Akron Fights Off Nate Miller and Bowling Green to Reach MAC Final

CLEVELAND, Ohio – In Bowling Green’s quarterfinal win twenty-four hours earlier, senior “point forward” Nate Miller had played with a chip on his shoulder, dominating Jerome Tillman and the Ohio Bobcats with a 22-point, 10-rebound double-double, making many in the assembled media wonder how’d he come only fourth in Player of the Year balloting (behind Michael Bramos of Miami, Tillman, and even David Kool of Western Michigan).  So it would not be surprising for Miller to dominate Akron.

On the other hand, in its quarterfinal, playing without injured point guard Humpty Hitchens from the 3:30 mark forward, somewhat miraculously Akron had clawed back from an 11-1 deficit, gotten ball-handling from two second guards, and stunned Miami.  The only good news for Akron – at least to this writer – is that during its recent successful run Louis Orr’s BG team had become primarily a 2-3 zone team defensively, and while Akron was awful against that zone in a home loss two weeks ago, at least that was the kind of defense they might be able to play without a true point guard.

In the first half, Akron had its way with Bowling Green, neutralizing Miller with Chris McKnight, Brett McKnight and Jimmy Conyers, in sequence (this writer thought Brett McKnight did the best job), moving the ball and scoring against BG’s zone, and dominating the boards.  So while BG did control the pace in the first half by playing slowly, Akron build a 13-point lead, and took an 11-point advantage into the locker room, 28-17.

In the half, Akron outrebounded BG 25-12 (Chris McKnight’s 10 board almost equaling BG’s total), and outshot the Falcons 42 percent to 20 percent.  Steve McNees handled the ball for 16 minutes with just two turnovers, and Darryl Roberts played 4 of his 18 minutes at point, accumulating five points, four rebounds, three assists and just one turnover.  Brett McKnight led all scorers with seven points, on 2-4 shooting, including 1-1 from the arc.  BG’s Miller had just two points in the half on 1-7 shooting, and no rebounds.

But just when it appeared safe to be an Akron Zip fan (perhaps steal a thought and a smile about tonight’s final), everything changed in the second half – and I do mean everything.  Perhaps not totally unexpected, Miller came out of the locker room like a one-man wrecking crew.  With the first possession of the half, just 11 seconds in, Miller set a screen on the perimeter for Darryl Clements, and for a moment Chris McKnight must have forgotten who he was guarding, as he hedged hard onto Clements and allowed Miller to roll to the goal uncontested.  The rest of Akron team was late helping, and Miller was off.  He hit a trey on BG’s next possession, cutting the Akron lead to 6, and it was a game again.  Then, after Keith Dambrot had called time to stop the bleeding, BG came out of the timeout playing man-to-man defense, which they did for the final 18:30 of the game.

BG’s man-to-man was surprising at that juncture, both to the Akron team and to this reporter.  BG hadn’t played man-to-man in weeks, probably hadn’t practiced it much, and in truth didn’t seem very good at it. That said, it was a way for Orr to get his kids to play more aggressively, and it tested Akron’s ability to play without a point guard.

The Akron players adjusted, and at first were able to stop BG’s run playing against their man defense, with McNees and Roberts handling the ball, and drawing lots of fouls (Roberts in particular). Over the next eight and a half minutes of play the teams battled evenly, 12-12, Miller scoring eight of BG’s 12 on two threes and a two, and Roberts and McNees each scoring five of Akron’s 12.  It was 40-34 Akron, with just over 10 minutes on the clock.

Then BG went on a run that earlier in the season would have won the game, 9-0 over 2 minutes, a run taking the Falcons from down six to up three, at 43-40.  From the 9:48 mark through 11:43, Akron committed three fouls and a turnover, Roberts missing their only shot, from the arc.  For BG, Brian Moten hit a trey, center Otis Polk had an old fashioned three-point play, and Clements hit a trey.

Then, just ten seconds apart the Zips had two timeouts in which to regroup, one that they called followed by a media timeout.  And regroup they did.  Brett McKnight drew a foul from Miller, hit one of two, and followed that up with the biggest shot of the game, a trey at 12:44, giving Akron back a one-point lead at 44-43;  they never relinquished the lead again, finishing the game on their own 23-12 run over the final 7:57.

