No Surprise – Missouri State is The Favorite

Bears Are The Consensus Pick

(St. Louis, MO) – Missouri State should win the Missouri Valley Conference basketball race, or so say the coaches, SID’s and members of the media. The Bears received 29 of 44 first-place votes. League experts also picked four Missouri State players among their top fifteen players.

Defending tournament champion Bradley was picked second and received five first place votes. Northern Iowa was voted third while co-regular season champions Loyola and Drake were ranked fourth and fifth. The Ramblers received the most first place votes (6).

The bottom five teams were Indiana State, Illinois State, Evansville, Valparaiso and Southern Illinois.

ValleyHoopsInsider.com had a vote this season and our selections mirrored the league’s in spots 1, 2, 7 and ten. We had big discrepancies in two major places. We had Drake and Evansville inverted at five and eight, and between Indiana State and Valparaiso where we had those spots inverted at six and nine.

We at VHI selected the same starting five for our preseason team, but selected Northern Iowa’s A.J. Green as the preseason player of the year over Loyola’s Cameron Krutwig.

The preseason teams are below.

 

 

Third teamers Gaige Prim and Lamont West (Missouri State) and DeAndre Williams (Evansville) are the only players on any of the preseason teams that are newcomers to the conference.

For the full release go to mvc-sports.com.