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The Southern Illinois Salukis basketball team will host the Northern Iowa Panthers in Missouri Valley Conference play on Wednesday.
The game (9 p.m. ET start time) will be televised locally on Fox Sports Midwest/Kansas City/Indiana and NBC Sports Chicago, but if you don’t have those channels, anyone in the United States can watch it live on ESPN+:
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Once signed up for ESPN+, you can then watch Northern Iowa vs Southern Illinois live on your computer via ESPN.com, or on your phone (Android and iPhone compatible), tablet, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or other streaming device via the ESPN app.
Northern Iowa vs Southern Illinois Preview
The Panthers have won five straight and 10 of their last 11 to improve to 16-2 on the season and 5-1 in conference play.
They blasted the Bradley Braves 86-71 on the road on Sunday. Northern Iowa guard AJ Green scored a team-high 25 points on 7-of-15 shooting, adding 5 rebounds and a pair of assists.
“He single-handedly beat us,” Bradley head coach Brian Wardle said, according to the Des Moines Register.
The sophomore is averaging 19.7 points per game this season, second among players in the MVC. In conference play alone, he’s putting up 25.8 points per game — should he maintain that pace through season’s end, he’d have the MVC’s highest points-per-game mark since Hersey Hawkins averaged 33.4 for the Braves in 1987-88.
“I’m not surprised by any of it, because of how hard AJ works,” Panthers head coach Ben Jacobson said, according to the Des Moines Register.
The Salukis snapped a two-game losing streak on Sunday, pounding the Drake Bulldogs 66-49 at home to improve to 9-10 overall and 3-3 in MVC play.
Southern Illinois held the Bulldogs to 18-of-50 (36%) shooting from the field and 4-of-25 (16%) shooting from 3-point range, helping them to 14 turnovers.
“We’re proud of our group,” Salukis head coach Bryan Mullins said, according to The Daily Egyptian. “I thought for 40 minutes, especially on the defensive side of the ball, they were really locked in and they really guarded as a team. Everyone had each other’s back today, and that was the biggest thing, especially in our transition defense.”
Center Barret Benson and guard Eric McGill led the Salukis with 18 points apiece. Benson added 10 rebounds, a pair of assists, and a steal.
“He’s a huge piece of the team, and when he can score with his back to the basket, it just gives another dynamic to our offense,” Mullins said of the graduate transfer, per The Daily Egyptian. “He was really aggressive from the start of the game, and defensively, he did a really good job taking up the paint.”
Up 37-32 with 14 minutes left, the Salukis went on a 17-0 run to pull away. The first 8 points of the stretch belonged to McGill, who hit back-to-back 3-pointers after a successful trip to the free-throw line.
“I feel like I’m streaky. I feel like if I make one, I’m going to make the next one,” McGill said, per The Daily Egyptian. “That [run] was huge for us. After that, I felt like my team found some energy and we just took off from there.”