Recordpub.com - Kent State blasts arch-rival Akron for MAC regular-season title

By David Carducci

Record-Courier staff writer

AKRON — The epic battle between the Mid-American Conference’s dominant powers never materialized.

Kent State showed up in enemy territory ready to fight tooth and nail for the chance to claim just the fourth regular-season MAC championship in school history.

Akron couldn’t come anywhere close to matching the Golden Flashes’ resolve in its quest for its first regular-season title.

The result was a runaway 74-61 Kent State win at James A. Rhodes Arena, giving the Flashes the conference title, an automatic bid to the National Invitation Tournament in the hip pocket, and the No. 1 seed to next week’s Mid-American Conference Tournament in Cleveland.

They might want to re-gift one of those prizes. As the No. 1 seed, KSU will have a tougher road to the tournament championship than Akron will find at No. 3.

But the right to hang a brand new championship banner in the M.A.C. Center? The Flashes will hold on to that honor.

“We’ve been doing this for almost 100 years having a basketball team at Kent State,” said Ford. “The perception of Kent State basketball is that it’s highly successful, it’s a very good, it’s a national program. All those are things are true, and we just won our fourth championships in school history. So, what we did was pretty special.”

The Flashes won the MAC in 2002 under Stan Heath and in 2006 and 2008 under Jim Christian.

In just his second season as head coach, Ford joins a short list of coaches with regular-season titles at KSU.

“I’m going to enjoy this one for a day or two,” said KSU head coach Geno Ford. “We have grinded all year to get here. The hardest championship to win is the regular season. The fun one is the tournament because you get the NCAA Tournament bid. But for a 16-game grind, for us to go 13-3, it’s something we need to enjoy for a day or two, and we’ll get focused in on the (MAC Tournament).”

KSU simply dominated every aspect of a game against a team that stepped on the floor with the exact same 22-8 overall and 12-3 league record on the regualr-season’s final day.

“That’s the first time in my six years here we got beat that bad at home,” said Akron head coach Keith Dambrot. “They were a much better team than us tonight. Both games really. Tip your hats to them.”

The Zips lost the first meeting in Kent 87-70 back on Jan. 23. While the final score didn’t look quite as lopsided, Friday night was the bigger blowout.

The circumstances made the game all the more impressive. The Flashes’ top scorer, Justin Greene, struggled to just eight points. Their Player-of-the-Year candidate, Chris Singletary, played just 15 minutes because of foul trouble. Singletary and starting point guard Rod Sherman didn’t practice all week because of injury. The game was played in front of a soldout, partisan Akron crowd of 5,545. And still KSU blew out its arch rival. It wasn’t even close.

Kent State out-rebounded Akron 36-30, but 10 of the Zips’ rebounds came in the first five minutes, as they built an early 11-5 lead. Over the next 35 minutes, the Flashes dominated the boards to the tune of 32-20.

They also dominated the scoring in the paint 44-30, the points off of turnovers 25-12, and pummeled Akron off the bench 34-12.

Most of the damage off the bench was inflicted by the potential MAC Sixth Man of the Year, Anthony Simpson, who was a one-man wrecking crew in scoring career-high 23 points to go with his nine rebounds.

Simpson hit turnarounds from 15 feet, he threw down two-handed dunks, he made crisp cuts to the rim for easy layups and at the 14:25 mark of the second half, he drilled a 3-pointer that signaled the Zips’ demise.

“That 3 by Anthony was the turning point,” said KSU’s Rod Sherman, who was the Flashes’ other dominant force in scoring 15 points, including 11 in the second half. “When Ant starts smiling, and he is feeling it, I know we are in for a good night.”

It’s a simple truth. When Simpson scores in double figures. Kent State wins — and usually big. The Flashes are 13-0 when Simpson hits for 10 or more.

The defense against Simpson demonstrated just how out-of-sync the Zips were.

“Simpson was, man, I don’t know if you can play better than that,” said Dambrot. “But you have to corwd up on him to take away the jumper. And he’s going to go to his left to take the jumper. We knew it, but we didn’t do anything about it.”

The Flashes open tournament play against either Ball State or Ohio on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Gund Arena.