Primarily a collection of news links about all 11 Missouri Valley League teams on a daily basis, culled from online newspapers, school athletic websites, the conference website, and school newspapers, plus some other content from time to time.
#62 Belmont (-1) at #107 Murray State, 6 PM ET, ESPN2.
If you are of a certain age, you will recognize this as the once-perennial
Ohio Valley Conference title game. Now, it's merely a matchup of the two
best* teams in the Missouri Valley and of possibly the most interesting
future option on the 12-seed line in the entire sport. The odds of this
ending up as the single most entertaining game of the weekend, especially
because of how vastly different each team plays, is higher than you'd think.
Belmont remains the same 4-in, 1-out offense they've been for 25 years, but
this edition is shooting 61% 2PT/41% 3PT and has the single best frontcourt
of any mid-major in the sport. Yes, I'm serious: the best.
No one in the MVC has been able to slow down the multifaceted combo of Sam
Orme, who is the best pick-and-pop stretch 4 in mid-major basketball this
year not named Allen Graves, and center Drew Scharnowski, he of a 117 ORtg
on 26% USG to go with an 8.4% Block%. The list of guys in this sport with a
110+ ORtg on 25%+ USG and a 8%+ Block%: Scharnowski, Nate Bittle, and Tarris
Reed.
Murray, meanwhile, is one of the five best teams in college basketball in
2026 in one very specific area: winning from three. The Racers have made 98
more threes than their opponents this season, only outpaced by Alabama,
Texas Tech, Charleston Southern (!), and Saint Louis. This is in large part
because no team allows fewer threes than Murray thanks to a relatively
unique defensive structure that keeps a big roughly 15 feet away from any
screening action:
This is reliant on the defending guard chasing hard over the top, similar to
an Illinois or Creighton system, but Murray's is as extreme a version of the
super drop as I've seen run. In the first matchup, Belmont completely
destroyed the super drop by running a record number of dribble handoffs,
with Tyler Lundblade thriving off of them because Lundblade needs
little-to-no space to get his shot off:
0:00
/0:08
The defensive equation is interesting, though. Belmont gave up a season-high
number of points on putbacks because Murray's numerous three-point attempts
banged off in every direction, meaning Murray's guards/wings were able to
react to these shots quickly and secure 16 offensive boards. It ended up
being pointless because Belmont got back 15 of their misses, but a better
shooting day (6-23 versus Belmont's 12-24 two weeks ago) and better
rebounding could give them what's necessary to get over the hump. And to
bring back some nostalgia. - Will Warren
No comments:
Post a Comment