Prohm, Ragland ready for Racers/Aces III
MBB: Murray State and Evansville will meet in St. Louis at 6:00pm Thursday night
Murray State and Evansville opened their Missouri Valley Conference schedules against one another back on December 3rd, as the Racers held off a late Purple Ace rally to win, 63-61.
Thursday night at Enterprise Center in St. Louis, one of these two teams will see their Missouri Valley Conference championship dreams extinguished in the opening round of Arch Madness. When the brackets were officially revealed on Monday, it didn’t really matter to Murray State Head Coach Steve Prohm who popped up, because he knows how big the challenges will be this week.
“They're all hard,” Prohm said. “No matter who you play, they're all hard. (Evansville Head Coach) David (Ragland) has done a really, really good job. He had a really competitive non-conference schedule where they struggled and had some tough moments. Then they got into league, and we played them in the first game. We were up, 10, 12, 14, (but) never could pull away and messed around at the end and it became a two point game. I thought he's done a really good job of changing the way they do things. They went really, really big. They're probably the biggest team we’ll play.”
With Missouri Valley Conference Defensive Player of the Year Connor Turnbull and Joshua Hughes both listed at 6’10, the Aces have plenty of interior defense to protect the rim. Throw in a pair of big guards on the wings, 6’7 Gabriel Pozzato and 6’7 Tanner Cuff, Ragland knows his team’s size is one of its biggest assets.
“That's been our advantage,” Ragland said. “I think we're one of the bigger teams in the conference, and our size has been our advantage. We have Connor Turnbull that's leading the conference in blocks — and I want to say he's Top 20 or Top 25 in the country in terms of blocked shots. Josh Hughes has been really good at being able to block and alter shots. We work on wall-ups. The guys probably get tired of working on wall-ups every single day, but I think it gets us in a good position, and then sometimes your opponent just hands you the basketball. Gabriel Pozzato is extremely athletic and able to block and alter shots too. Our size and our length and our switchability gives us a lot of strength on the defensive end. If we can protect the paint and protect the rim, that would be really, really good for us, especially in the conference tournament. I think it's a little bit tougher to adjust to perimeter shooting in that big of an arena, so you have to protect the paint and protect the rim.”
Against the Racers in Evansville, Ragland opted to keep his size around the rim to limit Murray State’s interior offensive threats. When they packed their defense in the paint, the Aces all but dared the Racers to take all the three-pointers they wanted. Murray State went 12-for-36 on the night, and had just 18 points in the paint.
”The one thing that they do, and you saw by being over there, they may not guard a couple guys,” Prohm said. “They may just play everybody in the paint, and they're going to let you shoot threes, and you're going to have to make some. We missed a lot of great opportunities. You're going to have to make some just to kind of get them out and spread the floor out a little bit more.”
In the game in Evansville, the Racers led at the half, 25-20, as the defenses ruled the day — or at least ruled for an hour. In the second half, both offenses found their groove as the Purple Aces outscored the Racers 58-49 to get the win. The two halves couldn’t have been more different from a style standpoint, and Ragland says he was proud of the resolve his team showed.
“Just stay the course,” Ragland said. “Every season is a bit of a roller coaster of emotions. There's been multiple times throughout the season where we've had to respond from a not so great start, one being against Murray at our place. I give our guys a ton of credit. We did it again (Sunday at Illinois State), being down 18 points, coming back, taking the lead, fighting back. It speaks to the character of the group. Just make sure that we stay the course and try to do the things that we do well as a group, and then try to slow Murray down in the things that they do well, and do that over the course of 40 minutes.”
We saw two wildly different tempos in the January game in Evansville, from 45 total points in the first half to 107 scored in the second. Prohm thinks a happy medium between the two can be a successful recipe for the Racers.
“I don't think we need to just go run up and down and play a 60-point half,” Prohm said. “I think you saw that against Belmont. I think we let that get away from us. We just haven't shot the ball at that level to be able to do that. We've got to take good threes, we got to take good open threes, we got to take good rhythm threes, but you’ve got to make some. I'm going to try to talk to those guys about being really, really confident, and we’ve got to play our best game.”
Murray State and Evansville will play at 6:00pm Thursday night at Enterprise Center in St. Louis. The winner will face #2 seed Bradley at 6:00pm Friday in the tournament quarterfinals.