Once Upon A Time In Las Vegas – Wildcard Edition
Evansville (4-15 SU, 5-13-1 ATS, 0-8 MVC) is looking for their first Missouri Valley Conference victory when they travel to meet Southern Illinois (14-5 SU, 8-9-1 ATS), who leads the league. Both will square off at 8pmET from the Banterra Center in Carbondale, Ill.
Last season, SIU won both games, but only covered their road game 80-53. At home, they beat the Purple Aces 69-62 as a 12-point favorite.
Evansville has not had a victory in 2023 as their last win took place over Bellarmine on Dec. 21 (73-61). Since then, they've lost six straight games and have not covered a game in that stretch. This has been a tough first year for head coach David Ragland, the former Butler assistant who is taking over a program that went 6-14 last season and 2-16 in the MVC. This is going to be a rebuilding year as they fell to Valparaiso in their last game 76-69 last Saturday. Yacine Tomi (6-10, 210) led the way with 18 points and seven boards, while senior forward Antoine Smith (6-7, 215) added 15 points on 5-of-10 shooting (4-8 3pt) with a team-leading eight rebounds. This was a battle of winless conference teams and the Purple Aces never led late in the first half through the rest of the game. They shot 47% from the field and 37% (7-19) from beyond the arc, but just 18 of 36 from the line.
< p lang="en" dir="ltr">Kenny Strawbridge Jr . from downtown!
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?? #ForTheAces pic.twitter.com/3duB2GgU3y— UE Men's Basketball (@UEAthletics_MBB) January 14, 2023
Defense has been a major problem for Evansville all year. They pretty much gave up their average against Valpo, which is around 46.5% from the field (335th). They also allow teams to make 37.7% from long range to rank 345th in the nation. The offense isn't much better as they rank 354th in points per game at 61.5, 351st in field goal percent (39.2%), 312th in three-point percentage (31.1%) and 348th in free throw percentage (63.1%).