Evansville beat Missouri State twice in the regular season and what I like about this match up is that it is fresh in the minds of Missouri State who ended the year on a 4 game losing streak, but they did play the top tier teams in the MVC. They finished the season on the road at Evansville and with 8.8 seconds left Evansville hit a 3 to force OT where they went 11-12 form the FT line. They shot .379 overall and were 25-30 from the FT line in that game. Meanwhile Missouri State shot 40.7% went 16-27 from the FT line and turned the ball over 24 times.
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Evansville is a smaller team and they got out rebounded in that game by 20. However, I expect with 5 days to prepare that Missouri State will be ready with a smaller line up playing PG Michael Bizoukas a lot more for his ball handling after turning the ball over 24 times. Even with that game Missouri State is still ranked 13th nationally with fewest turnovers. So I do not expect a repeat of that especially with the extra time to prepare against the trap of Evansville. In pretty much every other aspect of the game Missouri State is better and it will show tonight where they play on a neutral court, but the game is in Missouri. Evansville from Indiana wonât be as close to home and that should be an advantage for Missouri State. Finally, expect Missouri State to shoot better not only from the FT line where they are nearly a 73% team, but from the field as Evansville has allowed opponents to shoot 48.3% on the year and 49.8% on the road. Missouri State avoids the 3 game sweep and moves on in the tournament that they won a year ago.
