The Awaited Epic Battle

(St. Louis, MO) – The awaited epic battle for Ohio Valley Conference supremacy is upon is! For the hard-core, non-partisan OVC fans, tonight’s championship game between top seeded Murray State and # 2 Belmont is the game you have been waiting to see.

In the OVC’s unbalanced schedule the two league titans met only once this season and Belmont was the beneficiary of the home court and defeated the regular season champions 79-72. The Racers haven’t lost since. Their 12-game winning streak pushed them past the Bruins for their 25th regular season crown.

Murray (25-5) defeated reigning tournament champion Jacksonville State 70-63 Friday ensuring there will not be repeat champion. The Racers were the last team to win back-to-back titles, when they won three-in-a-row during the late 1990s. MSU last took the post season crown in 2012.

Belmont (24-8) drilled the upstart Austin Peay Governors 94-79, to advance to Saturday night’s final. The Bruins are the only OVC team to win multiple tournament championships over the last seven events. Four different teams the past four years and six OVC separate squads have grabbed the trophy during the past seven seasons (Morehead State, Murray, Eastern Kentucky, Austin Peay, Jacksonville State and the Bruins twice).

How did these two arrive at this point? They are simply the best teams in the league. Their records bear that out, and statistics don’t lie. They are the league’s top two teams in scoring, scoring margin, field goal percentage and assist/turnover margin.

The Bruins love to shoot the three! Rick Byrd’s team is the only OVC team to average at least 10 triples per game and they average 11.6. Friday night they connected 12 times from deep as Amanze Egekeze was an amazing nine for 11 from long range on his way to a career high 32 points.

In Belmont’s win over Murray State, the Bruins made 14, threes as Dylan Windler and Austin Luke each tallied 21 points in a game that the Racers led by four at half time.

Murray is the top rebounding margin club in the OVC. In Friday’s win Terrell Miller pulled off an 18-point, 18-rebound double-double.

The battle tonight will pit the second and third best rebounders (Miller and Windler) and the top two assist men (Luke and freshman Ja Morant) against one another, but the X-Factor is OVC scoring leader Jonathan Stark. How do the Bruins slow him down? He had JUST 19 points in the mid January loss at Belmont.

The conference ‘Player of the Year‘ has averaged 25 points per game since then and has topped the 30-point mark four times this season and three times in the last five contests.

Tonight’s winner heads to the NCAA Tournament and the loser has a strong case to placed in the National Invitation Tournament. The whole season comes down to this one game for these two brilliant programs.

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