Taking On All Comers

(St. Louis, MO) – Any Where … Any Time! That seems to be the motto of top Ohio Valley Conference teams this year. They want stiff competition and they are willing to go about anywhere to find it.

Belmont has played the Pac 12’s Arizona State, Missouri Valley’s Evansville, Marquette from the Big East, C-USA’s Western Kentucky, BYU of the West Coast Conference and have an upcoming home-and-home match up with perennial Horizon Conference power Valparaiso.

Murray State has challenged itself most notably with the SEC’s Georgia, Houston (AAC) and three straight December dates with Missouri Valley schools. At 5-2, the Racers’ next four games could make or break their national reputation.

Let’s not leave out UT-Martin! The Skyhawks have scheduled three ‘power 5’ conference teams and travel to Saint Louis (A-10). Last season the Skyhawks dropped games to Marquette, Nebraska and Butler in preparing for a successful run to the C.I.T. semi-finals. Schroyer’s new-look team has struggled (2-5) in the early going and still has Texas Tech on the docket along with the game at SLU.

OVC teams have to participate in games like these on the road or in multi-team events because the ‘money conference’ teams don’t want to risk a ‘bad loss’ at some OVC arena, but Belmont’s Rick Byrd, MSU’s Matt McMahon and UT-Martin’s Heath Schroyer all know they need these games on their team’s ledger to have a chance to dance in March if they don’t capture the ‘Music City Madness’ trophy in Nashville.

The Racers may have scheduled some of these games thinking Cam Payne would still be around and not playing with Oklahoma City of the NBA, but they will live with the schedule and hope that newcomer Demarcus Croaker can grow as an impact player.

Byrd has never shied away from tough scheduling. For all of those tough December road losses, there are those miraculous wins at North Carolina or an upset of Alabama, Missouri or Stanford. Belmont and Murray State have been able to recruit NBA quality players, so they are dangerous teams for the big name schools.

This season the Bruins have defeated Marquette and Western Kentucky and dropped narrow decisions to Arizona State, Evansville and BYU. All of these battles to prepare for the OVC season and to build a resume for the smoke-filled selection committee hotel room.

By Christmas we’ll know what kind of RPI numbers and national reputation these teams and Eastern Kentucky have obtained.

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