Four years ago, the top two teams in the Ohio Valley Conference moved their conference affiliation to the Missouri Valley Conference. OVC watchers expected the two league heavy-weights to jump right into contention in the Valley.
They were sadly mistaken, but now four years later the OVC takeover of the Missouri Valley Conference seems to be underway.
Murray State (16-5, 8-2) and Belmont (18-3, 8-2) are the top two teams in the standings and in most of the college basketball metrics. Belmont is on the verge of its twentieth straight season of at least twenty wins and leads the Valley in the NET and at KenPom.com.
After Murray State’s lost weekend in Iowa (losses to Drake and Northern Iowa) the Racers are still 8-2 in conference play and tied with Belmont for the Valley’s top spot. The former OVC powers are the Valley’s top two teams in the NCAA’s NET rankings and two of its top three at kenpom.com. It took these two tradition-rich programs several years to figure out the rugged Missouri Valley, but they have now arrived.
While they have built their teams in very different ways, they have stayed true to what makes these tradition-rich programs special. They spent ten years battling for OVC supremacy and now they are the Valley’s top two teams in the standings.
Belmont returned eleven players from last year’s roster and is coached by Rick Byrd protégé Casey Alexander. The Byrd-Alexander coaching connection has lasted 40 years in Nashville.
Murray State had no returners, and Ryan Miller is the third Racers’ head coach in the last five years.
The Bruins’ blue-print hasn’t changed for those 40 years. Belmont recruits high school players with offensive skill and outstanding basketball and academic IQ. They frequently redshirt players that often stay four or five years.
Murray has enjoyed successful stints from the likes of Scott Edgar, Mark Gottfried, Tevester Anderson, Mick Cronin, Billy Kennedy, Steve Prohm and Matt McMahon. The strength of the Murray State program is ‘the program’. Fans and administrators are the backbone of what makes Racer basketball successful. In Murray, Kentucky the community and administration have high expectations that are routinely met.