Mid-American Conference Tournament Quarterfinal Recap
by Bill Kintner
CLEVELAND – On of the more interesting things to happen yesterday on a rather uneventful day was Bowling Green coach Dan Dakich’s entertaining “farewell” press conference, or maybe it was just a “media availability.”
I don’t know if it is his last. He is on somewhat shaky ground, having had losing seasons four of the last five years and a ton of players transfer out.
Okay, it looks like he is dead meat. He is at the end of his contract and vultures have been circling over the Quicken Loans Arena.
In a very entertaining and at times light-hearted way, Dakich took questions from a large contingent of gathered media who all knew that this was the end of the line for Coach Dan.
Dakich is at times profane, he can be stand-offish, but he can turn on the charm. There are times he could charm a bulldog out of his last pork chop. As the losses mounted and the fans stayed away from Anderson Arena it started to look bad for Coach Dan. Then there is the famous incident at Buffalo. For those who have not seen it or somehow missed it, here is what happened.
As time ran out, Bowling Green held a 77-75 lead when Buffalo’s Parnell Smith took a shot that missed. The buzzer sounded and Dakich pulled his team off the court when the official closest to him signaled that time had expired and they went to the locker room. The officials stayed on the court to review the time on a monitor. They put .6 seconds back on the shot clock and Bowling Green administrative assistant Art Furman was dispatched to inform the team to come back out.
It gets a little fuzzy at this point, but it took some time to get the Falcons back on the court. They were charged with a technical. Buffalo’s Yassin Idbihi hit both free throws to send the game into overtime, where Bowling Green eventually fell 98-90.
That game was an exclamation point on a bad season.
Did Dakich refuse to bring them back on the court in a timely fashion? I don’t know, but he is the coach and responsible for what happens.
He said, “I told the team, I’ve got to resign. I am not supposed to hurt you. I’m supposed to help you.'”
But he obviously he did not resign. He is a coach, what else is he going to do?
“This is more fun than what I am going to do next,” said Dakich.
Since he got hired by West Virginia as their coach and then backed out of it in the spring of 2002, things have gone downhill for Dakich.
As the larger than usual crowd of media crowded into the interview area, Dakich talked about the good things he has going for his team. He mentioned that he loses just two seniors and that the team should be pretty good next season. But nobody in the room was buying it. I don’t think he believed it either.
He didn’t say he should be back or will be back; that, he said, is not in his hands. He did say he wanted to be back next year.
After a very promising start at Bowling Green, Dakich’s tenure as coach fizzled out with defections, injuries and bizarre behavior.
The merciful thing for Bowling Green to do would be to do pull the curtain on this act and let Coach Dan get on with that next thing that won’t be as fun.
No. 1 Toledo 62, No. 8 Eastern Michigan 54
In a conference tournament dreams can live and can come alive for a lower seed trying to knock off a higher seed. Today for No. 8 seed Eastern Michigan, they were dreaming big for the first eight minutes of the first half while they had the lead. Then No. 1 seed Toledo settled down and took the win, 62-54.
“They got all the loose balls and hustle points. They were competing and I thought we were standing around watching and that was disturbing,” said Toledo coach Stan Joplin.
When Toledo (19-11) started to pressure the Eagles on defense, they started forcing turnovers, and that is when they pulled ahead. When the dust settled Eastern Michigan turned it over 21 times.
Justin Ingram’s steal at midcourt and Keonta Howell’s dunk topped a 9-0 run that propelled the Rockets to an early 24-15 lead at the 8:40 mark in the first half.
The Eagles did get the deficit down to three points right before the half on a three-pointer by Devon Dumes at 35-52.
Eastern Michigan briefly regained the lead at 36-35 on Justin Dobbins’ jumper shortly after halftime, but the Rockets regained control when Florentino Valencia scored six straight points, all right around the basket. Toledo then went on a 13-2 lead to go up by 12 points at 54-42.
Eastern Michigan coach Charles Ramsey said, “They are the class of the conference, and hopefully they will be able to go and finish up the season.”
Eastern was led by Dobbins with 16 points and Ingram led the Rockets with 14 points.
No. 4 Miami 70, No. 5 Ohio 51
In the second game of today, Miami lives to play another day and RedHawks coach Charlie Coles gets to keep his room key for another night as Miami rolled over Ohio 70-51.
That’s right – Coles said the best part about winning is he doesn’t have to go through the heartache of turning his key in since his team stays to play tomorrow in the semi-finals against Toledo.
Just last week, Ohio (19-13) beat the RedHawks 52-45, so Coles wanted to just play or run their offense and not try to keep track of the defenses that the Bobcats were running.
