ST. LOUIS—By the first TV timeout in both games this weekend in the Missouri Valley Tournament, Southern Illinois coach Barry Hinson had already shed his jacket.
Some who know the coach best might have just been surprised it took that long. The veteran of the Valley—this was Hinson’s 11th Arch Madness experience, nine at Missouri State, now two at SIU—is the excitable sort on the sidelines. Hinson wears typical coaching footwear, but he really should bust out running shoes; he doesn’t so much pace the sidelines and he does sprint up and down them all game. Could be to argue a call, could be to run down to grab a sub for the next possession, could be for the joy of breaking a sweat.
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Of course, if he wore sneakers, though, his foot stomps—an attention-getting staple in the Hinson repertoire—would lose their effectiveness. Cushioning isn’t loud.
And his distinctive voice is hard to miss.
“I couldn't sing alto, there's no way,” Hinson said before his team’s opening game. “I'm probably close to a tenor. Couldn't be a bass, not with this raspy voice. Maybe close to Stevie Nicks, but that's about it.”
There are times that passion and excitement get the best of him. Such was the case in the middle of December, in a postgame press conference after the Salukis lost at Murray State. It was an unforgettable display of the raw honesty—colorful, brutally raw honesty. It rubbed many people outside of the locker room the wrong way.
So when he got back to the Valley Tournament this week, he was asked to look back at the moment. “I've always been that way,” he said. “I'm a volcano. I erupt. I say what's on my heart. I'm passionate. I'm not a thermostat. I apologize. I don't regulate. What you see is what you get. You watch me during the game, we miss a basket, I'm crushed. We make a basket, I'm happy.”
As coach of the Bears, his teams finished under .500 just twice in nine years. From there, he was on Bill Self’s staff at Kansas for four years before returning to the Valley to take over a massive rebuilding project at SIU. The Salukis were 6-12 in conference play in his first year and exceeded expectations this season by finishing 9-9 in league play.
That was good enough for a sixth seed in the tournament, and they promptly upended third-seeded Northern Iowa in their opener. Then, they pushed a very talented Indiana State team down to the wire before falling to the Sycamores, 62-59. The Salukis had a look from 3-point range at the buzzer, but Desmar Jackson’s shot missed the mark.
“I knew this game would go down to the wire,” Hinson said. “No question in my mind, and there certainly weren’t any surprises there.”
Indiana State will face Wichita State in the title game.
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