Opponent Preview: Mississippi Valley State
A new era of Blazer basketball begins today.
At the dawn of every college basketball season, the Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils begin a brutal, cross-country road trip that takes them into the lairs of power conference foes and elite mid-majors alike.
Without fail, their non-conference strength of schedule ranks among the country’s top ten. The constants in these games: MVSU loses, and MVSU makes money. At one of the poorest athletic departments in the nation, this buy-game gauntlet keeps the lights on.
To quote a piece by The Athletic’s Sam Blum:
“[The Delta Devils] are the Washington Generals of college basketball, paid to lose spectacularly every time they take the court.”
MVSU hasn’t won a non-conference game on the road since November 22nd, 2006, a streak that doesn’t seem likely to end in 2025 — the Delta Devils’ schedule includes over 8,800 miles of travel and features matchups against Florida State, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Kansas State, among others.
Tonight, MVSU’s annual ritual begins as it travels to Bartow Arena for the christening of a new era in UAB basketball’s storied history. Nine times have the Delta Devils played against the Blazers; nine times have they lost by double-digits, including a 100-58 demolition spearheaded by Josh LeBlanc (!) in 2021.
Last season, MVSU went 3-28 and 1-17 in the SWAC, its only Division I win coming against Arkansas Pine Bluff, which KenPom pegged as America’s second-worst team. The Delta Devils, as you may have guessed, were KenPom’s worst team, posting an adjusted efficiency margin of -42.12 compared to UABP’s -25.94.
Only once in KenPom’s 28-year history — 2013 — has the gap between a season’s worst and second-worst teams been larger.
That year’s 0-28 Grambling State squad is the only team of the KenPom era to achieve a lower AdjEM (-46.26) than the 2024-2025 Delta Devils. Put simply: last year, MVSU fielded the second-worst team Division I basketball has seen since 1996-1997.
MVSU head coach George Ivory has lived this life for a long time. He starred for the Delta Devils as a player in the 80s, began his coaching career on the staff of the Jackson State women’s team in 1991, and returned to his alma mater as an assistant in 2002.
From there, Ivory bounced from SWAC sideline to SWAC sideline until he landed a job as the head coach at UAPB in 2008; he remained with the Golden Lions for 13 years. Ivory resigned after the 2021 campaign and took the reins of MVSU’s program the following spring. He’s about to enter his 38th year in the SWAC.
It remains to be seen whether Ivory can overcome immense budgetary restraints and lead the Delta Devils to their first March Madness berth since 2012. He’d probably settle for a winning record in SWAC play, something else MVSU hasn’t accomplished since 2012. In all likelihood, he’d be satisfied with six SWAC wins, a milestone MVSU hasn’t reached since 2017.
Our only concern, however, is what Ivory’s bunch will accomplish tonight. What should UAB expect to see from its first opponent of the post-Lendeborg era?
An Anemic Offense
MVSU has long struggled to shoot, but last season was the first time under Ivory the Delta Devils finished with the lowest effective field goal percentage (42.1%) in the country. They were incapable of making twos, threes, or free throws. Ugly.
Ivory’s squad also turned it over on nearly 25% of its possessions, and the Delta Devils’ strengths during the first two seasons of the coach’s tenure — offensive rebounding and foul-baiting — dissipated. MVSU sported a team-wide three-point percentage of 28.8%; as such, it attempted triples at one of the 20 lowest rates in the country. The Delta Devils also rarely got out in transition, so its offense was predicated on two-point attempts in the half-court.
The Delta Devils’ clunky roster construction — multiple guards that lived inside the arc, a non-shooting center in Alvin Stredic that posted up with great frequency — crowded the floor and made generating spacing and open shots difficult. As a result, many MVSU possessions ended in ISOs that were neither successful nor aesthetically pleasing: the Delta Devils recorded assists on 41.7% of their made field goals, the tenth-lowest rate in Division I.
MVSU’s strong suit, if it existed, was not passing or ballhandling. Save forward Jair Horton, no Delta Devil posted an assist-to-turnover ratio that ranked above the 18th percentile for their position. During MVSU’s 2024 non-conference gauntlet, several opponents found defensive success in being aggressive in the passing lanes and trapping on the baseline and sidelines.
The Delta Devils were also hamstrung by regular unforced turnovers.
As I alluded to earlier, MVSU once combatted its woes from the field by drawing fouls and creating second-chance opportunities; however, free throws and offensive rebounds were nowhere to be found last season. Stredic was the only player that consistently got to the line, but he posted pedestrian OREB numbers, and MVSU’s guards and wings were non-factors on the boards. Horton also provided little help. The Delta Devils boasted four players above 6’8”, but one — Walter Hamilton — was lost for the season after 11 games, and the others were too raw to see consistent playing time.
Thus, MVSU was out-offensive rebounded in all of its Division I games but three. The Delta Devils bulked up their frontcourt over the offseason, adding a slew of junior college bodies in the hopes that one of them will stick. We’ll see!
MVSU has made over nearly its entire roster, and some of the problems that plagued it in 2024-2025 could be slightly alleviated: last season, newcomers Michael James and Delkedric Holmes were both roughly 35% three-point shooters at the JUCO level.
Nevertheless, KenPom projects this unit, which features ten JUCO transfers, to once again be the nation’s worst. Even if MVSU becomes marginally more capable from the field, several structural problems remain in place. Sisk, the returning team leader in turnover rate (a whopping 34.1%), now becomes the presumed starting point guard. Uh oh!
UAB, which has been one of the best offensive rebounding programs in the country during Andy Kennedy’s tenure, is also insulated from losing games like this even if MVSU does go ballistic from beyond the arc. The Blazers are sans Lendeborg, yes, but KyeRon Lindsay-Martin should ensure UAB generates far more second-chance opportunities than do the Delta Devils.
A Porous Defense
While MVSU’s offense was just the 33rd-worst of the KenPom era, its defense was the second-worst of the KenPom era, beating out only 2018 USC Upstate. A telling statistic: the Delta Devils’ average defensive possession length of 16.4 seconds, the eighth-lowest mark in the country. This wasn’t a purposeful attempt to push the pace — remember, Ivory’s squad didn’t care to get out in transition — but rather a number that betrays the fact MVSU was simply unable to stop opposing offenses from doing as they pleased. The Delta Devils’ foes used an average of 16.4 seconds per possession because, more often than not, that’s all the time they needed to find a good look.
Whether it be in transition — which MVSU faced at a 98th percentile rate due to its tendency to miss shots and commit turnovers on the offensive end — or in the halfcourt, it didn’t take long for the Delta Devils’ opponents to put the ball in the basket.
Ivory’s squad couldn’t stop opponents from any region of the court, allowing them to hit threes, midrange jumpers, and shots at the rim — especially shots at the rim — at clips well above the DI average.
The point of defense is to make your opponents take bad shots, but MVSU had essentially no control over shot selection, its defense serving as a funnel to the paint. 37.4% of its opponents’ field goal attempts came at the rim (a really bad number), and they converted those attempts at a 68.4% rate (an even worse number). Just 9.4% of opposing shot attempts came from the midrange.
On the occasions the Delta Devils forced a miss, they gave up offensive rebounds 38% of the time; they also allowed .384 free throws per opposing field goal attempt, ranking 305th in the country in that category.
It was one of the worst units of all time, and it’s unlikely to get much better: KenPom again pegs the Delta Devils as the nation’s weakest defensive team by nearly three points per 100 possessions.
Outlook
Win by 40, get ready for NC State on Friday.
Prediction: UAB 82, MVSU 51