KANSAS CITY, MO - Apparently, the dead can walk. Walk and smother
the hell out of you defensively. Over its last five games, Illinois
State's opponents are shooting 39.6 percent from the floor and 31.7
percent from beyond the arc.
Of those five contests, the
Redbirds have won four. Which make sense, really, if you look a little
closer at the Missouri Valley Conference statistics: The top three
schools in terms field-goal defense and 3-point-field goal defense are
also the top three teams in the standings — Wichita State (10-4 MVC),
Creighton (9-5) and Indiana State (9-5). You guard in this league, you
win in this league.
"We weren't guarding; now we're starting to
guard," Illinois State coach Dan Muller says of his kids, who've won
seven of their last eight Valley tilts and host the league-leading
Shockers (21-5) on Sunday. "We've got some confidence back because we're
playing hard. But we also know it can fall apart real quick if you're
not careful."
And to think: A month ago, we'd left the Redbirds
for dead. Dead and buried. Toast. After a salty pre-conference slate
that featured wins at Drexel and Dayton and a three-point loss at
Louisville, Illinois State — the preseason pick to push the Jays in the
league standings — dropped its first six conference games, including
three at home to Creighton, Northern Iowa and Drake. Ace shooter Tyler
Brown landed in Muller's doghouse and wound up getting suspended. On
January 16, the Redbirds, who returned four starters from last winter's
MVC Tournament runners-up, were 9-9, ditch-bound, wheels spinning in the
air.
"Lack of buy-in," offers Muller, a former two-time MVC
Defensive Player Of The Year who's in his first season as the coach at
his alma mater. "When you do that in this league, you're going to lose.
We dug ourselves a big hole, and we're digging ourselves out. You can
get broke in a day or two. You can't be fixed in a day or two. You can
get broke real quick. It can take a while to fix it."
The
zombies are fixed, all right. Fixed, swarming, and feasting on the flesh
of their Valley brethren. While the Jays, Shockers and Sycamores
stumble down the stretch, the Redbirds (16-10, 7-7) have gotten hotter
with each passing week.
Illinois State erased a 17-point deficit
at Drake on February 6 — rallying in overtime, 94-86, to cap the
program's biggest comeback since 2004. For an encore, the Redbirds won
75-72 at Creighton, the program's first true road victory over ranked
foe since 1985.
"As far as the chance to get an NCAA bid, well,
we don't have that now — we screwed that up," Muller says of his squad,
which heads into the weekend ranked 113th in RPI but 56th by numbers
guru Ken Pomeroy. "Our goal was always to play the best basketball of
the season at the end of the season. Are we building toward that? Yes,
we are. Can we be a dangerous team heading into St. Louis? No question."
Muller
boasts arguably the league's most dangerous inside-outside combo in
senior forward Jackie Carmichael and senior guard Brown. The former is a
6-foot-9, 240-pound tank with soft hands, a man playing in a boys'
league, a double-double machine who put up 20 points and nine rebounds
versus the Cardinal and dropped 25 and 12, respectively, on the Flyers.
As long-range threats go, the 6-1 Brown is among the nation's streakiest
— draining four treys in a game against UC-Santa Barbara, five against
Wyoming, six against Southern Illinois and seven versus Northwestern.
But
Muller knows: The Redbirds are better when they're diverse, when they
play inside-out, when they crash the paint. Illinois State is 12-5 when
it gets to the charity stripe at least 16 times in a contest; 4-5 when
it doesn't.
"It's been an emphasis of ours in the last four-five
weeks, as far as getting to the line, because we were struggling to
score," the coach says. "Some (games) it's easier to control than
others, but it's something we have tried to do."
They're trying
to chase history, too. The Redbirds are one of 14 Division I schools to
lose their first six league games, a club that includes TCU and Penn
State. But unlike the Frogs and Lions, Illinois State has climbed out of
its self-imposed grave — in fact, it's the only Division I school to
open 0-6 in conference play and climb back to .500 after 14 league
contests.
And there's one more carrot for Mullen to tie to the
end of the stick: No MVC team has ever opened 0-6 in the conference and
finished with at least a .500 record in league play. After routing rival
Bradley 79-59 on Wednesday night, the Redbirds are 7-7 with two more
league home games in hand.
"(The Creighton win) was proof that
if you do the right thing and if you work hard, you'll play well,"
Muller notes. "It won't guarantee you wins. But if you play really well,
you'll have a chance.
"It's hard to be really good. It is. And I
don't think we really understood that because were had a good
non-conference and were not great, but good. And we relaxed. And if you
want to win, win consistently, you can't go through those things."
The
Redbirds have the longest NCAA tourney drought in the loop right now —
Illinois State hasn't visited Bracketville since 1998, when Muller was
still in uniform. Former coach Tim Jankovich got the ‘Birds to four NITs
over the past six seasons, but could never crack the glass ceiling;
three times, Illinois State was a game away from an automatic NCAA bid,
losing in the MVC tourney final in 2008 (to Drake), in 2009 (to Northern
Iowa) and again last March (to Creighton).
When Jankovic
bolted for SMU, the hiring of Muller, a first-time head coach at the age
of 36, caused some gnashing of teeth among the locals, especially when
gifted point guard Nic Moore transferred out to join his old coach down
in Texas. Those whispers re-emerged after the Redbirds stunk up the
first two weeks of January.
"I do think some of those questions
came up again, questioning certain things," says Muller, who cut his
teeth under current Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings, his old mentor at
Illinois State. "I do think that affected some things a little bit.
"It's
never been something that I've held against anybody. I'd be surprised
if we had another incident from any player, where they start tripping up
again, or they think I'm tripping (up) again. I think everybody knows
what we're doing and understands and we're going in the right
direction."
Onward. Upward. Having already climbed out of the
grave, the living dead from downstate are on the march again. And you
know what they say about payback.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com
