March is here. As EKU takes first step toward NCAA tourney, who else in state will follow?
On the final night of February before the calendar flipped to March, Baptist Health Arena in Richmond came alive with the familiar soundtrack of the third month of the year.
A packed-in student section cheered and jeered. Fans seated courtside engaged in banter with officials. And every possession of a basketball game felt like life or death, or something akin to it.
Such is life as a mid-major college basketball team during conference tournament season.
But for Eastern Kentucky on Tuesday night, this dramatic intensity was allowed to wane in the closing minutes.
The Colonels throttled North Alabama, 73-48, in the ASUN Tournament quarterfinals to keep their season alive, and with it the hopes of a first NCAA Tournament berth since 2014.
EKU — the No. 3 seed in the conference tournament — jumped out to a 14-2 lead within the game’s first seven minutes and never trailed in a wire-to-wire win over No. 6 seed North Alabama.
The victory extends EKU’s season for a little less than 48 hours at least: The ASUN Tournament semifinals will be Thursday night, with the Colonels traveling to play at No. 2 seed Liberty.
EKU went 1-1 against Liberty this season, winning in Richmond by three and losing on the road by 10.
The other ASUN Tournament semifinal is No. 1 seed Kennesaw State hosting No. 5 seed Lipscomb.
An EKU victory in Lynchburg, Virginia, would lead to a conference title game appearance on Sunday afternoon, a contest set to be broadcast on ESPN2.
“To win in the tournament, you have to be a great defensive team,” Eastern Kentucky head coach A.W. Hamilton said postgame. “That’s not going to change. This was a great win for us. ... But now we’re on to the next one. We don’t have time really to celebrate this.”
This week offers EKU the chance to make an early splash in their new conference as well.
The Colonels moved from their longtime home — the Ohio Valley Conference — to the Atlantic Sun Conference in 2021. As such, Tuesday night marked EKU’s first ASUN Tournament win in program history.
During its initial 2021-22 season in the ASUN, EKU went 13-18 overall and 5-11 in league games before bowing out in the opening round of the conference tournament.
This year, Hamilton’s team is 20-12 overall and went 12-6 in regular-season league contests.
Now, the Colonels are two wins away from the Big Dance.
Thursday night’s meeting with Liberty will match the closest the Colonels have come to reaching the NCAA Tournament under Hamilton, a former high school star at Scott County who was an assistant coach at North Carolina State before being hired as EKU’s head coach in March 2018.
In both the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, EKU reached the semifinals of the OVC Tournament before losing.
The Colonels again find themselves 80 minutes away from March Madness this season.
And if that dream is to come to fruition, it will follow the “The Most Exciting 40 Minutes In Sports” identity that Hamilton has established in Richmond.
The Colonels forced nine North Alabama turnovers in the first half alone on Tuesday, and limited the Lions to 29.1% shooting from the field for the game.
EKU junior wing Devontae Blanton led the Colonels with 15 points, while junior forward Isaiah Cozart (formerly of Western Kentucky and Madison Central High School) had 12 points, eight rebounds and six blocks.
“As a team I feel like it was our best defensive performance of the year,” Blanton said. “I think from start to finish we just dominated.”
Tuesday night also allowed EKU the chance to get revenge on North Alabama after the Lions won in overtime in Richmond on Senior Night on Feb. 18.
None of the players on this season’s EKU roster — including the three players with previous NCAA Division I experience at other schools — have made the NCAA Tournament before.
What characteristics of this EKU team could allow this group of Colonels to make history by returning to the NCAA Tournament?
“That’s your only chance at being special: You have to become a real family,” Hamilton said. “You have to sacrifice for each other, like it can’t be about one guy. That’s what they do, and that’s why they’ve got a chance.”
Tracking Kentucky schools on the road to the NCAA Tournament
Not that long ago, it was truly a question if one of the most impressive factoids about the state of Kentucky would still hold true.
Since 1964, every NCAA men’s basketball Tournament has featured at least one team from the commonwealth.
Thoughts of that streak being in jeopardy have been quashed by Kentucky’s resurgence in recent weeks, but plenty of Kentucky-based schools still harbor hopes of qualifying for the 68-team NCAA Tournament field.
While Kentucky is just about a lock to receive an at-large bid to the Big Dance, the likes of Eastern Kentucky, Morehead State and Northern Kentucky all have likely pathways to the postseason through conference tournaments.
Here’s a check-in (in alphabetical order) with all eight NCAA Division I men’s basketball programs in Kentucky as the NCAA Tournament field comes into picture.
Bellarmine
▪ Record: 15-18 overall, 9-9 ASUN.
▪ Next game: N/A.
▪ NCAA Tournament outlook: None. Bellarmine was in the third season of its four-year transition period after moving from Division II to Division I. As such, head coach Scott Davenport’s Knights are still ineligible for the NCAA Tournament.
But unlike last year — when Bellarmine stunningly won the ASUN Tournament and the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament had to go to regular-season champion Jacksonville State — the Knights’ season has already come to an end.
No. 8 seed Bellarmine lost in the ASUN Tournament quarterfinals Tuesday night at No. 2 seed Liberty.
