March 20, 2008. It’s a date that many Mississippi Valley State basketball fans will look to as the moment that possibly changed the Delta Devils men’s basketball program for years to come. MVSU walked off the court having claimed the lowest point total in NCAA tournament history in a 70-29 loss at the hands of the UCLA Bruins.
The Delta Devils also set marks for the tournament’s all-time worst single-game shooting percentage (19.7). The comments of players and coaches after the game were dejected, to say the least.
“The defensive pressure wasn’t that bad,” guard Stanford Speech said. “It was the banging and bumping around. We don’t see that in our conference. Those guys are great. They know how to play. If we’d have played our best game, we’d still have lost by 10 or 15.”
In the eyes of many basketball fans around the nation, they were the epitome of the term “loser.” But no one could have guessed that with just weeks remaining in the SWAC regular season, the loss would have been the first of many for the Delta Devils program.
Following the loss, it take nearly ten months before the Delta Devils would see their next victory. A murderous slate of out-of-conference games contributed to the string of defeats, but with most fundraising tours, the ulterior motive was that MVSU would be better prepared for conference play, and ready to contend for a second-straight SWAC basketball championship.
Instead, the Delta Devils have won only three games on the year, all at home in Itta Bena. You look at the scoring and senior leadership that left with then-senior guard Standford Speech, but no team should should have such a contrasting drop-off. This same Mississippi Valley State program less than one season ago rode a nine-game winning streak into the NCAA national tournament. This season, they have lost no fewer than three games consecutively.
Could UCLA be to blame for this sudden drop-off into fultility? Were the Bruins the catalyst for such a remarkable reduction in talent and drive? No one could ever know the answer for sure, but it is apparent that something has forced the devil out of the Delta Devils program.
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[...] State and Hampton, still yields wide margins of defeats that tip the scales of embarrassment. UCLA’s beat down of Mississippi Valley State in the NCAA national tournament is a prime example of how disparate the gap [...]