COLUMN: CMU needs to figure out how to win on the road — and fast
Loss. Win. Loss. Win.
Central Michigan has four regular season games remaining, and it’s not hard to figure out which two it likely will lose.
It shouldn’t be hard. The men’s basketball team is terrible away from McGuirk Arena.
It is the kind of terrible that only a record could describe. CMU is 1-12 on the road. Including neutral sites, you’re looking at a 2-13 team away from home.
CMU has two road games remaining, starting Wednesday at DeKalb, Ill., against Northern Illinois, and it hasn’t won a road game since a 62-52 win against Illinois-Chicago on Nov. 24. It has lost 10 consecutive road games.
“It’s still the lack of maturity that you have to have,” said CMU coach Ernie Zeigler, shortly after the team’s 61-55 loss to Niagara on Saturday in Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Quietly, CMU has turned into a quality home team. It is 5-1 at home in the Mid-American Conference.
But an 0-6 MAC road record, plus the most recent defeat against Niagara — the Purple Eagles of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference — keeps optimism in check.
The problem is deeper than the losses, though. What’s more disturbing is the team’s propensity to find new, innovative ways to lose. Take Saturday against Niagara. A nine-point second-half lead seemed like it would be enough.
Not the case.
“We’re playing a lot of first-year guys who still just haven’t been able to grasp that the other team is not going to just stop coming at you on their home floor,” Zeigler said. “They’re not.”
In this one, the Chippewas’ leading scorer, Trey Zeigler, scored just six points and nearly matched that total with five turnovers.
Father Ernie was none-to-pleased.
“Trey was extremely soft in this game,” he said. “Extremely soft.”
But a quick trip through the ghosts of past games exposes some startling other ways to lose.
The Chippewas can play well and lose a tight, defensive battle in overtime against Western Michigan on Jan. 9.
A week later, they can have control of a game against Ball State. So much so that it’s conceivable to think they win the game if Thomas — the 6-4, 200-pound forward who averages 15.6 points per game — stays on the court. But a sprained ankle takes him out.
Worse. It takes the Chippewas out.
And not to be left out, they also can lose a true dogfight, one where both CMU and Eastern Michigan combined — yes, combined — to shoot 27.4 percent on Jan. 23, a 41-38 loss in Ypsilanti.
CMU sat in the cellar that day, shooting 23.3 percent in the game and just 13.3 percent in the first half.
And there’s no need to look back at the details of the three double-digit road losses to MAC East foes Akron, Kent State and Buffalo.
After Wednesday’s game against NIU, the Chippewas come home against Ball State, then head to Toledo before finishing the season at home against rival WMU.
It would be fitting for CMU to win both at home, and lose both on the road.
A 2-2 finish would put them at 7-9, equivalent to the past two MAC seasons in which it won the West Division. So not all is lost for what Ernie Zeigler points out is the fourth-youngest team in the nation.
WMU (7-4) and Ball State (7-5) are too far ahead for CMU to have a chance at the division.
But forget the division. Here’s what we know: McGuirk Arena is far from Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, where the MAC tournament is hosted. It also is far from wherever CMU will play in the first-round game for a chance to make the trip to Cleveland.
There’s not a magical switch that can be flipped for a team to figure out road basketball.
Surely, Ernie Zeigler has looked for it. He needs it right now. CMU needs it.
Or maybe it’s time to look for a real remedy to figure out life away from Mount Pleasant.
