Trailblazers fall in road Region 24 matchup with Southwestern Illinois

BELLEVILLE, Ill – The Vincennes University Trailblazers fell to 0-2 in Region 24 play after a 61-34 loss at Southwestern Illinois Saturday afternoon.

VU got off to a slow start against the Blue Storm, falling behind quickly 13-2 to begin the game.

The Trailblazers attempted to rally together to keep from falling behind too much but only managed to keep the game at an 11-point margin throughout the rest of the opening half.

Vincennes headed into the locker room facing a 28-17 deficit against host Southwestern Illinois.

Southwestern Illinois began building their lead in the second half, outscoring the Blazers 20-6 to begin the second half of play, giving the Blue Storm a 48-23 advantage.

The Blazers looked to cut into the deficit late in the second half, but made shots were hard to find for the Blue and Gold as the Blue Storm defended their home floor well and game away with a 61-34 win over Vincennes.

"We can't hit a shot," VU Hall of Fame Head Coach Todd Franklin said. "We can't hit a shot and then we multiply that with enough weak ball-handling plays that lead to layups to make it even worse. We gave up 28 points in the first half and 33 in the second, if you take away the five or six easy layups we gave up because of bad ball-handling, SWIC would have shot well into the 30-percent range and we would have had more than enough stops. We had more than enough stops, SWIC had 16 turnovers, we did some things that bugged them on that end of the floor. That effort defensively, minus the easy layups, we should have won this game."

"Southwestern tried to pressure Brevin and bother him, because everybody is going to do that," Franklin added. "They were determined to do some things that were going to bug Thow and Shilo and they were able to do that because they were able to compress everything off the wings defensively. They allowed us to pass the ball back out and get an open shot outside and we didn't make it. Those are shots that college basketball players have to be able to hit and when we recruited these guys we thought they could hit that shot."

"We have guys like Thow who go 2 for 12, Brevin 3 for 10, Shilo 1 for 4 and Deatrick 0 for 4, so we were 1 for 8 on plays in the post where we should be at least 5 for 8. The problem is, for those guys, when anything extra is going to be around them, they aren't strong enough at this point to beat that. We hoped they would, we hope they will, but they are not. Now they are going to have extra guys around them because teams don't respect our wings. That was the strategy of this game and we knew it from the first minute. We don't have players that we can put in at the moment, so change is going to have to come from players stepping up. If it's in them, they need to start getting it out. If they are not there yet, then they need to get in the gym until it is."

The Trailblazers were led offensively by freshman Grant Brown (Fairmount, Ind.) who was the only VU scorer to reach double-figures with 10 points and three steals on the night.

Freshman Brevin Jefferson (Indianapolis, Ind.) was the next highest scorer with seven points to go along with a pair of assists and rebounds on the game.

Freshman Thow James Biel (Calgary, Alberta) led Vincennes in rebounding, finishing with eight boards, four coming off the offensive glass, while also adding four points and a block.

"When you shoot 19-percent from the floor, we have every kind of action you can run to move people around and get people open, but nothing is going to work when we shoot 19-percent," Franklin said. "We've wasted plenty of games where we've gotten enough stops defensively to win. Our stops have been better than people might think because our offense gives up easy buckets. Our offense not only doesn't score, but it helps the other team score. I don't take away anything from tonight system-wise that we can work on. Defensively we have to play more zone than we would like, but we're being successful at it mostly. We're getting plenty of stops and keeping guys out of foul trouble, so that has been okay and hopefully it stays that way."

"Southwestern couldn't score consistently on our defense and we got them to turn it over 16 times," Franklin added. "Those things were fine, but all of that does not matter when you literally cannot put the ball in the hole. 19-percent, there is bad, then there is historically bad and then there's that. We're sitting there helpless on the sideline because we know exactly what they are going to do and we couldn't find anybody to score. We're not going to win with that. SWIC averages over 80 points a game and we held them down as well as anybody has this season but we still can't be in the game because we can't score the ball."

VU will hit the road again to begin next week as the Blazers travel to Ullin, Ill. as Vincennes will take on Shawnee Community College, Wednesday, Dec. 8. Tip-off time is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. eastern.

"We have to protect the ball and finish shots. That's it," Franklin said. "If we are looking ahead based on what we did tonight, we have to be able to hit an open shot, not give away some sloppy turnovers, just be stronger with the ball, be stronger on the finish around contact and somebody be able to hit an open shot on the back end of what we're doing. Because I believe Shawnee, they may pressure us more and they will give you things on the back end of that and they will be there. We don't have a problem knowing where there is going to be a shot that we should be able to make with full scholarship players."

"If we hit those shots, which we should make at a high rate because they were easy open inside-out shots, if we just hit those at a little below average rate, we would have been in this game all the way to the end," Franklin added. "That's going to have to come from those guys in the locker room. It just is. That has to be rectified at some point and I wish I could rectify it on my own, but I can't. There's not any drill that we haven't done that will get these guys to hit these open shots. We could emphasis it more than we already are. I don't know anything else that we could do strategically and if I did I would do it. I've been in most every situation over the years and we've had pretty good answers over the years and right now I don't have an answer."

"I don't know if it means getting in the gym more, I don't know, but I've never been around this problem before in my life. All we needed tonight was guys being a little tougher with the ball and finishing some plays and some guys hitting some shots on the wings that we know are coming and this game could have been very winnable to the very end because the stops and the things defensively are there. I hope the stops stay there, because we really haven't had a game this year where we haven't gotten enough stops against high level competition. Rebounding has been okay. It hasn't been great but it's been good enough, it's just our ball-handling and our shooting and skills that these guys are on scholarship to do, it's not that it's not good enough, it's not even in the realm of being good enough. Right now we have to do some soul searching to find the guy. I don't know who that guy will be, because right now it's none of them. We're trying everybody that we've got but what I want to see going forward is us being tougher with the ball and protect the ball. It's going to have to come from our locker room. I'll keep doing everything I can to work and scheme and try to find a way to get it done. When the game starts Wednesday, I guess we will find out. We'll get in and practice it but until we prove that we can handle it, we're going to keep seeing it from other teams.

VINCENNES BOX SCORE

VINCENNES (34): Thow James Biel 2-11 0-0 4, Brevin Jefferson 3-10 0-0 7, Darrius Davis 1-7 2-3 4, Grant Brown 3-13 2-3 10, Shilo Jackson 1-4 1-2 3, Trenton Johnson 0-5 2-2 2, Ketaan Wyatt 1-3 2-2 4, Devawn White 0-0 0-0 0, Keegan Morris 0-0 0-0 0, Deatrick Pashell 0-4 0-2 0, Team 11-57 9-14 34.

Vincennes (3-9, 0-2) – 17  17 – 34

Southwestern Illinois – 28  33 – 61

Three-point goals: VU 3 (Brown 2, Jefferson). Rebounds: VU 33 (James Biel 8). Assists: VU 6 (Jefferson 2, Brown 2, Wyatt 2). Steals: VU 10 (Brown 3). Blocked Shots: VU 4 (Jackson 2). Turnovers: VU 15. Personal Fouls: VU 9. Fouled out: None.