2011 NCAA Tournament Third Round – Southwest Region
#12 Richmond Spiders vs. #13 Morehead State Eagles, Pepsi Center, Denver, CO
Saturday, March 19, 2011, 5:15 pm Eastern, TV: CBS
Opening Line: Richmond -3
Current Line: Richmond -4
Opening Total: 126
Current Total: 126
Money Line: Richmond -175 / Morehead State +155
The two lowest seeds remaining in the 2011 NCAA tournament will square off on Saturday at Denver’s Pepsi Arena when the 12th-seeded Richmond Spiders (28-7) play the 13th-seeded Morehead State Eagles (25-9) in a Southwest Region third-round game. The Eagles pulled off the biggest upset of the Big Dance when they knocked out #4 Louisville on Thursday 62-61 as 9-point underdogs.
Morehead State has now won 13 of its last 14 games, going 9-5 against the spread over that span. Demonte Harper was the hero in the team’s victory against the Cardinals, hitting the game-winning 3-pointer in the final seconds. That turned out to be Harper’s only made 3-pointer on six attempts, but it did not matter because the Eagles got their biggest win in school history.
The team won despite shooting poorly against Louisville, making just 21 of 57 from the field (36.8 percent). Harper made only 3 of 10 shots overall while the NCAA’s all-time leading rebounder Kenneth Faried converted just 4 of 17 but still grabbed a game-high 17 boards.
Faried figures to be a very difficult player to match up with in the paint for the Spiders, who advanced with a 69-66 win over #5 Vanderbilt in a lesser upset. They closed as 3-point dogs and were a popular bracket pick due in part to past failures for the Commodores in the opening round. Richmond’s victory was its eighth in a row both straight-up and ATS with the UNDER going 6-0-1 in the last seven.
The Spiders have been riding the hot shooting hand of star guard Kevin Anderson during their winning streak, as he has scored 20 points or more six times during that stretch. Anderson scored a game-high 25 against Vandy on 10 of 25 shots from the field, including 4 of 9 from 3-point range. The barely 6-foot senior was not recruited by bigger name schools because of his size, but he has made it his mission to show them what they missed out on in the Big Dance.
“His intelligence on the floor and his ability to make shots is so incredibly impressive,” Richmond head coach Chris Mooney said. “We knew right away we had something very special.”
The number 13 has not been a lucky number when it comes to this #12 vs. #13 matchup over the years, as the higher seed has advanced eight times in nine games. Valparaiso is the only #13 to ever beat a #12, which happened in the 1998 NCAA tournament.
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