The Missouri Valley Conference hosts its men’s basketball Media Day in St. Louis on Tuesday. Along with collecting endless amounts of coach speak quotes and interesting sound bytes from some of the league’s best players, the mainstream media following the MVC will unveil the preseason conference picks.
None of us at WBR can make it to the Gateway City this week, so we thought we’d throw together our own preseason ballot and All-MVC roster. We’ve culled these combinations together through a not-so-scientific process of flashing back to last season’s action, deducting graduated or lost players from who returns for each squad, and exactly zero in-person research or scouting for each team.
If you disagree with our methods and/or our madness, make sure to let us know it the Comments section below. So without further ado, here’s the Official White & Blue Review Men’s Basketball Preseason Picks, starting with the final standings projection.
Look familiar? The collective ballot submitted by us here at WBR matches the exact standings Max Univers published last week in his two-part MVC preview (found here and here). Still, the selections amongst the WBR staff varied somewhat, with Creighton and Illinois State even garnering first place votes.
Last year’s preseason MVC poll was half correct. The Valley media picked Creighton to win the regular season crown, and they shared the title with Northern Iowa. But the Panthers were picked to finish 6th in conference. A similar scenario played out in 2007-2008, with the Drake Bulldogs winning both the regular season and Valley tournament titles after being picked 9th in the preseason poll.
Will there be another Valley team to rise from the middle or lower part of the prognostications and take the league crown? Two of the gentlemen listed below will most likely have a say in such a scenario, if it does occur.
WBR Preseason All-MVC Team
- Osiris Eldridge, Illinois State — Preseason Player of the Year
- Adam Koch, Northern Iowa
- Justin Carter, Creighton
- Toure’ Murry, Wichita State
- Kevin Dillard, Southern Illinois
Honorable Mention
- Kwadzo Ahelegbe, Northern Iowa
- P’Allen Stinnett, Creighton
- Kenny Lawson, Creighton
- Clevin Hannah, Wichita State
- Anthony Booker, Southern Illinois
Based on last year’s successes and an off season’s worth of news and notes, we at WBR fully expect to see UNI, CU, and ISU Red take up the top three spots of the MVC preseason ballot. But we also see Wichita State making a run near the top, and Southern Illinois bouncing back from a horrific 2008-2009 season. If those scenarios play out, it will be in large part because of the efforts from first-teamers Toure’ Murry (WSU) and Kevin Dillard (SIU) and honorably mentioned Clevin Hannah (WSU) and Anthony Booker (SIU), all second-year players in the MVC.
The other members of the All-MVC team and those in the honorable mention category come from the league favorites, including two consensus WBR all conference players — Osiris Eldridge (ISU Red) and Adam Koch (UNI). And four out of five WBR staff members agree that the O-Hawk will end the drought of former Valley Freshmen of the Year award winners to never win a conference Player of the Year award: Not since Ashraf Amaya won the Larry Bird MVC POY as a junior has a former frosh of the year taken home the ultimate individual conference honor.
While all of these projections are just guesses, one thing is for sure: the Valley from top to bottom looks a lot more like the conference in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 than the past few years. Players such as Harry Marshall and Jake Kelly at Indiana State, Andrew Warren and Sam Maniscalco at Bradley, and Josh Young at Drake have the ability to lead their teams to the top of the conference standings, as well. Here’s hoping the MVC benefits from better depth and quality during the upcoming year.