What's Up In The Missouri Valley: What's Up In The Missouri Valley 12/15/2025

Who has the Missouri Valley Conference’s best chance of landing an at-large bid?--Busting Brackets
The Other Men’s Top 25: Saint Louis claims No. 1 spot for first time--Mid-Major Madness

Here is the full ranking:

Ranking

Team (First-Place Votes)

Points

Last Week

14 Belmont 54 T-13

20 Northern Iowa 26 24

Others Receiving Votes:

South Florida 19; St. Bonaventure 15; Northern Colorado 14; Illinois St. 13; Murray St. 10; Kent St. 9; Liberty 7; Cal Baptist 6; Towson 6; Rhode Island 5; Buffalo 4; UAB 4; Iona 3; Wyoming 3; Siena 2; Utah Valley 2; Loyola Marymount 1

Ranking	Team (First-Place Votes)	Points	Last Week
14	Belmont	54	T-13
20	Northern Iowa	26	24

Week 7 Watchlist: Strange Geometry--Basket Under Review

Wednesday, December 17
C Games
#91 Northern Iowa (-5) at #190 UIC, 5 PM ET, ESPN+. Worktime ball for the MVC. Northern Iowa's defense actually might be the best amongst 'true' mid-majors this year. I haven't seen many teams control the pace of play the way they do. They're just so hard to crack. UIC's path to cracking it is on the boards, where they're really good, but I haven't seen much from their actual offensive process to suggest a big game.
Thursday, December 18
B Games
#99 Illinois State at #122 Southern Illinois (-1), 9 PM ET, ESPN+. Here's a thing Southern Illinois must solve: being awful at home in conference play. Post-COVID, they've won just 55% of their conference home games. If you can't protect your home arena, you can't take the next step as a program, which Scott Nagy would love to do.
C Games
#126 Bradley (-1) at #183 Indiana State, 7 PM ET, ESPN+. This should be fun and close. Bradley has produced a maddening product thus far, but one thing they've been terrific at is perimeter defense, as they're fifth in TO% and Jaquan Johnson is third in the nation in Steal%. Playing an Indiana State team that's 251st in offensive TO% and has horrendous offensive shot volume is an intriguing get-right matchup to me.
#132 Drake at #97 Murray State (-6), 8 PM ET, ESPN+. Murray State looks to be on another planet right now, particularly offensively, where they stand a real chance of being the best shooting offense since the Indiana State team we all loved. Don't forget about Drake, however. Their rough start has turned into wins over Charleston and Georgia Tech.
Friday, December 19
B Games
#79 Belmont (-3) at #125 UC Irvine, 9 PM ET, ESPN+. Well, this rocks. Last year's game at Belmont was a doozy, with UCI winning 92-84 in their third-fastest game of the year. It was pretty simple for UCI: Belmont could not stop Bent Leuchten in the post and could not shut down driving lanes for Myles Che and Jurian Dixon. Only Dixon is back, and UCI's offense can be charitably described as a work-in-progress, now being reoriented around point guard Derin Saran in a semi-heliocentric attack.
This Belmont group is surprisingly much improved on defense this year with a P&R defense that's more drop coverage than hedge. This may spell trouble for the Bruins, as Saran's runners and short jumpers against drop are one of the few things that has seemed to work for UCI this year. As always, you have to prep for the typically stout Anteater D that manages to funnel a stunning amount of shots to about 8-10 feet. This made Belmont extremely jumper-happy last year and created their fourth-fewest rim attempts of '24-25; a repeat would add a TON of variance to a game that already feels unpredictable. The rare road team sweep?

The Women’s Other Top 25: Top holds steady, movement further down--Mid-Major Madness

Four teams joined the ranking this week after not being in the top 25 last week: Green Bay (19), High Point (21), New Mexico (22) and Murray St. (23).

The Racers have won five straight to improve to 7-2. They knocked off George Mason and Boston College at the Daytona Beach Classic.

Here is the full ranking:

Ranking

Team

Last Week

23 Murray St. NR

Dropped from Rankings:

UNLV – 11; Belmont – 14; Quinnipiac – 22; UC Irvine – 25