Missouri State Bears (13-3, 3-2 MVC) @ Drake Bulldogs (6-11, 1-4 MVC)

Tomorrow night brings a stiff test, in the form of the Missouri State Bears. They're 13-3 overall, and sit tied for third in the Valley with a 3-2 conference mark. Their non-conference play went fantastic, finishing 10-1 with wins over Auburn, Tulsa, and St. Louis. Their two conference losses were by 8 @ UNI and by 3 at home v. Wichita State -- arguably the two best teams in the Valley.

Who to watch for

They've got two strong shooters that can burn us from the outside, and really guide the Bears offense:

• Adam Leonard, junior transfer from Eastern Kentucky is shooting 40-95 from three (42.1%) and is averaging 13.0 PPG
• Kyle Weems, the fantastic sophomore, is shooting 33-68 from the three (48.5%), and 52% overall en route to 16.1 PPG. He's also chipping in 5.8 RPG.

In additon to those two, there are some other key role players that fit in very well. To name a few:

• Jermaine Mallett (Jr Guard) has scored in double figures in 8 of his last 9 games, en route to a season PPG of 10.8.
• Justin Fuehrmeyer averages nearly four assists per game off of the bench.

That said, this seems to be a two horse team on offense. In their last game against Bradley, Leonard and Weems hoisted up 30 shots combined. They'll likely try to find ways to get open shots against our zone tomorrow night.

What do they do well?

They do a lot of things well overall on offense, and using adjusted efficiency they look to be one of the top offenses in the nation thus far through the season.

Part of the reason for that is they take fantastic care of the basketball. Their assist to turnover ratio AS A TEAM is 1.25. In addition, they only turnover 17.9% of possessions, well below the national average of 20.9%. In short, they take care of the basketball -- something that is going to make our defense work even harder.

Given the statistics above, it shouldn't be surprising that this team shoots the ball very well from beyond the three, obviously guided by Leonard and Weems. Overall, they shoot 39.7% from the three as a team, which will certainly put pressure on our zone defense to extend against those shots.

On defense, they do a fantastic job keeping other teams off of the boards, only allowing 29.2% of opportunities to be fetched by the opposition (well below the nat'l average of 33%).

They're going to be a stiff test for us, and it will be interesting to see if the improvement we've shown over the past few games continues against them.

What can we exploit?

Well, hopefully we can utilize our improving defense. Looking at all of our Valley games, we haven't allowed over 31.3% shooting by any of our opponents in a game. Considering the importance of the three point shot for MSU, if we can keep that trend going, that will be critical to holding their offense down and allowing us opportunities to capitalize. I'd say that keeping MSU under 33% from beyond the three is critical.

Hopefully we can keep MSU off the boards as well, particularly if they do miss from the outside. I'm specifically looking at Templeton, because he's been huge and has really turned into an on court leader for this team. He's developing into a player that just makes you feel better about our chances when he's on the floor, hopefully that continues into tomorrow night.

Now, MSU is not a strong offensive rebounding team. If you throw out their 17 against Bradley, their prior four Valley games shows this. Consider their game by game results: 8, 9, 6, and 6. If we can keep MSU in single digit offensive rebounds, coupled with above, we're going to drive down their efficiency on the offensive end.

On our end, when we do have the ball -- we have to improve on our poor shooting. Wichita State got away with 38% because they got 14 offensive rebounds. UNI had little to no offensive rebounds because of their fantastic 53% shooting on the night. Altogether, I think we need to be above 40% tomorrow night to help us put ourselves in position to win. We need Josh Young and Ryan Wedel to lead the charge from that standpoint.

So those are my three keys for tomorrow's scorecard:
(1) Keep MSU < 33% FG
(2) Keep MSU < 10 offensive boards
(3) Shoot > 40% FG

Prediction

I think the keys fall in our favor pretty well. We're back at home after a strong road trip, we're playing better, and I feel like some of the keys above are things we can certainly accomplish tomorrow. I think we're going to really hold them down from beyond the arc tomorrow, and that's going to critically stump their offense for stretches of the game.

I think the combination of returning to the Knapp and some confidence built from a strong road trip is going to really catapult our offense tomorrow into a level we haven't seen in several games. Cuonzo Martin is doing a fanastic job with this Bears team, but come tomorrow night, I think he's going to be surprised with what hits his team. I'm honestly thinking this is a game we can snag.

Drake 68, Missouri State 66