Morehead Magic: Morehead State men’s basketball wins OVC regular-season championship
Morehead State continues to lay claim to being the commonwealth’s most consistent Division I men’s basketball program.
For the second straight season, the Eagles have won at least a share of the Ohio Valley Conference regular-season championship.
On Saturday, Morehead State closed its regular season with a 67-49 home win over Lindenwood: The Eagles finish the regular season with a 23-8 overall record and a 14-4 mark in OVC play. And that result wrapped up a share of the OVC regular-season title for Morehead State.
This follows last season’s historic accomplishment, when Morehead State won the outright regular-season OVC championship for the first time since 1983-84, and just the second time.
The Eagles entered play Saturday in a three-way tie atop the league standings with Little Rock and UT Martin. All three teams won Saturday.
Morehead State will be the No. 3 seed for next week’s OVC Tournament, and will open tournament play in the quarterfinals against either Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville or Eastern Illinois. The Eagles are 1-1 against SIUE and 2-0 against Eastern Illinois this season.
While Morehead State lost in the semifinals of last year’s OVC Tournament to Southeast Missouri State, the school still achieved postseason history last season: Morehead State won at Clemson (a 1 seed) in the first round of the NIT, marking the Eagles’ first victory in the program’s first NIT game.
“It’s a balance of having great hunger, because we weren’t satisfied with last year, but we also gained a lot of confidence. It has helped us, and it will continue to help us,” Morehead State head coach Preston Spradlin told the Herald-Leader this week. “In the moment, it’s probably not exactly how you wanted to write it, but (we’ve) certainly taken the positives from those experiences.”
With Saturday’s win, Spradlin has now guided Morehead State men’s basketball to its 11th Ohio Valley Conference regular-season championship. Here is MSU’s history with league titles:
▪ 1955-56: Shared with Tennessee Tech and Western Kentucky.
▪ 1956-57: Shared with Western Kentucky.
▪ 1960-61: Shared with Eastern Kentucky and Western Kentucky.
▪ 1962-63: Shared with Tennessee Tech.
▪ 1968-69: Shared with Murray State.
▪ 1971-72: Shared with Eastern Kentucky and Western Kentucky.
▪ 1973-74: Shared with Austin Peay.
▪ 1983-84: Outright.
▪ 2002-03: Shared with Austin Peay.
▪ 2022-23: Outright.
▪ 2023-24: Shared with Little Rock and UT-Martin.
This marks Spradlin’s second regular-season championship at Morehead State: The eighth-year head coach is paid $260,000 annually, and his current contract runs through June 2027.
(Spradlin would be paid $30,000 — equivalent to a more than 11% bonus compared to his annual pay — if Morehead State participates in the NCAA Tournament.)
Morehead State’s success this season is all the more impressive given that fifth-year guard Mark Freeman — who was named the preseason OVC Player of the Year — is set to miss the entire season due to a wrist injury.
Morehead State is Kentucky’s most consistent Division I men’s team
Over the last four seasons, no Division I men’s basketball program in Kentucky has won as many games as the Eagles.
Morehead State has 91 victories since (and including) the 2020-21 season, which towers above the commonwealth’s seven other men’s Division I teams.
▪ Morehead State: 91-39.
▪ Kentucky: 80-44.
▪ Western Kentucky: 76-47.
▪ Eastern Kentucky: 75-52.
▪ Murray State: 73-49
▪ Northern Kentucky: 73-50.
▪ Bellarmine: 57-62.
▪ Louisville: 38-74.
This run of consistent success has also reset Morehead State’s own record books: The Eagles have won 20-plus games in four straight seasons for the first time in school history.
Despite this consistent regular-season success, Spradlin and the Eagles have made the NCAA Tournament only once during this stretch: Morehead State won the OVC Tournament during the 2020-21 season and qualified for the NCAA Tournament as a No. 14 seed, losing in the first round to West Virginia.
Former NAIA star Riley Minix leads Morehead State this season
Plenty of good players have had a role in Morehead State’s impressive consistency on the court in recent years. This includes Johni Broome and Ta’Lon Cooper, who used Morehead State as a steppingstone to play at high-major schools Auburn, Minnesota and South Carolina.
