Both of the favorites advanced in the OVC tournament last night. Tennessee Tech crushed UT-Martin, 83-59, while Austin Peay whipped SeMO 76-60.
This sets up a showdown between the top four teams in the conference. Tonight's OVC semi-finals will feature two Kentucky v. Tennessee battles:
Murray St. (14-4 in the OVC) v. Tennessee Tech (12-6)
Morehead St. (13-5) v. Austin Peay (13-5)
These should be two excellent games.
Eagle bait!!
ReplyDeleteEagle bait, indeed. Tennessee Tech upset Murray State, as the Racers chose to not pressure the Golden Eagles' point guard on three consecutive possessions after the guy had hurt his wrist. On one of the three possessions, he made a backdoor pass for a layup that gave Tech a two-point lead, and then, with 20-some-odd seconds to go, he bombed a three-pointer to expand the margin to five. That was pretty much the ballgame.
ReplyDeleteESPNU said Tennessee Tech has won only one OVC championship, in 1967. That surprised me.
My wife, daughter and my wife's sister (a Murray grad) went out this evening to a Mexican restaurant in an old bank in downtown Earlington, where it turned out to be "Murray State Alumni Frida" (sic). We watched the first half there.
Our table was next to that of a 14-year-old and his grandparents. The kid was visiting from Mayfield; he's a student at Graves County High, and I gave him grief about his team eliminating Heath from the Fourth Region boys' basketball tournament last night. The grandfather sells phone systems to companies, including several clients in Paducah. He said he had never walked around downtown Paducah much until his last trip there and decided it is just fantastic. (I agree.)
The grandfather is an Earlington native, and he was proud to show my wife a wall, tucked around near the restrooms with signatures from dozens of folks from Earlington--including many with connections to the 1967 Earlington High Yellowjackets team that won the state basketball championship. (1967 was a very big year for basketball at Earlington and at Tennessee Tech. Strange.) The guy told my wife that, when the folks leased the old bank building to open the Mexican restaurant, part of the agreement was that the wall would be untouched and remain available for the public to view.
The whole time we're there, my sister-in-law feels like she knows the guy but can't place his face. Finally, she gets it. His mom and the maternal grandmother of my wife and sister-in-law shared a room at the same assisted-living facility after both had gotten Alzheimer's. So, at this point, we've rolled into full-tilt family-reunion mode, and I'm begging the family to order another round of burritos and stick around. Anecdotes and memories--some funny, some sad--are shared. It was just delightful.
The guy talked about how close he became with my wife's grandfather, who died less than a year before our daughter arrived two years ago.
"I still drive by his house all of the time," he said. "I loved him. I really loved him."
Yup, so did we.
Thirteen minutes to go in the second OVC men's semifinal, and Austin Peay State has crept back within 40-32 of Morehead State.