MAC Title Game Recap: Ohio Wins in OT

Brendan Bowers — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:03:11 -0800

hese championship weeks of college basketball teach us yearly that anything is possible, but more than that, they illustrate the fact that those things that do happen can happen fast. In the five second blur that was OU point guard DJ Cooper racing down the court like Tyus Edney to beat the halftime buzzer, is as quickly as his ninth seeded Bobcat team would go to the locker room leading 36-34. And as rapidly as it later looked the regulation clock would tick away on Akron’s chances at their second MAC title in as many years, is as fast as big shot maker Steve McNees would then tie things up at 68 to send it to overtime.

In overtime, with an eternity to play, you couldn’t help but remember how far it seemed the Ohio University Bobcats were from a championship caliber team a week ago. Not only was their regular season win total not worthy of a first round bye, as the nine-seed, they were forced to play their opening round of the tournament at Ball State. They won their first game in OT, man-handled the league champs (Kent) in their next one, beat their arch-rivals (Miami) in the third, and then the defending tourney champs in overtime tonight. And in four short games, what was once maybe a year away for this young club with only one senior, was now only a week. They’re going to the Big Dance right now, simply because they didn’t want to wait any longer for an invitation.

OU Coach John Groce on the win:

I’m really proud of our guys, and especially proud of the way we finished. When they hit that shot to send it to overtime, I told our guys just don’t blink, stay poised, and they did that. It’s a heckofa win for our guys, and a great win for our University.”

It was a heckofa game to be seated courtside for as well. As a basketball fan, there’s no more than could’ve been asked of a conference championship game on any level. This one went back and forth all night long, and you’re not going to find a group of kids tougher than the ones that battled this one out tonight. The storylines are endless, but we’ll start with OU’s freshman point guard from Chicago.

DJ Cooper was the MAC’s Freshman of the Year coming into this tournament, but in the two games leading up to the Conference Finals he scored less than 10 points. He had averaged 13.5 per game during the regular season, and the reports were that he was banged up. It showed. But it didn’t show tonight. While the talk coming into the Finals was the emergence of DeVaughn Washington, DJ Cooper would be the Bobcat to show up tonight alongside teammate Armon Bassett, and he picked the right time to do so. He finished with 23 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists, and while those numbers certainly dwarfed his production prior to tonight, his play came as no surprise to his teammate - and tournament MVP - Armon Bassett:

“He’s [Cooper] a special player, and other than John Wall there’s no other freshman point guard in the country putting up the numbers that he’s putting up. He’s been banged up, but I knew he’d show up tonight, and he did, right on time.”

Bassett himself showed up again tonight as he added a 25-point performance to the total of 91 points he’d already scored coming into the game which was good enough to break Earl Boykins’ previous tournament scoring total of 89. The new record Bassett set – 116 total points – is going to stand for a long time. But not nearly as long as it seems it might take for him to put down the MAC Championship Trophy he took the podium with after the game. When asked when he thinks he’ll set the hardware down, he indicated it might be a while.

More from Bassett:

“I don’t know, I guess when Coach takes it from me. I got a pretty firm grip on it.”

On the flip side, that firm grip is the same one the Akron Zips now have on dealing with a defeat in a game that slipped from their grasp as surely as the ball seemed to slide off the iron all night long. Akron out-shot OU 78 to 60, but they did so at a clip of 36% from the field by game’s end. To complicate matters, they shot it even worse from three point range finishing there at 27%. The Bobcats shot 47% from the field, and it proved to be as simple as that in deciding this one. But that’s not to say Akron was without their moments.

Junior guard Steve McNees, who sent their quarterfinal game into double OT with a three pointer at the buzzer of the first OT on Thursday, hit another one on Saturday with 6 seconds to go while staring defeat directly in the face down three. He’d hit another one in OT, but for the game, he only connected on 4 of 13 to finish with 12. Chris McKnight and Jimmy Conyers finished with 18 and 19 points respectively, but they too combined to shoot only 13 of 29 from the field. They both hit the glass with a vengeance though, grabbing 22 rebounds between them, and it was that tenacity on the boards which led OU Coach John Groce to opt to not foul McNees in the waning seconds of regulation up three.

OU Coach John Groce on that decision, and his exchange with McNees after the game:

“I have a lot of respect for Steve, I think he plays hard, I think he plays to win and he made a really big shot there. I probably should have fouled him, but I just didn’t want to put them on the line. They’re a good rebounding team, and McKnight especially is capable of coming up with a rebound, so I thought I’d roll the dice, and McNees hit a big shot. I think he’s a really tough kid, and I think he’s a smart basketball player, and I really enjoyed watching him on film, and that was basically the exchange I had with him after the game.”

