Tag it:

?

He had interest from several high-major schools but chose the Zips for a myriad of reasons. So when I looked in the paper a week or so ago and saw that McKeesport was playing a tournament game against Mt Lebanon on a Saturday featuring BracketBuster games that left a lot to be desired, I jumped in the ride and headed up 279-N to see the kid play.

I arrived with a little over two minutes gone in the first quarter and was immediately impressed by almost every part of the big kid's game.  

He communicated on defense, pretty much directing his other four teammates on every possession. He also blocked just about everything in sight without fouling anyone, no matter how hard the Lebo kids went at him. He caught the ball out top on offense and found cutters breaking backdoor for buckets on three different occasions in the first half. He also scored or made the correct pass every time he caught the ball in the post.  

The only problem was I could count the number of times he caught the ball in the post on my right hand and still have two fingers left. The team's record (14-10 I think) was starting to make a lot of sense to me. So were Marshall's stats.  

McKeesport went into halftime with a slim lead from what I recall. The second half started with two straight buckets by Marshall in the post. He never saw the ball again inside 12 feet the rest of the quarter. It would've been sad if it wasn't so funny. Here's a team with a 7-footer who is more than capable of scoring every time he touches it inside, who's clearly unselfish, and his coach apparently doesn't have the sense to tell his guards to throw the ball inside. Marshall's biggest defender was maybe 6-6.  

The fourth quarter was no different as Marshall rebounded every miss, passed the ball to a guard, ran down the court to post up and was ignored. Mt Lebanon played a smart game -- I can only imagine what their coach thought. Probably something along the lines of "cool!" when he realized McKeesport was intent on ignoring their only D-1 player.  

The game came down to the last seconds. Mt Lebanon ran a series of dribble hand-offs on the perimeter that finished with their best player driving to the hoop in front of his man as time was about to expire. Marshall came over to help but the kid made a great play by using the rim as a screen against the shot-blocker while laying the ball up and in on the other side. Buzzer. Ball game. Bedlam!  

As I walked out behind a group of McKeesport fans I heard one fella say "his only job is to block shots and he couldn't block the one that won the game."    

I turned around and said, "with all due respect dude, your team would've won that game by at least 15 if they'd passed the ball inside to the kid." The guy just looked at me like I was crazy and smirked.  

Don't worry Zeke, I think they'll let you at least touch the ball some at Akron. Just come ready to work, like you did in the game I watched, and you'll be appreciated.  

College hoops insider Ray Mernagh is the basketball contributing editor/writer for The Pittsburgh Sports Report, a writer for the Basketball Times and author of "1 Chance to Dance: A Season inside Mid-Major Hoops in Mid-America." Mernagh will be contributing a weekly column to MAC Report Online and is also the publisher of HoopWise.com.