Robert Corn’s team is 1-0 in 2010.

After defeating Northeastern State Monday, the men’s basketball team will host Central Bible College today and Ozarks tomorrow in the Freeman Sports Medicine/Chris Tucker Memorial Classic. Uncharacteristically, the Lions will have only one non-conference game after this weekend before getting into MIAA play.

“Both of them [Southern’s opponents today and tomorrow] are well coached,” Head Coach Robert Corn said. “If we let them come in here and execute their offense, they’re going to score points against us. Hopefully our pressure can get out and force them out of things, speed the game up a little bit or make them play a little bit further out than what they want to play.”

Corn stressed the importance of not only beginning the season with a stretch of games at home, but also the momentum that can be gained by winning those games.

“If you’re going to have any type of season at all you’re going to have to win a big percentage of your home games,” he said. “So you definitely want to build that pride factor and you want to build that fan base and hopefully the fans that were here Monday night liked what they saw and hopefully they’ll come back Friday night and hopefully we’ll play well Friday night, they’ll want to come back on Saturday night. The only way you can establish that pride standpoint when you play at home, plus, having an opportunity continue to draw and get bigger and bigger crowds is to play well and to be successful and fortunately we were able to do that.”

Monday, the Lions opened the season by sending Northeastern home with nearly a 20-point defeat, 75-53. Jason Adams led the Lions in scoring on the night with 22. He also led in rebounds with seven, followed by Keane Thomann who pulled down six. He also added 15 points.

“Well the big thing was, going in I felt like we had to get better defensively and I thought our pressure defense was pretty good,” Corn said. “I thought defense second-half was very good at times. And then we had to take care of the basketball. We still had 18 turnovers but I thought we did a better job, we at least had 21 assists. So we had a plus assist to turnover ratio.”