Murray State University Athletics
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Racers Ride Momentum Into Home Clash With EIU
1/10/2010 6:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Game 17
Eastern Illinois
10-5 (4-1 OVC)
at
Murray State
13-3 (5-0 OVC)
Monday 7:00 p.m.
RSEC
Murray, Ky.
The Murray State Racers return to the Regional Special Events Center to host the Eastern Illinois Panthers in a 7:00 p.m. game Monday. MSU enters the game with a 5-0 mark in the Ohio Valley Conference, their best in league play since the 1998-99 season when they started 13-0. MSU scored an impressive 69-53 win at Austin Peay Saturday in which they pulled away late in the game when they held the Govs to only one field goal in the final 6:18. B.J. Jenkins led the Racers with 14 points, while MSU got 12 from Isacc Miles and 11 from Isaiah Canaan. MSU leads the all-time series with EIU 30-7 and are 18-1 against the Panthers at home.
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MSU's defense continues to be their calling card as they held the Govs to 33 percent shooting from the field and 18 percent from beyond the three-point line. MSU has held opponents to less than 40 percent shooting in the last three games and 10 games this season.
As of Jan. 9, MSU was the only team in NCAA D-I currently leading their conference in overall games in these categories: scoring offense (79.3), scoring defense (61.8), field goal defense percentage (.391) and three-point defense percentange (.306). St. Mary's (Calif.) leads the West Coast Conference in three of the stat lines.
Part of the Racers' league leading defensive effort this season has been handling the opponent's leading scorer. Through 16 games only two have scored above their average against MSU. Beaumont Beasley of Missouri-St. Louis and A.J. Slaughter of WKU. MSU had a streak of nine straight games of holding down the leading scorer earlier this season and have been successful in their last four games against Mark Yelovich (SIUE), Benzor Simmons (UTM), Josh Sain (TSU) and Wesley Channels (APSU).
Eastern Illinois pushed their OVC mark to 4-1 Saturday when they jumped on SEMO 24-10 early and finished with an 88-68 win at Lantz Arena. Tyler Laser led the Panthers with 20 points on 5-of-10 shooting from three-point range. EIU had 24 assists on their 32 field goals. EIU ranks second just behind MSU in the OVC holding opponents to 66.1 points per game and they're also second behind the Racers in field goal percentage defense at 40 percent.
