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MAC Tournament Championship Recap

Kent State 71, Toledo 66

Live from Quicken Loans arena, let's take a quick recap of Kent State's 71 to 66 win over Toledo in the MAC Championship Game.

KSU keys to victory:

Ball control – Limit turnovers & fastbreak points.
Use Gerwig, Warzynski, and Scott to bang inside vs. the undersized Rockets.
Pressure Toledo, making them work hard for shots, especially inside the 3pt line.

UT Keys to Victory

Force the turnover.
Score in transition.
Points in the paint.

Toledo really came out flat in this one and had difficulty executing on their game plan through the first, and much of the second half. UT had trouble rebounding over Kent's larger post players early in the game, which led to quite a few second-chance points for the already hot-shooting Golden Flashes.

What looked like a blowout with as little as 9 minutes to go in the 2nd half, turned into a great game as Toledo showed an incredible amount of heart, grit, and any other adjective you can think of, by closing a 18-point KSU lead with 9-minutes left down to 3 points near the 3-minute mark.

During their run, the Rockets began evening up the rebounding differential, getting points in the paint, second chance points, and constantly passing to find the open man. All of these stats swayed heavily towards the Golden Flashes at halftime, but evened out on the final stat sheet mostly due to those 9 minutes of excellent play from the Rockets.

Kent State showed a lot of resiliency after Toledo cut the lead to 3 near the 3-minute mark. Even though, UT hadn't been that close to the Golden Flashes since early in this one Kent calmed down and scored the next 8 straight points, effectively spoiling the Rockets run. You have to credit a lot of the Golden Flashes' resiliency in this one to Jim Christian. Christian served as the calming influence for this team and used a heads-up substitution, subbing Jordan Mincy, Kent's backup point-guard, in for Jay Youngblood as Kent was having trouble handling Toledo's full-court pressure.

Final Thoughts

Kent State may have let Toledo get close in this one, but when the going got tough, they kept this one going. I really believe that this Golden Flashes team has the ability to win one or two games in the NCAA Tournament this coming week. With their hard-nosed defense and inside/outside game on offense, this Kent team could very well beat, or at least scare a weak major conference team.

By Dan Whitmyer, VanDelaySports.com Head Basketball Writer

published 03.11.06

MAC Tourney Semifinal Recap: #7 Toledo 77, #3 Akron 69

MAC Tourney Semifinal Recap: #1 Kent 72, #5 Ohio 59

MAC Tourney Quarterfinal Recap: #5 Ohio 73, #4 Miami 58

MAC Tourney Quarterfinal Recap: #1 Kent 76, #8 Buffalo 67

MAC Tourney Quarterfinal Recap: #3 Akron 72, #6 WMU 57

MAC Tourney Quarterfinal Recap: #7 Toledo 78, #2 NIU 77