Morehead State’s Preston Spradlin Sees Similarities Between His Team and WVU

For eight days, the players and staff of the Morehead State men’s basketball team knew they were heading to the NCAA tournament. After winning the Ohio Valley Conference championship on March 6 and claiming the conference’s automatic bid, all the team could do was wait until selection Sunday to find out their seed and who their first-round opponent would be.

MSU coach Preston Spradlin said knowing that they would be in the tournament did not lower the team’s excitement on selection Sunday at all.

“You kind of have an expectation of how you’re supposed to react,” Spradlin said Monday morning. “You’ve seen [teams react] over and over for years but it was really a great feeling.”

.@MSUEaglesMBB will be the No. 14 seed in the Midwest Region and will face No. 3 seed West Virginia Friday. #EaglesAlwaysSoar pic.twitter.com/PzjQhXNUsa

— Morehead State Athletics (@MSUEagles) March 14, 2021

Spradlin said the team kept trying to guess who their first-round opponent would be and they had a pretty good idea it would be West Virginia when the show started revealing the midwest region.

“They’re excited about the matchup,” Spradlin said. “We take a lot of pride in being a tough and physical team and what better way to test it than in the NCAA tournament against a really tough, physical West Virginia team?”

No. 3 seed WVU (18-9, 11-6 Big 12) and No. 14 seed Morehead State (23-7, 17-3 OVC) will tip-off at 9:50 p.m. Friday night from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Spradlin said he is expecting a good matchup between two teams with similar styles. After watching some film of the Mountaineers Sunday night into Monday morning, he called them, a “typical Bob Huggins West Virginia team”.

“They’re going to be very physical, very tough, very rugged,” Spradlin said. “Great defense, great rebounding team, good size and this year a very good offensive team to go along with it.

“It’s going to be a great matchup because in our league we kind of have the same identity,” he continued. “We pride ourselves on being a very physical, tough, defensive-minded team that dominates the glass and dominates the paint. So it’s going to be a battle of two really comparable teams in terms of style of play.”

Spradlin, Morehead State’s fourth-year head coach, has some with WVU and Huggins. He was a graduate assistant for Kentucky when the two played in the 2010 and 2011 national tournaments and he has built the Eagles into the top defensive team in the OVC this season.

The Eagles lead the OVC in scoring defense (63.4 points per game), field goal defense (40.3%), 3-point defense (30.7%), rebounding margin (+6.5) and blocked shots (150).

“For us, it starts defensively,” Spradlin explained. “Our guys bought in early on that we were going to be an elite defensive team and they didn’t balk us on that, they put in the work and we’ve got a very cerebral team defensively. We’ve got really good length for a mid-major team. All of our guards are 6-4, can play multiple positions and can guard multiple positions.”

On offense, Morehead State runs through true freshman center Johni Broome, an All-OVA First Team selection and the OVC’s Freshman of the Year. Broome leads the Eagles in scoring (13.9 points per game), rebounding (9.0) and blocks (1.8). Spradlin said he expects a good matchup between the 6-foot-10 Florida natvie and WVU’s Derek Culver.

“That’s going to be the marquee matchup of the night, no doubt,” Spradlin said. “We probably play through Johni a little bit more than West Virginia plays through Culver but he’s a fantastic talent…It’s going to be a great matchup, I know Johni’s really excited about it already and we’ll make sure we’ll get him ready for it.”

WVU and MSU will tip-off at 9:50 p.m. on Friday from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The game will be broadcast on truTV.