Day Two Preview of The Basketball Tournament's West Virginia Region
The first day of the West Virginia region was a fun one with two games coming down to the wire. Now that day one is over, it is time to look at the matchups that are happening on Tuesday.
The first matchup will feature The Bucketneers (Eastern Tennessee State Alumni) vs. War Ready (Auburn Alumni). The Bucketneers defeated Fully Loaded on Sunday, 83-73 after having a shaky first half, trailing for most of the first two frames. War Ready eked out a 70-67 win against WoCo Showtime, improving on their poor first-round performance against the Bucketneers last year. Although the Bucketneers won their matchup last year by 27 points, this War Ready team has vastly improved, playing a high level of team basketball and shooting the ball at a higher rate. The Bucketneers will have to get off to a faster start than they did Sunday in order to win the game. War Ready will need to take care of the ball and get defensive rebounds as the Bucketneers tend to get many second chances on the offensive end.
The second matchup Tuesday is a rivalry renewed as Best Virginia (West Virginia Alumni) takes on Herd That (Marshall Alumni). Herd That defeated the Founding Fathers (James Madison Alumni) 77-71 on Sunday behind 14 points and nine rebounds from James Kelley and six assists from Jon Elmore. Best Virginia handily defeated Virginia Dream 75-45, pulling away by a large margin in the second half. In a much-anticipated Tournament matchup, Best Virginia and Herd That will finally face off. WVU leads the all-time series 34-11, with WVU winning the last 11 games. Best Virginia will have to counter the strong in-and-out game of Herd That by locking down the paint and making sure impact players such as Jone Elmore cannot get easy looks.
Tickets are unfortunately sold out for Tuesday's games. You can look for resale tickets at ticketmaster.com.
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