RTC Live from Arch Madness returns for the MVC Championship game, between the top seeded Northern Iowa Panthers and the Wichita State Shockers. Despite predictions of wild upsets and a wide-open field coming into the tournament, come Sunday the top two teams will meet for the title. The teams split their first two matchups, with the home team winning each time. They both play a similar defense-first style, and as such, both games were low-scoring affairs. Sunday’s title game will therefore place a premium on taking care of the ball, hitting the open looks when you get them, and making fewer mistakes than your opponent. Join RTC Live at 12:45 CT for the MVC Title Game, live from St. Louis!

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RTC Aftermath will come to you each night where our correspondents are at the conference tournament games as a part of RTC Live.  Patrick Marshall was in St. Louis all weekend covering the MVC Tournament for RTC.

First off, I would like to apologize to Rush the Court and Rush the Court fans that due to a family issue, we were not able to do an RTC Live event for the Missouri Valley Conference Final as expected.

UNI: MVC Champs (photo credit: WCFCourier.com)

Northern Iowa is the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament champion and punched their ticket to the NCAA tournament today defeating Illinois St. in overtime 60-57.  Northern Iowa was on fire early and took  a 27-19 lead into the locker room at halftime.   Illinois St. was only shooting 23% at halftime and almost looked like they were going to suffer the same fate they handed to Creighton the night before.

However, Illinois St. came out in the second half with a run to quickly tie the game behind Osiris Eldridge who scored all 21 of his points after halftime.  The game then went back and forth the rest of the way with Eldridge hitting some 3-pointers that were way behind the line including one that was almost literally at half court.  It looked like Illinois St.’s game to win, but the Panthers from UNI stormed back to force the game into overtime.

In the overtime, UNI’s Ali Farokhmenesh once again hit 2 key three pointers and free throws at the end to get UNI to the victory.  He finished with 13 points on 4-5 shooting and 3-4 from three.  Kwadzo Ahelegbe led UNI with 17 points as the other Panther in double figures.

The things that stuck out in the game were that Illinois St. was able to put up 63 shots while Northern Iowa only put up 46.  For the game, Illinois St. was held to 30% shooting which was totally opposite from the night before.  So as Northern Iowa is celebrating with their 23-10 record and the MVC tournament championship, let’s see how other teams from the Valley might fare in the postseason:

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We are finally here. Today is the last day of the college basketball regular season. What’s that? St. Mary’s didn’t get the memo? Ok, after today 99.99999% of the programs will be done with the regular season. After we attempted to write the college basketball version of War and Peace for yesterday’s Boom Goes the Dynamite, we get a little break as there aren’t quite as many high quality games today, but the ones that we do have look like they will be pretty entertaining. Here are the games that we will be following today:

• Noon: #20 Purdue at #8 Michigan State on CBS
• 2 PM: Virginia Tech at #24 FSU on Raycom, ESPN Full Court, and ESPN360.com
• 2:05 PM: Illinois State vs. Northern Iowa on CBS
• 3 PM: Old Dominion vs. Virginia Commonwealth on Comcast, ESPN Full Court, and ESPN360.com
• 4 PM: #7 Duke at #2 UNC on CBS
• 5 PM: Northwestern at Ohio State on The Big Ten Network
• 6 PM: #19 Clemson at #10 Wake Forest on FSN
• 6 PM: College of Charleston vs. Davidson on SportsSouth and ESPN360.com

There are a couple of big story lines here. Outside of the obvious ones happening in Chapel Hill (Tyler Hansbrough‘s last game in the Dean Dome, UNC’s quest for a #1 seed, Duke’s last gasp effort for a #1 seed, and all the injuries including the under-reported–not by RTC–injury to Ty Lawson), we’ll be looking in on East Lansing where the Spartans will be looking to solify a #2 seed (forget all the talk about them getting a #1–not happening), Saint Louis where the Missouri Valley will award a ticket to the NCAA tournament, and Chattanooga where Stephen Curry and his Davidson teammates will be battling for their NCAA tournament lives as they will not get in if they don’t win their conference tournament.

