Recordpub.com - Kent State defeats No. 23 St. Mary's, 65-57

By David Carducci

Record-Courier staff writer

Kent State may have punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament with a historic ESNPU Bracket-Buster win at St. Mary's early Sunday morning.

The Golden Flashes still have some business to conclude before a tournament berth can be considered a lock, but the thrilling 65-57 victory over a Top 25 opponent on national television has made Jim Christian's team the hot topic in all discussions regarding potential NCAA at-large bids.

Prior to Saturday, most of the national pundits claimed Kent State lacked the marquee win it needed to have its tournament resume taken seriously.

That shouldn't be a problem now. The Gaels were ranked 20th in nation in the USA Today-ESPN coaches poll and 23rd by the Associated Press. They also had an RPI rating of 26 Saturday night.

To put the win in a historical perspective, in the 92-year history of basketball at Kent State, the Flashes had never before won a regular-season game against a nationally ranked team in 36 tries.

"Hopefully this is a win that puts us on the map," said KSU point guard Al Fisher.

With a heroic 28-point effort punctuated by two shots in the closing minutes that have to be considered among the biggest baskets by a KSU player since 2002, Fisher can also expect to find himself on the national radar.

Highlights of Fisher's spectacular performance were replayed on SportsCenter all Sunday morning, and the facts of his late-summer addition to the Flashes' roster -- no KSU coach saw the former Siena and Redlands Community College player in person before he arrived in Kent in August -- were retold over and over again in the national media.

In fact, snippets of Fisher baskets rolled behind the voice of ESPN analyst Doug Gottlieb Sunday as he put Kent State at the top of his list of the five fastest-rising teams in college basketball -- ahead of soon-to-be No. 1 Tennessee, and less than 12 hours after the Volunteers knocked off soon-to-be former No. 1 Memphis in the most hyped game of the year.

Here's what Gottlieb had to say about the Flashes' win over the Gaels:

"If you are a Syracuse or another bubble-team fan, you want Kent State now to win the Mid-American Conference Tournament, because their win over St. Mary's, the only team to beat the Gaels at McKeon Pavilion, they essentially protected themselves against falling out of the tournament if they (lose) in the MAC Tournament. That Kent State win is massive for the mid-majors, getting them an at-large if they don't win the MAC Tournament."

Beating St. Mary's in the BracketBuster improved Kent State's RPI from 39 to 29, just ahead of the Gaels at 31, according to Sunday's update rankings at RealTimeRPI.com. The RPI formula is just one of the criteria examined by the NCAA Tournament selection committee in determining its 65-team field.

While the Flashes have never enjoyed a sub-30 RPI in Christian's six-year tenure, KSU's players were quick to point out how losses in any of the Flashes' remaining three regular-season games -- March 1 at Bowling Green, March 4 vs. Miami of Ohio and March 9 at Akron -- or an early exit from the MAC Tournament would lead to a fast fall from grace.

"We still have three more games to play, and you never know what is going to happen," said Fisher. "So we have to stay focused and still take it game-by-game."

Senior Mike Scott has seen so many MAC teams get snubbed by the NCAA Tournament selection committee over the years, he still won't hold his breath during the at-large discussions, even if the Flashes secure three or four more wins but fail to capture the MAC's automatic NCAA bid.

"To tell you the truth, they are going to do what they are going to do," said Scott, who scored 10 points and grabbed eight rebounds against St. Mary's. "In my mind, we still have to win the MAC Tournament. You never know what is going to go on within that committee."

Scott joined Fisher with some late-game heroics Saturday night. Despite suffering from flu symptoms, the 6-foot-7 power forward drilled two long jumpers late in the game -- one from behind the 3-point arc and another with his foot just nipping the line -- to help the Flashes come all the way back from a nine-point second-half deficit.

Jordan Mincy also fought through illness to hold St. Mary's star Patrick Mills to just five points on 2-for-11 shooting (1-of-6 from the arc).

And then there was senior center Haminn Quaintance finding a way to stay on the floor for most of the final eight minutes while saddled with four fouls. The man they call "Q" still managed to swat away two huge shots as KSU held St. Mary's to just one field goal after the Gaels took a 53-47 lead with 6:56 to play.

After the win, Christian wanted only to talk about the courage displayed by his players. He wanted nothing to do with talk of NCAA Tournament bids.

"I really don't care about any of that," said Christian. "That's not what was important about what we did in this game. The No. 1 thing is this was our opportunity to finally kick in the door and beat a nationally ranked team. We played some ranked teams earlier this year (Xavier and North Carolina), and we played tough, but never for 40 minutes. Our whole discussion leading up to this game was to play for 40 minutes, and our guys did it.

"I've never been prouder of a team. We could have folded three or four times, and we didn't. We could have cracked. Instead, we held a team that scores 78 points a game to 57 in their own building. They were 14-0 at home before this."

After a few seconds to add up all of those accomplishments, Christian thought for a second and came to a bold conclusion.

"This has to be the biggest regular-season win this program has ever had," said Christian, thinking back to his first season in Kent, when he was an assistant on the 2001-02 team that reached the NCAA Tournament's Elite Eight. "It has to be. We didn't have a win like this in the regular season back in 2002."