Salukis look to six seniors in hunt for MVC title

By Spyder Dann
mdann@dailyregister.com
CARBONDALE ‑ With six seniors on the roster and three-straight winning seasons under Barry Hinson, SIU is hoping this is the year the Salukis can reach the promised land.
Picked third in the preseason in the Missouri Valley Conference standings, Hinson spoke on the team goals during Wednesday's Media Day at the SIU Arena, where an MVC title is on the Salukis' mind.
"Our goal is to win a Missouri Valley Conference championship," Hinson said. "Externally, it's not that great. They still picked us third. There were only four people that thought we would win it. How many votes are there? Forty votes? So 36 people didn't think we would be champions of the league; there were only four people, and one of those was me. The other three, I jokingly said my mom and dad were two of the other three. (Reporter: the Evansville writer said he voted for you). So we have the Evansville writer, me, and my mom and dad were the four that voted us to win the championship. We talk about it every day. Let's go win a championship. We challenge our guys. We did it with our non-conference schedule. It will be interesting to see how we adapt. We've made no bones about it. This is our goal; this is what we want to do. We want to put ourselves in a position to win a conference championship, however well that goes."
SIU kicked off the season Thursday night against East Central from Oklahoma and despite some injuries and ailments, Hinson is looking at his senior squad to be the difference this year.
"It's really fun to coach a group of guys, when you call something and they know what we are doing. The young guys don't but it is see by example. But we are doing that now with our guys and it makes practice much easier. Our practices have been much more efficient because of the maturity of our players."
SIU kicks off its regular season next Friday at Kentucky.
Spyder Dann covers prep and college sports for the Southern Illinois Local Media News Group. Follow him on Twitter: @spydieshooter.