WKU Basketball: Conference Tournament Notebook — Semifinal Friday
Quarterfinal Thursday is behind us, and we have now arrived at Semifinal Friday! It was a busy day around the tournament, but the Tops —…
Quarterfinal Thursday is behind us, and we have now arrived at Semifinal Friday! It was a busy day around the tournament, but the Tops — Lady and Fella — had little problem advancing.
The Lady Tops had no problem ending the season for UTSA, beating the Runners 78–50, but it honestly wasn’t even that close. The Lady Tops now get to face the surprise of the tournament — one could say on either side — in North Texas, who shocked #3 Louisiana Tech yesterday, 76–69.
In the lone regular season meeting, the Lady Tops beat UNT 79–65, in a game where Tashia Brown logged 28 points and the Lady Tops shot 43.3% from the floor.
The seed matchup might sound overwhelming, but I’m expecting a bit of a closer game than what we had yesterday.
The Lady Tops will tip off at 8 p.m., CT
The Tops will be facing ODU for a third time, after sweeping the season series — taking the game in Norfolk 75–68 and winning the Senior Night contest in Bowling Green a couple of weeks ago, 88–66.
ODU used big games from BJ Stith (22 points, 12 boards) and Trey Porter (18 points, 7-of-9 from the floor) to outlast Louisiana Tech, 62–58.
Stith scored 17 against the Tops in Norfolk and notched 12 in the game at Diddle, while Porter had 14 in the first game and eight in the second oe.
This matchup has me feeling very different things. On one hand, I imagine not having to grind out for a whole game like ODU did will help WKU, but it’s so tough to beat a team thrice in a year.
One thing is for sure — it’ll be a whale of a ball game.
Elsewhere around the tournament, it wasn’t a great day for MTSU. The Lady Raiders fell to Rice in their first game of the tourney, while the men were shocked by Southern Miss in overtime.
The biggest blow there, obviously, is to the men, who now have to sweat it out until selection Sunday to find out where they’ll be going, if they’re even going dancing at all. If you ask me, I say they’ll get in as a play in, but a lot of Twitter thinks they’ll be NIT bound, so we’ll see.
It wasn’t a great day for UTSA fans, either. The Lady Runners got run out of the state by the Lady Tops, and the Fella Runners, although they turned it into a game, fell to Marshall.
Full women’s scoreboard:
And updated women’s bracket:
Here’s the men’s scoreboard from yesterday:
And the updated men’s bracket:
