By David Carducci
Record-Courier staff writer
The headlines have been the same ever since the Mid-American Conference started scheduling its most heated rivalry for the final day of the men’s basketball season five years ago.
Kent State vs. Akron, tonight at 8 p.m. on ESPN 2, with a league championship on the line.
Keith Dambrot knew it would all come down to tonight at Akron’s soldout James A. Rhodes arena on the very the day the schedule was released back in August.
“It always works out this way,” the Akron coach said earlier this week.
Dambrot’s Zips and Geno Ford’s Golden Flashes will arrive at the JAR with matching 22-8 overall and 12-3 league records. By separating themselves from the rest of the MAC field, the arch-rivals have managed to put on the line everything that could possibly be on the line for tonight’s game — the MAC regular-season crown and the automatic National Invitation Tournament bid that comes with it, and of course the East Division title and the No. 1 seed to next week’s MAC Tournament.
“This is four straight years that the regular-season championship has come down to the last day with Kent State and Akron playing and it having title implications, so that’s not unique,” said Ford. “The coaches and the older guys on both teams have been through this. Maybe not the exact same circumstances where one of us wins it and one of us doesn’t, but we’ve both still been in it enough times, we’ve played in enough big games. Both teams know what is coming.”
Each team also knows everything there is to know about the other. Even after watching film of Akron all season long, KSU assistant coach Rob Senderoff spent another 24 hours this week piecing together the Flashes’ scouting report on the Zips.
On the home bench, Dambrot knows his 7-foot true freshman, Zeke Marshall, will be tested in the post early by Kent State’s own budding star, sophomore center Justin Greene. Kent State’s younster won the year’s first battle as Greene scored 23 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in leading the Flashes to an 87-70 home win over the Zips on Jan. 23.
On the visiting bench, Ford knows his Player of the Year candidate, Chris Singletary, will have a difficult battle with one of the league’s most improved players in small forward Jimmy Conyers. That head-to-head battle was a virtual draw in game one — Conyers scoring 12 points and grabbing three rebounds in 24 minutes, while Singletary scored 10 and matched the three rebounds in 26 minutes.
Both coaches also know they will turn to their respective Sixth Man of the Year candidates — Brett McKnight for Akron and Anthony Simpson for Kent State — within the first few minutes to provide their usual sparks.
In reality, all of those head-to-head matchups may not even emerge into true keys to the game because both teams have so much depth and can rely on so many players.
“There isn’t a lot of difference between the two programs,” said Dambrot. “We’ve taken different routes to get here, but we both have the same kind of kids. We both have kids who find ways to win.”
The biggest difference in style of play between the two teams is Akron’s reliance on perimeter shooting and Kent State’s desire to pound the ball inside.
“We both defend well, we both are physical, both teams are extremely tough,” said Ford. “But they shoot the ball better than we do, and we probably have a little more team speed and are a little better at scoring around the basket. So it is going to come down to which team can impose their will and make the game the way they want it.
“We can’t allow it to be a free-flowing game where they are getting a lot of open looks from the perimeter because even their post players can step out and shoot it,” Ford said. “We are going to have to pressure the ball relentlessly and not allow them to be comfortable and get good shots.”
That’s a difficult chore on the road, “but that’s what we are tasked with,” said Ford. “And for us to be successful, we are going to have to do a good job scoring in the paint the way we did in the game in Kent.”