This season (and for the second straight campaign), it’s been a former NAIA standout who has led the way for the Eagles.
Riley Minix — a 6-foot-7 graduate student — entered Saturday’s regular-season finale against Lindenwood as Morehead State’s leader in scoring (20.4 points per game), rebounding (9.8), total steals (38) and free throws made (107).
This is Minix’s first season at Morehead: He previously played four years at Southeastern University in Florida, where he scored more than 2,000 points, secured more than 1,000 rebounds and was named an NAIA All-American.
“We needed a starting 4 man, and we thought that he really checked every box across the board and thought that he could come in here and have a huge impact,” Spradlin said. “The transition for him was just getting used to the speed of the game. The physicality wasn’t an issue for him because he’s pound-for-pound the strongest player that we’ve had here.”
The NAIA to Division I switch has been seamless for Minix: He is among the OVC’s leading scorers this season and has recorded a double-double in nine consecutive contests.
Minix is only the eighth player in Morehead State history to score 600-plus points in a single season.
“He’s really tapped into the fact that, not only is he the strongest player on the court most nights, but he’s typically the most intelligent,” Spradlin said. “He’s able to find ways to impact the game even when he’s tired, or even when he has a tough matchup. Because his ability to retain and execute details from game to game is exceptional.”
Drew Thelwell becomes all-time wins leader in Morehead State history
While some players have shuffled in an out of Morehead over the last four seasons, senior guard Drew Thelwell has remained in place. And he’s done a lot of winning because of that choice.
Earlier this season, Thelwell became the all-time player wins leader in Morehead State history: He’s now won 91 games as an Eagle.
“Consistency. It’s just every day, doing the same things,” Thelwell said. “I know sometimes it’s tedious and gets boring, but at the end of the day if you want to win, you have to do the little things right all the time.”
Thelwell’s story at Morehead State is one of continued growth and improvement at one school, and under one head coach, increasingly a rarity in today’s college basketball landscape. Thelwell appeared in 46 games over his first two seasons at Morehead State but only started one of those contests.
But his role has expanded as an upperclassman: Thelwell has started all but one game for Morehead State over the last two seasons.
“I think the biggest thing is just patience,” Thelwell said. “Sometimes, things aren’t going to be given to you quickly or as quick as you want it to happen for you, and that happens in a game sometimes, too... The ball’s going to find you. So I feel like I’ve just learned patience throughout the four years.”
And with his starting opportunity, Thelwell has produced: He averaged a career-best 11.1 points per game last season. This season, Thelwell leads both Morehead State and the OVC at large with 196 assists, a total that also ranks highly nationally.
He only needs nine more assists to set the Morehead State single-season record.
While Minix and Thelwell have provided some eye-popping offensive numbers, Morehead State has also gotten it done on defense this season: The Eagles lead the OVC in scoring defense, field goal percentage defense and rebounding margin, among other categories.
Morehead State is ranked No. 124 in the country in KenPom and is projected by BracketMatrix to be a No. 15 seed in the NCAA Tournament, should the Eagles win the OVC Tournament to secure an automatic bid.
OVC Tournament
At Ford Center in Evansville, Indiana.
WEDNESDAY’S FIRST ROUND:
Game 1: #5 Tennessee State vs. #8 Southern Indiana, 6:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
Game 2: #6 SIU Edwardsville vs. #7 Eastern Illinois, 9 p.m. (ESPN+)
THURSDAY’S QUARTERFINALS:
Game 3: #4 Western Illinois vs. Game 1 winner, 6:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
Game 4: #3 Morehead State vs. Game 2 winner, 9 p.m. (ESPN+)
FRIDAY’S SEMIFINALS:
Game 5: #1 Little Rock vs. Game 3 winner, 7 p.m. (ESPNU)
Game 6: #2 UT Martin vs. Game 4 winner, 9:30 p.m. (ESPNU)
SATURDAY’S CHAMPIONSHIP:
Game 7: Semifinal winners, 7 p.m. (ESPN2)
