All previews: click here for the full 2021 NCAA tournament schedule
West Virginia
Seed: 3
Record: 18-9
Conference: Big 12
vs.
Morehead State Eagles
Seed: 14
Record: 23-7
Conference: Ohio Valley
Date: Friday, March 19
Time: 9:50 pm Eastern
Region: Midwest
Location: Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, IN
Channel: truTV
Two teams from the...Shallow South? Is that a thing? Whatever the opposite of the Deep South is, that's where both these teams are from.
West Virginia Morehead St.
Power Ratings
Strength: #24 Strength: #165
Pomeroy: #27 Pomeroy: #128
Offense: #11 Offense: #214
Defense: #65 Defense: #72
BPI: #27 BPI: #154
LRMC: #14 LRMC: #106
Other Measures:
Tempo Total/Off: #114/#176 Tempo Total/Off: #312/#264
SOS: #20 SOS: #240
Consistency: #11 Consistency: #171
Str x Consistency: #9 Str x Consistency: #169
2nd half season: #24 2nd half season: #123
Last 6 games: #43 Last 6 games: #126
Road Strength: #15 Road Strength: #153
Injury Modifier: #25 (-Tshiebwe) Injury Modifier: #168
The Mountaineers advantage in analytics is pretty clear, as is always the case in a 3 vs. 11-seed contest. They're in or near the top 25 in all the power ratings, with the LRMC putting them at #14. With their extreme consistency (can consistency be extreme?) they're a good pick to go far in the tournament, or at least as far as they should, which would be the Sweet Sixteen by seed.
Morehead State's hope of winning rests on their defense which, unlike their offense, is pretty good—almost as good as West Virginia's. Unfortunately the defense has to tackle WVA's #11 offense. If they can impose their slow tempo on the game they might be able to keep things within striking distance, but there's not much else here to hang their hopes on.
- Wins vs. tournament teams (8): =(10)VCU+12, @(12)Georgetown+9, (13)North Texas+12, @(4)Oklahoma St.+3, (6)Texas Tech+1, (3)Kansas+12, @(6)Texas Tech+11, @(3)Texas+2
- Losses to tournament teams (9): =(1)Gonzaga-5, @(3)Kansas-14, @(8)Oklahoma-4, (3)Texas-2, (7)Florida-5, (8)Oklahoma-OT, (1)Baylor-OT, (4)Oklahoma St.-5, =(4)Oklahoma St.-3
- Other losses (0): None
Overview: West Virginia faced overall #1 seed Gonzaga early in December and made a game of it, leading at the half and losing by just five points. They also beat VCU, Georgetown, and North Texas in the pre-conference season. Once the Big 12 started it was a murderer's row and the Mountaineers went 5-7 against the conference's tournament teams, also losing to 7-seed Florida along the way. They had a couple of three-game win streaks interrupted by overtime losses to Oklahoma and Baylor, the latter of which seemed to take something out of them as they dropped their last two games to Oklahoma State in close contests.
Mike McBride leads the four Mountaineers in double-digit scoring at 15.4 ppg; he also leads in assists and steals. #2 scorer Derek Culver (14.6) leads with 9.8 rebounds per game. West Virginia doesn't shoot the two very well at all (46.3%) and they're only reasonably good at the 3, but they get a lot of offensive rebounds and are good at avoiding turnovers.
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- Wins vs. tournament teams (0): None
- Losses to tournament teams (2): @(2)Ohio St.-33, @(7)Clemson-15
- Other losses (5): @Kentucky-36, =Richmond-18, @Eastern Kentucky-3, SIU Edwardsville-4, @Belmont-15
Overview: Morehead State's season didn't get off to a glorious start. They lost to Kentucky 81-45 and Richmond 82-64. Their third loss was to Ohio State 77-44, but at least the Buckeyes got a 2-seed. They fell the Eastern Kentucky next to start 1-4. To get some wins, they played Transylvania twice in two days, winning 77-55 and 81-55. No word if Dracula can dunk. They got revenge on Eastern Kentucky before falling to SIU Edwardsville and Clemson. At 4-6, and already 1-2 in conference, their Ohio Valley title hopes looked bleak.
After a long break from December 21 to January 2, though, they went 19-1, their only loss to conference regular season champ Belmont. They beat Belmont in overtime in the last game of the season, then beat them again, 86-71, in the Ohio Valley tournament final, in their best game of the year. The Eagles are led by 6-10 freshman forward John Broome's 13.9 points and 9.0 rebounds. He also gets 1.8 blocks per game, which anchors a solid defense.
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Game Analysis: The simplest way to look at this game is: Morehead State has no wins over tournament teams. West Virginia has no losses outside the tournament field.
The Eagles are solid on defense, even if they can't stop the Mountaineer offense it's reasonable that they could slow it down. And that's literally what they do, playing at a very slow pace. The main problems are on offense, where they turn the ball over often and only hit 68% of their free throws.
Looking at their chart, they have one path to victory: replicate their performance in their win over Belmont that won them the Ohio Valley title. The Eagles upset Louisville in 2011 as a 13-seed, so it's not completely far-fetched.
Vegas Line:
West Virginia by 12 1/2
Power rating: spread
West Virginia by 15.6
Game-comparisons: % Chance to win
West Virginia: 89.0%
Morehead St.: 11.0%
Recent game performance (last 6):
West Virginia: 83.3%
Morehead St.: 16.7%
West Virginia by 9.6
3-seeds upset 14-seeds 15% of the time historically, so Morehead State at 11% odds isn't a particularly good choice. Both Vegas and Strength consider them a double-digit underdog which makes sense given the results of their games with Ohio State and Clemson.
But narrow the sample size and it's easier for upsets to look reasonable. In this case, narrowing the window to each team's last six games boosts Morehead State's odds to 1 in 6, and the margin falls below double digits.
And if we look just at each team's final game of the season, guess what? Morehead State wins by 10 points! In fact that game beats all but about a dozen of the Mountaineers's outings, so that's Morehead's path to victory: play out of their heads. Easy, right?
Bottom line: We're going with the Mountaineers to survive a scare. How far? Not sure. But if they've recovered from their 3-game mini-slump, they should make the Sweet Sixteen at least.
Final prediction: West Virginia 66, Morehead St. 60
More previews: click here for the full 2021 NCAA tournament schedule.
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