I figured I’d start a thread for us to talk about the tournament games. Bradley is up at the half with MSU 35-34. If they can pull off this upset it’ll make the Valley look much better even if we had a down year. Although it will ruin all of my brackets, I’m alright with it haha.

If Bradley wins this game and we don't get two bids next year, we should just boycott the tournament. the MVC would be 10-0 in first round games since 2013.... I'm pretty sure the league is competitive and deserves at least 2 bids...

Seriously we’re underrated every year.

I will say that I notice the difference of being in the MVC in this game. When we played Michigan State in the Horizon they dwarfed us. Bradley looks to be similar or at least close in physical size and I know were bigger than Bradley.

They had a good showing and didn’t get blown out. That’s good enough for me. Congrats to them on representing the Valley well... on the court.

Murray State leads Marquette by 22 with 4 minutes left. Imagine how much better the MVC would be perceived this year if they were in the league. What is the mvc doing?

Nevada does not look like the team they were at the beginning of the year. They looks slow/tired. I think their strategy to only use a 6 (occasionally 7) man rotation has caught up to them at the end of the season.

There's a lot more to it. University Presidents, athletic directors, etc. have to agree to it. There are issues of budgets, facilities (although Murray has great facilities), travel, etc. I would love to have Murray State in the conference-- my only issue would be getting their men's basketball budget (and their entire athletic dept. budget) up about 25% higher to the median of the league. Murray State's men's basketball budget was $1.95 million in 2016. Only Indiana State in the MVC was slightly lower.

The MVC is closer to the Horizon and the MAC in budgeting than the A-10, Mountain West or American-- the real conferences we should be trying to emulate and compete with. I don't understand how anyone expects the MVC to get better by adding teams that are successful in lower conferences that have budgets half or smaller than the teams they're replacing, and spending half a million or more less than the league average. The league needs to figure out ways to increase budgets to make it easier to schedule, scout, and travel. A large part of the budget is salaries for assistants, who get poached when teams get good. And then there's paying to schedule games strategically, which has to be done ACROSS THE BOARD, LEAGUE-WIDE, or it's wasted money.

Woodford is fun to watch. Love to see them chopping up a Big East team.

How bad must Navada feel right now. They were so promising at the end of last year, and it really seemed like they were going to have everything in place to make another run. They started off so hot and things just went off the rails toward the end. Seeing what happened to them this year really makes me appreciate what we did in March last year. I know us, and other mid-majors complain about the lack of at-large bids, but at the end of the year, if your not running on all cylinders at the end of February, even if you get into the tournament, it may not matter that much.

We might have some growing pains in November, December and January next year, but if that happens, mentally the team will have to know to just stick with it (see Bradley).