What's Up In The Missouri Valley: What's Up In The Missouri Valley 11/2/2018

The Morning Dish – Friday, November 2, 2018--Hoopville

Side Dishes

Exhibition season continued with a host of games Thursday night. Take whatever you want from friendlies (but we’d probably advise one should take at least something from them), but non-Division I teams knocked off several D-I programs, while others threw good scares into them. Winners included Western Colorado rolling Air Force 84-64 and Indianapolis winning at Valparaiso 60-57. Ugly results for both losing teams. Also, NCAA Division III Salisbury (Md.) topped Maryland-Eastern Shore 67-60.
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An intriguing story this week has come from Missouri, which through unnamed sources was accusing Evansville of essentially blocking former Purple Aces guard Dru Smith from getting a waiver to play this year for the Tigers. Mizzou, like any other program that hasn’t been asleep for six months, has seen the NCAA handing out transfer waivers like Halloween candy and figured it would try on the basis that Smith supposedly left Evansville solely because coach Marty Simmons was fired in March, and thus should get a waiver. And according to the unnamed source this week, he would have if not for the Aces’ supposed pettiness.
After several days of silence, Evansville responded yesterday-strongly. Aces athletic director Mark Spencer detailed UE’s involvement throughout the transfer process for Smith, including Smith’s participation (with other Aces teammates) in the hiring process of current coach Walter McCarty and Missouri trying to get Evansville to say it had essentially pulled Smith’s scholarship and he was not welcome back to the program. Anyone with an ounce of common sense could’ve figured that wouldn’t have been the case with one of the better players in the Missouri Valley Conference, and Evansville rightfully refused to go along with Mizzou’s prodding. Schools like Missouri already have about every imaginable advantage in recruiting the Dru Smiths out of high school or poaching them away after they’ve played well collegiately. Evansville was under zero obligation to bow down, tell what some might consider just a little white lie and give them still yet one more advantage, even in the name of the supposedly sacred cow now of “student-athlete well-being.”