MVC Basketball: 2022-23 midseason all-conference team selections

Mar 5, 2022; St. Louis, MO, USA; Drake Bulldogs guard Tucker Devries (12) shoots against the Missouri State Bears during the second half in the semifinals of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament at Enterprise Center. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports /

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Northern Iowa guard Bowen Born Drake guard Tucker Devries MVC Basketball020522 Drake Uni 004 Jpg /

Preseason all-conference predictions are fun to discuss. By mid-season, you have a fairly good idea of who a league’s best players have been. Those two different lists often change, but perhaps not as significantly as the MVC Basketball mid-season all-conference team has.

Valley teams have pulled off two, top-25 victories and finished the non-conference schedule 19 games over .500 and twelfth in the KenPom.com rankings. Not only is the non-conference season over, but league teams have played two pre-Christmas conference games.

Four different players have topped the 30-point mark and Valparaiso’s Nick Edwards is emerging as an assist machine with two, double-digit-dime performances. Murray State’s D.J. Burns and Illinois State’s Kendall Lewis each have two games of 14 or more rebounds.

While the Valley named a six-man first team, along with five-men second and third teams, we have kept ours a more traditional set of threes. Eight of the MVC’s top sixteen players don’t even make the mid-season squad.

Injuries are always a factor whether by shutting a player down or elevating another. In the case of Bradley’s Rienk Mast, injuries moved him down the list but opened the door for teammate Malevy Leons to be added. We believe Mast will be higher on the end-of-season list than where he is right now, but with just seven games under his belt, we believed we could place him no higher than we did.

Northern Iowa’s Austin Phyfe was a preseason third-teamer and hasn’t played one second of Panther basketball. That has opened the door for Michael Duax and James Betz who are trying to fill Phyfe’s big Nikes. UNI has also missed starter Nate Heise.

None of the official Valley preseason second team is on that list in our mid-season evaluation. One has moved higher while the other four aren’t on the list at all.