It’s hard to come away with a win and two losses when only two conference teams are in action, but that’s effectively what happened in the Valley tonight.
Missouri St. was the lone bright spot for the conference. The Bears blasted Alabama St. 89-49.
But it was the losses of Indiana St. and Arkansas — yes, the Hogs — that hurt the Valley’s reputation tonight.
Tennessee Tech’s Anthony Fisher hit a layup with 2.7 seconds left to beat Bradley 84-82 in Cookeville, Tenn. Wednesday night.
Bradley drops to 5-2 after playing its first true road game of the season.
Tech led by nine at halftime, but the Braves battled back and led by as many as nine with 7:30 left. The Golden Eagles took over the rest of the game from that point with a 25-14 run.
Fisher led Tech with 20 points, including 4-of-6 on threes.
It’s 26 days until Christmas, 92 days to Arch Madness and 104 days to the NCAA tourney.
Yep, a long season still lies ahead, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited about what Valley teams have done in the early going.
Wichita St. leads the way with its win at LSU. They also went into George Mason’s gym and won. The Shockers moved all the way up to No. 17 in the AP poll. Maybe if they won at Duke, and then at North Carolina, followed up by a win at Florida, they could squeak into the top ten.
Fifth place isn’t so bad after all.
Southern Illinois closed out their Thanksgiving weekend visit to Orlando by beating Virginia Tech 69-64 in the fifth place game of the Old Spice Classic.
Jamaal Tatum’s three-pointer with 22.9 seconds left gave SIU the lead for good at 67-64. Tatum finished with 16 points.
The game wasn’t over yet, however.
Virginia Tech’s A.D. Vassallo missed a three with 3.5 seconds left, Tatum rebounded and was fouled.
Tatum missed both shots, and it gave the Hokies another shot to tie it with 2.9 seconds left.
For the second night in a row, Illinois trailed for most of the game and ended up winning.
The Illini did it Friday night against Miami (OH). Saturday, the victim was Bradley.
Bradley led by as many as 11 points in the first half, took a six-point lead into halftime, and led by as many as 10 in the second half.
Illinois fought back, however, and took the lead for good with a 10-0 run to go ahead 63-57.
Jeremy Crouch was on fire early for the Braves, making all four of his three-point attempts. Unfortunately for Bradley, he was 0-for-3 in the second half.
A few angry emails trickled into the Ledger office today wondering why there was no mention made of the Illinois St., Drake and Indiana St. games.
The explanation was fairly simple and brief: the four teams that were mentioned were taking on big-name programs and have either been nationally ranked or made a strong case to garner a national ranking. As such, it made sense to give those games some extra attention.
With losses to SMU and Florida St. already, don’t look for the Redbirds to be ranked anytime soon. But if they keep playing like they did Saturday night, they’ll be getting quite a bit more attention from everyone.
If Missouri State’s win over Wisconsin yesterday was large, Saturday’s win by Wichita St. on LSU’s home floor is of the extra large variety.
Sean Ogirri was held to three points, but five other Shockers hit double figures in the 57-53 win at Baton Rouge, La.
I tried to listen to the entire game streaming over the web (www.shockerradio.com), but the stream became unbearably choppy in the final minutes, so there are sadly no solid details on how this one ended from my point of view.
Nevertheless, this is the big win the Valley needed today to maintain the argument that it is a power conference this season.
After 38 minutes, Creighton seemed to be well in control of George Mason, leading 56-49.
But three straight turnovers and three straight Patriot baskets left the game tied at 56 with 49 seconds left. Will Thomas hit the last two buckets of the 7-0 run.
Creighton’s Dane Watts was fouled with 7.5 seconds left and hit both free throws for the 2-point lead.
Patriot guard Folarin Campbell then missed a jumper at the buzzer to seal the win for the Bluejays at the Qwest Center in Omaha.
Watts led Creighton with 19 points, including 3-of-4 on threes and 8-of-8 free throws.
Late in the first half against Oklahoma St., Blake Ahearn hoisted a wide-open three from the top of the key.
The shot was an airball, and it left Ahearn with a wry smile on his face.
That shot summed up the Bears’ performance Saturday afternoon in a 73-70 overtime loss from South Padre Island, Texas in the finals of the South Padre Island Invitational.
Oklahoma St. (6-0) used a stiff half-court defense to hold Ahearn to only 11 points. The Bears (5-1) shot only 40.3% from the floor, including 8-of-25 on threes.
There’s big. There’s important.
And then there’s Saturday.
If Bradley, Creighton, Missouri St. and Wichita St. can run the table today, the strength of the Missouri Valley Conference will be the hot topic of discussion on sports talk shows around the nation Sunday morning.
Three games against BCS conference opponents are on the docket, and the one non-BCS opponent was a Final Four team last season (George Mason).
With every one of their opponents capable of making a lot of noise later on in the year, Valley teams can make a big statement about the conference as a whole by coming up with wins Saturday.