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Posted at 12:30 PM EST

#879 Bradley +2½ -110 over Missouri State

2019 MVC tournament site: Scottrade Center, St. Louis, MO

3:30 PM EST. The Missouri Valley Conference Tournament continues today and we’re sticking with it after playing Evansville plus the points last night (winner), citing that we the MVC was wide open and that any team could emerge. In this mid-afternoon battle, the 4th seeded Missouri State Bears taking on the 5th seeded Bradley Braves and we’re not convinced that the 4th seed should be the chalk. They’re a small two-point favorite on the merits of its better conference record and better overall record. In that regard, Missouri St finished 10-8 in conference and 17-14 overall while Bradley finished 9-9 and 16-15. Big deal.

Missouri St played the tougher non-conference schedule too, which may also be part of the reason the Bears are favored but sometimes too much emphasis is put on that when it shouldn’t be. You see, the Bears toughest games or credible opponents during their non-con portion of the schedule came against Nebraska, USC, Murray State Air Force and Oregon State. Thing is, the Bears lost by 23, 19, 11 19 and 24 points respectively to those five programs. Anyone can schedule games against superior opponents but it’s important to at least compete in those games. The Bears got smoked in all of them and therefore they get zero credibility from us.

By contrast, Bradley played, competed and even won games against credible opponents. The Braves beat SMU by 13 and Penn State by three. Those were its two toughest opponents of the season. They also played at New Mexico, who is very comparable to Air Force and the Braves hung in all the way, eventually losing by 10 but Bradley was hovering around being stuck just six for most of the second half. Furthermore, when an automatic bid is up for grabs in a conference that has been dominated by nobody, watch out for teams that are “peaking” at the right time and/or teams that have been tailing off. In that regard, Missouri State has dropped three of its last four games. Two of those losses were by 19 and 20 points respectively to Drake and Northern Iowa respectively. The other loss was by eights points at Illinois State, a pedestrian team in its best day. By contrast again, Bradley closed with a flourish by winning six of its last eight games, which includes beating NIU by eight and running over Valpo by 25. What we have here is the inferior team favored over the superior one. Bradley is actually a threat to win this conference while the favorite has no chance. It’ll be a shame to lose this one because we truly are getting the superior team as the pooch.

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