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Singletary's late heroics lead KSU men past Ohio

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David Carducci
January 10, 2010

By David Carducci

Record-Courier Staff writer

ATHENS — Chris Singletary taught Ohio University’s youngsters a lesson on how to win in the grind-it-out setting of a Mid-American Conference game as he willed Kent State to a 62-60 victory over the Bobcats in Saturday’s league opener at the Convocation Center.

The Golden Flashes’ senior told everyone who would listen there would be no repeat of last year’s heartbreak in Athens.

“Last year is over. We will win this game,” Singletary shouted as he left the KSU locker room at the half.

As he waited to check in late in the second half of a deadlocked game, Singletary turned to the scorer’s table crew and guaranteed if Kent State was down by one with a few seconds left and he got the ball, “we will win it.”

He didn’t need to wait for the final seconds to tick away to give his Flashes the lead for good. With 33 seconds to play and KSU trailing by two, Singletary backed down Ohio’s DeVaughn Washington in the right block, spun to the baseline, then hung in the air as he flipped the ball over his shoulder and into the basket. As he released the shot, Ohio center Kenneth Van Kempen fouled him from behind.

After tacking on the free throw, the Flashes led 61-60.

A little more than a week earlier in San Francisco, Singletary missed a shot of similar length with similar meaning in a loss to Northeastern late in the finale of the Cable Car Classic.

The memory of that missed opportunity combined with the pain of a late loss at Ohio University last season inspired Singletary to guarantee a different ending on Saturday.

“I was just reassuring myself,” said Singletary. “The tongue can be a powerful thing. If you speak it, a lot of the times it will come true.”

Singletary’s big basket was the cap to a brilliant second half that saw him score 15 of his team-high 21 points after the break.

Even after Rodriquez Sherman connected on a free throw 22 seconds later to extend KSU’s lead to two, the Flashes still needed to dodge several bullets in the final 11 seconds to secure their first road win against a MAC East Division rival in two years.

With two seconds to play, Ohio freshman D.J. Cooper launched a long 3-pointer for a chance to win. And from the KSU bench, the shot looked good from the moment it left his hand.

“I had the worst seat in the house,” said KSU head coach Geno Ford. “It was right in line. I don’t know how it didn’t go. It looked like perfect arch, right on line. I thought it was down.”

But it wasn’t.

Cooper is one of four freshmen in the Bobcats regular rotation. He leads Ohio in scoring at 12.4 per game, and with his game-high 21 points on Saturday he looked like a MAC star in the making. But this was just his first taste of league play. And while his bid to win came up just short, KSU’s senior preseason All-MAC selection was eager to make winning plays at the end.

“We know that all of these MAC games come down to the end,” said Singletary. “We’ve been through these games before. I’m happy I could help get the win for the other seniors on this team and for coach Ford, to get him his first win here.”

When Cooper’s shot caromed off the rim, Ford secured his first win in Athens since the 1990s when he was a star player and an assistant coach for the Bobcats.

“I’ve been down here now six or seven times since I’ve been coaching at Kent State, and we were O-fer until today,” said Ford, who is in his second season as head coach at KSU, but served five years as an assistant with the Flashes under Jim Christian. “Any win is a good win. We’ll take it. I told the team afterwards I would have been just as proud of our team if that shot had gone in, because they competed unbelievably hard.

“We have a couple guys who are veterans, who have been around and who know what it takes to win on the road.”

In addition to Singletary, fellow senior Anthony Simpson provided major contributions to the win, scoring 10 points and grabbing eight rebounds off the bench. More importantly, he played the best defensive game of his career, consistently keeping his man from driving to basket while coming up with a highlight-reel blocked shot and a hustling steal in the second half.

Senior Frank Henry-Ala didn’t put up big numbers in 14 minutes, but his scramble across the floor in the closing seconds kept Ohio’s Jay Kinney — a 34-percent 3-point shooter who hit six 3’s against Robert Morris last week — from taking a wide-open shot for a chance at the win. Kinney instead passed to Cooper for the longer prayer.

Another senior, Tyree Evans, hit three big first-half 3s to help KSU to a 30-22 lead. Evans finished with 11 points in 32 minutes.

Armon Bassett led a second-half charge for Ohio (9-6, 0-1), as the Bobcats came back from a 13-point deficit to take a series of late two-point leads. After a scoreless first half, Bassett scored 13 after the break.

KSU (10-5, 1-0) returns to action Tuesday night at Miami University.

 




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