Belmont at Eastern Kentucky, 8:00 PM Eastern, espn+
The Belmont Bruins are two wins away from going a perfect 20-0 against Ohio Valley Conference competition in the regular season; however, their final two games are also their two toughest games of the season — tonight at third place Eastern Kentucky and Saturday at second place Morehead State. Belmont enters play tonight on a 21 game winning streak, 24-1 overall and 18-0 in the OVC. They have five players all averaging 10 or more points per game led by Nick Muszynski’s 15.2. Ben Sheppard was the standout star in Belmont’s 92-74 home win over EKU on February 11, with 25 points and 10 rebounds. If the Bruins can get the strong, balanced scoring attack that has given them the top-rated offense in the Ohio Valley again tonight, there may be no stopping them.
Eastern Kentucky currently sits at 19-6 overall and 13-5 in conference play. Tre King with 15.4 points and 6.3 rebounds per game is leading the way for the Colonels, who are rated #2 in fastest Tempo in the entire nation by KenPom. The colonels love to run the ball and are consistently putting up 80 or more points per game. They will need to find a way to outscore Belmont tonight if they want to win this game, and that may be a tall order given that the Bruins held all five EKU starters to single-digit scoring the last tie the two teams met.