The Missouri Valley Conference has voted to add Valparaiso effective July 1, 2017 according to the Valley’s official twitter feed.
Missouri Valley Conference statement on membership. pic.twitter.com/MNKLOAwwsE
— Missouri Valley (@MVCsports) May 9, 2017
Wichita State announced it would leave for the American Athletic Conference in early April leaving a major hole in the Valley especially for Men’s Basketball.
Valparaiso has been selected as that replacement. It is located in Valparaiso, Indiana and is a private university with 4,500 students. The basketball tradition is strong for the Crusaders. They have averaged an RPI of 97.5 over the last eight years in men’s basketball. This will be the second Horizon League team that the Valley has added after replacing Creighton with Loyola (Chicago) in 2014.
Several other candidates including Murray State, Nebraska-Omaha and Wisconsin-Milwaukee were considered.
Chad Plein covered them in detail. You can read that article by click here.
No further details are available at this time as negotiations between the Valley and Valparaiso are still on-going.
