Mid-American Conference Tournament Semifinal Recap
by Bill Kintner
CLEVELAND – Each day, the crowds get progressively bigger and for tonight’s games the arena is about half-full at the start of the first game and packed with 13,000 people by the second game.
One of the downsides about playing in a pro arena like the Quicken Loans Arena is that you are paying NBA prices for food and parking. The seating bowl is pretty sweet and comfortable, but boy do the fans pay for that with the outrageous prices.
At the end of the bench
Geno Harris is a scholarship player for Miami, only his scholarship is in football and he is a freshman wide receiver. At 5’11” he also is a guard in basketball.
Harris joined the team in December as a walk-on and since then he has played in five games for a total of 10 minutes and scored eight points.
He does know what he is doing on the court though. He played basketball in high school in Atlanta and he even attracted interest from the University of Georgia as a basketball player.
His role at Miami is to push the other players, especially the guards, to prepare them for upcoming games. With his speed, I am sure he really helped prepare the RedHawks for Toledo. He usually runs the upcoming opponent’s offense and defense to prepare the starters for what they will see.
Prepare, prepare, prepare, just in case he is needed and just to help all the other players get better.
He got in for a couple of minutes in the quarter-final victory over Ohio University and he was ready to come in the game tonight if the call went came from coach Charlie Coles.
It didn’t come.
Harris said he was headed back to his room to relax and maybe watch a little of the Kent State/Akron game. He said he might even do a little studying.
But sometime tonight the coaches will have the scouting report ready for the players and he will start studying that report to get ready just in case that call comes from Coach Coles.
The life of a back-up, walk-on player is tough and not very glamorous. The biggest contributions they usually make are far away from the screaming crowds, but they are crucial to the success of the team.
Harris is the just-in-case guy. He puts hundreds of hour of hard practice in just to play 10 minutes.
For most people, it would not be worth it, but it works for Harris because he doesn’t crave the spotlight, he craves team success and he is a big part of that even if the fans don’t know it.
No. 4 Miami 58, No. 1 Toledo 53
It finally happened in the ninth game of the MAC Tournament: a lower seed upset a higher seed.
Tonight, it was No. 4 seed Miami beating the No. 1 seed Toledo Rockets 58-53, a win that took a Herculean effort by Tim Pollitz to get it done.
Did Hercules play basketball? I doubt it, and if he did, he never went 11-12 from the field like Pollitz did tonight. Not only did Pollitz score, but he made some key plays off the ball too.
Case-in-point: with Miami ahead by just four points at 54-50 with 12 seconds left, Pollitz stole the ball from Justin Ingram, drove to the basket and layed it in to make it a six-point lead. Just four seconds later Toledo’s Kashif Payne hit a three-pointer to cut the lead to three at 56-53.
Pollitz then streaks down the court past his defender as Doug Penno hit him with a long pass, and he dunked it just before the buzzer sound to seal the victory.
Case-in-point number two: Toledo (19-12) trims the RedHawks’ lead from seven points to one at 43-42, and with 8:40 left in the game Miami’s Nathan Peavy picked up his forth foul.
With 8:00 left Pollitz took a pass from his brother Eric and layed it in, then proceeds to score four more unanswered in a little over a minute to get the lead back to seven points at 49-42.
By the time it was over Pollitz scored 22 points and pulled down eight rebounds.
In the first half the lead went back and forth four times until Miami grabbed the lead for good at the 13:18 mark when Michael Bramos popped in a three-pointer to make it 12-10. By half time the RedHawks held a 33-23 lead.
In the second half the Rockets applied even more pressure, forcing Miami into 12 turnovers that resulted in 11 points as they got the lead down to a single point. Then Pollitz came to the rescue as it was chronicled above.
Toledo coach Stan Joplin said, “We fought back and had it down to one, but we couldn’t get over the hump. We had five or six chances to take the lead, and I thought if we got the lead we would be in great shape.”
A contributing factor in Miami’s win was their strong rebounding edge. The RedHawks out-rebounded Toledo 29-18.
“In the first game, they had 16 offensive rebounds against us and we told them we did not want that to happen under any circumstances. I thought we did a good job of that, especially in the late stages of the game,” explained Miami coach Charlie Coles.
For Toledo, Florentino Valencia went 6-9 and scored 14 points. No one else scored in double figures.
No. 2 Akron 61, No. 3 Kent State 54
If at first you don’t succeed try again. And if you don’t succeed that time then try again.
That is exactly what Kent State did. After losing twice to Akron this year, including an overtime loss five days ago, Kent State tried to get a win. For the third time, they failed, losing 61-54 on Friday.
Kent State (21-11) played a strong first half, led by Mike Scott’s 10 points, and took a 33-19 lead into the locker room at half time.
But the Flashes got whipped in the second half, as they were out scored 42-21. Akron (26-6) held Kent State to just three field goals in the first 19 minutes of the second half.
“It was a game of two halves for both teams. We dominated the first half and they dominated the second,” said Kent State coach Jim Christian. “They made a great run at us and we came unglued a little bit.”
In the second half, Akron finally tied the score at the 11:03 mark at 40-40 when Jeremiah Wood (19 points) sunk two free throws.
The Zips got the lead up to nine points with 4:30 left on two more free throws by Wood.
The closest Kent State could get the rest of the game was five points with just 22 seconds left on a tip-in by Haminn Quaintance to make it 57-52.
Akron coach Keith Dambrot said, “It was very simple to me what we had to do to get back in the game. First, defensively we had to pick up our intensity level, and offensively, it was very simple, throw the ball to the block.”
In the first half Kent State shot 46.4 percent (13-29) and Akron shot 26.1 percent (6-23). In the second half Akron shot 52.9 percent (9-17) and Kent State shot 23.1 percent (6-26).
For Kent State Mike Scott scored 14 points.
