The Tennessee State Tigers and the Southern Illinois Salukis meet in college basketball action from the Banterra Center on Thursday night.
The Tennessee State Tigers will be out to remain unbeaten, sitting at 3-0 after an 87-76 win over Alabama A&M last time out. Christian Brown led the way with 20 points on 6 of 9 shooting with 4 threes while Marcus Fitzgerald JR. added 17 points with a team-high 7 rebounds and 5 assists. Jr. Clay added 13 points with 5 assists of his own while Zool Kueth added 10 points with 3 threes to cap off the scoring in double figures for Tennessee State in the win.
The Southern Illinois Salukis will try to bounce back from a 71-53 loss to Southern Indiana in their last game. Marcus Domask led the Salukis in scoring with 16 points along with a team-high 7 rebounds and a pair of steals while Lance Jones added 13 points and Xavier Johnson chipped in 10 points with a team-high 4 assists to finish off the trio of double-digit scorers for SIU in the losing effort.
Tennessee State is 9-2 ATS in their last 11 games overall and 6-2 ATS in their last 8 games following an ATS win while the under is 4-1 in their last 5 road games against a team with a home winning percentage above .600. Southern Illinois is 8-2 ATS in their last 10 home games and 3-1-1 ATS in their last 5 games following an ATS loss while the under is 4-1 in their last 5 games overall.
I get the reasoning for wanting to back an unbeaten at 3-0 but the problem is that it’s a paper 3-0 because there weren’t any contenders on that list. Southern Illinois had a bad loss last time out, but this SIU team is still the better team from top to bottom and I think they bang out a big win and cover in this one.