CLEVELAND, Ohio – During the course of this season, this writer has seen some memorable college basketball games, and some not-so-memorable. Any of the three contests between Butler and Cleveland State could have been best. Northeastern’s game down at VCU and that wonderful Bracketbusters between tournament-bound Morehead State and Kent State also come to mind. Well, all of those pale in comparison to last night’s titanic struggle between Akron and Miami, a game which came this close to being a Miami 30-point blowout, but which Akron somehow came back and won. A game for the ages for Keith Dambrot and his team.
First, it took a miracle for the Zips to even to get to last night, playing poorly and finding themselves down a dozen to lowly Toledo with five minutes left two nights earlier. They miraculously forced overtime, and then inbounded with a second and a half left in overtime and Brett McKnight catching and scoring. And while such miracles can give rise to strange results in following games (mostly bad, in this writer’s experience), in this miracle win Akron saw its only point guard, Anthony “Humpty” Hitchens go down with an ankle injury.
As we’ve chronicled, early in the year redshirt freshman Ronnie Steward earned the point guard spot, but he went down mid-way through the non-conference schedule. He came back and practiced a bit in early February, but was so out of shape that that was aborted, in favor of applying for a medical redshirt. That left true freshmen Hitchens the only remaining point guard, something not affected when the team lifted a redshirt off of freshman shooting guard Brent McClanahan halfway through the season. Having become “the man,” Hitchens averaged 9 points, 2.5 assists, 1.5 rebounds and close to three turnovers per game this season. Diminutive at 5-10, and hardly a pure shooter, Hitchens gave the team an innate toughness, a total fearlessness, the inconsistency of a freshman, the heart of a lion, and an ability to create shots and get to the goal, both in transition and in half court.
Now, while Hitchens is (well, was) the only legitimate point guard dressed, Dambrot had to use someone else at that spot, and that someone was sophomore backup second guard Steve McNees. A good shooter with range, McNees possesses neither the speed and quickness to defend most teams’ point guards (second guard Darryl Roberts performed that task when Humpty was out) nor the ball-handling ability to face pressuring defenders. Overwhelmingly you’d see him backing his way up the court, or positioned side-saddle toward his defender. But for 10 or 12 minutes a game, Dambrot used McNees to spell Humpty.
At Akron’s short practice on Tuesday at Cleveland State, while the assistant coaches said Humpty would be ready for the Miami game and Dambrot said “we’ll see,” it was obvious from his walk (and the fact that he was just shooting at a side basket) that Humpty was far from ready for tournament action. Then last night Humpty started against Miami, and gutted out three and a half limping and ineffective minutes before Dambrot mercifully took him out.
At the time of Hitchens’ departure the score was 7-1 in favor of Miami, and McNees would have to play point for the remaining 36+ minutes. It got even worse, as little pressure on Miami’s guards allowed them to smoothly get into their offense, and barely 5:19 into the contest, two Michael Bramos free throws gave the RedHawks an 11-1 lead (MAC Player of the Year Bramos had 5 of the 11).
Then innocently enough, at the 5:34 mark, freshman Brett McClanahan made Akron’s first field goal of the game, a trey that brought them to within 11-4. Then a Brett McKnight jumper a minute later made it 11-6, and suddenly, a “headless” team being blown out was sort of in the game. A few minutes later, after Bramos and Co. had extended Miami’s lead to 17-6, Roberts (more on him later) hit a trey, to pull Akron to within 17-9. It’s not a score to write home about, but Akron was – just barely – clinging to life in the game.
But if we’ve learned anything as a group in watching sports, lots of things are contagious: good things as well as bad things. Fear, tentative play, poor shooting, fouling and the like are contagious for sure; so are enthusiasm, confidence, and even that nothing-to-lose reckless abandon we see all too rarely in college and professional sport. And suddenly – maybe Dambrot and his staff saw this all year long, but it was sudden to this writer – in place of apprehensions, concerns and a fear of losing, grew this wonderful devil-make-care I-can-do-this attitude, and at least to me, it grew from nothing.
Before he scored a single point you could see it clearly in show-footed McNees as he battled the ball up the floor and into offensive position. And thus emboldened, at 9:16 Akron’s newly anointed point guard launched a trey, and it went in to bring the Zips to within 17-12. The bench stood up, the coaches smiled – for just an instant – and the Akron contingent in Quicken Arena roared with approval. The Zips weren’t dead, and they were fighting. This game could be something special.
Before the first half was over, McNees had wowed the crowd with a total of 4 threes in 5 attempts, plus a goal in close after smartly penetrating to the rim with less than 30 seconds remaining, those 14 first-half points already exceeding his previous high for the season. In the process, McNees led an unfathomable 30-21 run from 11-1 down to the end of the half, leaving the Zips down just one at intermission, 32-31.
