A jigsaw puzzle takes time and patients to complete, and a puzzle is the best way to describe the SIUC men’s basketball season.

The Salukis’ woes continued Saturday at SIU Arena as the Dawgs were dumped by the University of Evansville, 80-68.

The loss comes as SIUC’s third straight, and lowers the team’s record to 9-9 overall, and 2-5 in the Missouri Valley Conference. The three-game losing streak is the team’s first since 1986- 87 season, and has landed the squad in ninth place in the conference.

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Piece by piece, though, the Salukis are coming together. Freshman forward James Watts added the rebounding that has been missing this season by grabbing 10 boards, and helped the Dawgs outrebound the Aces 44-27.

Even though the Salukis dominated the offensive glass, 26-5, missed opportunities and poor shooting cost SIUC the game. The team shot only 36-percent against the Aces from the floor, and a dismal 21-percent from behind the three-point line in the game.

The shooting lull comes as no surprise as SIUC shot 33-percent at Drake Jan. 23 and 35-percent at Northern Iowa Jan. 24.

Evansville assistant coach Steve Bennett said the Aces were fortunate the Salukis did not convert on the offensive rebounds, and his team had been struggling with its inconsistency like SIUC.

We’ve missed a lot of easy buckets throughout the year, and being young is no excuse, he said. But, we have been inconsistent with our play defensively also, but today we put together a pretty good defensive effort. We were fortunate because Southern missed some good shots that they normally make.

The one thing we didn’t do very well was offensive rebounding, and you don’t win very often when the other team gets 26 offensive rebounds.

Other pieces of the puzzle for the Salukis were hustle, constant hard play and inside penetration that fell into place against the Aces after being missing earlier this season.

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Sophomore guard Troy Hudson and senior forward Jaratio Tucker, both scoring 18 points in the game, took the ball into traffic down low on numerous occasions, and those points canceled out the poor shooting from the outside to keep SIUC in the game for most of contest.

Even with a 6-29 effort from the three-point line, SIUC coach Rich Herrin said he stands behind the Salukis’ high number of three-point shots because that is the teams biggest strength.

We’re going to shoot the three. We think that is probably the best weapon we’ve got, he said. When you don’t hit em, it doesn’t look very good. So if you hit em, it looks pretty good. Anytime you go up and down the floor and have some freedom to play, your going to take some shots you shouldn’t take, but that is part of the game.

Herrin was pleased with the overall effort of the team, and thought the defeat was ironic to this season’s earlier victories.

I thought we played pretty hard consistently for 40 minutes, much more than we did in our previous two defeats we had, Herrin said. The other thing is that we worked pretty hard on the boards. It’s kind of an amazing game. The first four ball games we win, but don’t win the war on the boards; today we win the war on the boards, but Evansville shot very, very good.

The big thing is we were very competitive and worked very hard, and they did a good job of taking care of the basketball.

Freshman forward Monte Jenkins said the defeat was tough on the team, but said his increased playing time has helped keep the game fun for him.

I think it’s very hard because we just came off a two game roadtrip that we got beat pretty bad, and when you can’t win at home, it’s horrible, he said. I’ve been working hard, coach sees that in practice, and he’s been giving me playing time now. I’m having fun right now, even though we’re not winning.

Herrin said the team’s losses should not be judged so heavily by the fans and media because of the realistic expectations placed on the team in the preseason.

Let me say this. We may lose six or seven in a row, but that doesn’t matter, he said. Nobody thought we were going to win to start out with. Everyone got excited when we won some big basketball games, and in order to beat Old Dominion and Utah State on the road, you’ve got to play some pretty good basketball.

For you guys who haven’t played, it’s tough for you to understand, but for you guys who have played, you understand that these guys don’t want to lose.