Murray St. lives up to advance billing

~ The Racers won the OVC title as many expected.

Ohio Valley Conference men's basketball coaches apparently knew what they were talking about.

Murray State was the overwhelming preseason favorite to win the championship, garnering nine of 11 first-place votes from the league's coaches back in October.

Thursday night, the Racers backed that up by routing host Tennessee State 77-52 to clinch the program's conference-record 20th regular-season title, but its first outright championship since 1998-99. The Racers shared the 1999-2000 crown with Southeast Missouri State.

"We're obviously very proud of the fact we've been able to win the regular-season championship," Murray State coach Mick Cronin said during Tuesday's OVC coaches teleconference. "We did not expect to have it closed out with two games to go. We expected this to be a rough week."

The Racers (20-5, 16-2) have two OVC games remaining this week -- at Tennessee Tech and at home against Tennessee-Martin -- but no matter what happens in those, they will carry the No. 1 seed into next week's conference tournament.

"We're going to come to play, try to go into the tournament with some momentum," Cronin said.

While Murray State has wrapped up the title, Samford (17-9, 13-5) has clinched at least a tie for second place and assured itself a home game for the first round of the eight-team conference tournament.

Third-place Tennessee Tech (17-11, 12-7), based on tie-breakers, also has nailed down a tournament home date, but the fourth and final hosting spot is still up for grabs among Austin Peay (16-12, 10-8), Jacksonville State (13-12, 10-8), Eastern Kentucky (13-14, 10-8), Tennessee State (11-14, 9-9) and Tennessee-Martin (13-13, 9-10).

"The difference between a home game and a road game is enormous," Jacksonville State coach Mike LaPlante said.

Busting brackets

OVC teams went 5-6 in Saturday's BracketBuster series games involving teams from midmajor conferences.

But the eight league squads that have locked up tournament berths were 5-3.

Victorious Saturday were Murray State, Austin Peay, Jacksonville State, Tennessee State and Tennessee-Martin.

Murray State's 72-68 triumph over Illinois-Chicago pushed the Racers' winning streak to 10 games, which is the longest among OVC men's teams this season.

SE women on top

Entering Saturday's games, there appeared to be a good chance that Tennessee Tech and Southeast Missouri State would wind up tied for the regular-season women's title.

Then Austin Peay upset Tennessee Tech -- and opened the door for Southeast to capture the championship outright.

The Redhawks (18-7, 15-3), who are riding a conference-best 12-game winning streak, can clinch at least a share of the crown by beating visiting Samford on Thursday. Wins over Samford and Jacksonville State on Saturday would make Southeast the undisputed champion.

Tennessee Tech (19-7, 15-4) needs to win its final game --Thursday at home against Murray State -- and hope Southeast loses at least once in order to gain a share of the title.

"We're in good shape, but we can't get ahead of ourselves," Southeast coach B.J. Smith said. "We still have a lot of work to do."

Southeast's women have never won or shared the OVC title since joining the conference and moving up to the Division I level in 1991-92.