Zero interest in this game until news just came down that five Missouri State guys are out for whatever reason, including leading scorer Alston Mason and one of his backcourt co-starters. Maybe they are on the Eras tour ... tying to think about how much someone would have to pay me to even think about doing that. Bidding starts at $5 million.

The Purple Aces (6-0) have exceeded last year's win total of five with a high-powered 86 ppg offense fueled by a variety of disparate parts assembled by second-year HC David Ragland, who uncovered many stones in the portal to go along with a handful of holdovers who have quickly meshed. One of those new adds, bombardier G Ben Humrichous from NAIA Huntington, is scoring at a 19 ppg clip and hitting 62% of his shots, including nearly 50% beyond the arc. Meanwhile vet Mizzou State is rolling with five straight wins and features four DD scorers led by retrunee G Alston Mason (16 ppg), the path of least resistance tonight in Springfield might be on the "over" side. Play Evansville-Missouri State "Over"

Evansville has won just 29 games over the past four years but they started this season 6-0. There is a good reason, one is they returned four starters, two is they played an extremly easy schedule. SOS of 346 out of 363. Missouri State is 5-0 straight up and 4-1 against the spread in their last five games with a SOS of #240. Missouri State won both games last year, winning by 23 at home. My model has the Missouri State Bears by 16.5 points.