Getty Belmont Bruins center Nick Muszynski.
The UT Martin Skyhawks basketball team will host the Belmont Bruins on Saturday in Ohio Valley Conference action.
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The game (5 p.m. ET start time) won’t be on regular TV anywhere, but anyone in the US can watch Belmont vs UT Martin live on ESPN+ right here:
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Belmont vs UT Martin Preview
The Bruins are coming off a 68-55 home victory over the Murray State Racers that pushed them to 9-1 overall and 3-0 in OVC play.
Casey Alexander’s squad won the turnover battle 15-9 and held the Racers to 42.9 percent shooting.
“I’m extremely proud of our team,” the head coach said after the Wednesday win, according to the Belmont Vision. “It was a big win to get because obviously they’re a really good team.”
Belmont guard Ben Sheppard led all participants with 21 points, a career high, shooting 9-of-15 from the field. He also helped restrict Murray State guard Tevin Brown to 6 points on 2-of-8 shooting; Brown entered the night scoring 13.9 points per contest.
“What Ben Sheppard did on both ends of the floor tonight, tremendous effort for him,” Alexander said, per the Belmont Vision. “He’s obviously our best defender and the plan was for him to guard Tevin Brown whenever he was in the game and he did that really well.”
Fellow Bruins guard Grayson Murphy shot 7-of-13 from the field en route to 15 points to go with 7 rebounds, 4 rebounds and a trio of steals. With just under a minute and a half remaining in the first half, he picked the pocket of Racers guard Chico Carter and went coast-to-coast to end an 8-0 Murray State run and take a 26-25 advantage into the midway break.
“It was a pretty miserable performance there for a while,” Alexander said, per the Belmont Vision. “We had nothing going for a while but Grayson Murphy’s steal and layup to stop the bleeding in the first half might have been the play of the game.”
The Skyhawks have lost three straight, most recently falling 80-70 to the Jacksonville State Gamecocks to drop to 3-3 overall and 1-1 in conference action.
UT Martin trailed 45-23 at the midway break then clawed back to cut the deficit to 10 with just over three minutes to play.
Skyhawks forward Cameron Holden scored 23 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, both game highs.
“Jacksonville State made some shots and we had a couple of big turnovers in the first half that led to easy fast break points,” UT Martin interim head coach Montez Robinson said, according to the school’s athletics website. “I thought if we could have stayed under control in the first half, we would have been OK. In the second half, the guys came out and followed the gameplan. We just have to sustain our execution for 40 minutes and continue to play together.”