MVC – Wilder Than Ever

The Fifth & Sixth Seeds Play For the Title

(St. Louis, MO) – In a historically balanced Missouri Valley Conference season, we have now had a historically topsey-turvey Arch Madness. A fifth seed is playing a sixth seed for the championship. No one saw this coming AND everyone saw this coming.

The Valley season saw three games in the standings separate the top SEVEN teams and we predicted close games and lower seeds winning games. So here we are! No. 5 Bradley gets to wear the white jerseys today because they’re playing No. 6 Northern Iowa.

If you compare these two teams to top seeded Loyola (whom Bradley beat Saturday), the Braves split with the former champs and Northern lost twice, but both times by a single point. There was no intimidation factor from top to bottom.

The Braves and Panthers split their regular season games. As was the Valley trend this year, the visiting team won each game.

Keys To Watch

Bradley’s Darrell Brown has struggled to find his shooting touch. The Braves’ leading scorer has made just six of 20 shots and he has missed eight of his ten long distance attempts. When UNI won at Bradley, the Panthers held the second team all-conference guard to two points. Brown responded with 29 points in BU’s win in Cedar Falls.

Post play matchups are enormous. Bradley’s Elijah Childs has two double digit games in this tournament including a double-double against Loyola. He reached double figures in both UNI encounters and recorded a double-double in the road win against the Panthers. How Ben Jacobson decides to defend Childs will be the strategic question of the day.

Can Wyatt Lohaus continue his amazing tournament? The 6’2 guard scored 21 points in the Panthers’ 61-58 win over Southern Illinois and then added 27 points and the game-winning basket against Drake. He is the tournament’s ‘most outstanding player’ to this point.

Sit back and enjoy!

Do Good