NCAA Basketball: Will Evansville become mid-major star of 2019-20?

Will Evansville be the next Cinderella out of the MVC?

In recent years, the Missouri Valley Conference has made quite the splash in March Madness. Two seasons ago, Loyola-Chicago and the now-famous Sister Jean captured the nation’s hearts during their Final Four run. Loyola-Chicago started their season that year similar to how Evansville did this year, with a road win over a top-5 ranked SEC team. Before them, Northern Iowa advanced to the Sweet 16 and then back to the Round of 32 in the 2015 and 2016 NCAA tournaments.

This year, Loyola-Chicago and Northern Iowa are back as the favorites in the MVC. Loyola-Chicago still retains some key contributors, including big man Cameron Krutwig, from their Final Four run and Northern Iowa’s Ben Jacobson brings a fairly deep team led by sophomore top 100 recruit AJ Green. For their part, Evansville currently ranks fourth in the MVC according to KenPom. This may not seem great, but it is a significant improvement for a team that started the season projected to finish eighth in their conference.

The Missouri Valley Conference’s past tournament successes not only provides precedence for a potential Evansville tournament run, but it also means that they’ll have a strong regular season gauntlet to sharpen their team. Loyola-Chicago and Northern Iowa both have experience winning. If Evansville is able to find success against both of them, they will have a good measuring stick for how successful they can be in the postseason.

While it may not be the ACC or even the Atlantic-10 conference, the MVC will provide a strong test for Evansville. If the Purple Aces are able to come out on top at the conference tournament, they should have a solid shot at making a run in the tournament. Based on how they’ve started the year, Evansville really looks like they’ve got a good chance of doing just that.