While the Missouri Valley Conference’s 2018-19 season notably has not been all it appeared cracked up to be before the year, that doesn’t mean the league didn’t have its bright spots this year.
Missouri State was one of them. A team that was picked eighth in the conference’s preseason poll competing for the conference regular season title right to the end. After a slow start in conference play, first-year coach Dana Ford pulled the troops together and his team became a tough out the rest of the way, even defeating defending Valley champion and 2018 Final Four participant Loyola Chicago twice.
The bright spots of Ford’s first year also made it more frustrating when the Bears’ season came to a quick end in the 2019 MVC Tournament.
Just a week earlier, Missouri State went into its final regular season game with a chance to tie for the conference title. A tie would’ve with Loyola for first would’ve given the Bears the top seed in St. Louis based on the sweep of the Ramblers this season.
Missouri State lost to Drake at home on Saturday, though. And now, barring an invite/buy into a postseason tournament, the Bears’ season is finished after a tough 61-58 loss to Bradley in the semifinals of Arch Madness.
In the 4-vs.-5 matchup of the tourney quarterfinals, the Braves were the tougher team and came up with the plays down the stretch. Darrell Brown and Elijah Childs had big second halves, Bradley outrebounded MSU 31-21, and instead of the Bears getting a third crack it will be the Braves who face Loyola in the first semifinal game on Saturday.
“Our guys did what they’ve been doing all year, kept fighting to the end,” said Ford afterwards. “We came up with a late play there, and I thought, like everybody, we had a chance there to win it. Kind of what we do is we control the pace and try to make some plays at the end.
“Tonight we just didn’t make the play at the end. So unfortunately, we come up on the short end.”
Trailing by two, the Bears did indeed have two good chances in the final seconds to go ahead, but Childs influenced both opportunities with his defense. First, he blocked Keondre Cook’s three-point attempt from the left win with 16 seconds left. Then, after Ryan Kreklow stole a failed Bradley inbounds attempt into the backcourt, he got a hand up on Kreklow’s three-point try with nine seconds left.
Missouri State even got one final chance just before the buzzer. With 1.6 seconds left and the Braves up three, Childs missed the second free throw and Dixon got the rebound. The guy who made a halfcourt shot at the buzzer to beat Illinois State earlier this season had a look from 75 feet, but his shot went off the top of the backboard as time expired.
Even before then, the Bears had their opportunities in this one. Missouri State led 29-22 at halftime and never trailed until Bradley took its first lead of the game at 37-36 with 12:19 left. Missouri State had the pace working in their favor, bleeding the shot clock on offensive possessions before seeming to frequently finish off with daggers that could frustrate any opponent.
Seniors Kreklow, Jarred Dixon and Josh Webster combined by 41 points, including 17 from Dixon. MSU also took advantage of Bradley’s 12 turnovers, turning them into 15 points.
What Missouri State unfortunately did not get was what it has come to expect from first team all-MVC performer Tulio Da Silva. MVC coaches have been speaking this week about teams needing their big players to come up big in the postseason, but in this one Da Silva had his quietest game in a Bear uniform.
Da Silva finished with just three points, making 1 of 6 from the field. The Valley’s top newcomer, one of its best post players this season and nothing less than the main reason for the team’s in-season improvement, he was well off his averages of 14.7 points and 7.6 rebounds, as Childs stuck to him like glue in the second half and Bradley’s switching defense late in the shot clock made it tough to get him the ball.
“Yeah, when you get to March, your marquee guy has got to play,” said Ford after the game. “I mean, teams have a week to prepare for people. Same way we prepared for their marquee guys. They did it on him for 40 minutes. We were only able to do it on Childs for it looks like a half.
“Players got to play, man. We’ll have to go back and watch the tape, but I thought they were really physical, and maybe that was the reason why. But without watching the tape, analyzing the tape, I can’t tell you exactly. But player’s got to play.”
Despite the sour ending, Ford felt good about the base this year’s team has established with his program.
“They are responsible for the culture as it stands today,” Ford said of his seniors, including Dixon and Kreklow next to him at the post-game press conference. “The thing about cultures, you’ve got to fight for it every day, and these guys have literally fought every day.
“When we talk about culture, we talk about behavior that we will allow, and these guys have, first of all, come from great families, so they know how to act. I don’t have to worry about teaching them how to be young men. I just have to worry about developing them into men. They’re definitely a great example of that. And then obviously on the floor, we just tell our guys to do your best, and when you watch these two guys, I don’t think you ever guess if they’re doing their best.”
“Just proud of how we just fought all year when a lot of people didn’t really think we were going to be anything this year,” Dixon added. “Coach just told us that like I guess us three seniors, we turned the program around. Turned a lot of heads and put this program in a great place for the future. That’s really-that’s all you can really ask for.”
Also, Ford made sure it was understood that he felt this year’s Missouri State team, and especially its seniors, had been slighted a bit, and that their accomplishments deserved to be noticed.
“One of the things that’s really upset me this year-and I’m going to say it-everybody talks about our league is down,” said Ford. “We returned a lot of starters on teams that were picked to be good, and if our league is down, it’s because teams that were picked to be good weren’t good, and we finished as well as most.
“That to me is a discredit to these two guys sitting beside me. So that’s my initial thought on my first year is we exceeded expectations, even if people considered the league to be down.”
Twitter: @HoopvilleAdam
