OVC Championship Game Preview

SEMO Faces SIUE

(St. Louis, MO) – The Ohio Valley Conference championship game features the league’s top two regular season teams. Conference champion Southeast Missouri and runnerup Southern Illinois Edwardsville square off Saturday night in Evansville’s Ford Center.

SEMO reaches the final with an easy 78-59 Friday win over Little Rock and SIUE eked out a narrow 71-69 victory over Tennessee State.

The Redhawks ran out to a 40-29 half time lead and stretched it out to the final 19-point margin. All conference guard Rob Martin led the way with 21 points and Troy Cole added 17. SEMO (21-11, 15-5) has won eleven of its last 12 games.

Creed Williamson tallied 20 for the Trojans (19-14, 12-8).

OVC ‘Player of the Year’ Ray’Sean Taylor sparked SIUE to a program record twenty-first win. With the game on the line, Taylor scored ten points in the game’s final six, pivotal minutes. Taylor finished with 24 for the game.

Tennessee State (17-16) had won eleven of its last fourteen games.

Championship Game Preview

SEMO will come into the championship game as its favorite. The Redhawks defeated the Cougars in both of their previous matchups. SEMO won each convincingly. They handled SIUE 80-64 in Cape Girardeau and 83-68 in Edwardsville.

SEMO’s Teddy Washington was outstanding in each game scoring 17 at home and 28 on the road and in both contests the Redhawks were the more accurate long distance shooting team. They held SIUE under 27 percent from deep in each contest, while making over 37 of their own.

While Taylor scored 30 points in the home loss, Rob Martin negated that by scoring 31 himself.

SIUE has won seven of their last ten games and the Cougars are to OVC’s best defensive club. SEMO is its second best scoring team. Scanning the OVC stat page, the Redhawks are second in scoring, scoring defense, free throw percentage and field goal percentage. In-other-words, the Redhawks are near the top in many categories and are number one in defending the three-point line.

Brian Barone’s team needs someone to step up offensively to compete with the multi-talented Redhawks. Routinely SEMO players Martin, Washington, Cole, BJ Ward and Terry are putting up offensive numbers.

The ‘go-to’ players are in less supply behind Taylor. Ring Malith and Brian Taylor are Barone’s best options. Friday, others contributed to the cause, but none has been that consistent, reliable scorer behind Ray’Sean Taylor and Malith.

For SIUE to pull the upset, their defense has to be on point. While the Cougars average under 67 points per game defensively, but the Redhawks have reached 80 points in both of the games between the teams.

SEMO is looking to do ‘more-of-the-same’. They want to limit threes, spread the floor and attack offensively with a wide range of talented guards and wings.

History Making Ramifications

The winner will qualify for the NCAA Tournament and will likely head to Dayton for one of the ‘play-in’ games. That trip would be SEMO’s second trip to the Big Dance in three years and it would be SIUE’s first ever.

The title game tips at 8:00 pm (Central) and can be seen on ESPN2 and heard on Westwood One.

This is a huge, history-making championship game for each program.

Do Good