Perhaps the biggest single play in the game took place 4:12 left in the game.  Miller had just scored at the rim to pull BG to within 47-45, and as Brett McKnight received an entry pass at the foul line, Miller ran up from 6 or 8 feet away to basically grab and foul McKnight, as obvious and unnecessary a foul as you will ever see.  And after grabbing McKnight, Miller continued walking right on over to the BG bench, taking himself out of the game.  Later, Miller told us that he was spent, needed the seconds remaining and then the under-four media timeout to rest, but that the foul was not intentional, but it looked to all the world as if it was.

In the 63 seconds Miller was on the bench (Orr had to call a timeout to stop play with 3:19 left, as he could no longer wait for a whistle and a media timeout), Akron went on a 6-0 mini-run, extending from up 47-45 to up 53-45.  Even when Miller got back in, he could not overcome an eight point lead in the final 3:19.  Miller would finish the game with 27 points, 25 coming in the second half and just three late rebounds.  But somehow, that decision to remove himself with 4:22 on the clock was his undoing.

Without a point guard, it was a monumental show of character, of mental toughness, for Akron to withstand Nate Miller’s onslaught, punch back, and win the game.  Brett McKnight led Akron in scoring with 14 points (on 3-8 and 2-4), Darryl Roberts had 12 (on 4-6), five rebounds and four assists, and Nate Linhart had 11 (on 3-7), 11 rebounds, one great slap at a rebound on the foul lane to a teammate, and just seemed to make every “little play” needed to win.  Nikola Cvetinovic had nine points (on 3-6 shooting), Chris McKnight had five, 14 big rebounds, and spent most of his time guarding Miller, and McNees finished with nine (on 3-4 including two huge treys in three tries) and a superb all-around floor game.

Dambrot spoke with great pride about his team’s toughness, that “no one can question whether or not we can take a punch.”  He complimented Miller at length, bemoaning the fact that he “tried recruiting him twice and missed both times” (once when Miller first attended UNC Wilmington, and then again when he transferred to Bowling Green).  He added that he suspected that if Orr had known in advance that Miller would hit 5 of 8 treys in the game, Orr would have expected to have won the game.

Nate Linhart downplayed the fact that he’s scored the 1,000^th point of his career late in the game, and was obviously sincere when he said that “I just wanna win this tournament.”  When Nate was asked about Akron’s 43-26 margin on the boards, he complimented Akron assistant coach Jeff Boals, saying his “main focus in life is to get us to crash the boards.”

Dambrot thought Roberts was absolutely great at every aspect of the game (scoring, handling, rebounding and defending Darryl Clements), but most of his praise (privately) was for Steve McNees.  “This was the best he’s ever played,” Dambrot said.  “He did everything, controlled the game, wasn’t afraid of anything.”  He concluded, “This team surprised me.  They’re so resilient.  Sometimes they surprise me and play badly, but they have the ability to come back.”

Now heading to the NIT (guaranteed by virtue of his team winning the regular season), Orr was disappointed, particularly at his team’s lack of toughness, that they were so “out-physicaled” on the boards.  “A tournament like this is an endurance challenge, and with Chris Knight not at 100 percent, we didn’t seem to have the toughness that the Akron kids had,” Orr said.

I asked Orr about his change to man-to-man early in the second half, specifically if he’d considered going back to his signature zone when BG got the lead.  He responded, “No, the man-to-man got us the lead, got us to be aggressive.  We weren’t rebounding well in the zone, so I thought, ‘let’s go with it [the man-to-man]‘.”  Perhaps that decision hurt BG, we’ll never know.

So now, these 5^th-seeded point guard-less Akron Zips have one more mountain to climb, and the steepest of all: the big, strong, athletic and tough Buffalo Bulls in the conference Final, tonight at 8.  Without Hitchens on the floor for Dambrot (perhaps even if Humpty were able to play) the Bulls appear the physically more imposing team in this match-up.  But one thing is for sure: Akron will be just as tough as Buffalo mentally, take a punch or two, and keep coming back for more.