(St. Louis, MO) – Missouri Valley Conference teams are three for three this postseason. Wednesday Illinois State and Evansville joined Loyola with first round wins in their respective tournaments.
Illinois State was a National Invitation Tournament winner, 69-56 over Green Bay. The Redbirds (22-12) trailed 31-24 at the half and rallied to score 45 in the definitive second half. Four Redbirds reached double figures in scoring, led by Paris Lee’s 18 points.
The sophomore point guard handed out six assists with only one turnover and collected four steals. Head Coach Dan Muller told WJBC, that Lee was really led the team to victory.
Illinois State travels to Old Dominion on Monday.
Evansville reached the 20 win plateau with a 82-77 win over IPFW. The College Insider.com Tournament win was sparked by D.J. Balentine’s 35 points. The Kokomo native hit his first nine shots and said there were some motivating factors in his performance.
D. J. Balentine – gopurpleaces.com
“I have two really good friends on the IPFW team and they’ve been talking trash about how they were going to shut me down, so I had a little extra motivation,” he said.
Center Egidijus Mockevicius collected his 18th double-double in just 21 minutes of play. The big Lithuanian scored 15 points and grabbed ten rebounds.
Next up for Marty Simmons’ Purple Aces is a Monday night date with Jay Spoonhour’s Eastern Illinois Panthers.
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As we near the closing of the portal window, we've reached 1900. Some of them never to play college basketball again, earn a college degree and some to play at a much lower level than they did last season.
I guess we'll be seeing this in a @RacersHoops uniform this year. Glad AJ is staying in the @ValleyHoops.
