It was my first trip to Cleveland. I had lived in Akron for two years, less than 45 minutes from Cleveland, and had yet to make the trip there. The Mid-American Conference (MAC) tournament is held in Cleveland, and the previous year my grandfather on my mother’s side had died and I was at home in Virginia for the funeral, so I missed the trip.
This year’s feeling going into the tournament was much different than that of last year. Last year we had to win 4 games in 5 days to win the conference championship, having finished outside the top 4 in the conference. This year, due to a restructuring of the conference tournament and our regular season conference championship, we only had to win 2 games to get to the Big Dance.
I don’t think there are many people around the program who would disagree with the notion that this year’s team was more talented than the one we had last year, but the team obviously had their own demons to deal with. The team was incredibly young, and with that comes problems that stem from not being mentally tough enough to push through difficult parts of practices/games/seasons. Some of them didn’t want to deal with the daily grind that the latter stages of a season are. Admittedly, it is pretty tough to deal with if you haven’t had to do it before.
Regardless, we were much more talented and there was not a single game this season where I felt overmatched athletically or less skilled than our opponents. Two games and we’re in! We can do this!
Our first game came against our neighbor and arch-rival, Kent State. We came in with a measure of confidence, as we had beaten Kent State 4 out of the last 5 times we had played, including last year’s MAC Championship game. The game was tough, as Kent State is pretty talented themselves, but we controlled the game for the most part, finally winning 78-74 after thwarting a comeback attempt by the Flashes.
The championship game, Akron’s sixth in a row (a feat only Gonzaga can also claim), was to be a match-up against Ohio University. We were less confident coming into this one, having suffered a 24-point loss to the Bobcats at their place 4 games prior. Nevertheless, this was a shot at some revenge as well as a berth in the NCAA Tournament and another conference championship.
The game proved to be a heavyweight shootout, with Ohio dealing a knockout blow when D.J. Cooper hit a leaning 3-pointer as the shot clock expired from NBA 3-point range. It was just their night. We cut it close and thought we had tied the game when the ref ruled a free throw had been goaltended, only to overturn it after going to the monitors (STILL don’t think that’s legal).
That was it. A 1-point loss…1 point away from achieving our season-long goal. If one basket more had fallen for us, if we had made two more free throws, if we had gotten one more stop defensively, we’d be dancing. I never noticed how much 1 point can change your demeanor and the type of weekend I’ll have. I had made plans to go out in Cleveland and celebrate. We planned to live it up and not go home til the next morning…
I grabbed my bags immediately following the game and left the hotel. The 45 minutes home was the quietest my car has ever been…no music, no cell phone conversations, nothing but silence. It hurt the next day to watch 68 names called for the NCAA Tournament and Akron not be one of them. We were so close, but not even an afterthought to the general public because we didn’t make it.
To make matters worse, Ohio went on to beat their first two opponents and move on to the Sweet Sixteen. John Groce, the head coach at Ohio, parlayed that success into landing the head coaching job at Illinois. If we make one more shot, Groce is sitting in his office in Athens right now, and Illinois is still searching for a new coach.
One basket, one stop…
This goes to show that the margin between success and failure is miniscule. This is as true in life as it is in basketball. The difference is just that the notion of “success” in basketball can be measured to a certain degree, with wins and losses. It’s much harder to measure a win or a loss in our daily lives.
I sulked for a couple days, as I’m sure our players did the same. However, we had to regroup. Our regular season conference championship meant we got an automatic berth in the NIT. We were selected to play in Chicago against Northwestern. We didn’t have a lot of time to regroup, we were selected to play on Sunday night, and we flew out to Chicago on Monday, and played Tuesday night. We battled well in that game, but ultimately lost another close one and our season was over.
After the loss to Northwestern, I refused to sulk anymore. We had a great year, we won 22 games and won the conference championship in the regular season, which less than 10% of college basketball teams can claim this season. I’ve been a part of a conference tournament title and a regular season title in my time here, and I refuse to treat that as a “loss” on my journey.
The loss to Northwestern marked an end to my time in Akron. It was tough to say bye to everyone, I had made a lot of good friends over the course of my stay there. I looked up to each of the coaches on the staff there as well, they were all positive influences that I hope will become lifelong friends.
I’m looking forward to my next challenge however, and I’m working a couple different angles to achieve that opportunity. I’m sure in my next update I will be able to elaborate on where I will be and what that means in my journey.
This chapter has come to an end, but it certainly isn’t the end of my book. My story is much closer to the hard cover on the left than the right. I’ve had a great start though. I got to learn from a great coach in a great city with some great players.
I’ll look back when I’m done with my career with fondness, but for now I can’t afford not to look forward and prepare myself for what’s next…