Missouri Valley Madness (This Week in Review)

Covering Monday - Friday's craziness in college basketball and why the MVC is one of the most competitive leagues in college basketball.

Welcome everyone to the first Substack post from Bracket Busters. We will be completely a weekly post that covers the last week in Mid & Low-Major College Basketball. Big wins, stat lines, and more.

This last week saw some chaos at the top of the ladder. #1 Purdue was knocked off by Northwest, #4 UConn was knocked off by #5 Kansas, #18 Villanova was defeated by Saint Joseph’s, #12 Kentucky obliterated #8 Miami, and that’s just covering Monday through Friday as I write this on Saturday morning.

This is college basketball. Nothing is straight-forward, and anything can happen night in and night out. A lot happened at the top of the boards, what happened with our fan favorite Mid & Low Major teams that aren’t being covered by the media. Let’s look at the Missouri Valley Conference.

MVC Play Began

As a University of Evansville alumni, I can confirm that the MVC will always be one of the best mid-major college basketball conferences in the country. This week proved why. At the start of the week, my beloved Aces & Bradley sat at the top at 6-0 apiece. Looking to continue their hot trends into conference play, both were met with force.

Missouri St plowed through Evansville for the majority of the game, but in the last 10 minutes, thanks to the likes of budding freshman star Chuck Bailey, Evansville was able to make a slight comeback and cut the lead to just 10. However, the final score had a deficit of 12 thanks to a late foul, I apologize to those fellow spread betters that took a loss at (11.5).

On the Missouri St side, they are just a good basketball team. They had five players out, so their depth was low, but they kept up with the fast Evansville offense and even stepped on the pedal a little bit harder. Donovan Clay is a stud and will always be one of the toughest players to go head-to-head with in the Valley. The Bears only lost 5 MVC openers EVER. Insane statistic, but the trend continued this week.

Bradley went down to Murray St. to take on a Racers team that has been an absolute rollercoaster in non-conference play. In year two of Coach Prohm’s return to the Racers, beating Bradley would remind everyone why the MVC wanted Belmont and Murray to join the league for years. That’s in-fact what they did. Bradley would go on to be outplayed by JaCobi Wood & Rob Perry who put up 19/6/2 & 19/3/2 each. The Racers are going to be a dominate team.

Belmont beat a UNI team that has shown to be somewhat down this year despite being highly regarded pre-season. Belmont has STRUGGLED on the defensive end. Prior to the game, they’d given up 90 or more points to their opponents in 3 games & 79+ in 5/7 games. For those of you that are NBA fans, they are pretty much in the Indiana Pacers. No defense is played, it’s all offense. However, they had one of their best defensive showings of the season against UNI holding them to just 70 while pouring on 90. If Belmont can get the defense figured out consistently they are going to be a serious dark-horse in the MVC Tournament because they are an offensive juggernaut.

Drake faced a small scare thanks to a strong showing in the first half by Valpo. However, Drake showed why they were a top favorite in the league this season by going on to outscore Valpo 46-29 in the second half. Still a great sign for Valpo in the first half. It’s important that every team in the valley is competitive if they want a chance at two-bids.

I really don’t know what to say about what the bloodbath of Indiana St vs SIU was. Just yikes, but my goodness the MVC is going to be brutal this year. The Sycamores are going to be one of the top four teams that could probably lead to anyone winning the whole thing.

UIC who had shown some serious promise went ice cold from the field in the final 8 minutes of the game to take an MVC opening loss to the Illinois St Red Birds. UIC is building something special up there. At first, I was skeptical when they were added to the league, but just in a year and a half they’ve shown why they are going to be a great additional.

For Illinois St. this has to be a great feeling. They really haven’t been talked about at all in the non-conference play, so starting off 1-0 in the Valley is a great reminder that every single one of these teams is competitive this year.

This weekend, Evansville is taking on UNI at home, ISU & Bradley are teeing off, Saint Louis is taking on SIU, Missouri St & Drake go at it, Belmont & Valpo go head-to-head, and Murray St & Illinois St looks to go 2-0 against one another.

Here’s my personal predictions:

1. Evansville over UNI

2. ISU over Bradley

3. Drake over Missouri St

4. Belmont over Valpo

5. Murray St over Illinois St

6. Saint Lous over SIU