SEMO (8) VS MOREHEAD (5)
This tournament is being played on a neutral court in Nashville. Anyone who looks at the history and stats for these two team's would have to pick Morehead. For some reason SEMO has more trouble against Morehead than any other team in the league. I don't count Belmont because they just joined the league. Once again I will remind everyone. DON'T USE YTD STATS. I will give you a good example. By using YTD stat's SEMO looks like a pretty bad shooting team. But if you dig a little deeper you will see that just isn't the case. We'll take a look at three shooting stats 1) fg% 2) 3fg% 3) ft%. We'll look at those as YTD, Conference only, and last 5 game stat's. YTD: fg% 43.9%, 3fg% 34.1% ft% 66.0%. Conference only: fg% 44.7% 3fg% 37.7% ft% 68.4%. Last 5 game's: fg% 46.3% 3fg% 40.4% ft% 74.5%. You can see that the further along they went in the season the better they became.
I've been saying for some time now this SEMO team is a Jeckyll and Hyde team. When they're the good SEMO team they can beat anyone in this league. When they're the bad SEMO team they can be beat by anyone in the league. The problem is you never know for sure which team will show up. SEMO ended the year going 3-3 in their last 6 games. But in all three losses they had a nice lead in the second half and just pissed it away. They are playing their best ball right now. They just need to tweek their end of game scenario's. The coaches have been working with them frantically the last week and a half. When these two met in their only game this year it was the bad SEMO team that showed up and Morehead won 70-57.
Morehead is the junkyard dog of the OVC. They want to have a ugly physical game. If they can get in an extra push or elbow they will. They want to get in the other team's head and throw them off their game. That is what happened to SEMO in their last meeting. The SEMO coaches have got them prepared for that this time around. Don't think I'm saying that Morehead is a dirty team because I'm not. They don't look to injure anyone. They just push the boundary. That is why they are one of the worst team's in the country at committing personal foul's per game. They rank 345th out of 351. The line now is Morehead -3. I will probable lay off the side unless it goes up a couple of point's. Waiting on the total.
SIU-E VS E. ILLINOIS
I like this game for one reason. EIU is a pretty good road team and SIU-E suck's on the road. EIU has some good road win's this year over Cleveland ST.,Indiana St., E. Kentucky, and Morehead. SIU-E has only 1 road win at SEMO. I was at that game and I can tell you it was the very bad SEMO team that showed up. They split their two meeting's this year each winning at home.
3* #784 E. ILLINOIS PK -110