Men’s basketball reignites the CMU-WMU rivalry Saturday in Kalamazoo

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Friendly or not, the Central Michigan men’s basketball team doesn’t like Western Michigan.

It will be the 139th meeting between the two rivals. Sophomore guard Trey Zeigler has faced the in-state rivals just twice since becoming a Chippewa and already doesn’t like them.

“It’s a big rivalry. We don’t like them, they don’t like us,” he said after Thursday’s practice. “It’s going to be fun. I’m going to have fun playing there.”

Both teams are coming off losses and look to go above .500 in Mid-American Conference play with a win at 2 p.m. Saturday inside the University Arena in Kalamazoo.

The last time the Chippewas played there, Zeigler went off, scoring a game-high 22 points. But they lost 63-56 in overtime behind 21 points from Broncos guard Demetrius Ward, who is a senior.

“When it’s time to play Western, here as Chippewas, we have a lot of distain for the Broncos,” said head coach Ernie Zeigler. “But, it’s a friendly rivalry, it really is. We go after those absolute battles. We’ve had nothing but absolute battles down there, when we’ve gone there. We expect nothing but the same.”

If CMU wants to snap a three-game losing streak against WMU, it must improve on a season-low four assists in the 21-point fallout against Ball State Wednesday.

Ernie said that he saw his team panic once the Cardinals opened a large lead, and then players tried to do it themselves instead of moving the ball and finding an open look at the hoop.

“We weren’t sharing the ball,” he said. “We have numerous guys who have the capabilities to make plays for each other and we just weren’t sharing the ball.”

Sophomore guard Derek Jackson, who started the game on the bench for violating team rules in the BSU loss, is expected to start Saturday against the Broncos as long as he “takes care of business in the next 36 hours,” according to Ernie.

Freshman point guard Jorddan Myrick, who sat out against the Cardinals on Wednesday with a hip injury will not play this weekend.