Men’s basketball stumbles on road against Kent State, 85-69
Sophomore guard Kevin McKay goes up for layup on Dec. 5 in McGuirk Arena.
The Central Michigan men's basketball team (12-3, 1-1 MAC) fell short in search of revenge on Jan. 6, losing to Kent State (7-8, 1-1) at the Memorial Athletic and Convocation Center, 85-69.
The 2016-17 season for Kent State included a Mid-American Conference Tournament Championship and an NCAA Tournament appearance for the first time since 2008.
In the first round of the MAC tournament, the Golden Flashes took down the Chippewas in overtime, 116-106. The win over CMU helped propel Kent State to a MAC title and a date with No. 8 UCLA in the NCAA Tournament.
“You have to be able to turn the page after one game and realize there are going to be other nights where you’re down and where you lose, but how you respond is really important to our success,” CMU head coach Keno Davis said.
Kent State opened the game on a 15-4 run, fueled by junior guard Jaylin Walker. During the hot stretch for the Golden Flashes, Walker knocked down three 3-pointers.
“The number of shots made by Kent State in the first half put us off-guard,” Davis said. “They hit us in the mouth and it took us until halftime to respond and that’s too late to be able to win on the road.”
Walker was the star of the show, putting up 26 points, four rebounds and five assists to help hand CMU its first loss since Dec. 16. Since the 1996-17 season, the Chippewas have one just once at Kent State.
With 13:20 left in the first half, sophomore guard Kevin McKay handed the momentum back to CMU by dropped a 3-pointer, cutting the Chippewas deficit to eight points. Moments later, CMU trailed by just five points on a layup from McKay.
Both teams traded 3-pointers back and forth towards the end of the first half. As the halftime buzzer sounded, junior center Adonis De La Rosa threw down a dunk on an assist from junior guard Jalen Avery, giving Kent State a 46-30 lead at the break.
In the second half, the scoring of Walker, Avery and De La Rosa proved too much to handle. The two teams went back and forth for quite some time, but Kent State managed to pull away as time wound down.
“I’m really proud of the way we fought back at halftime,” Davis said. “We played more like ourselves in that second half.”
Kent State took a 20-point edge over CMU with 3:43 remaining in the game on a layup by senior guard Kevin Zabo. He finished with 17 points, two rebounds and four assists for the Golden Flashes.
The Chippewas were led by senior forward Luke Meyer. The 6-foot-11, 224-pound big man chipped in 15 points, seven rebounds and four assists. Kent State’s defense held senior forward Cecil Williams and sophomore guard David DiLeo to four and nine points, respectively.
“In our entire starting lineup, nobody shot 50 percent,” Davis said. “That’s not exactly the recipe for success to have a lot of guys with off nights. I think the bright spot is we had very few guys play well and with six, seven minutes left it was still a game.”
Last season in the MAC tournament against CMU, De La Rosa played just one minute and did not score. On Jan. 6, he loaded the stat sheet with a double-double, logging 24 points, 14 rebounds and one assist.
CMU travels back into the state of Michigan at 7 p.m. on Jan. 9 to play its third Mid-American Conference game of the season against Eastern Michigan at the Convocation Center in Ypsilanti.
“It’s a game where you wish you had a couple more days of preparation,” Davis said. “(EMU) is 0-2, but could easily be 2-0. We haven’t had a lot of success in the last couple of years against them. We feel like we have a better ball club.”
