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Ohio Valley Conference Tournament Odds, Schedule & Predictions

Eric Rosales

by Eric Rosales in College Basketball

Updated Feb 28, 2023 · 12:00 PM PST

Mark Freeman at free throw line
Nov 15, 2022; Morgantown, West Virginia, USA; Morehead State Eagles guard Mark Freeman (0) pauses before a foul shot during the first half against the West Virginia Mountaineers at WVU Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Ben Queen-USA TODAY Sports
  • The Ohio Valley Tournament will be held from Wednesday, March 1 to Saturday, March
  • Morehead State won the regular season league title outright for the first time since 1984
  • See the 2023 Ohio Valley Conference Tournament odds, seeds, bracket, and full tournament preview below

Morehead State might be the betting favorite, but the 2023 Ohio Valley Conference Tournament — with the winner locking up the lone NCAA Tournament berth that comes along with with it — appears to be (mostly) anyone’s game.

The 8-team tournament is a quickie, kicking off on Wednesday, March 1 with the tournament wrapping up on Saturday, March 4. All games will be played at the Ford Center in Evansville, Indiana.

Seven teams finished with at least 15 wins on the year, and seven schools went 9-9 or better in conference play.

As this winner will likely have the longest odds in the NCAA Tournament odds, this might be your last best chance to pick an OVC team to win.

2023 Ohio Valley Conference Tournament Odds

Team Seed Odds
Morehead State Eagles 1 +140
Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles 2 +360
UT Martin Skyhawks 3 +650
Tennessee State Tigers 4 +750
SIU Edwardsville Cougars 6 +900
Southeast Missouri State Redhawks 5 +1100
Southern Indiana Screaming Eagles 7 +1300
Lindenwood Lions 8 +10000

The top-seeded Morehead State Eagles are the betting favorite, with +140 odds to take the title, an implied probably of 41.67%.

Value dots the board, with UT Martin (+650), Tennessee State (+750) and SIU Edwardsville (+900) tied for the second-most wins of any team in the Ohio Valley with 18.

The Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles have the second-best odds to win it all (+360), and they finished a game under .500 overall, but did have the second best conference mark at 11-7.

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Odds as of Feb 28 at DraftKings

Ohio Valley Tournament Schedule

Morehead State and Tennessee Tech have earned byes directly to the tournament final four.

The bottom-4 seeds will kick things off on March 1, with No. 8 Lindenwood battling  No. 5 Southeast Missouri State at 6:30pm ET, followed by No. 7 Southern Indiana vs No. 6 SIU Edwardsville at 9pm ET.

The winners of those will advance to the quarters with the Game 1 winner battling 4th-ranked Tennessee State at 6:30pm ET, and the Game 2 winner getting a crack at UT Martin. Those four games will all be available on ESPN+.

The semifinals will feature the two surviving teams from the first two days facing the Eagles and Golden Eagles. Those games will be live on ESPN U.

The Tournament final wraps up Saturday night at 7pm ET, in a game you can see live on ESPN2.

The only team guaranteed not to dance are the Lindenwood Lions, the last seed that snuck into the tourney, ahead of DNQ’s Little Rock Trojans and Eastern Illinois Panthers.

As this is the Lions’ first run in Division I, they can compete for conference titles, but aren’t tourney eligible until 2026-27.

Teams to Look Out For in OVC Tournament

No team enters the tournament hotter than top-seeded Morehead State, as the Eagles won five straight to close out the season, including taking 11 of their last 12. They topped 20 wins for the third straight year, claiming their first regular season crown since the mid-80s.

They’re led by the inside-outside tandem of Mark Freeman and Alex Gross. Freemen led the team in scoring at 14.8 points per game, 3.8 assists on 38.6% shooting from three-point range. Gross put up 12.1 points and 7.5 rebounds on 57.5% shooting from the field.

If meaningful, successful action leading up to the tournament is a good sign, then the Golden Eagles might be worth looking out for. A pair of back-to-back road wins over Southern Indiana and Eastern Illinois locked them into the 2-seed, and a first-ever bye to the semifinals.

Going by the best player in the field theory? Then you’d probably be keying in on Tennessee State Tigers dynamo guard Jr Clay. He averaged 18.8 points and 5.6 assists, both tops in the OVC, as well as leading the conference in minutes played.

Just three wins off Morehead State, the SIU Edwardsville Cougars limp into the tournament. A team that was once 17-9, they dropped four of their last five. Ray’Sean Taylor leads a group of four Cougars averaging better than 10 points per game.

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2023 Ohio Valley Tournament Prediction

The OVC has undergone some turnover, with Murray State, Belmont and Austin Peay all exiting stage left, and Little Rock, Lindenwood and Southern Indiana taking their place. KenPom ranks them their fourth-weakest conference across the 32-conference Division I landscape.

It’s no surprise that in SBD’s projected March Madness bracket, Morehead State is the predicted winner of the tournament, which will only lead to a berth in the first four, a play-in to lock in a 16 seed.

If there’s a chance to break off the chalk, it’s the OVC, with a crush of evenly-matched teams. Six of the eight teams were separated by just two games in the final standings. Give us the conference’s best player in Jr Clay, who could get hot and shoot his team into the Big Dance.

Pick: Tennessee State Tigers (+750)

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