As the season dwindles to a close for the SIUC men’s basketball team, and the Salukis are on the edge of elimination from the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, the team still refuses to toss in the towel.

The Salukis (11-15, 4-11) travel to Indiana State tonight to battle the Sycamores (8-16, 4-12) for the pride of not finishing in the basement of the MVC.

The only problem for the Dawgs, however, is effort and heart alone do not win basketball games, and the team has not has a go-to guy this season.

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Sophomore guard Shane Hawkins said the team’s youth has played a role in the last minute losses recently this season, and the squad is still trying to find its go-to player.

One reason for that is because we’re a young team, and we haven’t had that go-to player like we did last year, Hawkins said. Last year when we were going down the stretch, we could rely on Chris (Carr) to get us that bucket if we needed one, and with the youth and inexperience we have, we’re still trying to find that out.

Senior forward Jaratio Tucker had a slightly different view then Hawkins, and said the key to winning the close losses is the team’s intensity level in the first half of the game.

As far as intensity, we have good intensity in the second half, but we need to come out in the first half, he said. Sometimes we come out in the first half lackadaisical, and we just need to pick up the intensity and push the ball more.

SIUC coach Rich Herrin said the team has just come-up on the short end of the stick recently, his squad won the close games earlier this season, and the team is better than a cellar-dweller.

Each game is different, and we’d like to (win the close games). Tulsa (who won 84-75 in overtime at the SIU Arena Feb. 14) just finally wore us out. We’ve won some close ones, just not the last two or three. Early in the year we won some close ball games, and what we need to do right now is take care of business and focus on beating Indiana State, Herrin said.

What that (a victory at Indiana State) does is eliminates teams out of the cellar. We’re right down there with three of them (Evansville, Indiana State, and Wichita State), and we don’t want to be there. If you take the four league games here, Northern Iowa, Creighton, Tulsa and Drake, and give us those four victories, we’ve had a pretty good year.

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Even though a Saluki loss, or a victory by Evansville or Indiana State, would eliminate SIUC from the MVC Tournament, Hawkins said the fat lady has not sung yet, and the team will continue to play for the eighth spot in the conference and a berth into the tournament.

We’re not giving up on it yet, he said. We know we have to win three games, and either Evansville or Northern Iowa would have to lose all theirs; and we’re not going to give up until we lose, or both of them win. Right now we’re looking at it as that we have to play at Indiana State, and it’s a must-win to keep our season alive.