CARBONDALE, Ill.\u00a0\u2014 Southern Illinois men’s basketball overcame a slow start to defeat Austin Peay, 84-79, in an\u00a0exhibition matchup\u00a0Friday night at Banterra Center.<\/p>\n
The Salukis trailed by as many as 12 points in the first half but found their rhythm after the break. Sophomore guard Quel’Ron House<\/a> led the way with 29 points on 8-of-13 shooting.<\/p>\n SIU entered halftime down 45-35 but outscored the Governors 49-34 in the second half, locking in defensively and shooting nearly 60 percent from the field. The Salukis held Austin Peay to just 27 percent from 3-point range.<\/p>\n Sophomore forward Rolyns Aligbe<\/a> contributed 16 points and eight rebounds, while senior guard Isaiah Stafford<\/a> added 11 points and went 8-of-12 from the free-throw line.<\/p>\n Southern Illinois dominated the paint late, finishing with a 36-26 advantage inside and outscoring Austin Peay 15-6 on fast breaks. The Salukis were aggressive and physical, converting 32-of-49 free throws\u2014a major improvement from their 9-of-19 performance in the first half. They also grabbed 15 offensive rebounds after managing just two before halftime.<\/p>\n Austin Peay led for more than 25 minutes, fueled by six 3-pointers and 17 points from freshman Tyler Wagner. But SIU took control midway through the second half and never relinquished the lead.<\/p>\n The Salukis return to action Oct. 29 for an exhibition road game against Lindenwood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CARBONDALE, Ill.\u00a0\u2014 Southern Illinois men’s basketball overcame a slow start to defeat Austin Peay, 84-79, in an\u00a0exhibition matchup\u00a0Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-221808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}