What's Up In The Missouri Valley: What's Up In The Missouri Valley 3/2/2025

Predicting the first 15 college basketball conference tournament winners of 2025 March Madness--Busting Brackets

Missouri Valley

Dates: March 6th-9th

Venue: Enterprise Center

Top Seed: Drake Bulldogs

Winner: Drake Bulldogs

This is the only tournament that could result in a stolen bid if Drake doesn’t win the league. They are currently 26-3 and have run away from the rest of the Valley. The Bulldogs are in year one of head coach Ben McCollum, who is doing all of this with former Division 2 players from his last stop at Northwest Missouri State. Drake allows the fewest shots against them in the country, teams struggle to get up more than 50 shots in a game, they don’t allow threes, they don’t allow rebounds, and they force a ton of turnovers. The offensive end is also a masterclass. Drake plays at one of the slowest paces in the country because they work for the highest percentage shot they can get, and they are ultra-efficient on the offensive end. Drake is going to be a problem for a high-major team in the tournament.

Sleeper: Murray State Racers

There is about a 10% chance that anyone other than Drake wins this league, but if I had to pick a sleeper from someone outside the top 4 seeds, it would be Murray State. The Racers have one of the oldest rosters in the country and a ton of experience. The problem is that they are not as talented as a lot of the other teams in the league; they don’t shoot the ball overly well, and they turn the ball over too much. However, they have already beaten Drake this year, and if they can get out of their year-long offensive funk, it could become a problem.

NIT Bracketology, March 1--NIT Bracketology

Project NIT Bracket (Autos for Top 16, Bubbles in Italics):

1. Texas (SEC)
Arkansas St.
4. Middle Tennessee (CUSA)
Colorado St.
3. North Texas (American)
Kansas St.
2. Pittsburgh (ACC)
Dayton

1. Boise St. (MWC)
Oregon St.
4. Penn St.
St. Bonaventure
3. Bradley (MVC)
Saint Joseph's
2. UC Irvine (BW)
San Francisco

1. Santa Clara (WCC)
Grand Canyon
4. Stanford (ACC)
Nevada
3. LSU (SEC)
Florida St.
2. Utah (B12)
USC

1. SMU (ACC)
Samford
4. Georgeotnw (BE)
Virginia
3. George Mason (A10)
UNC Wilmington
2. Oklahoma (SEC)
Northern Iowa

Arch Madness brackets (essentially) set--Racer Basketball

Conference title check-ins: Final days of regular season--The Next

MVC

The Missouri Valley is this year’s Chaos Conference. Five teams are all within one game of first place, but there’s only one more matchup between two of them: Missouri State and Illinois State on Thursday. Assuming no major upsets in the other games this week, either the Bears either take that game and win the conference title on tiebreakers, or they lose and Murray State gets its first conference title since 2008, when it was still in the OVC.

The MVC conference tournament in a week and a half is going to be very interesting.

The bracket with two games to play ...--Racer Basketball