Four glaring questions presented themselves at halftime (I suspect in Akron’s locker room as well as at courtside). First, was McNees’ incredible first half play simply an aberration, or could he sustain it? Second, having played the last 16 and a half minutes of the first half, could McNees – averaging 20 minutes a game for the season – possibly play the entire second half at point? Third, if not, could Humpty give them even a minute in the second half? Fourth, again if not, who would fill in at the point and rest McNees during the second half? They were great questions for a great game.
The first of those questions was anwered immediately as a Chris McKnight jumper 18 seconds into the second half made clear that the magical run wasn’t over, and gave Akron its first lead of the game at 33-32. And while Miami’s Tyler Dierkers (who we later heard spent the day on IV fluids with the flu) hit a jumper 13 seconds later to restore Miami’s one-point lead, that lead would be short-lived, and would turn out to be Miami’s last of the evening. On the ensuing possession, Akron senior and leader Nate Linhart launched and hit a trey, and the magic continued from there.
The remaining questions were answered moments later: with Humpty clearly immobile on Akron’s bench (aside from later when he came out onto the court to cheer and greet his teammates), at the 5:34 mark, with the score tied at 39, starting second guard Roberts returned from a brief rest, replacing McNees, making Roberts the point guard de jure. Seamlessly assuming his new duties, Roberts twice penetrated Miami’s man-to-man defense, drawing big-man help, and deftly passing to teammates Nikola Cvetinovic and Chris McKnight for easy baskets. By the time McNees returned at the 7:56 mark, Akron was up 47-41, and the margin would never slip below three the rest of the night. Miami’s fate was sealed when Linhart hit another trey at with 5:33 left, widening Akron’s lead to 63-50. In the end, with Bramos and his Miami team utterly demoralized, the Zips coasted to a 73-63 win.
For the game, McNees scored 17 on 6-9 shooting, including 5-7 from the arc, with three assists and most importantly, no turnovers. His alter ego, Darryl Roberts, finished with 15, on 3-10 shooting, including 3-5 from the arc, adding six rebounds, and also with three assists and no turnovers as well. Cvetinovic scored 12 on 5-10 shooting, grabbing eight rebounds, and Linhart scored 10 including two crucial treys (shooting 3-10 and 2-5), and also grabbed eight rebounds.
For the losers, Bramos managed 24 points (just 10 after halftime), making only 5-13 from the floor and adding 10-11 form the line. Point guard Carl Richburg (himself a fill-in for earlier injured Eric Pollitz) finished with 12 points on 2-3 from the arc and 6-7 from the line, and five assists, but Coach Charlie Coles found his play wanting and sat him for long stretches of the second half.
Dambrot told us after the game that “they punched us early, disrespected us, beat the crap out of us. This team showed the ability to take those blows, to shrug off disappointment, to rally. Steve [McNees] did the same, as he didn’t have the year he’d have liked to have, but rallied himself tonight. We have character guys.”
As to using Roberts at the point, he added, “Well, I had no choice. Plus, Darryl has been in big games for us, conference championship games, NIT games.” As to holding Bramos down in the second half, he told us that “we’ve done well against him. Tonight he had his way in the first half. Conyers and Linhart made him work in the second.”
As to the style of play, Dambrot mused that “we had to play faster, score more, because early on we couldn’t guard them. Then, we scored off our good rebounding, particularly our 19 offensive boards.” For the game Akron out-rebounded Miami 40-28.
Coles was gracious, telling the media that “we were beaten by a superior team tonight, coaching too. Their bigs inside and their smalls outside, then sometimes switching. We didn’t rebound, gave up 19 offensive boards, five or six in one sequence, which must be some kind of record. As for us, teams have figured out that we’re not particularly good off the dribble, so they’ve crowded us. And when they take away our perimeter game and we can’t create off the dribble, we’re not very good offensively.”
On Akron, Coles added, “they were good defensively, switching to zone and back to man defense. They’re mentally tough, tough enough to win this tournament.”
We’ll see how tough this point guard-less team is Friday night against Bowling Green. The Falcons used a tight 2-3 zone to beat Akron 50-46 last week at Rhodes Arena, and used that same defense to manhandle Ohio University 74-61 in last night’s earlier semi-final. Perhaps it’s not a bad match-up to face a zone team now that Akron is without a true point-guard, as McNees, Roberts and McClanahan could be on the floor together for stretches as zone-breakers.
Regardless, someone or some combination is going to have to defend BG star forward Nate Miller. Miller manhandled Ohio’s Jerome Tillman last night for 22 points (on 9-11) and 10 rebounds, mostly scoring powerfully near the goal. That job will fall partly on Defender of the Year Linhart, partly on Jimmy Conyers, and partly on both McKnight brothers. That will leave it to McNees, and his alter ego Roberts, to handle the ball for the Zips. Should be fun!
