The Missouri Valley Conference Women’s Basketball Tournament starts today in St. Charles, Missouri. The Creighton Bluejays await the winner of this evening’s Drake-Evansville game. Let’s get caught up on the women’s teams and the matchups for Thursday night.
Game 1 (5 p.m.): #8 Indiana State (16-13, 7-11) vs. #9 Southern Illinois (5-23, 4-14)
Season Series
Indiana State comes into this game with a 2-game losing streak to end the regular season. However, the Sycamores did not lose to Southern Illinois in their two meetings this season. Brittany Schoen led the way in the first meeting with 17 points, including 5 3-pointers, which were career highs. In the game at SIU Arena in mid February, the Sycamores walked away winners. Kelsey Luna scored 17 of her 19 points in the final 6 minutes of the game to lead ISU to its first Valley road win of the season. Christine Presswood and Teri Oliver led the Salukis in scoring in both games.
Indiana State will win if …
…They can stop Stephany Neptune. Last week, Neptune scored 28 points, grabbed 17 rebounds, dished 7 assists, blocked 2 shots, and snagged a steal to lead SIU to victory against Evansville and break a 25-game road losing streak. She was named MVC Newcomer of the Week five times this season and has really turned it on down the stretch of the conference season.
Southern Illinois will win if …
…They can play great defense on Luna and keep her from going to the free throw line. Luna is second in the nation in free-throw percentage at 92.4%, including a stretch where she set an MVC record with 44 makes in a row. She has gone to the line 120 times and has missed only 9 shots. Luna is on the buzz watch list for the Nancy Lieberman award recognizing the top point guard in the nation. The other thing the Salukis need to do is find a way to score points. The Sycamore’s held opponents under 40 points twice this season, which has only happened 27 times in the league’s history.
Game 2 (8:30 p.m.): #7 Drake (14-14, 7-11) vs. #10 Evansville (4-25, 1-17)
Season Series
As most teams have this season, Drake appeared to dominate Evansville in their two games to the tune of almost identical 67-53 and 69-48 scores. However the scores are deceiving. In their first meeting in Evansville, Drake held a 1 point lead with just under 6 minutes to go before 2nd team All-MVC guard Jordann Plummer made her first basket of the game and scored 9 points in a 21-8 run to close that one out. In Des Moines it was a somewhat similar story; Drake closed the game with a 29-8 scoring run in the final 9:30 to get the win. As always, beating a team three times could be a tricky task.
Drake will win if…
…they can put away the game early. In the two wins against Evansville during the regular season, the Bulldogs had to rely on runs late in the game to pull out the wins. The longer the Purple Aces stay in the game, the tougher it might be to hold them off. The other key is getting Plummer involved early. As the team leader in minutes played, free throws made (88), assists (123), steals (65), and scoring (13.6), she is a one woman show that Evansville may not be able to contain. It will be her responsibility to carry this team into the next round.
Evansville will win if…
…they get on a roll again like last year’s MVC tourney. Evansville entered last season as a #9 seed and ended up rolling through to the finals and defeating Creighton in the championship game on a last second shot, earning the automatic trip to the NCAA Tournament. Weirder things have happened, but a lot of Evansville losses this season have come down to not finishing games, notably against Drake. They have a taste of the Big Dance and that could be a motivating factor.
