Mid-American Conference Tournament Opening Round Recap
by Bill Kintner
CLEVELAND – This year there are some changes at the Mid-American Conference Tournament. For one, all games are in Cleveland at the Quicken Loans Arena (formerly Gund Arena), as in the past there would be opening round games at campus sites.
Second, 24 teams are now playing here. If you guessed that they are having both the chicks and the dudes play here you win a cigar. Well, actually I smoked your cigar on the way up here this morning, but rest assured it was good.
They have the men playing four on Wednesday, four on Thursday, the semi-finals on Friday and the Championship game Saturday night at 7 P.M.
The women are kind of fitted in and around the men in the schedule. They started with four games on Sunday, four games on Tuesday, then come back to play two games before the men on Friday and on Saturday they play their championship (the Chick Championship) early in the afternoon.
Day one was not an exciting day of hoops, but it will get better.
No. 8 Eastern Michigan 51, No. 9 Ball State 48
Up by 15 points with 11 minutes to go in the first half, it looked like Eastern Michigan was in the driver’s seat until they took their foot off the gas. When they finally regained control, they pulled out a 51-48 win over Ball State.
The game started going south for the Eagles when Ball State went on a 13-5 run to close out the first half. That made the halftime score 32-25, a still respectable seven-point lead.
Coming out of the half the Eagles pushed the lead up to 12 points in the first six minutes. At the 8:44 mark it was still 12 points. Then Ball State (9-22) went on a 15-6 run.
Eastern Michigan (13-18) got two crucial free throws from Brandon Bowdry with 13 seconds left, along with a steal, to earn their first MAC Tournament victory in nine years.
“Well it’s been nine years since we’ve been in this position, and we’re elated about being in the next round,” said EMU coach Charles Ramsey.
EMU was led by Jesse Bunkley, who scored 15 points on 5-6 shooting from three-point land. Justin Dobbins put in 11 points and Jarred Axon scored 10 points.
Ball State’s Anthony Newell led all scorers with 20 points.
No. 5 Ohio 69, No. 12 Bowling Green 59
Ohio University coach Tim O’Shea reached 100 wins, as the Bobcats got 19 points from Bubba Walther en route to a 69-59 win over Bowling Green.
The Falcons suffered from poor shooting, as they shot 36 percent (21-61), while Ohio (19-12) shot 45 percent (21-47). Bowling Green should be used to losing to Ohio since this is the third time they have lost this season.
Both teams came out cold at the start of the game. Ohio was just 2-6 and the Falcons 1-5.
The Bobcat got the lead at 5-4, but Bowling Green’s Martin Samarco put up five straight points and a Nate Miller free throw gave Bowling Green (13-18) a 10-5 lead six minutes into the half. After allowing a basket, the Falcons went on a 7-2 run to go up 17-9.
The Bobcats’ Stephen King stopped the run with a three-pointer and Walther followed with another three-pointer to narrow the gap to 17-15.
Whitney Davis made it 11 unanswered Bobcat points with a lay up and a shot from 3-point land to give Ohio the lead at 20-17. A Troutman basket and a Williams tip-in extended the run to 15 straight Bobcat points and a 24-17 lead.
The Falcons came back and used an 8-2 run to pull within a point at 26-25. Sonny Troutman scored the last basket of the half with 2:00 left on the clock to give Ohio a 28-25 lead going into the half.
Bowling Green started the second half on a 9-4 run, but the Bobcats came back with nine unanswered points, capped off by a Walther three, to take a 52-43 lead with a little over nine minutes left in the game. That shot got Bowling Green to take a timeout.
“I think the game turned when Walther hit his three threes. I think we were in the process of gaining momentum at that point,” said Bowling Green coach Can Dakich.
Ohio’s Coach Tim O’Shea agreed that Walther’s sharp shot made the difference.
“I think Bubba (Walther) was the key today. When we were struggling he hit those three threes in a row and that got our energy going,” said O’Shea.
After the timeout, Ohio made it an 11-0 run on a lay up by Kenneth Van Kempen for the Bobcats’ first double-digit lead of the game. With Ohio up 58-49, Troutman stole a Falcon pass and went all the way down court to score and give Ohio a 60-49 lead with 3:54 left in the game.
Bowling Green tried to stage a comeback and got within 64-59 with under a minute left. Ohio held on to grab the win and stay alive to play another day.
No. 7 Central Michigan 80, No. 11 Buffalo 74
Central Michigan (13-17) let Buffalo get back into what had been a blowout, and held on for an 80-74 win.
The highlight of this game was Central Michigan’s Giordan Watson scoring 34 points, including going 5-7 from 3-point land. Buffalo (12-19) had their own human highlight film in Andy Robinson when he dropped in 27 points on a 9-13 shooting spree and Byron Mulky scored 19 points for good measure.
Just the facts ma’m.
In the first half the Chippewas got their lead up to 21 points at the 3:19 mark. Buffalo got it back down to 40-23 at the half.
They key for Central Michigan was that they took more shots (28 to 20), made more shots (13 to 7) and made more three-pointers (8 to 3).
In the second half they came out on fire and got the spread up to 30 points at 57-27 with 13:06 left in the game.
Rather than detail the million shots that both teams took in the last 13 minutes, Buffalo went on a 47-23 run to close out the game. They shot 62.5 percent in the second half.
That was enough to scare Central Michigan, but not enough to win.
No. 6 Western Michigan 67, No. 9 Northern Illinois 62
Western Michigan completed the sweep of higher seed today by holding off Northern Illinois 67-62.
Northern Illinois (7-23) scored the first point when Cody Yelder made one out of two foul shots. Twenty seconds later David Kool put in a layup to give the Huskies the lead, which they would hold for the rest of the game.
At the 13:26 mark Northern Illinois got within one point when Zach Pancratz hit a three-pointer to make it 11-10. By halftime Western Michigan (16-15) had the lead up to 30-25.
In the second half the Huskies once again pulled within one when Shaun Logan hit a three-pointer with 16:22 left on the clock. That was as close as they would get.
The Broncos got the led up to 13 points a couple of times before Northern would make one more run at them. The Huskies got the deficit down to three points with 11 seconds left when Yelder put in a lay up. But David Koop hit four straight foul shots in the last 10 seconds to put the game out of reach.
The sights and sounds of the MAC Tournament
- Ball State’s record in MAC Tourney is 35-20 with seven tournament championships, the most of any team in the conference.
- Eastern Michigan averaged 841 fans per game this year at a school with 24,000 students, and they play in a pretty nice arena (the Convocation Center) that seats 8,824.
- In what has been a subpar year for Dan Dakich’s Bowling Green team, the Falcons did have some out-of-conference success as they defeated Horizon League Champion Wright State on the road by a 59-56 margin. That was the Raiders’ only home defeat this year. The Falcons also defeated the Sun Belt East champ South Alabama at home 65-64.
- The Quicken Loan Arena is a nice hockey arena with a great seating bowl. The top level of seats had curtains blacking them off to give it a more intimate feel.
