The Missouri Valley Conference tipped off the basketball season Monday with its annual media day, hosted on the Field of 68’s platforms. Coaches from across the league shared insights on roster moves, nonconference schedules and what to expect from their teams this season.
Below is one takeaway from media day for each team.
Belmont has clarity
Over the last few years, the transfer portal has gutted the Bruins, causing them to lose dynamic players such as Ja’Kobi Gillespie, Malik Dia and Cade Tyson to high-major programs.
However, this year, they only lost one transfer to the portal, which has benefited the team’s continuity.
“It feels so much better because you don’t have to start over,” head coach Casey Alexander said. “You know who you’re losing as a senior, but you don’t know who’s going to transfer out. In this case, it was just Isaiah (Walker), so it gave us a better starting point this summer with our current roster.”
Bradley will take time to blossom
Bradley lost nearly 70% of its scoring to graduation or the transfer portal and fielded a much younger team this season. The Braves have eight freshmen and sophomores and had to replace much of their coaching staff.
Head coach Brian Wardle is preaching process and patience.
“It’s been a teaching, teaching, teaching, patience, patience with a deadline type of idea all offseason,” Wardle said. “I do have a good group of returners that have won us games, but just haven’t been starters or played starter minutes yet. I’m excited to see where we go, but I do think it’s a one day, one week at a time with this team. I think we’ll get better as the season goes on.”
Drake will be physical, play fast and move the ball
After being one of the slowest teams in college basketball last season, Drake will look to maintain physicality while getting out in transition and moving the ball frequently.
First-year head coach Eric Henderson looks to continue a similar play style that led South Dakota State to two NCAA Tournament appearances in the last four seasons.
“We’ve always had very good passing teams, and I think this team can be that way,” Henderson said. “When I looked at this group that we put together, I wanted to make sure that we got older guys that had some experience, and we could play super, super, physical. My goal is to be one of the best defensive teams in our league.”
Evansville is enormous
A significant focus of Evansville’s offseason was adding size, and they’re entering the year with a roster in which every player is 6 feet 3 inches or above.
In the era of position-less basketball, the Purple Aces are focused on depth, length and versatility, which could improve their already excellent defense.
“We’ve locked in on positional size,” head coach David Ragland said. “We wanted to make sure we have really good size at each position. Basketball is position-less and that’s how we coach it and that’s how we want to play. We have guys who we think can defend multiple positions offensively.”
UIC’s homecoming
UIC head coach Rob Ehsan helped bring the Flames back to prominence in the Valley last season. For the first time since 2020, they won 15 or more games.
Ehsan looks to build on the success in his second year, and this time it could mean a bit more.
“Last year, I was begging kids to come back home when I first got here and nobody wanted to,” Ehsan said. “We had the success in Year 1, we kinda made UIC basketball relevant, and what it’s led to is Lowery, Silverstein, Hammons — all these guys wanting to come back and represent Chicago. All of them are gonna be key factors.”
Illinois State values tradition over transactions
The Redbirds returned 73% of their roster from last season’s fifth-place finish, including projected first-team all-conference players Johnny Kinziger and Chase Walker.
In college basketball’s current landscape, it’s extremely hard to retain players at that level, but head coach Ryan Pedon is resisting what’s becoming the norm.
“I will never give in to anything but my convictions,” Pedon said. “I will never give in to becoming just a pawn to transactional culture. I’m going to fight hard to keep this a developmental program.”
Indiana State is international
Indiana State took a step back after its NIT run in 2024 but used the transfer portal to reload this offseason, and head coach Matthew Graves stepped outside the U.S. to do so.
The Sycamores boast six international players with roots from Canada to Germany.
“The basketball IQ, the fun we have in practice with these guys, and the way they value winning has made it so much fun to coach these guys and see their personalities bleed out over into our American players,” Graves said.
Murray State will be Marksmen
Head Coach Ryan Miller looks to turn the ship around at Murray State by bringing some of the concepts and play styles he used as an assistant coach at Creighton.
The Racers plan to run a lot of pick-and-roll and get up a ton of 3s.
“We are going to take advantage of analytics,” Miller said. “We are gonna be similar to Creighton, where we’re going to let it fly a little bit. We’re going to take some deep threes. We’re going to play on pick and roll a lot.”
Northern Iowa’s fresh front court
The Panthers lost first-team all-conference forward Tytan Anderson and center Jacob Hutson to graduation, but reinforcements are on the way.
The Panthers will rely on sophomores Will Hornseth, Marino Dubravic and graduate student Tristan Smith to replace some of the production and impact that Anderson and Hutson provided last year.
“He’s one of those guys in our league that when you see him as a freshman, you think, ‘Wow, he’s going to be pretty good someday,” head coach Ben Jacobson said about Hornseth. “For me and for us, that someday is right now.”
Southern Illinois is setting the culture
When head coach Scott Nagy took over at Southern Illinois, he had to build not only a roster but also an entirely new coaching staff.
In his first year, the Salukis struggled to tally wins and establish a culture. This season, with a good group of returners and veteran transfers, their culture and consistency are much stronger than last year.
“We just have a lot more people that know what we should be doing and know what’s important,” Nagy said. “Not that we had bad kids last year, but we didn’t have what we would call a team full of Salukis. We really feel like we’ve done a much better job this year of not only collecting talent, but guys who we feel like are going to be Salukis.”
Valparaiso adds size and experience
The Beacons were last season’s Cinderella team. They shocked the entire conference on their way to an appearance in the MVC Tournament semifinals.
After the season, they lost 11 players who helped them reach that precipice, including star guard All Wright and standout forward Cooper Schweiger.
Head coach Roger Powell Jr. has had to build from the ground up and did it by adding size and experience in the transfer portal.
“We got bigger at pretty much every position,” Powell said. “We had to get bigger at the wing. We had to get bigger inside. We had to add some experience. We were very fortunate that two of our transfers started at the Division I level. Now we have some experienced transfers that will come in and help us.”
