Cowboys open NIT tonight on the road

CARBONDALE, Ill. — In the same way that Byron Eaton has dictated Oklahoma State's season, Bryan Mullins has been Southern Illinois' go-to guy. The same way OSU came charging back with a five-game winning streak, late in the season the Salukis strung together five wins in a row.

Southern Illinois coach Chris Lowery attributed the late charge to Mullins' play, much the way OSU coach Sean Sutton credited Eaton's improved play with the Cowboys' wins down the stretch.

But when Eaton and the Cowboys travel to Carbondale, Ill., tonight to take on the Salukis in first-round NIT action, Mullins will be sitting on the sidelines with an injury while Eaton tries to advance his team to the next round of the tournament.

"I think he's a big key to what they do,” Sutton said of Mullins. "He's certainly tough. I know that he was limited in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament whenever he played up there in their conference tournament, so I'm not sure where he will be health-wise, but he's certainly a big key and a big factor to their team.”

Mullins has been struggling with a stress fracture for a month and a half, Lowery said, but he played all the way up to the conference tournament.

"Bryan Mullins was our leader and he took the reins and that's why we were able to get a five-game winning streak going late,” Lowery said. "But physically, he was done. It was to the point where he could barely walk. He quit practicing for a month. He was just playing in games the last month of the season.”

His loss is obviously tough because he was the starting point guard, playing 35 minutes a game and serving as one of the Salukis' best on-ball defenders. But Lowery said Monday it's also brutal because on a team with a lack of leadership "He was the guy who stood up and said, ‘Hey, I'm going to do it.' ”

"Obviously Bryan has exclusively handled the ball for us,” Lowery said. "Now we are going to have to do it by committee. We just have to figure it out and it's a very short time to figure it out.”

Everything about the turnaround time for tonight's game in Carbondale has been short. OSU traveled on Monday, hoping to arrive by 8 or 9 p.m. If OSU wins tonight, the team will likely travel directly to Tempe, Ariz., if Arizona State beats Alabama State. If Alabama State wins, OSU would host the next round.