RTC Aftermath: MVC Quarterfinals
Posted by rtmsf on March 7th, 2009RTC Aftermath will come to you each night where our correspondents are at the conference tournament games as a part of RTC Live. Patrick Marshall is in St. Louis all weekend covering the MVC Tournament for RTC.
Today you experienced our live blog of the Bradley-Southern Illinois game in the quarterfinal round of the MVC tournament. This game was up and down for both teams. Both teams were ready to go:
Bradley won this game by hitting timely shots and wearing out the Salukis. The Salukis shot only 35% from the field and Kevin Dillard, one of SIU’s bigger scorers was held scoreless in playing all 40 minutes of the game.
Sam Maniscalco was the key player down the stretch for the Braves. He was 14-14 from the free throw line and led the Braves with 21 points.
Coach Les from Bradley talked at the postgame news conference that containing Dillard was a focus for Bradley and Eddren McCain took on the challenge and focused to make it difficult for him to score. The idea of Bryan Mullins from SIU playing did not alter their gameplan.
After talking to Coach Lowery, it sounded like Bryan Mullins tried everything to get the opportunity to play today. He even suited up, but he was not cleared to play and they were not going to play him. He might have been helpful to at least get him on the floor I think just to give the team a little bit of a lift, but with Dillard held scoreless and Justin Bocot and Carlton Fay held to 3-20 shooting, Southern Illinois did not have enough. Tony Boyle was one bright spot. The Senior led SIU with 16 points and said he enjoyed his time at Southern Illinois. Coach Lowery was complementary of him as well that Boyle only had 7 hours of schooling left for his degree which getting his players an education is important to him.
Other Valley Tourney Games.
Today was a wild day for the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament.
(1) Northern Iowa 73, (9) Indiana St 69—This game started out the day and it looked like Northern Iowa was very close to losing this one. Indiana St. really seemed in control of this one until Ali Farokhmanesh hit a couple key three-pointers and Northern Iowa took the lead for good with about 3 minutes left in the game. Northern Iowa will meet Bradley in the first semifinal game on Saturday at 1:35 PM CST.
(3) Illinois St. 78, (6) Evansville 68—This game was up and down most of the night but then about midway through the 2nd half, the Redbirds took control and pulled away holding off the Purple Aces. Shy Ely had 29 points for the Purple Aces, but the combination of Champ Oguchi (20), Osiris Eldridge (14) and Lloyd Phillips (16) and Illinois St. shot 52% for the game.
(2) Creighton 63, (7) Wichita St. 62—In probably the most bizarre game of the night Creighton escaped with victory with a controversal last 12 seconds of the game ending with Booker Woodfox hitting a shot as time expired to get the win for the Jays. What you may not know about this game is that it should not have even gotten to a final shot to win the game. Creighton controlled things in the first half leading by 13 and then continuing the pressure to put the lead up to 22 with 16:41 remaining. Wichita St. then went on a huge run to cut into the lead and took the lead 62-61 with 9 seconds remaining. A wild shot by Antoine Young then was knocked out of bounds of Wichita St. in what appeared that the clock expired. After review 1.9 seconds was put on the clock and Booker Woodfox then got the inbounds pass, fumbled a bit, took a couple of dribbles and took the shot as time expired. That shot was reviewed and seen as good. Here is Gregg Marshall’s thoughts of the situation at the end of the game:
Though after the game, Tom Shatel from the Omaha World Herald went with MVC Commissioner Doug Elgin to replay the end of the game on the stopwatch and it was clear that somehow Woodfox’s basket was good even though he was able to fumble it, dribble twice, and put up the shot.
So now Creighton will meet Illinois St. in the Semifinals of the MVC Tournament on Saturday at approximately 4:00 PM. Rush the Court wil be there for that game with RTC Live. Be sure to check it out.
