Winner Take All!

(St. Louis, MO) – This is the game we wanted and this is the game we’ve got! It is a winner takes all battle royale in Wichita! Number Ten Northern Iowa battles Eleventh ranked Wichita State for the Missouri Valley Conference title, a top ten national ranking and a prestigious seed in the NCAA tournament.

Both teams are 16 and 1 in MVC play. Both are red hot and both deserve a top ten ranking, but only one will have the number one seed at Arch Madness and only one will come to St. Louis carrying that top ten ranking.

ESPN’s College GameDay will be there. The 1:00 p.m. tip will be carried on ESPN’s main platform. Koch Arena will be packed and showing the nation a celebration of Valley Mania! The Round House will be on full display.

Head Coach Gregg Marshall says having GameDay on campus will be fun for all involved, and there is a lot on the line.

 

 

With Arch Madness, the league’s conference tournament next week, both teams still have work to do, but this final game of the regular season will be special.

Northern Iowa’s Seth Tuttle will be attempting to will his team to a championship against the ‘play angry’ Shockers, and put a bow on his Player of the Year candidacy. UNI (27-2, 16-1) has won 16 straight, including a 70-54 defeat of WSU on the last day of January.

The Shockers (26-3, 16-1) have been a resident in the national polls all year, and Gregg Marshall’s team suffers from great expectations. Here they are the winningest team in the NCAA since 2010, ranked 11^th in the nation, playing for the title, and all people are saying is, “they don’t seem as good this year”, and “VanVleet and Baker haven’t been as dominating as they should be”.

We said at the beginning of the year, their post players would be the key to the season. Would their post players, Darius Carter, Shaq Morris and others be good enough to keep some of the pressure off Baker, VanVleet and Tekele Cotton? Frankly the answer is …. ‘sometimes’.

In the previous matchup, Tuttle (29 points) was unstoppable and guard Wes Washpun (16 points) emerged as a slashing, penetrating presence. VanVleet and Baker combined for 30 points and the trio of WSU post players (Carter, Morris and Rashard Kelly) combined for 15 points. Carter struggled with foul trouble throughout the game.

Northern made 5 of seven three point attempts and the Shockers converted just 5 of 24.

How much difference will the home crowd make in this game? Wichita State has won 31 straight home contests. Do familiar rims, raucous fans and a good night’s sleep in your own bed make a difference?

While Tuttle was great and is the focus of the Panther offense, I thought Washpun was the extra dimension. The Shockers had no answer for his drives to the basket and it seemed to cause repeated defensive breakdowns. How Gregg Marshall corrects that flaw will be central to their ability to defend their regular season title.

Either way, WSU will finish in the top two in the regular season race for the sixth straight year. They are the fourth program since World War II to accomplish that feat.

Ironically this is the third time in the past five years where the regular season title will be decided in a ‘winner take all’ game. Wichita has been involved in the last two, losing both times (to Missouri State in ’11 & Creighton in ’13).

This game marks the first time two ranked teams have played one another twice in the regular season since 1972. This is only the fourth time two 25 win teams have faced each other, and the second time it’s happened in the regular season.

UNI Head Coach Ben Jacobson says it will be a special day, but he doesn’t have an ability to place it in some historical setting.

 

 

The Valley’s two best teams, arguably the two best coaches, probably the three best players, a league title, a national audience, and a top 10 ranking are all in play. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Do Good