Evansville Purple Aces vs. Valparaiso Beacons Prediction & Game Preview - 2/21/2022

Time: 8 p.m. ET

Venue: Athletics-Recreation Center, Valparaiso, IN

Where to watch: ESPN+

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Evansville: 6-20 (2-13 MVC)

Valparaiso: 12-15 (5-10 MVC)

There is nothing I like more in this world than watching two bad teams from a mid major conference go at it near the end of the regular season.

In particular, the Evansville purple aces are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to very bad teams. Evansville has played a grand total of 26 games and has only won six of them. You can not tell me that you are not excited for such an atrocious showing between teams that we will not be seeing play meaningful basketball in the next couple of weeks.

Evansville has lost four straight games and is coming off a 16 point loss to of course their opponent for this week the Valparaiso beacons. As in all around horrible showing for Evansville in this game on Saturday. We're talking about Evansville shooting 42% from the field, going six of 24 from 3 point range, and only going to the free throw line 11 times.

Line that up with what Valparaiso did by shooting an astonishing 60% from the floor and only taking 11/3 pointers, but making five of them. Clearly we know where the town discrepancy lies and clearly we will never truly understand why team are as bad as they appear off paper.

There really is no hope for Evansville this year, or probably even next year. This is a team that averages less than 60 points scored per game while giving up almost 70 themselves. Not to mention they are also shooting less than 40% from the floor and are not registering enough turnovers, and also playing pitiful offense to where they are turning the ball over at an alarming rate.

If you have some sort of hope in your pinky finger that Evansville is going to even when one game down the stretch I might have an igloo to sell you.

Now let's talk about Valparaiso, a team that's not any better than their opponent for these last couple of days.

The Beacons ended a three-game losing streak with their win over Evansville on Saturday, winning their 12th game of the season and 5th in conference play. Evansville would only wish to hope that they could get to that kind of marks which they still can should they win their final few games of the regular season and whatever seating they get in the conference tournament, but I'm not going to hold my breath and say that such nothing is going to happen anytime soon.

As we mentioned before Valparaiso shot 60% from the floor, led by a game-high 21 points from Kobe King. What a name end if you are going to name your kid after Kobe you better hope he can score some points. On this night king did.

It would be one thing if we were going into this game thinking that Valparaiso would be in trouble based on the home and away factors between these two teams, but given the fact that the beacons just destroyed Evansville the other night in their home turf, it would not shock me in the least to see Valpo make it two in a row against a pitiful team.

If you can get your Kobe guy to make more than nine shots, or in this rate just enough to where you are looking as remotely decent as possible, then this should not be an issue and this should be an easy victory.

The over has cashed in five of Evansville last seven road games, and I would venture to guess that the reason for that is because this team cannot defend on the road and struggles as heavily to defend at home as it would away from it. Valpo has hit the over in their last six overall, and if they hit their shots and make this as easy of a game as possible, there should be no reason why Valpo does not win this game period clearly the better team, and clearly Evansville is just at the bottom of the trash heap and we must accept it for what it is. Valpo by 15

Evansville is 27-61 ATS after a game of nine assists or less.

Evansville is 19-28 ATS after a game with five offensive rebounds or fewer.

Valpo is 30-25 ATS against conference opponents the past three seasons.

Valpo is 17-7 ATS after losing four or five of its last six games.

PG: Shamar Givance

SG: Blaise Beauchamp

SF: Noah Frederking

PF: Evan Kuhlman

C: Preston Phillips

PG: Preston Ruedinger

SG: Eron Gordon 

SF: Kobe King

PF: Kevion Taylor

C: Ben Krikke

Points: Shamar Givance -- 14.1

Rebounds: Jawuan Newton -- 5.7

Assists: Shamar Givance -- 3.7

Points: Ben Krikke -- 14.6

Rebounds: Thomas Kithier -- 6.7

Assists: Trevor Anderson -- 2.4