Ja Morant brings the ball up during an away game.
Blake Sandlin/ The Murray State News
The OVC Men’s Basketball Tournament starts tonight, which means eight teams are going to battle it out for a chance at the NCAA National Championship.
Each postseason, conference tournaments give underdogs the chance to be unlikely heroes on the biggest stage of the year. This season, Murray State has a chance to play spoiler when they enter the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament on Friday, March 8, at the Ford Center in Evansville, Indiana.
The OVC Tournament consists of the top eight teams in the conference at years end. The top four teams receive byes, but the top two seeds will receive double byes to the semi-final round.
The Belmont Bruins earned the one-seed this year, putting together an impressive resume in OVC play going 14-2, suffering each loss to Jacksonville State. The Bruins enter the tournament as favorites, sporting the top scoring offense in the OVC averaging 88.3 ppg. The Bruins will be a tough team to conquer in March, coming into the tournament winning an OVC-high 14 straight games.
Murray State enters the OVC Tournament on a winning streak of its own, rattling off nine straight victories to earn the second-seed among the eight team field. The Racers finished the season with an emphatic win at home over Austin Peay 94-83 last Saturday, March 2. Sophomore guard and OVC Player of the Year Ja Morant will look to lead his team to their second consecutive OVC Tournament championship as well as their second straight trip to the NCAA Tournament.
Jacksonville State secured the three-seed in the tournament, finishing the regular season 15-3 in conference. The Gamecocks ended the season with wins over Eastern Illinois and Southern Illinois-Edwardsville while Austin Peay surrendered its fifth loss to Murray State in the last week of the season, dropping to 13-5, earning the fourth-seed.
The Gamecocks and Governors will be interesting foes for Belmont and Murray State if they manage to make it into the semi-final games on Friday evening. The Gamecocks have knocked off Belmont twice and the Governors have one of the OVC’s best on their squad in Terry Taylor. Taylor was named to his second-consecutive First Team All-OVC team this past week, averaging 20.6 ppg and 8.8 rpg on the season.
The bottom four seeds will have an equal chance to disrupt a stacked OVC Tournament as well this weekend.
Eight seed Southern Illinois-Edwardsville will take on five-seed Morehead State to kick off the tournament at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6. In the two teams’ most recent matchup, SIUE took down MSU 83-76 in Edwardsville.
Six-seed Eastern Illinois will take on seven-seed UT-Martin following the conclusion of game 1 on Wednesday night, set for an 8:30 p.m. tip-off.
Eastern Illinois scampered into the tournament this season despite a five-game losing streak to end conference play. UT-Martin will look to improve on its road woes in the OVC Tournament following a dismal 1-14 record on the road this season. While the Skyhawks have played less than great away from home, they do hold a conference win over Jacksonville State, an interesting possible matchup in game four on Thursday night.
The OVC Tournament will begin Wednesday, March 6, and will conclude with the OVC Championship at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 9, at the Ford Center in Evansville, Indiana. You can catch the first four games of the tournament on ESPN+, semi-final games on ESPNU and the championship game on ESPN2. All Racer games can be heard on Froggy 103.7 FM.