Missouri Valley Basketball: Preseason power rankings for 2021-22 season

Missouri Valley Basketball has perennially been one of the deepest, competitive and unpredictable conferences in college basketball since the turn of the 21st century. More recently, the MVC has been making a name for itself on the national stage. In 2018, Loyola-Chicago made a run to the Final Four and just last year the conference was a multi-bid league with both Drake and those Ramblers making the field, with the latter once again making a run to the regional finals.

With last season being such a fractured season with teams not playing equal schedules, it is difficult to gauge the strength of the conference. But, if we look at the 2019-20 regular season the conference flexed its muscles with half of the 10 schools winning at least 19 games, with four winning 20 or more.

While the numbers look good, one problem that arises when a conference is so deep is that the teams end up beating up on each other, ultimately hurting the conference as a whole. Two years ago, Drake was the biggest victim of this, despite going 20-14 they finished 8th in the conference with an 8-10 record.

Last season despite being a multi-bid league, a few injuries derailed the seasons of Northern Iowa and Drake, but they are healthy this season and with the usual suspects ready to conquer Arch Madness, the conference should once again be deep and ready to make its mark in March. Here is how I have the 10 squads stacked up heading into the 2021-22 season.