CMU Men's Basketball Preview: A Year of change
It was not supposed to go the way it did last season for the CMU men’s basketball program and coach Ernie Zeigler.
Heading into his third season at the helm of the program, Zeigler felt it was the year the team got over the hump and started a sustained stretch of winning seasons.
That is how it went for him when he was an assistant at Pittsburgh. That is how it went when he was an assistant at UCLA.
But a variety of factors did not allow that to happen.
Despite a Mid-American Conference West Division championship, the proverbial ‘next step’ was not taken. The 2008-09 season and what transpired after it was closer to a nightmare than anything else.
Scattered start
Heading into the season, Zeigler had a roster he liked and a program he thought was coming into its own. The team, seeing the potential it felt it had, embraced the motto “take the next step.”
“The aspirations were to become a winning program,” Zeigler said. “I felt like we had kind of laid the foundation of what we wanted to be as a program.”
But the nucleus of that roster did not play with each other much at all.
The team started the season missing forward Marko Spica, guard Jordan Bitzer and forward Marcus Van. Van, kicked off the team for a short period of time, was later reinstated, and Bitzer came back after missing time in the fall semester because of academic ineligibility. Spica missed the entire season due to injury.
But in all the chaos and uncertainty throughout the roster, Zeigler was notified his future at CMU was secured. The day of the team’s first regular season game on Nov. 14, 2008, against Princeton, Athletics Director Dave Heeke gave him a one-year contract extension through the 2010-11 season.
Heeke said the extension was given because he feels Zeigler is the coach that will lead the program out of its current state.
“I really feel Ernie has the ability to build this program,” he said. “That’s what we talk about a lot and I feel we are on the right track.”
But as the season began, things worsened. Now, senior forward Chris Kellermann, on his way to his best season of his career, broke his foot after seven games and missed the rest of the season. With Kellermann and Spica out, it left a gap in the team’s roster that later forced the team to change the way it played.
“What I found out real quick is that the things you can’t control sometimes make the circumstance much more harder than you would ever imagine they could ever be,” Zeigler said. “And that’s definitely what happened to us in the early part of last season. We had to reinvent ourselves for a lot of different reasons.”
Fifteen
After the team’s 75-61 loss at Toledo on Jan. 20, which put the team’s Mid-American Conference record at 1-3, it sparked the coaching staff to look at what could be done to improve the team’s slipping record.
Zeigler said one his goals has always been to get his best players on the court as much as possible in a productive manner. But with the injuries, the team’s lack of depth left the starters on the court more than usual. Their talents were no longer being utilized in as productive of a way as possible.
During a midseason meeting, assistant coach Keith Noftz suggested slowing the team’s tempo on the court. The coaching staff decided to implement a system it called “15”, which vaguely meant the team would not try to score until there was 15 seconds on the shot clock.
The new system began to pay dividends. CMU, 4-12 at the time, finished the regular season on a 7-6 run. And, for the third consecutive year under Zeigler, it advanced to the second round of the MAC Tournament before losing in overtime to Ball State, 64-61.
CMU held its opponent to less than 70 points in every game after the Jan. 20 loss to Toledo. But with some things in order, the team’s identity dramatically changed again in the offseason.
Roster overhaul
CMU graduated Van and Ryan Thomas when the season ended. But by the time July arrived, it lost five more players.
Jeremy Allen, Lawrence Bridges, Adrian Hunter and William Eddie III all departed the program under mutual terms, and all have since moved on to other basketball programs.
Assistant coach William Eddie Jr., William Eddie III’s father, also left, taking an assistant coaching job at Florida International to coach under Isiah Thomas, whom he previously worked with earlier in his career. He reunited with Allen, who transferred to FIU.
Zeigler said the transfers were not a complete surprise to him and the other coaches, but the number of players departing was.
“I was not fully aware that all four were going to leave,” he said. “We had some inkling that one or two guys was thinking about leaving.”
With that inkling, Zeigler knew he would most likely have to recruit a few additional players when spring arrived.
“It definitely, in the spring, put us on the track of finding (guard) Finnis Craddock and (guard) Amir Rashid and (guard/foward) Jalin Thomas.” Zeigler said.
Joe Estrada, Tyler Brown, William McClure and Sean Day rounded out the recruiting class.
Zeigler had an idea he might be losing some players and scouted accordingly. But in June, the team took another unexpected hit.
Forward Jacolby Hardiman was arrested June 24 after being arraigned on felony charges and was released from the team.
“There is a level of accountability that is expected of Central Michigan basketball players,” Zeigler said. “And it’s not going to be compromised, and it’s my responsibility to help them understand, to take that next step into adulthood.”
Hardiman was later convicted of a high-court misdemeanor and sentenced to two days in jail and fined. He transferred to Robert Morris University.
The Present
Through all the injuries, personal issues, transfers and new recruits, CMU is looking at this season as its opportunity.
“We’re hungry, extremely hungry to, first and foremost, become a winning program,” Zeigler said.
Zeigler gives credit to seniors Bitzer, Brandon Ford, Robbie Harman and Kellermann for staying through all the adversity and holding together the program after losing seven players and gaining seven more.
“I think they are the guys that were in the trenches, and they were the guys that were carrying the torch when maybe some of those other guys who left weren’t quite as committed as they were. ... I think they’ve welcomed the change because they knew those guys weren’t totally on the same page with them,” Zeigler said.
Harman said having the seniors know his system so well makes things run a lot smoother on the court.
“Everyone that’s been here for four years knows what (Zeigler) wants, so it makes his job easier with us being out there relaying what he wants,” he said.
Zeigler kept specific goals to himself and the team, but it is apparent expectations are high. Expectations say this is the turning point. This is the year the program blossoms.
“In April, I want to look back and say, ‘Man, this was the most successful team that we’ve had since I’ve been the coach,’” he said.
