Is Chris Lowery Tweaking The System?

Predicated on rugged defense and timely scoring, The System has needed some adjusting after a 13-18 season.  With Chris Lowery at the helm, there has been a subtle tweak in The System.  And I think I found it.

What is The System?  Well, for starters, it's so important that it needs to be capitalized.

The System helped put the Southern Illinois University men's basketball team back on the college basketball map and led the squad to a run of six straight NCAA Tournament appearances and a pair of Sweet Sixteen runs from 2002 to 2007.

The System is best described here by Paul Klee.  It's arguably the most well-written piece about Saluki basketball in the last decade or so.

I feel as if sometimes people forget that Lowery, while being a descendant from the Bruce Weber Coaching Tree (yes, that gets capitalization in my world), the sixth-year man from Evansville, Ind., is truly a Rich Herrin understudy, harking back to his days as a player.

Lowery was the Salukis floor general from 1990-94 where he led the Salukis to a pair of NIT berths and a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances.  He scored 1,225 points in his career while dishing 391 assists as a Saluki.  C-Lo paced one of the most potent offenses in school history.

If you catch Lowery at practice (and you ask nicely) he'll take you back down memory lane and talk about Herrin's coaching style and philosophies.  It's a conversation worth having with the Saluki head coach.  The Salukis ran, and ran, and ran some more.  Under Herrin, if you could not score then you would not see the floor.  It was a pretty simple philosophy under that regime of Saluki basketball.

You might miss it if you blink, but there is a change in how things are being done inside the SIU Arena.

Through seven games, the SIU men's basketball team sports a record of 5-2 and is averaging 78.1 points per game.  Nearly one year ago, the Salukis were 3-4 and had reached the 70-point mark once -- a 79-70 loss at Western Kentucky on the night before Thanksgiving.  As a point of comparison, SIU averaged 66 points per game through seven contests last season.

Maybe Lowery has taken my old "you can't win if you don't score" adage to heart, as the Salukis have averaged a whopping 83.4 points per game in the team's five victories.  Lost in the shuffle is the team's defensive effort, as Southern has limited opponents to an average of 64.8 points per game.  That is exactly where Lowery and his staff want that number to be.

However, in the team's two losses, SIU is averaging 65 points per game while its opponents are averaging 75 points per match-up.

Overall, the production is up on the Carbondale campus, which might strike some who didn't see this coming considering Southern was returning most of its core before losing Ryan Hare to disciplinary issues.

So, how is SIU doing it?  I might regret crunching these numbers down the line because it is still a small sample size, but I have to do it because the numbers are eye-popping.

Here are three keys to Saluki success.

1.  Tony Freeman is an improvement over Bryan Mullins.  (Gasp!)  Get the noose and your most sturdy tree ready, children.  This one's gonna be a barn burner.  B-Mull is a future Saluki Hall of Famer, but Tony Freeman is more valuable to the 2009-10 squad.

Freeman is averaging 13.2 points per game, while shooting 49 percent from the field and 48 percent from the 3-point line, all while averaging a shade under 25 minutes per game.  While Mullins handled business in the steals and assist departments, Freeman's presence on the floor has been equally as steadying for the young Salukis

Efficiency is what is separating Freeman from Mullins.  I ran some adjusted stats on Freeman's numbers, and if he averaged Mullins' minutes through seven games last year, T-Free would be averaging eight more points per game than Mullins did as a senior.  It's almost like comparing apples and oranges, but it is hard to ignore the quality minutes Freeman is providing.

2.  Nick Evans is an improvement over Tony Boyle.  Consider me to be one of the many members of the Nick Evans bandwagon.  If Evans played baseball, White Sox GM Kenny Williams would have traded his top two prospects for him twice already.  He's a grinder, a scrapper, a nose-to-the-hardwood kind of kid.

And he's doing more as a sophomore than Tony Boyle did as a senior.

At this time last year, Evans was sidelined with a busted wrist.  A healthy Evans is averaging 10.6 points and 4.9 rebounds per game.  Boyle averaged 8 points and 4.4 rebounds through seven games last year, but did so on an inconsistent basis.  He played fewer than 20 minutes in four of the first five games before busting out with a 33 minute game against Charlotte.

What gives Evans' start in 2010 the edge over TB is his efficiency shooting the basketball.  Boyle shot at a 45 percent clip through the first third of the season while Evans is currently shooting a whopping 64.6 percent from the field.  He has been consistent with his playing time, his shot attempts and efficiency, having not shot below 50 percent since opening the season against UT-Martin.

3.  Better shot selection.  SIU relied so heavily on the 3-ball throughout last season, by the end of the year, tired legs caught up to the team.  SIU is shooting fewer 3-point shots this time around, and it is showing in the stat sheet.  The Salukis are scoring more points and shooting at a higher clip.

Through seven games, the Dawgs are shooting 46.9 percent from the field.  If they can carry this pace throughout the season and end at 46.9, it will be the team's best shooting percentage since the 2002-03 season where the team shot 47 percent from the field and averaged 74.4 points per game.

SIU hasn't scored with that kind of success since.

Some of it is talent.  Some of it comes down to luck.  But really it comes down to the kind of players Lowery has brought into the system.  Lowery's recent recruiting classes have included an influx of team speed starting with Kevin Dillard, Justin Bocot and Kendal Brown-Surles.  Up front, there's also speed with Anthony Booker and Nick Evans.  These Dawgs seem more willing to push the tempo more than any other recent Lowery squad.

It's almost as if Floorburn U was shelved for RoadRunner U.

Sometimes, that leads to some turnovers -- especially when Dillard misfires on alley-oops.  But that comes with youtful exuberance and I look the other way when it happens.  I'm curious to see how the 5-2 Salukis play when they hit Missouri Valley Conference play.  There's no telling how it will go, but here's hoping whatever is spurring Southern's strong start continues in Las Vegas and beyond.