Brandyn Wilcoxen

Saluki football celebrated Homecoming weekend by taking care of business at home, as it moved to 5-2, 4-0 with a win over the Western Illinois Leathernecks (0-6, 0-3) by a score of 30-7. In doing so, three of its top offensive players tied or broke records on the day. Javon Williams Jr. punched in all...

Kristen Wilkerson described the last voicemail she received from her dad as “a mundane request.” But it being the final message she got from him, she cherished it. It started with his voice, saying ‘Hi Kristen, this is dad,’ and ended with ‘Bye, I love you.’ Thanks to a recent phone update, that voicemail was...

Three months after voting to unionize, the workers at Carbondale’s Starbucks location on Main Street joined those at more than 100 other stores across the country in a nationwide strike on Nov. 17. The strike coincided with the company’s Red Cup Day, which is said to be one of its busiest days of the year....

Saluki men’s basketball started the new year off right, as it took care of the Belmont Bruins (9-6, 2-2) on a New Year’s Day showdown. While it struggled in the first half and trailed at the break, Southern had a big second half en route to a 63-45 win. Belmont entered Sunday having only scored...

Centralia, Illinois, is a 12,000-person town roughly an hour north of Carbondale. Among its claims to fame are its high school basketball team, which is the winningest program in America. But soon, it could be the hometown of an NFL player. On Jan. 11, Javon Williams Jr. announced that he would be forgoing his final...

On West Main Street, down the road from Thai Taste and Castle Perilous, sits a vintage thrift store known as Electric Larry’s. The titular Larry is said to spend his days “traveling through time and space to bring you the weirdest things he can find from decades past.” In reality, Electric Larry’s is run by...

Southern Illinois University welcomed back perhaps its most famous alum on Monday, as actor and comedian Bob Odenkirk visited Carbondale to officially receive two degrees from the university. Odenkirk received his bachelor’s degree from his time at SIU in the 1980s, as well as an honorary doctorate initially awarded by the school in 2019, in...

Among the nearly 46,000 U.S. adults to die by suicide in 2020, more than 13% of them were veterans. With rates like that, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is looking to stem the tide and save lives. The Marion VA Health Care System hosted its first ever Veteran Suicide Prevention Summit on Sept. 14...

Saluki quarterback Nic Baker became the all-time leader in passing yards on Saturday, as his team bounced back with a 27-6 victory over the Murray State Racers (2-4, 1-2 in MVC), and improved to 5-1, 2-1 on the season. Baker completed a 10-yard pass to Izaiah Hartrup on the second drive of the first quarter,...

In the past couple of years, I’ve been in my head about what I call the “rock band documentary” phenomenon. Essentially, it seems cliche for a rock band documentary to begin with a group of folks who met in college and started making music together. Entering my senior year, I felt I still hadn’t met...