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The University of Evansville men's basketball team (10-3, 2-1) hasn't lost a home game all season, and Missouri State (7-7, 0-3) has lost four in a row. So Wednesday's 7:05 game at Roberts Stadium should be easy, right? Probably not. The Bears have been without leading scorer Chris Cooks the last four games after he suffered a concussion Dec. 22 against Middle Tennessee. Doctors have cleared the senior forward to play, and that’s good news for MSU. The Bears are 7-3 with him, including a win over Arkansas.

•Evansville Bosse graduate Cardell McFarland is a freshman at Missouri State, and has started in 12 of the 14 games.

•UE will try to extend its homecourt winning streak to 10 on Wednesday. The last time the Purple Aces started a season with 10 straight wins at Roberts was 1999-2000.

•At 10-3, the Aces are off to their best start since the 1999-00 squad was 13-3.

•It only took the Aces until January 4 to surpass last season’s win total of nine. One more conference win will equal last season’s MVC total, when the Aces finished 3-15 in the Missouri Valley in Marty Simmons’ first year as coach.

•Despite last week’s loss at Illinois State, the Aces are still first among MVC teams in the Rating Percentage Index (RPI), used by the NCAA since 1981 to aid in selecting at-large teams and the seeding of all teams for the NCAA basketball tournament. Here’s where the 10 MVC schools rank in the RPI this week: 23. Evansville; 36. Illinois State; 61. Creighton; 63. Bradley; 78. Drake; 130. Missouri State; 185. Northern Iowa; 197. Southern Illinois; 221. Wichita State; 252. Indiana State.

•Shy Ely's 24 points Sunday at Indiana State moved him past former teammate Kyle Anslinger and into a tie with another former teammate, Bradley Strickland, for 35th place on Evansville's career scoring list with 1,068 career points. Ely is the MVC scoring leader at 17.8 points per game.

•Nate Garner broke his career scoring high for the second time this season when he scored 21 against Indiana State Sunday. Sixteen came in the second half, when the Aces rallied from a 10-point halftime deficit to outscore the Sycamores 44-28 and end a 16-game road losing streak against MVC teams.

For a complete look at the game notes, click on the Mo. State Game Notes link on the men's basketball page here at GoPurpleAces.com.