Published: February 05, 2008 02:54 pm         

The race is on...in the men's OVC

Everyone loves a good race. Whether it be a political race, NASCAR race, or even a good old fashion foot face. But the kind of race I’m talking about is an Ohio Valley Conference championship race, which our Eagles are in the thick of as the calendar starts to turn from January to February. Morehead State is only a game over the .500 mark at 11-10, but they sit in third place in the OVC standings at 8-5. All this coming from a team that was voted by coaches to finish second to last in the OVC’s preseason coaches poll.

A key factor of the Eagles surprising success in the OVC is their perfect record at home. Morehead is off to a 10-0 start at the friendly confines of Ellis T. Johnson Arena. This constitutes the best start since the 1972-1973 team finished that season with a 9-0 mark.

“We have played great at home. We’ve gotten the support of the students and town’s people and that has really been helpful, however it needs to keep getting better,” says Morehead State head coach Donnie Tyndall. He also believes that with such a young team, playing at home hearing cheers and positive chants from the crowd gives them a more comfortable feeling and helps his Eagles to play better.

With the good comes the bad and Morehead’s is the road. The Eagles have gone 2-10 on the road, but they have won two of their last three road games. “In this conference a lot of the schools have to play money games against some of the bigger schools and that’s going to make our road record look bad. We’ve had five games this year at Oklahoma, Louisville, Houston, Bowling Green and Marshall and those are tough games. In fact our non-conference schedule is ranked 26th nationally. So we have taken our shots and it’s been a great learning experience,” Tyndall says.

The Eagles have played great basketball as of late by winning seven of their last eight games, and six of their last seven OVC contest. Coach Tyndall says his team’s turning point came against arch rival Eastern Kentucky. Morehead State came limping into that game with a 3-9 overall record and 2-4 in the OVC. “We were coming in against EKU and the kids really wanted to win this game for the university,” Tyndall says.

In the EKU game, Morehead had been down by three at half time while shooting only 24 percent in the half. The Eagles came out strong in the second half and shot 64 percent and won the game 62-53. Without that victory Morehead would have fallen to 3-10 and 2-5 in the conference, possibly falling off the OVC map. “That win was so important for us and really gave us a lot of confidence. Eastern was a team that had beaten us three times last year and they were the defending conference champions. To beat them gave us the confidence that we could compete now in the conference.”

Morehead continued to build on that confidence as they then went on a four game winning streak after the Eastern Kentucky win, their longest since the days of Ricky Minard. “I think something that really helped us in that winning streak was our non-conference schedule, we played tough teams and that got us ready for conference play,” Tyndall says.

With each win the Eagles kept moving further up in the standings. In the OVC the first round of the conference tournament is played at the top four team’s home arenas, and given the home and away record it’s safe to say Coach Tyndall is looking to lock up a top four slot.

Tyndall has orchestrated the Eagles turnaround with such a young roster. Morehead came into this season with only four players coming back that had seen minutes the previous year and only one starter returning. They’ve depended heavily on freshmen and sophomores this year. “I really thought this was going to be a rebuilding year for us, with so many players coming in I thought we were going to take our hits and play more for next year.”

Tyndall says that the play of his seniors; point guard Nikola Stojakovic (who averages seven assist a game. Which is tops in the OVC) and shooting guard Jamyron Steward (who is averaging almost 12 points a game) has really stepped up from last year. Front-court newcomers like junior Leon Buchanan (who is 4th in the OVC in field goal percentage) and freshmen Kenneth Faried (who was last week’s OVC freshmen of the week) have given Morehead the strong inside play that it has lacked since the days of Kyle Umberger and Ike Lopez. “All of these guys have really stepped up their play and they are playing way ahead of schedule, I didn’t think we would compete for a top four spot in the league until (my) fourth or fifth year, but in our second year to be sitting in third place over half way through the conference schedule is a really great surprise,” Tyndall says. “We wanted to build this program with high school players, but when we got here and we needed some junior college players like Nik, Jamyron, and Leon, to help speed up the process a little bit so we could be competitive for now and better in the future.”

But why be satisfied with a first round home game? Yes it’s nice, but why have a slice of the cake when you can get the whole thing? Morehead controls their own destiny in the OVC. They are a game and a half from first place and play four of the last seven games at home, including games with the first and second place teams, Austin Peay and Murray State there is no reason to think that Morehead can not make a run to win their first OVC title since the 2003-04 season. “Playing at home against teams like Tennessee State, SEMO (Southeast Missouri), Murray, and Peay is a really nice luxury. I honestly think we can go out and win our last eight games but it’s very realistic that we could very easily lose our last eight games.”

Last seasons collapse is not far from Tyndall’s mind. Morehead was 10-6 and 6-2 in the OVC on January 13th but they lost their next nine games and only won two more games the rest of the season. Tyndall says he doesn’t see that happening with this bunch of Eagles.

“Last season we had some guys who had their own philosophies and wanted to do things their way. When you hit on hard times like we did last year that’s not good and it only hurts the team,” the coach said. “This season we have some great kids with great characters. They play team ball and they want to win. They want to do what’s best for the team and that’s just great.”