WIU has had two weeks to prepare for the Salukis.

SIU is ahead where it counts - if the halftime score counts - but North Dakota State’s football team is having its way today at McAndrew Stadium.
The ninth-ranked Salukis lead the Bison 10-7 at the break after Kyle Dougherty’s 44-yard field goal at the 2:41 mark. SIU scored its only touchdown off a 61-yard play-action pass to Jeff Evans.
NDSU scored its only touchdown off a 10-play, 60-yard drive that took 4:42. Backup tailback D.J. McNorton capped the drive with a 1-yard plunge over the left side. The Bison are trailing, but are doing exactly what they wanted to do in the opening half. They’re keeping the football (they had it more than 18 minutes in the first half) and are grinding out yards on the ground (119 already). Running back Pat Paschall, the nation’s leading rusher in the Football Championship Subdivision, has 93 yards on 17 carries.
On the other side, Deji Karim and the SIU offense is finding it hard to do anything on the ground. Karim, the nation’s second-leading rusher at the FCS level, has 30 yards on 11 carries. Steve Strother had two carries for a yard. The Salukis have looked best off the play-action, and will have to do some more of it to get some of the Bison out of the box in the second half.
Punter Scott Ravanesi really has been a 12th man for the defense. Ravanesi has three punts for an average of 45 yards. He got two of those inside the 20-yard line and nearly got the other one downed at the 2.
SIU can keep the same tempo in the second half, it just has to do something with the football other than throw it.

SIU football coach Dale Lennon always talks about big plays - creating some on offense and avoiding them at all costs on defense.
North Dakota State should test both of those challenges today at McAndrew Stadium, which is suffering through some rain right now. I don’t expect the rain to continue throughout the game, but it might still be lingering at the kickoff in about 40 minutes.
The Bison have had 19 scoring drives this season, and 13 of them have come on drives that took less than 105 seconds. SIU might have the best defense NDSU has played this season, including the opener at Iowa State, but even the best defense is occasionally susceptible to the 90-yard touchdown run.
“We gotta, No. 1., recognize what they’re doing, defensively,” Lennon said. “We gotta be ready to make adjustments during the course of the game. I like the diversity of our offense with the run and the pass, and having some multiple weapons, so, it’s trying to be ready as the game dictates.”
Both teams possess fast-break threats - Deji Karim had an 82-yard touchdown off a kickoff return and added a 61-yard scamper, while NDSU tailback Pat Paschall had a 91-yard touchdown run last weekend. I don’t anticipate a shootout today, though. I expect the team that can best orchestrate a multi-play drive will win today.
Karim, the nation’s second-leading rusher in the Football Championship Subdivision to Paschall, sounded confident earlier this week.
“Everybody is on the same page,” he said. “The offensive line has just been awesome the past two games, and I expect the same out of ‘em. And, you know, (Fullback John Goode), he doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. He does so much for our offense.”
Look for NDSU to try to keep the football as long as it can, especially if these conditions continue. SIU has a marked advantage in offensive firepower, as far as the running and passing game, and the Bison don’t want to let the No. 8/9 Salukis have the football. They will line up in a spread, the near formation, far formation, and the straight I today. As with Paschall’s stats, their biggest strength is up front.
“Very few times have we missed blocks,” NDSU coach Craig Bohl said. “We’ve gotten body on body, so there haven’t been a lot of times where there has been a player that we did not think we could block, and it could cause us some problems. What Pat has done ot do some of the big plays; there have been several times where Pat has just broken a tackle, or two.”

My pick is SIU by two scores, 35-21. Should be a physical, methodical, tight football game at The Mac. What are your predictions?

Well, the Missouri Valley Conference hasn’t released the men’s basketball schedule, but, apparently, it is complete.
And it’s weird. But in a good way, depending on if you like televised games.
SIU released its tentative non-conference schedule awhile back, but it had some question marks as far as some games with conference opponents. Well, the Salukis got seven network television appearances, according to sports information director Tom Weber. SIU’s game at Northern Iowa Saturday, Feb. 6, will be on ESPN2. The Salukis’ games at Illinois State (Jan. 3) and against UNI (Jan. 6) and Wichita State (Jan. 31) will be on ESPNU. The Valley’s TV network deal with Fox Sports Midwest will air SIU’s games against Drake Jan. 9 and its two games with Creighton (here Feb. 23 and at Omaha Jan. 13). Last year most of their conference games, if not all of them, were either on Wednesday, Saturday or Sunday. This year they’re on every day of the week except Monday.
In a really tough stretch, SIU hosts Illinois State Saturday, Jan. 23, hosts Western Kentucky Monday, Jan. 25, goes to Indiana State Thursday and then hosts Wichita State the following Sunday. No back-to-back nights, as SIU coach Chris Lowery predicted, but still a tough stretch.
I’ll put the new, finished schedule on the blog tomorrow or Wednesday, and we’ll run it in the paper soon.
SIU’s home ESPNU BracketBuster game could also be televised, as well as the regular-season finale at Wichita State. I imagine both of those will get a lot of consideration, as SIU and the Shockers should be in contention for top-five spots. Nice to see the Salukis get some games on ESPN’s family of networks, they should be exciting to watch. Mediacom will also probably air a few, and is still picking games.
Weber estimated SIU’s All-Access program would air about 20 of the 31 games.
In personnel news, guard Caleb Long is not going to walk on this year, according to Weber. Lowery told me a few weeks ago Nathaniel Mitchell, a former Carrier Mills High School standout, will walk on this year. He’s a 6-foot-5, 205-pound forward that was pretty athletic. He played the last two seasons at Southeastern Illinois College in Harrisburg, where he averaged 3.9 points and 4.5 rebounds per game. He shot 51 percent from the field, according to stats from the NJCAA, but was a 48 percent free-throw shooter. Yikes.
The Drew Barham saga is officially over. The shooting guard who signed with SIU for this coming school year but never showed up has been released from his scholarship, according to the Memphis Commercial-Appeal. Barham, a 6-7 marksman, plans to walk on at Memphis. SIU originally said it wasn’t going to release him from his scholarship, which would have cost him a year of eligibility, but relented. It’s probably for the best. I’ve made repeated attempts to get in touch with Barham, his parents and his former coaches without any luck.
I wish him well, as I’m sure the Salukis probably do. Horrible move by Barham, because I think you need to honor commitments you make to people who take a chance on you, but, hopefully both programs can move on.

Strange, but enjoyable night in Detroit for me and a few friends this weekend, as the SIU football weekend takes a few days off. We took in today’s Detroit Tigers-Toronto Blue Jays contest, did a little gambling, and now hope to get some sleep for tomorrow’s Notre Dame-Michigan football game on ABC. Then it’s back to Comerica Park for Sunday’s tilt between the Tigers and Blue Jays.
In the lobby of the Motor City Hotel and Casino, I briefly ran into a guy by the name of Cecil Fielder. In Marshall gear, of all things, as he’d just gone over there to speak. Nice guy. He said his son is a much better hitter than he was, which kind of shocked me, but I was even more shocked to see him. He had a little gray in his beard, and lost some weight from his playing days, but looked sharp.
Walking around the casino brought back a lot of memories from my last trip to Nevada, when the Saluki men’s basketball team went to Reno. The two trips to Las Vegas this season will also bring back a similar environment. Hopefully they’ll be as successful as tonight was for me.
Saturday will be my second trip to the Big House in Ann Arbor, Mich. I went two years ago with a friend of mine, and the Wolverines ended up beating a nationally-ranked Penn State squad. Hopefully, the Blue take out the Irish in another nationally-televised game, as I believe the game against Penn State was televised last year. Either way, I plan on enjoying some more Football Bowl Subdivision tailgating, not that SIU doesn’t do it well. It just doesn’t seem the same as the bigger, more nationally-recognized programs you hear about.
SIU’s first home game is next weekend against Division II Southwest Baptist. Can’t wait to see the tents back up, the team lining up for one of its final walks up the hill, and a great football game at McAndrew Stadium. Hope to see you all there.
As for the recent news about Chauncey Mixon (he’ll be out 4-6 weeks with a broken jaw), it’s a hit, but not a major one. SIU is very deep at linebacker, and the reserves that will see more time next week (Kyle Walker, Scott Cole and others) could start for other Missouri Valley Football Conference teams. Know that the Salukis lose a vocal, verbal guy in Mixon, and a tremendous athlete, but that they also have more in the chute, so to speak.
Who did you tune in to this weekend in college football, with your beloved Salukis on the sideline?

After a few mechanical bugs with our new Web site, the DawgBlog is back up. I’ll have some posts later tonight after I get back from the SIU men’s basketball dinner thing at Stadium Grill.
Hope to see you then.
Todd

I will have a live chat Wednesday night at 7 p.m. Hope to see you there.
We’re still working on the Dawg Blog, as we recently changed Web site, but it appears it works now.