NCAA basketball: Murray State gets the first ticket to the 2018 NCAA Tournament
The top two teams in the Ohio Valley faced off with a spot in the NCAA Tournament. When it was all said and done, it’ll be Murray State that’s dancing.
Championship Week started a bit early for the Ohio Valley basketball conference, being on of the first mid-major leagues to start their tournament. It started at the very end of February, with the format dramatically benefiting the top two regular season teams. That’s because neither Murray State, nor Belmont had to play until the semifinals.
In those games, the Bruins of Belmont easily handled Austin Peay to get to the title game. Top seeded Murray State had some difficulty with No. 4 seed Jacksonville State for much of the game, but prevailed in the end by seven points.
Belmont won the only matchup between the two earlier, but the Racers had different plans in the title game. It was at a neutral site court in Evansville, with the fans representation evenly split.
Murray State was off to the races, taking a big lead to start the game before the Bruins could even score a point. But they settled down to catch up in a short period of time.
The rest first half was tight throughout, with both teams unable to separate from one another. That was true for the first ten minutes of the second half, with Belmont within striking distance.
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But Murray State just went utterly ballistic from deep, hitting a few in succession to take it from a one possession game under 10 minutes to as far as 19 points with just two minutes to go.
Belmont went cold in the second half, scoring just 19 points in the final 20 minutes of the game.
The leading scorer for Murray State, Jonathan Stark had a tremendous game, going for 24 points. Temetrius Morant chipped in with 15 points. This is a Racers team that has potential to make some noise in the big dance, with a high-powered offense combined with some good defenders as well.
In our latest Bracketology, Murray State (the projected auto bid for the Ohio Valley) was given a 13 seed. This should make any potential four seed nervous if picked with this team.
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One team down, 67 more to go, as Championship Week starts to get going. But Murray State gets to now sit back and relax, as they know they’ll have their name called in about a week.