SIU team spent night in church

TUSCOLA, Ill. - Southern Illinois' men's basketball team made it back to Carbondale on Monday after their unexpected overnight stay on the floor of a central Illinois church.

The Salukis were returning to Carbondale following Sunday's 66-48 loss to Illinois State in Bloomington when their bus got stuck in snowdrifts on Interstate 57 south of Champaign.

A tow truck pulled the bus from the side the road around midnight - hours after they first became stuck - and the roughly two dozen players and staff members spent the night at a Tuscola church.

Tom Weber, the school's assistant athletic director for media services, said players began traveling again around 6:30 a.m. Monday after stocking up on food. Weber said earlier in the day heavy snow meant the bus was only traveling about 15 mph. Several hours into the trip, they'd only made it as far as Effingham, about 50 miles south of Tuscola.

"The roads are very, very bad," he said. "They haven't made a lot of progress."

Weber later said the team arrived at 2 p.m. in Carbondale.