There are also some great games out in Las Vegas for the West Coast Conference tournament with Gonzaga vs. Santa Clara, which will be featured as our RTC Live event, that will be followed by Saint Mary’s vs. Portland (aka “The Return of Patty Mills“). Unfortunately, that’s past my bedtime on the East Coast (tips at 9:30 and 11:30 PM ET respectively) although if you’re really nice you might be able to talk rtmsf into staying up late for you since he’s on the West Coast.

11:30 AM: It looks like we only have 2 games (Purdue-Michigan State and Alabama–Tennessee) worthy watching in the noon time slot. Unfortunately, they’re both on CBS so most of the nation will only be able to follow one on television. Luckily, I’m getting the better of the two games (Purdue-Michigan State), but I will be following the game in Knoxville on GameCast as well. If any of you are in Tennessee or Alabama, feel free to send in your thoughts in the comment section so the rest of us will know what’s going on in the game beyond the box score.

While we’re waiting, I wanted to pass along a photo I found on Deadspin this morning featuring Erin Andrews, who found something in Freedom Hall a little disturbing (probably Rick Pitino‘s yelling).

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RTC 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.

RTC Live Aftermath—Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, March 7, 2009

Today’s Missouri Valley Conference tournament game between Creighton and Illinois State was covered by Rush the Court. Illinois State dominated Creighton from the start and won 73-49 to advance to the finals of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament.

Tournament officials decided to do something a little different than what was done in Thursday or Friday’s games for the starting lineups as they dimmed the lights and spotlighted the players.

Illinois State came out on fire and did not let up. They shot 55% from the field and 68% from the three point line (13/19) while Creighton shot only 27% from the field and 18% from the three point line. The Creighton huddle was befuddled by what Illinois State was doing.

In all reality though, the biggest issue was the shooting and making scoring plays. Illinois State had 16 assists on 28 baskets so they were getting great ball movement which gave them open shots. Creighton actually won battle of rebounds 39-35 (including 20 offensive rebounds) and made more free throws than Illinois State. Steals and turnovers were also basically even.

Creighton’s dance team tried to get the Jays going, but was unsuccessful.

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RTC 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.

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Update (3/7).  Oops.  Our MVC correspondent will be unavailable on Sunday, so we regret to inform you that RTC Live will not be covering the MVC Championship Game.  Thank you for those of you who checked in with us the last two days, and we hope to see you again soon.

Update (3/6).  RTC Live will be back Saturday with one of the two semifinal matchups.  Come back this evening to vote on which game you’d like to see us liveblog.  We already know the first matchup is N. Iowa vs. Bradley.  Who will be the other two semifinalists?

Update (3/7).  The next RTC live game will be Creighton vs. Illinois St. at 4pm CST.  Join us for what will undoubtedly be a tremendous battle.

Hello MVC fans, and welcome to RTC Live’s ongoing coverage of Arch Madness from St. Louis, Missouri.  Our correspondent and man-on-the-move, Patrick Marshall, will be live-blogging and reporting from the River City throughout the weekend.  If there’s a major incident at the Scottrade Center, he’ll be all over it like Rush Limbaugh on Michael Steele.  Or something like that.   The Tournament begins tonight with two opening round games, so Patrick has already published his MVC Season Wrap and Tournament Preview for your viewing pleasure.

We’ll also be live-blogging select games throughout the weekend, starting tomorrow with the #4/#5 matchup between Bradley and Southern Illinois at 2:30pm CDT.   If you’re new to the site, the live-blog box will show immediately below this paragraph, and Patrick will be taking comments and questions throughout the game.  Particularly insightful questions will be chosen for him to take into the media press conference and/or locker rooms afterwards.  So if you really want to know why SIU underachieved this year (as an example), here’s your opportunity to ask Coach Lowery.  Afterwards, we’ll post takes from the day’s other games in the MVC Tourney and give you, the fans, a chance to select Saturday’s game that we liveblog.