 I'm just going to key on three points -- one disturbing -- about the finish of the regular season and opine on each for this week's column.
Top seed
Bowling Green is the #1 seed in this week's MAC Tournament. Louis Orr inherited a really good group from Dan Dakich, added some key pieces including Joe Jakubowski as his point guard, and has made all the right moves in putting the Falcons in position to finish on top of the MAC heap Saturday night. The seniors on that team really deserve a lot of credit. Brian Moten, Darryl Clements and Nate Miller have been through a lot, both personally and team-wise since they arrived at BG and for those kids to have a postseason experience is awesome. At worst, this group will go into a hostile environment with a really good chance at upsetting a larger conference school in the NIT. At best they'll be dancing in the NCAA's as the MAC's only representative. Either scenario will be a fitting end for three really tough kids. And what if they do get to the NCAA's and have some success? It would be really, really interesting to see whether Orr, if given the chance, would choose to move up again like he did after Siena or stay put.
Wild, Wild West
Ball State, Central Michigan and Western Michigan finished with a share of the MAC West title -- CMU being the only team to win its way into the top spot by overcoming a 14 point WMU lead in the second half behind the toughness/rebounding of Marcus Van, and the shooting of Robbie Harman, Jordan Bitzer and Jeremy Allen.
| The Eagles have guarded well all year but have displayed the shooting marksmanship of a blindfolded, drunk politician on a hunting trip. |
And the hottest team in the West is Eastern Michigan! after their 55-53 overtime win at Ball State. Both CMU's Ernie Zeigler and Ball State's Billy Taylor see the crack in the West division door widening with some slippage in Kalamazoo, and are busting their butts trying to take advantage of it. While over at EMU, Charles Ramsey's team is finally making some shots.
The Eagles have guarded well all year but have displayed the shooting marksmanship of a blindfolded, drunk politician on a hunting trip. Ramsey has been through hell with injuries to key players the last three years and his own personal health struggle with vertigo. I've had several folks say to me that Ramsey can't lean on the Medlock injury as an excuse for his team's poor record this year because he's in year four of his stay. I disagree.
With Medlock I think they win the West. Without him they still ran off four-straight wins at the end of the year, beat regular season league champ BG at BG, and finished a game out in the West. Look at it this way: If you took David Kool out of WMU's lineup this year how many games would the Broncos have won?
Playing dirty
Akron and Kent State played another in a long line of fierce, hotly contested games yesterday. Kent came out on top, and interestingly enough, they were able to do it without their oft-troubled junior Chris Singletary. I turned the game on at noon before flipping over to see what game was on CBS. I stayed on CBS for about three, maybe four minutes tops and when I returned to the MAC telecast Micheal Reghi was explaining that Chris Singletary had already been ejected for punching Akron's Nate Linhart in the sternum.
I watched the replays on YouTube this morning and it was a dirty play on Singletary's part. In a huge game, with TV cameras everywhere, he put a personal beef in front of his team's success -- while trying to hurt Linhart at the same time. The first angle looked questionable but only because it was from half court and too far away to see the intent of the act. He punched an airborne player right in the spot that makes all your air go out of you when you get hit there. I was wondering if he cracked any of Linhart's ribs after seeing it from a closer angle. And it was clear he was trying to get away with it by the way he helped Linhart go down softly after slugging him. He's done it before, several times, and gotten away with it.
He's a dirty player.
The only difference this time is that there were cameras there to catch him. For those of you who think it was just a shove or a jab, go down to your local gym and watch the way fighters let loose with short, crisp cuts to the body. Then look at the body on Sing and ask yourself if you'd stay down for a minute or so if he popped you right in the sternum (believe me, you would). Linhart's no angel -- he's always in the middle of things and tries to get away with whatever he can, but nobody deserves that kind of surprise on the basketball court.
| Truth is, Singletary's been a consistent headache going on three years now. |
Truth is, Singletary's been a consistent headache going on three years now. There's more than one story out there about his penchant to allegedly lash out physically when he gets upset, no matter who it involves. The guy's been given chance after chance, yet continues to make stupid decisions. It makes you wonder if having him on the team is worth all the problems?
Maybe it's better, for him and the team, if he's no longer a part of things from a basketball angle. Maybe keeping him on scholarship so he can get his degree without basketball, if you feel you owe that to him, will help him more than enabling his poor decision making. I mean, how many times can you suspend a guy before it's obvious that he just doesn't get it?
Is he a good player? Yeah...but he ain't that good.
Quite frankly, it's become embarrassing.
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. |