But before their season ended, the Knights provided the first buzzer-beating moment of conference tournament season.
In a first round ASUN Tournament win over North Florida on Monday night, graduate student guard Juston Betz made a turnaround jumper with 0.4 seconds left to win the game.
Eastern Kentucky
▪ Record: 20-12 overall, 12-6 ASUN.
▪ Next game: at Liberty, 7 p.m. Thursday.
▪ NCAA Tournament outlook: The Colonels are two wins away from their first NCAA Tournament berth since 2014.
The No. 3 seed Colonels defeated No. 6 seed North Alabama on Tuesday night in Richmond, but EKU must go on the road for the ASUN Tournament semifinals.
Up next for A.W. Hamilton’s team is stiff opposition in No. 2 seed Liberty.
The Flames are ranked No. 42 in KenPom, No. 40 in the NET and are currently projected as a No. 13 seed in the NCAA Tournament and listed in 71 of 110 total bracket projections according to the Bracket Matrix.
Fun fact: EKU is tied with Boise State for the most losses in the NCAA Tournament (eight) without a win.
Kentucky
Record: 20-10 overall, 11-6 SEC.
▪ Next game: at Arkansas, 2 p.m. Saturday.
▪ NCAA Tournament outlook: Kentucky has one game remaining before next week’s SEC Tournament in Nashville, and the Wildcats’ margin for error is back to being thin.
UK lost on Senior Night on Wednesday night at home to Vanderbilt, and potentially lost star freshman guard Cason Wallace for longer with a left leg injury.
A season-sweep over Tennessee highlights UK’s résumé, but Kentucky is back to worrying about possibly being a double-digit seed for the Big Dance.
Louisville
▪ Record: 4-26 overall, 2-17 ACC.
▪ Next game: at No. 13 Virginia, 2 p.m. Saturday.
▪ NCAA Tournament outlook: Louisville’s only hope of making the NCAA Tournament after a historically bad season is to win the ACC Tournament. It would be more likely for a meteor to strike Earth tomorrow.
Morehead State
▪ Record: 21-10 overall, 14-4 OVC.
▪ Next game: vs. TBD, 8 p.m. Friday.
▪ NCAA Tournament outlook: Outside of the Kentucky Wildcats, it’s the Morehead State Eagles that have the easiest and most direct path to an NCAA Tournament appearance.
Head coach Preston Spradlin guided a new-look Morehead State team to an outright Ohio Valley Conference regular season title this season, just the second time ever that MSU has won the OVC outright and the first time in 39 years.
The reward is the No. 1 seed for the OVC Tournament in Evansville, Indiana, which will begin for Morehead State on Friday night against No. 5 seed Southeast Missouri State or No. 4 seed Tennessee State.
Morehead State is a combined 3-1 against those teams this season.
The Eagles will only have to win two games in Evansville to win the OVC Tournament and reach the NCAA Tournament for the ninth time ever and the second time in three years.
Murray State
▪ Record: 16-14 overall, 11-9 MVC.
▪ Next game: vs. Valparaiso, 7 p.m. Thursday.
▪ NCAA Tournament outlook: It’s been a season of transition for the Racers after a switch in valleys from the Ohio Valley Conference to the Missouri Valley Conference.
Steve Prohm’s second turn as Murray State head coach has seen the Racers earn the No. 7 seed for the MVC Tournament. Murray State will open play Thursday night in St. Louis against No. 10 seed Valparaiso.
Last season, Murray State went 18-0 in league play in its final season in the OVC before winning the OVC Tournament, as well as an NCAA Tournament first-round game against San Francisco.
Prohm returned to Murray State after six seasons as the head coach at Iowa State.
He replaced former coach Matt McMahon, who left last offseason for LSU and took a trio of players with him: Trae Hannibal, Justice Hill and KJ Williams.
Northern Kentucky
▪ Record: 19-12 overall, 14-6 Horizon League.
▪ Next game: vs. Oakland, 7 p.m. Thursday.
▪ NCAA Tournament outlook: Northern Kentucky’s NCAA Tournament hopes hinge upon winning the Horizon League Tournament, so it’s a good thing the Norse have somewhat perfected this task.
Northern Kentucky has won the league tournament in three of the past six seasons and lost last season’s title game by just one point to Wright State.
This season, NKU is the No. 4 seed and will begin the postseason by hosting No. 5 seed Oakland.
Junior guard Marques Warrick (Henry Clay) leads Northern Kentucky in minutes per game (34) and points per game (19).
Western Kentucky
▪ Record: 15-14 overall, 7-11 Conference USA.
▪ Next game: at Texas-El Paso, 9 p.m. Thursday.
▪ NCAA Tournament outlook: Like Kentucky, Western Kentucky still has two more regular season games to go before the Conference USA Tournament in Frisco, Texas, next week.
The Hilltoppers’ 7-11 conference mark would currently have them tied for the No. 7 seed in the conference tournament, which would leave WKU as a significant underdog in a league that also features both Florida Atlantic (19) and North Texas (50) in the top 50 of the NET rankings.
Western Kentucky hasn’t reached the NCAA Tournament since 2013.
This story was originally published March 1, 2023 at 7:59 AM.
