Eleven Racers score in 108-60 rout of Delta Devils
MBB: Murray State improves to 2-0 on young season with win over Mississippi Valley State
Murray State blew out Mississippi Valley State, 108-60, Friday night at the CFSB Center. Here’s what you need to know:
With the win, the Racers improve to 2-0 overall
All 11 Racers in uniform scored, as Brayden Shorter led the way with 15 points
Five other Racers scored in double-figures, including Fred King (13 points), Roman Domon (12 points), Mathis Courbon (12 points), Mason Miller (12 points) and KJ Tenner (10 points)
The full box score can be found here
Murray State’s 108 points are the most against a Division I team in regulation since the Racers scored 114 against Tennessee State on February 27, 2001
The Racers will look to improve to 3-0 on Tuesday when they travel to SMU
After a slow start, Muray State’s offense explodes in home opener
Mississippi Valley State, for most of the game, threw a zone defense at the Racers. Zone offense is something Murray State Head Coach Ryan Miller admitted he and his staff had not had been able to spend much time on early in the season. It look a little while for the Racers to figure out how to attack the Delta Devil zone, as with 5:00 to go in the first half, Murray State’s lead was only 26-17.
Eventually, the Racers solved the zone, emphatically, as they scored 82 points in the final 25 minutes of the game to win going away, as Murray State picked up their largest win over a Division I team since they beat Morehead State, 92-40, on December 10th, 2005.
“Give credit to Mississippi Valley State,” Miller said after the game. “They came out in a zone, and it really bogged us down. We haven’t done a lot of zone work, and it’s a lot of my fault there. We just haven’t got into it because I wanted to get our culture and our space and pace play with our man-to-man offense. We really haven’t worked on zone offense. We knew they were going to play some zone — we didn’t know they were going to play it for 35 minutes. We have 10 or 11 players that can really play. It’s going to be a different guy every single night. This is a basketball team. There’s going to be guys that have really good nights some nights, and it’s going to be some of the other guy’s nights the other nights. We want to share the ball, we want to be unselfish. If someone gets it going, we want to find him. If there’s a mismatch, we’ll try to find that. That’s our Racer Basketball.”
You get an assist, and you get an assist, and you get an assist…
KJ Tenner led the Racers with six assists, while Layne Taylor chipped in with five of his own. As a team, Murray State dished out 27 assists, which is the most for the Racers in a Division I game since they had 28 against Southeast Missouri State on February 23rd, 2019. In records dating back to the 2002-03 season, this was the first time the Racers had recorded at least 27 assists while turning it over five times or fewer.
King makes his belated debut for the Racers
After missing Monday’s game against Omaha for precautionary reasons as he worked through a minor knee injury, senior forward Fred King came off the bench and saw his first action of the season. In nearly 14 minutes on the floor, King made all five of his field goal attempts, finishing with 13 points and seven rebounds.
“(It felt) pretty good to show them what I’m about,” King said after the game, when asked about playing in front of the Murray State fans. “Back against Omaha, (the knee) was a little bit iffy, so I didn’t want to take a chance.”
“Obviously, he’s physical, he’s an imposing player,” Miller added. “You see a 6’9, 270 pound frame, and how he impacts the game. He’s behind cardio-wise. We wanted to keep his minutes between 10 and 15, but we’re going to need to stretch those minutes out against a very good SMU team on Tuesday. Hopefully we can get him going a little bit, get his cardio right, and hopefully he can give us some more minutes.”
When asked if he’d be able to play closer to 30 minutes against SMU, King had a simple two-word response: “Hell yeah.”
All gas, no brakes for 40 minutes for Racers
The undeniable part of Murray State’s performance was the Racers never took their foot off the proverbial gas at any point during the game. Miller has repeatedly stressed to his team that whether they’re up by ten points, or down by ten points, he wants them to play with the same energy and aggression at all times. On Friday, even with the lead north of 50 points late in the second half, the Racers were playing just hard as they did in the opening moments of the game.
“Our team is always going to live in the moment,” Miller said. “The scoreboard is always going to read 0-0. We’re just going to hopefully keep fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting until that horn goes off. If we happen to lose one, we’ll go back to the drawing board, but we never look at the scoreboard. We believe that our hard work, our unselfish play, our toughness together will dictate the scoreboard at the end, so we don’t try to get caught up in the scoreboard too much.”
Even with 90 seconds left in a blowout win, Miller was repeatedly down in a defensive stance on the sidelines, imploring his team to keep defending at a high rate.
“If I didn’t know him, I would have been like, ‘That’s crazy,’” King said with a laugh. “Since I know him, he’s all about energy. No matter what, just keep fighting. It’s always a war. They aren’t going to give up because they’re down. You’ve just got to keep fighting.”
Sleets honored with jersey retirement
During halftime, former Murray State great Lamont Sleets had his jersey retired, as he, along with friends and family, got to watch his #10 drop from the rafters at the CFSB Center. Sleets is still 8th in Murray State history with 1,902 career points, and he’s third in career assists with 458. Sleets was the first Racer to earn All-Conference honors four times.
Next up: A trip to Dallas to face SMU
Coming up Tuesday, the Racers will face arguably their toughest non-conference test as they’ll travel to Texas to challenge unbeaten SMU.
Lamont Sleets…THE very first and original superstar PG of PGU!!