Ohio Valley Tips Off Tonight!

Belmont Defending Its Crown

(St. Louis, MO) – Southern Illinois Edwardsville wants to make history and Belmont hopes to repeat history as the Ohio Valley Conference Basketball Championships tip off tonight. Defending champion Belmont (24-3, 18-2) opens tournament play against SIUE (9-16, 7-12) tonight at 7.

The Bruins have won seven tournament titles during their eight-year OVC existence and own an all-time record of 10-5 in this event. Brian Barone’s Cougars have never won an OVC tournament game. The Cougars’ seven conference wins are their most since 2015. This is their fifth appearance in the season-ending event.

Second seeded Morehead State (20-7, 17-3) clashes with Southeast Missouri (11-15, 9-11) in tonight’s other quarterfinal game.

Bruins & Cougars

Both teams come to Evansville a little banged up and feeling like they have something to prove. The Bruins were cruising along, undefeated in OVC play and feeling like they were making history. During the season’s final weekend matchups with second place Morehead and third place Eastern Kentucky, the Bruins played without all-conference center Nick Muszynski. The big lefty was in a walking boot the entire weekend and Belmont dropped both games.

SIUE had to fight their way into the tournament as an eight seed. The Cougars knocked off UT Martin on the season’s second last game to earn the trip to Evansville, but it wasn’t easy. Barone’s squad is missing several key components. Junior wing Cameron Williams is out for the season and it seems to be true of junior Carlos Curtis as well. Both players were averaging over eight points per game and Curtis was dishing out three dimes per game. Leading scorer Sidney Wilson has left the team for ‘personal reasons’.

That’s three of SIUE’s top seven players.

Belmont, of course is loaded. Point guard Grayson Murphy (10.8 ppg & 8.1 rebounds) joined ‘Moose’ on the all-OVC team. Luke Smith (12.2 ppg) was named to the league’s all-newcomer team and Murphy landed the OVC’s top defender award.

Casey Alexander’s team is second in the OVC in scoring, racking up over 82 points per game, while leading the league in assists and assist/turnover margin. They are a well-oiled machine. Jacobi Wood and Ben Sheppard are also double-digit Bruin scorers. Alexander says Muszynski will be ready to play tonight.

Mike Adewunmi is the Cougars’ only double figures guy (12.9 ppg). They have no all-conference players of any kind and they’ve lost key players. What they have is grit. One of those seven conference wins was at Morehead State and Belmont fans remember SIUE winning in Nashville during the season-opening game of the 2019-20 season.

Though undersized the Cougars are second in the OVC at shot blocking (4.4 per game) and they are the league’s third best team at defending the three-point line. All OVC fans know, Belmont loves to shoot the three.

On paper this is an easy call, but Barone’s mantra ‘find a way’ means anything is possible for the young Cougars.

Eagles & Redhawks

The other quarterfinal finds two teams on the rise. Morehead State has set a program record for conference wins (17) and completely turned things around. During Preston Spradlin’s first four years at MSU the Eagles were 23 games under .500. Now this season’s ‘Coach of the Year’ has his team flying into the tournament with a four-game winning streak and playing their best basketball.

Rookie sensation Johni Broome (13.3 ppg & 8.7 rpg) is the league’s ‘Freshman of the Year’ and and all-conference selection. Devon Cooper (11.7 ppg) was a second teamer and guard Skylar Potter joined Broome on the all-freshman team.

The Eagles are the league’s best defensive team. Every metric shows it and Spradlin’s team does it with plain old man-to-man, defensive fundamentals.

SEMO has flourished under first-year coach Brad Korn. They’ve won two straight games and four of their last five. The Redhawks played five overtime games, losing the first three and winning the last two. Korn’s Redhawks have learned how to win. This is SEMO’s first trip to Evansville for the league tournament. Their last appearance was in 2017.

Like SIUE they have no individuals receiving all-OVC honors. Chris Harris and Eric Reed are their only double-digit scorers and Nebraska transfer Nana Ankenten is SEMO’s leading rebounder. They played 16, single digit games, winning nine of them.

They dropped both games to Morehead by double digits (14 and 11 points).

The OVC championships tip off at 7. Enjoy the week!

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