Northern Iowa-Wichita State is college basketball’s best 2-horse conference race

Before last Saturday’s showdown between then-No. 12 Wichita State and then-No. 16 Northern Iowa, the Missouri Valley Conference had not been able to claim a game featuring multiple top 25 teams in more than 30 years. It’s a fact that’s a bit difficult to believe considering the league’s reputation for sending multiple squads to the NCAA Tournament with some regularity for seemingly ... well, ever.

The Valley doesn’t have a potential No. 1 seed or a team chasing history the way it did a year ago, but what it does have is the best two-team conference championship race in all of college basketball.

Northern Iowa, now ranked No. 14, has won 10 straight, including last Saturday’s 70-54 throttling of preseason favorite Wichita State. The Panthers own one of the nation’s most under-appreciated stars in Seth Tuttle, and their only two losses remain a 52-49 defeat at Evansville, and a double overtime loss at No. 18 VCU.

The Shockers, they of a 2013 Final Four appearance and a 2014 No. 1 seed, might not be quite as well-rounded as last season’s history-makers, but that doesn’t mean they won’t go further in March. Gregg Marshall’s team still owns a gaudy record (21-3), and one of the five best backcourts in all of college basketball.

Wichita State and Northern Iowa will each enter this weekend at 10-1 in Missouri Valley play, a full three games ahead of third place Illinois State and Indiana State. Both are basically playing for NCAA Tournament seeding now, not at-large consideration, which is always a rarity for so-called mid-majors.

Attempting to improve your situation for the big dance is important, but there’s something else in the back of the collective minds of both teams right now forcing them to maintain focus every time they take the court against inferior foes. You see, the rematch between these two will take place on Feb. 28, the final day of the Valley’s regular season. If each can take care of business in their next six games, we will have 16-1 Wichita State hosting 16-1 Northern Iowa for all the league championship marbles. That would be quite an event.

The Shockers running through the MVC unscathed last season has likely taken away some of the shock value of these two squads being so dominant so far, and that’s a shame. We hear the same clichés every year when great teams from major conferences lose games to not-so-great teams during league play. There’s always the “familiarity” or the “wear and tear” or the “ruggedness” of the conference season to blame. Now I’m not saying these aren’t all completely legitimate justifications for late January/early February upsets, I’m just saying that the same absolution that Duke or Arizona receives in these situations doesn’t seem to be extended to ranked squads from the Valley or the Atlantic 10.

The term “mid-major” still tears through the eardrums of lots of folks in the Midwest, and with good reason. The Missouri Valley has sent teams to the Final Four 17 times, and owns an all-time NCAA Tournament record of 93-100. Since 2006, the league has had four teams advance to at least the Sweet 16, making them the only non-BCS league to send more than two squads to the second weekend over that span.

The Valley has produced some tremendous teams, but the vast majority of those squads have been beaten down at least a little bit by the ... here it comes ... wear and tear that the league presents each and every year.

How consistently tough have things been? Consider the following facts:

--In the three-point era of college basketball (1986-87 season through the present), not one Missouri Valley team had gone through conference play undefeated before Wichita State did the deed last season.

--Over that same time span, all but one of the MVC’s regular season champions have had at least 20 overall wins.

--The average win total for the MVC regular season champion since 1987 is 25.8. Since the 200-01 season, the average win total of the Valley’s regular season champion is 28.5, and no champ has won fewer than 24 games.

--The only regular season champ that didn’t win 20 games was 19-10 Illinois State in 1993, and even then, runner-up Southern Illinois was a sparkling 23-8.

--Despite the strength of the Valley’s champions over the past three decades, just two teams in the last 28 years have finished conference play with fewer than two league losses, and just five have finished with fewer than three.

The Valley is a gauntlet, and Wichita State running through it unscathed a year ago shouldn’t take away from what both the Shockers and Northern Iowa are accomplishing at the moment.