Akron’s seniors – McKnight and Conyers – closed out their careers as the only class in MAC history to make it to the championship game in each of their four years. The loss will be tough, but the Zips program revitalized under Coach Keith Dambrot will be around for a while. He’s built something that will last in Akron, and something that hadn’t been there before his arrival. But it will take him and his guys sometime to move past this one.

Akron Coach Keith Dambrot after the game:

“We just had some things not go our way and we didn’t shoot the ball really well. We battled though, and I was really proud of that. We went after the offensive rebounds all night, and we took good shots, we just didn’t make them. Take no credit away from OU though because they’re a good team, and I’m really happy for them in what they’ve done. They’ve got some good players, and those are two good guards. Our effort was great, we just didn’t have it tonight.”

OU did have it tonight though, and as quickly as they got here, is as quickly as they’ll move to the NCAA tournament. They only thing they’ll wait for now is the announcement of their opponent on selection Sunday.

All Tournament Team:

My vote for All Tournament team, as submitted, was as follows…

David Kool (Western Michigan)

Carlos Medlock (Eastern Michigan)

Armon Bassett (Ohio University)

Chris McKnight (Akron)

Steve McNees (Akron)

My Tournament MVP: Armon Bassett

When the Votes were tallied, the official tournament team was as follows:

David Kool (Western Michigan)

Carlos Medlock (Eastern Michigan)

Armon Bassett (Ohio University)

Chris McKnight (Akron)

Jimmy Conyers (Akron)

The MAC Tournament MVP: Armon Bassett

Ohio U on your bracket sheet:

Ohio University’s not going to the sweet sixteen this year, but they are a team that is absolutely capable of winning a game. Don’t let their record and seed fool you when the brackets come out. In the right match-up – meaning one where they have an edge at the guard position – they could pull a first round upset. Armon Bassett started his career at Indiana, and played well as a freshman, and he’s playing the best basketball of his life right now as a junior. He can get points on anybody, and DJ Cooper is a deceptively long little point guard that can fly. Guard play wins games in the NCAA tournament, and OU’s strength is its two outstanding guards. Keep an eye out for the Bobcats in round one.

MAC Quaterfinals Recap: Favorites Fall & Double-OT

Brendan Bowers — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:15:19 -0800

Brendan Bowers will be in Cleveland all week covering the MAC Tournament for CollegeHoops.net.

Upset of the Day: Ohio Bobcats beat Kent State 81 – 64

In my preview I predicted that regular season champion Kent State would ‘have no trouble with this Bobcat group’ in their opening round match-up. No sooner did I post that then did a friend of mine - an OU grad - text me the following: ‘Bowers, the odds of Kent beating OU by more than 5 are slim. Honestly, the Bobcats are very dangerous and I think they will win.’ Turns out, Kent did have a lot of trouble with this Bobcat group, and OU did win. The results of which were my feasting on crow throughout his numerous text messages during the latter stages of the game. And by a lot of trouble, I mean Kent got steam-rolled.

Armon Bassett dominated the game by way of a stat line that read 38 points and 5 rebounds as he led his OU squad to the improbable upset over the top-seeded team in the tournament – their first win in three tries against Kent this season. He had help too. Teammate DeVaughn Washington came off the bench to capitalize on the space being created by the attention paid to Bassett on the offensive end, and he went 8 for 8 from the field on his way to 19 points and 8 rebounds. With 5:26 left in the first half he caught a pass from Bassett and dunked it home to give OU a commanding 32-15 lead. From there - despite a 22-9 run by the Flashes to open the second half that cut the lead to 3 (49-46) – the Bobcats would play Kent even, and win the game by that same 17-point margin (81-64).

Kent State’s Chris Singletary led the Golden Flashes with 19 points, but struggled from the free throw line, and ended up fouling out with 2:52 left in regulation as his team trailed 70-60. Anthony Simpson scored 12 points and grabbed 8 rebounds for Kent as well, but it wasn’t enough as their dreams of an NCAA berth ended two days before the conference title game. Kent fell to 23-9 on the season, and will be forced to settle with a berth in the NIT. The Bobcats moved to 19-14 with the win, and will face Miami tomorrow in the semis.

OU’s Armon Bassett on his production offensively: “They [Kent State] really like to get up in you and pressure you defensively and that plays into my game. I like penetrating, and I was able to get by them and really get going tonight.”

