Fred Huff on SIU Sports
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ As every good Saluki sports fan knows, there have been many good weeks in SIU's history which is now only three school years of completing its first century of uninterrupted activity. William McAndrew arrived on campus in the fall of 1913 and there have been teams of one sport or another representing the university ever since.
Sure, there have been some weeks which produced more exciting happenings, but SIU's football win at Northern Iowa last Saturday was huge and former basketball coach Rich Herrin being selected as a Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame inductee provides just a little icing on the cake.
We're almost growing tired of reporting how football coach Dale Lennon continues to impress us. Just like thousands of other Saluki followers who had become confirmed Jerry Kill fans, we weren't all that confident that Lennon, or anyone else for that matter, could replace the down-home style of SIU's former coach.
Now we're not so sure, particularly if one is simply relying on winning football games as a yardstick.
Lennon's style is not the same. He perhaps isn't as charismatic as Kill. He isn't the least bit interested in entertaining listeners with his small-town, boyhood yarns. Seemingly he's just intent in continuing the winning pattern Kill established in his relatively short stay at SIU.
However, we sense that the two definitely had/have one thing in common.
A powerful staff of assistants.
The game of college football has become far too complex for a head coach and two or three assistants to handle. That may have been fine for the 1950s and '60s and the days when SIU's football team traveled to Bowling Green, Ohio, and to Northern Michigan in a single 48-passenger bus. But those days are gone forever and the worn-out line of "It's not like the good old days" could never be more inaccurate. As far as winning college football games are concerned, it's much better this way with the team traveling by charter plane to Cedar Falls, Iowa, to take on the mighty UNI club in its Dome.
While listening to SIU's superb three-man radio crew -- Reis, Green and Sambursky -- relay the happenings on the field, we kept waiting for the Panthers to deliver the blow. Instead it was the Salukis who made one defensive stop after another and took advantage of a couple of UNI errors to win the game.
In all probability the Salukis assured themselves of at least a piece of the Missouri Valley Football championship and obviously are in fine position to claim it all by winning out in the next four weeks against Youngstown State Saturday, at Indiana State the following week, at presently-undefeated South Dakota State and finally at home against Missouri State.
It's a tough challenge, but Lennon and his aides have made believers of us and we now feel they're capable of delivering.
And then there's Rich Herrin. His story has been told and re-told possibly too many times now, but a few of the highlights are worthy of recalling.
Rich, a guy who had spent his entire 29-year coaching career at the prep level was given the opportunity of restoring SIU's once-proud basketball program in 1985.
He not only succeeded, he enhanced it.
Following three years of rebuilding, Herrin's fourth team missed winning the MVC post-season tournament and an automatic NCAA bid when it lost to a fine Creighton team by two points. An NIT bid awaited, but the Salukis weren't mentally ready and were embarrassed in St. Louis by the Billikens, 87-54.
We always believed the one-sided loss was a key to Herrin's program as the highly competitive guy became even more intense in the next few years when his clubs received three more NIT bids and followed those by qualifying for three consecutive NCAA tournaments.
The Salukis did that by winning three MVC tournaments in a row . . . 1993, '94 and '95.
No other team, no other coach had done that previously and no other coach or team has matched it since.
Now, 14 years later, the Valley is honoring Rich by inducting him into its Hall of Fame.
It's an honor well deserved.