MVC WBB Tournament

[flyingMoose]

The tournament begins today with the play-in games, matching the #8/#9 seeds (Loyola and Bradley) and the #7/#10 seeds (Missouri State and Southern Illinois).

Tournament Central

[flyingMoose]

Thursday Games

Loyola 75-69 Bradley
The Ramblers will play Indiana State tomorrow at noon.

Missouri State 61-39 Southern Illinois
The Bears will play the Shockers tomorrow at 6pm.

[flyingMoose]

Other Friday Games

Indiana State 61-52 Loyola

Evansville 61-71 Drake
Indiana State and Drake meet Saturday at 130pm.

Northern Iowa 63-65 Illinois State
The Shockers and Illinois State meet Saturday at 400pm.

[1972Shocker]

Missouri State 61-39 Southern Illinois
The Bears will play the Shockers tomorrow at 6pm.

I still can not for the life of me figure out how we lost to SIU which cost the Ladies an outright Valley championship. Hopefully, the Ladies are ready to make amends for that this weekend.

[1972Shocker]

#1 Indiana State 62 - #8 Loyola 51

Decent effort by Loyola coming off a play-in win over Bradley last night.

Indiana State lead 46-44 with 6:30 remaining before pulling away late with the Sycamores scoring their final 9 points from the FT line.

Loyola's Sr. Troy Hambric who is the 2nd best player in the league behind Alex Harden lead the Ramblers with 21 points and 14 rebounds.

Indiana State survived a poor shooting game hitting only 29.4% from the field and only 63.0% from the line but they had 10 more FG attempts and 17 more FT attempts than did the Ramblers thanks to outrebounding Loyola 21-8 on the offensive boards and winning the turnover battle by 5.

[1972Shocker]

#5 Drake 71 - #4 Evansville 61

Drake took a 44-35 lead into the locker room at the half. However, Evansville opened the second half with an 18-5 run to take a 53-49 lead with 13 minutes remaining in the game.

The game was still tied at 55-all with 6 minutes to play as neither team did much during that 7 minute stretch. At that point Drake, behind Valley Co-Freshman of the Year, Lizzy Wendell, started to pull away. Wendell lead Drake with 28 points.

[WuDrWu]

Shocks are going to win this one, but they don't look good (to me) and I won't be surprised to see them out soon. Sure want to be wrong because they should win this tournament.

[1972Shocker]

Shocks are going to win this one, but they don't look good (to me) and I won't be surprised to see them out soon. Sure want to be wrong because they should win this tournament.

Shocks 71 - MSU 53

Alex lead the Shocks with a 20 point, 10 rebound effort. Jamillah chipped in 19 points and Michelle contributed 14 points. Shocks were outrebounded 32-42 which has been a weakness now and then for the Shocks. They offset that though by winning the turnover stat 27-15.

Need to get a little more production out of Kelsey, Michaela and Alie. Only got 10 points and 7 rebounds combined tonight. Would be nice to have them combining to match Alex's production of 20 and 10.

Jody did empty her bench for the final 2-3 minutes tonight. Valerierose did not play again so I am assuming she has an injury.

[1972Shocker]

#6 Illinois State 65 - #3 Northern Iowa 63

Chloe Nelson lead Illinois State to the win with a 25 point performance and a date with the Lady Shocks in the semi-finals.

[Play Angry]

Congrats ladies. 1 down, 2 to go!

[tgcshock]

Drake beats InSt 66-58. If the Shocks can take care of business this evening, it sets up an interesting grudge match between ACTUAL ON THE COURT player of the year Alex Harden and PURPORTED BY THE VOTERS to be player of the year Kendall Clark.

[1972Shocker]

#5 Seed Drake 66 - #1 Seed Illinois State 58

This is good news for the Shocks, I think, if they can get by Illinois State. IMHO the Shocks match up better against Drake than they do against Indiana State.

However, Co-Freshman of the Year Lizzy Wendell is playing very well for Drake as she has scored 48 points in two games on 16-30 FG's including 7-14 three-pointers. Wendell was 3-4 from three-point range today but the rest of the Bulldogs were 3-23. The Sycamores only shot 5-25 from three-point range today so their was more than a little brick-laying going on.

Drake won this game at the free throw line going 18-25 (72.0%) vs the Sycamores who were 7-15 (46.7%). Indiana State did resort to fouling down the stretch in an attempt to get back in the game late.

I think the Shocks are well equipped to match up with Drake. RPOY Alex Harden at 5-11 can match up with the 6-0 Fr. Wendell and Kelsey is also probably capable of defending Wendell. I assume Jamillah will be assigned to guard Valley PPOY Kyndal Clark, a 5-5 Sr guard.

1st things 1st though. Shocks have to get by Illinois State this afternoon.

[WuDrWu]

7-0 ISU and I wouldn't give you 10-1 that we'll ever be in this. Our "look" is awful if you ask me.

[1972Shocker]

Ouch. Real bad start for the Shocks down 0-7 in the first couple of minutes. Quite frankly Illinois State simply looks like they want it more than the Shocks at this point. That has to change. The Shocks defense so far has not been good outside of a block by Kelsey. The Redbirds have definitely been more aggressive.

[shoxilla]

Bringin some double wide IPA to the festivities, GO SHOX !!!!