Game of the Day: Akron beats Eastern Michigan in Double OT 97-89

With 6:41 left in regulation Akron’s Chris McKnight hit a three to put Akron up by 10 (61-51) over Eastern Michigan. Five and a half minutes later, EMU’s Carlos Medlock connected on a three of his own which capped a run by the Eagles that brought them all the way back and gave them a lead of 71-69. From there, madness ensued, as if it wasn’t crazy enough already. Chris’ brother, Brett McKnight, converted a lay-up for Akron with 31 seconds left in the second half to tie it at 71, and the Zips would get one last stop as regulation expired to force OT. But it wouldn’t stop there.

The first OT looked like it would end by way of an upset after EMU’s Jay Higgins converted a triple try with 8 seconds left to give his team a lead by as many points. With one tick remaining however, Akron’s Steve McNees would express his own desire to play one more session. With no timeouts, and his team trailing by three, he pulled up on an off-balanced three with two defenders on him while drifting to his left…and he nailed it. You can call it the shot of his life, and they played another overtime.

This time, in the second OT, the Eagles just ran out of gas. Akron would get up by as many as 10 before eventually hanging on to an 8 point win. The loss should do nothing to diminish the effort by Eastern Michigan’s Carlos Medlock however, who was flat-out amazing. If a player ever has a chance to win the MVP of the tournament despite his team losing in the quarterfinals its Medlock. He played all but two minutes of the entire game – 48 total minutes – and he scored 41 points while grabbing 8 rebounds and dishing out 3 assists in his final game as senior. He defined the often used cliché of leaving it all on the floor, and his epic effort was not lost on those in attendance. Teammate Brandon Bowdery kicked in 21 points and 14 rebounds as EMU closed out their season with a record of 17-15. Akron moved to 23-9 with the 97-89 victory, and was paced by McNees’ 18. Anthony “Humpty” Hitchens also scored 16 for the Zips, as they now appear the clear-cut favorite to win it with Kent State out of the way. They’ll face Western Michigan tomorrow.

Akron’s Steve McNees on his thoughts leading up to his OT three: “The first thing I thought was I was pretty disappointed he [ Higgins ] made his. I knew I had to get it [my shot] up quick, we had no timeouts. I like shooting it going to my left, so I just tried to go that way and get it up.”

Recap: Western Michigan 69 – Central Michigan 60

Central Michigan was the two-seed as the MAC quarterfinals tipped off this afternoon, and for the first half they played like it against the 7^th seeded Chippewas. They held conference POY David Kool to 2 points on 0-4 shooting from the field during the first half, and at halftime, CMU led 31-22. They led by as many as 11 in the first half, and with 13:42 left in the second half they would lead by as many as 14 after Amid Rashid (14 points) hit a jumper to make the score 49-35. From that point on though, Western Michigan’s Kool played the way his name would describe, and when he hit a jumper with 4:44 in the game he’d tie the score at 54 apiece. Kool would then captain a 15-6 charge to close it out, and finish with 26 points on 7 of 15 shooting en-route to a nine point victory. Kool also had 4 rebounds and 3 assists for the game while scoring 24 points in the second half, and teammate Flenard Whitfield had a double-double with 12 points and 12 rebounds as well. CMU was paced by Robbie Harman who scored 20 on 7 of 17 shooting from the field, and Jordan Bitzer kicked in 15 points and 4 rebounds as well in defeat. Western Michigan will play Akron in the semis on Friday.

Recap: Miami 73 – Buffalo 59

Sitting behind a contingent of Buffalo fans I never realized – until midway through the second half – just how catchy the phrase ‘let’s go Buffalo’ really is. Say it a couple times to yourself, its catchy, trust me. Nevertheless, despite the urgings from the Buffalo faithful, the Bulls wouldn’t have enough tonight in the last of four quarterfinal games at the Q. Miami led by 11 at halftime (32-21), and never allowed the Bulls to get anything going. Leading scorer Rodney Pierce was held to 2 of 8 from the field in the first half, and finished with 12. On the flip-side, Charlie Coles’ Redhawks squad was paced by fellow first- team all MAC selection - Kenny Hayes – who scored 27 and did just about anything he wanted to all night. Miami stretched the lead out to 11 (68-57) with two minutes to go, and the game was never as close as I thought it’d be. Julian Mavunga finished with 14, and Cleveland native Nick Winbush finished with 11, as Miami now readies themselves for a match-up with OU in the semis.

Friday’s Semi-Finals Match-Ups:

Akron vs. Western Michigan (Prediction: Akron)

Ohio vs. Miami (Prediction: Ohio)

My prediction record in the tournament thus far is 2-2. I’ll keep you posted going forward. For in-game updates tomorrow during the semis, follow Twitter @StepienRules.