MSU Opens OVC Season Wednesday Against EKU

Eastern Kentucky
(3-4) (0-0 OVC)
at
Murray State
(3-2) (0-0 OVC)

TIPOFF: Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. CT, Regional Special Events Center, Murray, Ky.
RADIO: WFGE (103.7 FM, Murray), Neal Bradley with the play-by-play
LIVE AUDIO: Listen Live through GoRacers.com
VIDEO STREAMING: Watch live or later on pay per view video streaming on OVCsports.tv
TV REPLAY: MSU-TV 11 cable station at 10 p.m.
LIVE STATS: on GoRacers.com

Murray State men's head basketball coach Billy Kennedy met

with members of local media Monday morning and talked about the Racers' game with Mississippi State and their early season Ohio Valley Conference opener Wednesday at home against Eastern Kentucky.

The Racers lost in Starkville, Miss. Saturday 78-61 to the Bulldogs and showed quite a bit of fight in the face of one of the best teams in the Southeastern Conference.

MSU trailed 39-24 at the half, but cut the Mississippi State lead to 10 with a nice run to start the second half.

Sophomore center Tony Easley continues to improve and ended the game scoring a career-high 17 points and grabbing a team-leading seven rebounds.

“He's improved and his confidence is up,” Kennedy said. “He's a smart kid and understands what we want him to do. He still needs to stop trying to block every shot and try to take more charges, but he's playing at a higher level and sustaining it longer.”

Kennedy's Racers had one lead in the game at Mississippi State, but battled a very talented and physical squad of Bulldogs.

“In reviewing the Mississippi State game, we played well in our offense but just didn't knock down a lot of shots,” Kennedy said. “I don't want us to get too down about it, Jamont Gordon and Charles Rhodes are very good players and their talent level is very good.”

“We had trouble being physical with them,” Kennedy added. “We've got to get more aggressive in driving to the basket. We've got to throw it into the post.”

Ready or not, the Racers open play in the Ohio Valley Conference Wednesday at the Regional Special Events Center with a 7 p.m. tip against Eastern Kentucky. Last season, the Colonels beat the Racers in a December overtime game (72-66) in Richmond, Ky., then came to the RSEC and won for the first time in 11 tries in the RSEC (64-62). It was EKU's first win in Murray since 1992.

The colonels capped off their season with a one point win over Austin Peay in the championship game of the OVC Tournament to gain entry into the NCAA Tournament.

“This is conference play, you would like to be more seasoned,” Kennedy said. “But we're excited about opening the conference season.”

“We thought we had a chance to win both games against them last season,” Kennedy added. “But EKU made better decisions than we did late in those games. If we win the game at their place, it's the difference between finishing second by ourselves or in third place.”

The traditional pre-conference season where a team plays 10-plus games before their first league game went away a long time ago. However, the Racers do have five games under their belts and have tangled with two teams (Western Kentucky and Mississippi State) who're favored to win their conferences. MSU defeated a very good Rider University squad at home on opening night, and also scored an impressive win at home over Arkansas State.

“We're 3-2 and when I look at the schedule we've played, those are some tough teams,” Kennedy said. “We'll learn a lot this week about where we're at.”

The Racers are also at home Saturday in a 7:30 p.m. game with Morehead State.

Murray State University Athletics

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