The Racers finally went down to defeat tonight, losing 72-68 at home to Tennessee State. Tenn St. is the second place team in the Ohio Valley Conference this year and is playing some decent ball right now, winning 6 in a row and 8 of their last 9. The reason we bring this up is, the talking heads at ESPN will SURELY get all kinds of mileage out of this loss, discussing whether the Racers deserve an at-large bid now because they lost a game to an OVC team. You can just hear idiots like Skip Bayless and Digger Phelps making the arguments now. "Well if Texas played that schedule, they'd be undefeated right now too!". It's pathetic, but it is what they do.
The fact is, Murray State gets every single team in the Valley's best shot every single time they take the floor. Someone was bound to get them and it just happened to be the second best team in the conference. It's not a "bad loss" by a long shot, they were bound to lose eventually. Now, assuredly they will drop in the polls because god forbid a mid-major lose a conference game to the next best team in the conference, but the real question is, how far will they drop? Probably upper teen's to low 20's. Makes sense right? I mean after all, they are only 23-1 now.
They should still absolutely be guaranteed a at-large birth despite the opinions of BCS talking head morons on ESPN. I wouldn't suggest them losing to many more, but that game against St. Mary's will be a tough one as the Gaels are a top 15 team as well. But that game isn't the important one. They SHOULD be able to lose that game and be fine for an at-large, the game the Racers really need to worry about is the rematch with Tenn. St. on the road in the Tigers home gym. They can't get swept by a decent but not great OVC team.
Regardless, one freaking loss is meaningless to their at-large chances despite what the morons at ESPN will undoubtedly say. The Racers are still an absolute lock as of this moment, at least according to us here at TourneyBubble. We can't wait to watch their matchup with St. Mary's on Feb. 18th, even though the luster of the "undefeated season" has now left the matchup, making it less exciting to ESPN because they can't tout that angle all show long, relentlessly beating it into the ground over the course of the game because their crack staff did very little research into a mid-major like Murray State and thus giving them nothing to talk about all game long.
Finally, as a fun little game, if you do watch the Murray State-St. Mary's game on ESPN, count the number of times they say the word undefeated. I guarantee you, it will be at least 30, probably closer to 50. The Ocho everyone!
