St. Louis, MO- Whoever said that March is the best sports month of the year because of the upsets very clearly wasn’t talking about the 2022 Missouri Valley Mens’ Basketball Conference Tournament.

Going into the final game of the second round on Friday night from the Enterprise Center, not a single lower-seeded team had won a game in the tournament. 

As time would tell, third-seeded Drake’s matchup with sixth-seeded Southern Illinois would not be the first game to break the trend. The higher-ranked Bulldogs handled the Salukis by a final score of 65-52.

Senior forward ShanQuan Hemphill led the charge for Drake with 19 points and 10 boards despite getting into foul trouble late. Two other Bulldogs finished with double digit points, freshman Tucker DeVries and senior Roman Penn who had 13 apiece. 

Southern Illinois’ junior forward Marcus Domask had 18 points on 54% shooting, but the rest of the team shot 36% from the floor and the Salukis couldn’t hang around long enough to make it close in the end.

Each of the top four seeds remain alive in the conference tournament. Drake will take on second-seeded Missouri State in the late slate Saturday afternoon. That game will begin immediately following the conclusion of top-seeded Northern Iowa and fourth-seeded Loyola Chicago, which tips off at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, March 5. 

The winners of each respective game will face each other in the conference championship game Sunday afternoon, and the winner will receive the conference’s only automatic bid to this year’s NCAA Mens’ Basketball Championship.