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NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Morehead State men’s basketball will be playing in a familiar game on Saturday in Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium. This time, it will be an unfamiliar opponent though.
The Eagles used a big second-half run to pull away for a 68-49 win against No. 3 Austin Peay in the semifinals of the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament Friday night at Municipal Auditorium. MSU, who will play in its third consecutive OVC title game, will face surprising No. 4 Tennessee Tech, which eliminated No. 1 seed Murray State earlier in the night.
Tipoff for the championship game is set for 8 p.m. EST.
“I thought our kids played very, very hard right from the beginning. We played in attack mode the entire 40 minutes against a great Austin Peay team that I respect a great deal,” said coach Donnie Tyndall. “Certainly jumping out early like we did, you could see on our kids’ faces that we were focused. We said 80 minutes of good basketball this week. We played 40 and now we’re halfway to our goal.”
Kenneth Faried finished with 12 points and 21 rebounds and tied the OVC Tournament single-game record with a career-high eight blocks. Demonte Harper tallied 25 points and six rebounds while shooting 9-of-14 from the floor.
“Demonte was fantastic tonight, and for Kenneth, more important was the eight blocks. He continued to block shots and change shots. He was the hero on the defensive end," Tyndall said.
MSU (23-9) shot 45 percent for the game and held the Govs to just 31 percent. The Eagles also forced 17 APSU turnovers, won the rebound battle 42-33 and shot 15-of-19 from the free throw line.
The Eagles opened with an authoritative dunk by Faried with one second left on the shot clock on their first possession then scored the next eight to take a 10-0 lead in the first five minutes. The Govs didn’t hit their first field goal until the 15:19 mark to break the zero on the board.
MSU upped its lead to 16-5 at the 10:11 mark following a Ty Proffitt jumper. APSU trimmed the lead down to six (28-22), but fast break layups from Terrance Hill and Harper set the halftime lead at 32-22.
In the final half, the Eagles saw their lead slip to eight at 46-38 with 8:02 left, but MSU effectively put the game away with a 17-5 run, capped by a Harper layup at 3:18, as they went ahead by 20.
For the Govs, Justin Blake paced the offense with 13 points, but he was the only Governor in double figures. John Fraley had six points and eight rebounds.
Peay finishes the season at 20-13. This will be the first time since 1986 that neither Murray nor Austin Peay is not in the championship game.
