Re: MOREHEAD at SEMO***ANOTHER MONSTER***
Morehead St. comes to town tonight sitting atop the OVC standings with a 5-1 conference record. They already own wins over UT-Martin, Murray St., Austin Peay, Tenn Tech, and Jax St. Their lone conference loss has come on the road at Tenn. St. Their only other conference road game was a 10 point win at Austin Peay which is a very hard place to pick up a win. Morehead comes in without the services of Maze Stallworth, their 3rd leading scorer. He has been suspended indefinitely. He's also missed the last 2 games, both Morehead home conference wins.
I classify teams in this conference as generally falling into categories. Athletic or fundamentally sound. Austin Peay and Murray St. fall into both, that's why I think they are the teams to beat in the conference. This year SEMO falls into neither. Morehead is a fundamentally sound team that just doesn't beat itself. These teams give SEMO more trouble it seems than the athletic teams. All they have to do is be patient and move the ball around and they will get plenty of open looks. The more teams move the ball around on SEMO the more SEMO gets way out of position.
This is what I know about Calvin Williams (17ppg and 7.7rpg) availability for tonights game. He sat out Mondays game with a sprained ankle suffered on the opening tip of last Saturdays game. After the game Monday night he told some fans that he didn't expect to play Thursday but thought he would be able to play this coming Saturday. Calvin DID NOT practice Wednesday. Zac Roman, SEMO's coach, said BEFORE practice that he DID NOT expect Calvin to play Thursday. Then after practice Calvin went to his head coach and told him he thought he could give him a few minutes Thursday night. At that time his ankle was still very tender. I expect this to be a game time decision. Best case for SEMO I don't believe Calvin will start but will try and give the team as many minutes as he can. I don't expect that to be a lot. I'll be at the game so I won't be able to relay any last minute info. Even if Calvin was healthy I would still like Morehead to cover this number. Morehead has a very good center of their own in 6'8" Kenneth Faried, 12.3ppg and 11.9rpg. If I hear anything more before going to the game I'll let everyone know.
One thing most people don't know. Israel Kirk, a 6'7" backup f/c is down to avg.12.1 minutes in conference games. Whenever he isn't practicing or playing in a game he wears a medical boot around one of his ankles. The coaches have said if they had a full roster instead of only the 8 scholarship players they have now he would have already been shut down for the year.
I also like Morehead to cover the first half number of -4. SEMO was up 2 at home against Tenn. St. (a shakey road team) before getting beat by double digits the second half. The closest they've come at the half in their other conference games is 8 against E. Illinois.
5 MOREHEAD -4 (1H)
