Hoops in the Heartland

by **DUBulldog** » March 12th, 2023, 2:12 pm

Drake cruises past Belmont to win the MVC tournament.

First time in Drake's history that they've won both the men's and the women's tournament.

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by **BEARZ77** » March 12th, 2023, 3:43 pm

Drake was clearly playing the best basketball in the league late and they cruised relatively easily in the tourney other than the Missouri State game. Hopefully Drake can keep the momentum going and get a win or 2 in the NCAA. I'm hearing 4 Valley teams to the WNIT , ISU,MSU, UNI, Belmont, hopefully that's true as well.

I think the league is in great shape on the WBB side going forward; most of the top teams return a number of their best except for ISUr, but even they will have 2-3 starters back. Illinois State has made steady progress over the last 3-4 years to join MSU,Drake, and UNI as pretty consistently solid contenders. Belmont looks to be similar, and I think SIU is coming under their new coach. Murray St has Young and others back and should also be a threat to move up.

For me and Missouri State, I'm really happy with how well we navigated the coaching change this year, still winning 20 games and being in the title hunt till the last weekend. We lose a couple starters , but have our young frontline back , 5 really solid freshmen recruits coming in, and will hit the portal for the 2 remaining openings. Might take one more year to totally get back where we were, but then again maybe not. We didn't fall as far as anticipated having lost 8 of our top players , the entire coaching staff, and half the recruiting class from the prior year.

Really looking forward to the MVC the next few years; we've seemed to go thru a period where things fluctuated for a while and a number of other schools jumped up briefly but not consistently. But now the last 4-5 years the traditional powers Drake and MSU have reasserted themselves, UNI has been consistently good, and ISUr has been coming on. Now add a good Belmont program and like I said, I think a couple others are close and the Valley looks as good for WBB as it has in a while.

Congrats to Drake on the rare double MVC Tourney titles this year.