What’s Wrong With the West?

(St. Louis, MO) – A season of potential promise has been filled with frustration instead. The Ohio Valley Conference’s West Division is collectively struggling to be competitive. Rarely has one whole division gone bad all at once.

After Thursday’s games the West Division has one team (Tennesee-Martin) with a winning record, and two of the six teams are winless in league play. The bottom four teams in the division have a COMBINED three wins against 16 losses.

So how did things go so wrong?

Eastern Illinois (5-12, 2-3) who is showing signs of life after last night’s win over visiting Eastern Kentucky, was coming off its first ever post season performance and boasted of a very solid recruiting class, but the Panthers have fallen flat. One factor was the defection of second leading scorer and leading rebounder Chris Olivier, but what else has gone wrong for Jay Spoonhour’s team?

Without Olivier the Panthers are vulnerable inside. They are last in the OVC in rebounding and are second worst in blocked shots. The lack of an inside scoring threat and rim protector makes everything else more difficult for Spoonhour’s young squad.

EIU is second from the bottom in free throw percentage.

Cornell Johnston has had a subtle sophomore slippage. The Ladue High School product is still productive, but his shooting percentages are dramatically down all across the board. His field goal percentage down from .428 to .365, 3 point shooting is .348 down from .519 and even at the free throw line he has slipped from .862 to .571. His scoring average and assists are slightly up. He’s averaging 10.6 points and 5.1 assists per game and he leads the OVC in assist-turnover margin.

Southern Illinois Edwardsville and Southeast Missouri are breaking in new coaches with teams that lacked the talent to compete. Only one player, Burak Eslik (SIUE), from those TWO teams is even in the top 25 in the league’s scoring race.

Rick Ray’s SEMO squad (2-14, 0-4) is last in scoring and last in scoring defense. They are the only team worse than EIU at the free throw line, making just 60.4% of those scoring opportunities. The Redhawks yield the most rebounds to their opponents and are the twefth in three-point shooting percentage. Suspensions and injuries have limited Ray’s rotation possibilities. Things aren’t pretty in Cape Girardeau.

Jon Harris’ team (3-14, 0-5) has the worst shooting percentage and thus they hand out the fewest assists in the entire OVC and they are one of two teams that hasn’t come up with at least five steals per game.

Ray and Harris however, are the right men for their jobs, and there are signs of life in both programs.

Three of SIUE’s five conference losses have been five or fewer points. Thursday, they lost in overtime to Morehead State. Earlier this season they defeated Southern Illinois Carbondale (15-3) for the first time in program history. Freshman Carlos Anderson (Alton High) is a young player to build around. For the season, the 6’4 slasher is averaging almost 11 points per game, but in conference play his average is closer to 14. A good recruiting class is on the way for next year.

For Ray, the job is more daunting. They have only one Division 1 win this season (their other victory was over the NAIA’s Harris-Stowe). The good news is that there is just one senior on the roster. Their best player, Antonius Cleveland is just a junior and several freshmen with good ‘upside’ are gaining valuable playing time.

Eric McGill, a 6’2 guard from Memphis and Tony Anderson a 6’9 forward from Columbus show promise. Anderson has reached double figures in scoring for the first time in his collegiate career in each of the last three games. He racked up a career high 17 points in Wednesday’s loss to Jacksonville State.

Austin Peay (8-11, 1-3) has already won as many games as last season and could still be a factor in the West Division race. Chris Horton is a double-double machine and fellow senior Khalil Davis are veterans having solid seasons, and sophomore Josh Robinson (St. Mary’s High – St. Louis) is having a break out season averaging 14.3 points per game. His seven game double figure scoring streak was snapped Thursday, but included in that stretch was a 30 point performance against Wofford.

With only one team with a winning record in the West, it looks like UT-Martin should be able to run away with the division title. However, if any team gets hot as the schedule changes and the divisional teams play one another, things could change in a hurry.

Do Good