The Valley is going to produce two high-seeded teams in the NCAA tournament but the problem for the conference is that the bottom end has performed very poorly. Of the four teams playing Thursday evening, Southern Illinois is ranked #242. The winners will be fodder for the top two teams. The only realistic bid thief is fourth-seeded Illinois State and it appears that the Redbirds’ Reggie Lynch will lead the country in block percentage for the second consecutive season. So there’s that. But Wichita State and Northern Iowa went 31-1 against the rest of the conference so Arch Madness might not be particularly mad this week.
One thing the conference accomplished this season was setting a standard for slowness. The MVC averaged 60.02 possessions per 40 minutes during conference games. It narrowly avoided becoming the first conference in recorded time to go under 60 possessions for an entire season, but it still managed to break the previous record for long possessions set by the 2009 Big Ten (60.4).
It’s not hyperbole to say this was the slowest conference season ever. While we don’t have comprehensive data before this millenium, given how much pace has decreased in the last 15 seasons, it’s unlikely a conference dipped into the 50’s for an entire season. It may have been possible in the early 1980’s before the shot clock era began, but even then, average pace was faster than it is today.
Missouri Valley
All-kenpom.com: Seth Tuttle, Nothern Iowa (kPOY); Fred VanVleet, Wichita State; Ron Baker, Wichita State; Darius Carter, Wichita State; Wes Washpun, Northern Iowa.
March 5-8 at St. Louis.
Qtrs Semis Final Champ 1 Wichita St. 100 95.9 78.9 47.7 2 Northern Iowa 100 95.6 85.5 44.4 4 Illinois St. 100 69.2 16.3 5.2 3 Indiana St. 100 50.6 6.8 0.9 6 Loyola Chicago 100 49.4 6.5 0.9 5 Evansville 100 30.8 4.0 0.8 7 Drake 52.5 2.4 0.7 0.05 9 S. Illinois 54.2 2.4 0.5 0.04 10 Bradley 47.5 2.0 0.5 0.03 8 Missouri St. 45.8 1.7 0.3 0.02