“I think our movement without the ball was much better. I don’t think we gave much credit to the changing defenses, by that I mean we just kept playing,” said Coles. “We came out with one thing that we going to do against all their zones.”
This revenge win for Miami (16-14) was led by junior Tim Pollitz, who scored 25 points and pulled down 10 rebounds.
The win was deeper than just beating Ohio after losing to them. The Bobcats have knocked Miami out of the MAC Tournament three of the last four years.
Miami was hot from the field, shooting 60.4 percent for the game (29-48), while the Bobcats shot just 38.1 percent (16-42).
Pollitz hit a jumper at the 18:53 mark to start the scoring. Just 22 seconds later, Ohio’s Stephen King came back and hit a three-pointer to give the Bobcats their only lead of the game at 3-2.
The RedHawks slowly increased their lead until it hit 18 points at the half 89-21.
Ohio coach Tim O’Shea thought the extra day the RedHawks had off due to their bye was a real key in his team’s sub-par performance.
“I thought Miami was a fresher team than we were,” said O’Shea. “We didn’t have the legs to really make shots when we needed to.”
When the second half started, it was more of the same. The RedHawks kept a consistent lead in the mid-to-high teens. With 5:09 left in the game Miami cracked 20 points when Michael Bramos hit a jumper to make it 63-43. Less than a minute later Miami’s Alex Moosmann buried a three-pointer to give the RedHawks their biggest lead at 66-43.
The best the Bobcats could do was get it down to 17 points on a lay up by Leon Williams with 48 seconds left. Miami’s Geno Harris hit a jumper with five seconds left to get it back to 19 points when the buzzer sounded to end the game.
Williams was the only Bobcat to score in double digits with 22 points on a 7-9 shooting performance.
Miami plays Toledo on Friday night at 7 p.m. on Ohio FSN.
No. 2 Akron 82, No. 7 Central Michigan 53
The Zips spread the scoring around and did what a high seed usually does to a low seed: they whipped them, as Akron beat Central Michigan 82-53.
Akron (25-6) had five players score in double figures in a game where the Chippewas held a brief lead when Jordan Bitzer hit a three-pointer at the 19:07 mark.
But 22 seconds later the Zips’ Nick Dials hit a jumper to make it 3-2 and then Romeo Travis hit a three-pointer to give Akron the led for good at 5-2.
The Zips finally got the led to double digits at the 8:33 mark when Cedrick Middleton hit a three-pointer to make it 26-16. When the teams left the court at halftime, Akron led by 11 points at 39-28.
Part of Central Michigan’s problem was shooting. In the first half, they shot just 30 percent, and it was not much better latter in the game either.
Central Michigan’s coach Ernie Zeigler said, “The mark of any good team, when you look across the country, is if you can hold them to an average of 40 percent defensive field goals or less. If you look at Akron’s stats, they are doing that.”
Coming out of the half, it did not take the Zips long to increase their lead as they went on a 16-3 run to make it 55-31 lead at the 14:07 mark. Central Michigan (13-18) showed some signs of life as they went on a 12-4 run, making the score 59-43 with a little over 11 minutes left to play.
“We did a better job of getting the ball inside in the second half. Defensively we were pretty good,” said Akron coach Keith Dambrot.
Akron’s five double digit boys were: Travis with 16 points, Jeremiah Wood and Dials had 11 points and both Dru Joyce and Middleton had 10 points.
Central Michigan was led in scoring by Watson with 12 points and Andre Smith with 10 points.
Akron plays Kent State at 9 p.m. and the game is on FSN Ohio.
No. 3 Kent State 75, No. 6 Western Michigan 66
In a game of runs it took a strong second half surge for Kent State to get by Western Michigan 75-66.
Kent State held a three point lead at 38-35 at the half. After five minutes of play, Western Michigan (16-16) went up by five points at 45-40. Then it happened, as the Golden Flashes went on a 16-3 run to take a 56-48 lead, capped off by a jumper by Chris Singley.
“You have to find ways to get big stops and have poise at the offensive end,” said Kent State coach Jim Christian.
Kent State got the lead up to 70-58 before the Broncos scored eight straight points to cut the deficit to four points on two free throws by David Kool with 1:34 left. That made it 70-66. The Golden Flashes made five free throws to seal the win and advance to the semifinal round.
“Kent State played a terrific game and deserved to win. For awhile there, we were able to get it stopped to make a run at them, but they were able to get to the rack a lot more in the second half and we went dry,” explained Western Michigan coach Steve Hawkins.
Western Michigan’s Joe Reitz led all scorers with 16 points and Omni Smith led the Golden Flashes with 14 points.
