MIssouri Valley Conference
March 3-6. All games at St. Louis.
kPOY: Ron Baker, Wichita State.

Arch Madness gets underway with two first-round games on Thursday evening.

Wichita State dominated the Valley like no other team this side of Nacogdoches.

Conference scoring margin, 2016

Stephen F. Austin 22.3
Wichita State     19.1
Gonzaga           14.8
Valparaiso        14.7
Stony Brook       14.1

The Shockers lost two of those games, however, so there’s just a slight bit of uncertainty regarding their at-large situation should they drop a game at the Scottrade Center. The consensus is that there are about a dozen teams in the virtual bracket closer to the bubble than Wichita State, but that’s nothing that a quarterfinal loss to Bradley couldn’t wipe out. OK, we probably won’t see that match-up, which would be the rare game between the nation’s top-ranked offense and its bottom-ranked defense. Even if it did occur, you’d expect the Shockers to beat their 19-point average in the final margin.

Whatever happens, this will be the sixth consecutive season that Wichita State finishes as the highest-rated team in the conference. Yet they have just one tournament title to show for it so far. It says here that there’s a 31% chance the Shockers are denied again. Given that number, it appears the Valley is more likely to be a two-bid league than it is for Wichita State to miss the NCAA tournament if it loses.

Without researching this thoroughly, it’s hard to imagine another conference that has a more experienced group of seniors. The all-kPOY team is exclusively seniors, and the group of VanVleet, Baker, Mockevicius, Balentine, and Washpun has played big minutes for a combined 19 seasons.

                      Qtrs Semis Final Champ
 1 Wichita St.         100  93.9  80.1  68.6
 2 Evansville          100  84.0  52.2  12.9
 4 Northern Iowa       100  66.4  13.8   7.8
 3 Illinois St.        100  66.7  32.5   6.7
 5 Southern Illinois   100  33.6   4.2   1.7
 6 Indiana St.         100  33.3  11.2   1.4
 8 Loyola Chicago     85.0   5.9   1.8   0.6
 7 Missouri St.       58.6  10.5   2.9   0.2
10 Drake              41.4   5.5   1.2   0.07
 9 Bradley            15.0   0.2   0.01  0.001

MVC tourney records (since 1999)

Northern Iowa 16-13
Indiana St.   17-15
Wichita St.   17-16
Loyola Chicago 2- 2
Missouri St.  17-17
S. Illinois   15-16
Illinois St.  15-17
Bradley       11-17
Drake          9-16
Evansville     6-17