Getty Ja Morant and the Murray State Racers will take on the Belmont Bruins.
The Belmont Bruins and the Murray State Racers will play for the Ohio Valley Championship at the Ford Center in Evansville, Indiana, on Saturday.
The game is scheduled to start at 8 p.m. ET and will be televised on ESPN2. If you don’t have cable, you can watch a live stream of ESPN2 on your computer, phone or streaming device via one of the following live-TV streaming services:
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You can start a free 5-day trial of PS Vue right here (select “Start Streaming” in the upper-right corner), and you can then watch a live stream of Murray State vs Belmont on your computer via the PS Vue website, or on your phone (Android and iPhone supported), tablet, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, PlayStation (3 or 4), or other supported device via the PS Vue app.
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Belmont vs Murray State Preview
Belmont and Murray State finished with identical 16-2 marks to share the conference’s regular season title, then got byes to the semifinals, where the former topped Austin Peay and the latter bested Jacksonville State.
The Bruins won their lone matchup with the Racers 79-66 on the road to earn the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament, which determines the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
The Bruins shot 33-of-62 (53.2 percent) from the field and turned the ball over just eight times in that tilt. Murray State only had 10 turnovers, but they went 20-of-62 (32.3 percent) from the floor.
“I thought offensively we just struggled to finish plays,” Murray State head coach Matt McMahon said, according to The Murray State News. “I thought we got to the rim some; we were 6-for-22 on layups, which is a good number to get there, but we came into the game like seventh or eighth in the country in two-point percentage, and we really had a hard time finishing plays at the basket.”
Racers star point guard Ja Morant rolled his ankle early in the first half and left the floor, prompting a 14-0 Belmont run. He returned, but shot just 5-of-19 for 20 points, adding nine assists and a pair of steals
“He said he landed on his foot and rolled his ankle pretty good,” McMahon said, according to the Murray Ledger & Times. “He was sore and hurting. But like I said, (he’s a) really tough kid — winner. He’ll bounce back.”
Morant’s 24.2 points and 10.3 assists per game are good for eighth and first in Division I. The projected top-five pick in the upcoming NBA draft was named the conference’s player of the year.
The Bruins had their own candidate for conference player of the year in senior forward Dylan Windler, who’s averaging 21.5 points per game while shooting 44 percent from 3-point range and 66.7 percent from inside the arc, adding 10.7 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 1.4 steals per contest.
Though Belmont finished with the conference’s best record in his freshman and sophomore seasons, Windler has yet to play in the big dance.
“I’m extremely motivated (to reach the NCAA tournament), more than I can put into words,” Windler said, according to The Tennessean. “Obviously, that’s been a goal of mine since I was a freshman. We probably had the best team in the conference in three of my four years and haven’t found a way to do it. But I think we have a really, really good team right now.”
Should they fall in to the Racers, the Bruins still have an outside shot at an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
“Hopefully, we don’t even have to have that conversation,” Windler said before the tournament started, per The Tennessean.