Racers Go To NIT Quarters With Win At Tulsa

Monday, March 23

Tulsa, Okla.

8 p.m.

Murray State

29-5

Tulsa

23-11

Murray State

Tulsa

Photo by: Tab Brockman

3/24/2015 12:16:00 AM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

The Murray State Racers advanced to the quarterfinals of the National Invitation Tournament Monday with an 83-62 win against the Tulsa Golden Hurricane at the Reynolds Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The win pushes the Racers (29-5) into the NIT quarterfinals where they'll travel to Norfolk, Va., Wednesday to meet the Old Dominion Monarchs (27-6) who defeated Illinois State at home 50-49. Game time for the Racers at ODU's Constant Center is 6 p.m. Central Time on ESPN2.

Cameron Payne played limited minutes because of foul trouble, but still managed to score 20 points and deliver seven assists, while T.J. Sapp and Jeffery Moss each added 17 points. Jarvis Williams tossed in 15 points on 11-of-14 shooting from the free throw line.

The story of the night was MSU's hot-shooting from long range and the poor shooting by the home team. The Racers were 14-of-25 for 56 percent, while the Golden Hurricane was 2-of-22 for 10 percent. The Racers had their best shooting game in terms of total made threes in a year and they were only three off the school-record of 17 set against Campbellsville in 1994.

Trailing by a point at the 14:30 mark of the first half, the Racers hit the Golden Hurricane with a 14-2 run that ended with three straight 3-pointers from Justin Seymour, Payne and Sapp for a 30-16 lead at the 7:51 mark.

After Tulsa cut the lead to 10 points with 3:49 left in the half, MSU ended the first stanza with an 11-3 run thanks to air-tight defense and opportunistic offense. MSU got three straight stops and turned it into exclamation points from Sapp and Payne who hit back-to-back threes.

MSU went into the half leading Tulsa 45-27. MSU hit their season-high with nine threes in the half on only 15 attempts for a 60 percent clip. The Racers' amazing shooting line in the half read: 15-of-25 from the field and 9-of-15 from 3-point range, each 60 percent. Payne had 12 points and six assists.

In the second half, Tulsa cut the lead to 17 with 17:27 left, but Payne and Moss hit threes to push the lead to 55-32 at 15:43.

Payne fouled out with 8:03 left, but the Racers kept the momentum thanks to Williams who scored seven straight points (all from the free throw line) as MSU increased their lead to 26 points with 3:10 remaining.

Game Notes
With the win, the Racers improved to 8-1 in postseason play in Steve Prohm's four seasons as coach at MSU. MSU is 1-1 in the NCAA Tournament, now 2-0 in the NIT and they were 5-0 last spring on their way to taking the championship of the CIT. Prohm has won seven straight postseason games since his only loss in 2012 to Marquette in the NCAA Tournament.

The Racers improved to 12-1 on the road this season, tied with Albany for the national lead among NCAA D-I teams. MSU's 11-game road winning streak is tops in the nation. MSU hasn't lost on the road since Nov. 24 at Xavier.

MSU's 29^th win puts them only two wins from matching the school and OVC record of 31 that MSU had in the 2009-10 season under Coach Billy Kennedy and under Coach Prohm in his rookie 2011-12 season.

Prohm is now 104-28 at Murray State for an amazing .787 winning clip.

With 684 points, Payne has a shot to become just the fifth MSU player to score 700 points. The others are: Jeff Martin (87-88) 806, Marcus Brown (95-96) 767, Jeff Martin (88-89) 745 and De'Teri Mayes (97-98) 711.

Payne has 203 assists this season and is getting very close to Chad Townsend's record of 212 from the 1996-97 season.