SIU faces West Virginia in first round

~ The MVC was on the defense after receiving four seeds to the tournament.

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Chris Lowery bristles when he hears pundits declare that his Southern Illinois squad and others in the Missouri Valley Conference play "ugly" basketball often associated with pressure defense that can keep scores low.

But a day after his Salukis and three other teams in the league landed in the NCAA tournament, Lowery is pretty sure he doesn't care about the critics.

"You're only ugly in the eyes of the beholder," the Salukis' second-year coach said Monday as his 11th-seeded Salukis began practicing in earnest for their Friday opener against sixth-seeded West Virginia in Auburn Hills, Mich. "We guard. If you ask anybody who plays us, we keep you honest. And when you're patient and make people be honest, I guess that's ugly."

Lowery doesn't expect the young Salukis to do anything differently against the veteran Mountaineers (20-10) and 3-point shooting center Kevin Pittsnogle, among four senior starters on the Big East Conference team that last season was within one win of the Final Four.

"We've just got to pressure, do what we do," Lowery said. "We're not going to change how we play."

While in the afterglow of the MVC getting a conference-record four teams in this year's 65-school field, Lowery lamented that two more league teams didn't get in. And he deflected persisting questions that perhaps the league had something to prove, as CBS analyst Billy Packer suggested Sunday when he claimed bracket builders perhaps were too generous to the Valley.

"It's our opportunity to prove how good our league is," Lowery said. "If we get emotional about what they're saying, it takes away from our game plan and what we're going to try to do to win games."

Lowery's bottom line: "We're excited about where we're at."

Southern left nothing to chance to get there. The Salukis (22-10) had received at-large bids to the NCAA tournament each of the past four years but got an automatic bid this season by winning the MVC tournament for the first time since 1995.

That victory transformed Southern from a bubble team to an automatic qualifier, now gearing up for a first-round Atlanta Bracket matchup Lowery admits poses its challenges.

"There are no similarities between our teams," says Lowery, giving the experience edge to a West Virginia team with a starting lineup of four seniors and a junior. "They're good offensively and, right now, we struggle with our youth and with our inability to make shots at times."

Southern also must contend with 6-foot-11 Pittsnogle, the big man who can stretch defenses as the Mountaineers' top 3-point threat. No Saluki starter is taller than 6-foot-7, and Lowery says "we haven't seen a big guy who can shoot 3s like [Pittsnogle] and also play inside."

At least on Sunday, after the Salukis finally learned their first-round foe, the Mountaineers were a mystery to many of them.

"I don't know anything about them," said Jamaal Tatum, a junior guard who averages a Saluki-leading 15 points a game. "I leave the scouting reports up to the coaches."