Recordpub.com - Even as No. 1 seed, KSU has tough road ahead

By David Carducci

Record-Courier staff writer

CLEVELAND — Congratulations Kent State.

You won the the Mid-American Conference regular-season title and your reward for earning the No. 1 seed in the 2010 Mid-American Conference men’s basketball tournament is a danger-filled path to Saturday’s championship game.

It may not be a Homeric odyssey, but it sure isn’t easy.

The Golden Flashes face their first peril tonight at 7 p.m. in a quarterfinal matchup with ninth-seeded Ohio University. Win that and they take on another East Division-rival in either No. 4 Miami or No. 5 Buffalo.

KSU would probably prefer to see just about any team on the other side of the tournament bracket. Three of the four teams on that side hail from the MAC’s West Division, and the Flashes haven’t lost to a team from out west since 2008 — a stretch of 17 consecutive wins.

“The tournament format is not at all in favor of the No. 1 seed,” said KSU head coach Geno Ford. “We get no breaks. The play-in day was on Sunday, so Ohio will have had three days to prepare for us.”

The old MAC Tournament sent all 12 teams to Cleveland and forced seeds 5-through-12 to win four games in four days to win a championship. Now that the first round games have been moved back to campus sites in a cost-cutting move, there is a three-day break before the final eight convene in Cleveland for the quarterfinals.

“There is no advantage to the bye now,” said Ford. “It used to be the lower seeds played the day before and they came in, and because of that they were tired. Now you don’t get that advantage.

“All of these things add up to a week where we are going to have our work cut out for us,” Ford said. “We are playing really good teams. We are playing teams that played us close. Ohio easily could have beaten us in either game we played this year, and we split our two games with both Miami and Buffalo.”

Ohio missed a chance to beat Kent State at the buzzer in the Flashes’ 62-60 win in Athens on Jan. 9. When the two teams met in Kent on Feb. 17, KSU had to battle back from an eight-point deficit in the second half to win 74-67.

Today’s third meeting between the Flashes and Bobcats will mark the seventh time the two programs have squared off in the MAC Tournament. The first six games were split 3-3, with KSU winning in 1984, 1999 and 2003, and Ohio in 1985, 2000 and 2005. The Bobcats have only upset KSU once in three tries as a lower seed, spoiling the third-seed Flashes hopes of a second NCAA Tournament appearance with a 69-68 quarterfinal upset as the 2000 tournament’s No. 6 seed.

On paper Kent State appears to have an advantage in every area but one (see Kent State-Ohio matchups to the left). In Indiana transfer Armon Bassett (15.5 points per game) and MAC Freshman of the Year D.J. Cooper (13.5 points), the Bobcats have the better backcourt — and there is a widely-held belief among many coaches that guard play is a key to any March run.

“I think the good teams win at this time of year,” said Ford. “Certainly, having good guards is a major help, but the one thing you can count on over a three-day time period is that there aren’t many teams that are going to shoot a high percentage for three straight days. So, if you find a team that is really good defensively, rebounds the ball well, I think those teams can be effective also.”

Not-so-ironically, defense and rebounding have been the key to Kent State’s run of 13 wins in 14 games dating back to mid-January.

Ohio has enjoyed its own resurgence after a slow start to the MAC season with four wins in the last six games. The Bobcats played four conference games before notching their first win.

“Every coach’s goal is to have its team playing its best basketball at this time of the year, and we’ve been able to do that,” said Ohio head coach John Groce. “We’ve been able to do that. We’ve made it through some adversity, and I think that made us stronger. It forced our young guys to grow up quicker.”

But are young guys like Cooper and fellow freshman starter Reggie Keely seasoned enough to upset the MAC’s top seed in their first trip to Cleveland?

Ohio boasts only one senior — 6-foot-10 center Kenneth van Kempen.

All-MAC First-Team selection Chris Singletary (11.7 points, 4.9 rebounds per game), fellow starters Tyree Evans (10.2 points) and Frank Henry-Ala, and MAC Sixth Man of the Year Anthony Simpson (8.8 points, 5.8 rebounds) will lead a group of six seniors in search of the program’s sixth MAC Tournament title.

“Obviously, they have those six seniors and a fifth-year junior (point guard Rodriquez Sherman),” said Groce. “They have a lot of men out there. Our guys have a great deal of respect for Kent State and they are looking forward to playing them a third time.”

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Contact David Carducci at dcarducci@recordpub.com