Written by Jesse Lamovsky

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The expanding size, scope and hype of the Tournament have benefited the less-prestigious conferences in general, and the MAC has gotten in where it fits in as well. Seven Mid-American Conference members- Kent, Ohio, Miami, Ball State and all three directional Michigan schools- have combined for sixteen wins since 1989; four of those teams have survived past the final weekend and Kent State got to within a game of the Final Four in 2002.

Here are their most memorable stories.

Before there were Sixty-Four

Founded in 1946, the Mid-American Conference first received an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament in seven years later, when O.G. Miami represented the conference. In those archaic days the MAC champion was always slotted in the old Mideast Region and was almost always road-kill against the representatives from the Big Ten, SEC and independent powers like Marquette, Notre Dame and DePaul. Despite the presence of great individual talents such as Bowling Green’s Nate Thurmond, Toledo’s Steve Mix and Central Michigan’s Dan Roundfield the MAC, then as now, was usually one-and-done in the Dance.

But even in those days the conference was capable of pulling the upset. On a pair of occasions the pride of the MAC cut top-five ranked, championship-caliber squads down to size.

1964 Mideast Regional Semifinal, Minneapolis, MN: Ohio University 85, Kentucky 69

In a span of a few days of March, 1964, the Ohio University Bobcats brought the lordly Commonwealth of Kentucky to its basketball-crazed knees. It started in the first round of the Mideast Regional, when James Snyder’s team fought back from a five-point halftime deficit to down Louisville in overtime, 71-69. Four Bobcats scored in double figures, led by Mike Haley’s 17 points.

 The result wasn’t a huge surprise, what with the Cardinals a relatively lackluster 15-9 during the regular season. Ohio would get a far stiffer test in the Regional Semifinal at Williams Arena in Minneapolis: fourth-ranked Kentucky and its blonde All-American with the sweet game and the oh-so-southern name, Cotton Nash. Adolph Rupp’s boys were expected to redeem the honor of the Commonwealth against the upstarts from north of the river.

Instead the Wildcats walked into an ambush. Ohio jumped Kentucky right from the start, building a sixteen-point halftime lead and making the second half a mere formality. Cotton Nash was held to a miserable 4-of-14 from the field, part of a 39 percent overall effort by the SEC champs. Five Bobcats scored in double figures led by Jerry Jackson, who was dominant with 25 points and eleven rebounds. Ohio advanced to the Mideast Final, where they were eliminated by Michigan. It would take nearly four decades for a MAC team to advance that far again.

1978 Mideast Regional First Round, Indianapolis, IN: O.G. Miami 84, Marquette 81 (OT)

Al McGuire had ridden off into the sunset of television analysis but his old team remained formidable. Marquette had four starters back from its 1977 National Champion and rolled into the ’78 Tournament with a 24-3 record, a third-place slot in the polls and an almost-certain second-round date with top-ranked Kentucky, the odds-on favorite to win it all. All the Warriors had to do was dispatch the Miami Redskins first. No problem- after all, Marquette had gone 8-0 against MAC opponents in Tournament play, including three conquests of Miami.

For most of the match-up it looked as if the Warriors would keep that streak going, leading by five at halftime and keeping control for most of the second half. With less than four minutes to play and no shot clock or three-point line to contend with, Marquette was in cruise control with a ten-point lead. Then center Jerome Whitehead was whistled for a two-shot flagrant foul and ejected from the game. Head coach Hank Raymonds was then hit with a technical foul for protesting a bit too much in the vein of Al McGuire, his flamboyant predecessor. Buoyed by the turn of events, Miami staged a dramatic comeback, forcing a tie at the end of regulation. The Redskins would stage another late rally in overtime, scoring the last five points to win, 81-79.

Two players were particularly indispensible in the winning effort. Guard John Shoemaker hit on 10-of-15, scored twenty, dished out six assists and hit the basket to force overtime. Future Ohio State coach Randy Ayers added twenty of his own and grabbed a game-high ten rebounds. Miami, not Marquette, would meet Kentucky in the second round in Dayton’s UD Arena. Alas, the Redskins were a mere speed bump for the ’78 National-Champion Wildcats, falling 91-69.

Since ‘85

It took a while for the MAC to establish itself as a winning force in the 64-team Tournament. In the first four years of the expanded field MAC schools went 0-5, negating the efforts of stars like Ron Harper of Miami, Dan Majerle of Central Michigan and Grant Long of Eastern Michigan. But Ball State’s upset of Pitt in the ’89 first round inaugurated a very successful era for the conference. From 1989 through 2003 MAC schools won ten first-round games, four second-round games and a Sweet Sixteen game and earned three at-large bids. In the process they created some of the big Tournament’s most memorable games, shots and individual performances.     

1990 West Regional Semifinal, Oakland, CA: #1 UNLV 69, #12 Ball State 67

The beauty of the NCAA Tournament, when it comes to the mid-major, is that you don’t have to win the entire thing in order to achieve success. Just winning a game or two can cut you a slice of immortality. Ball State did win in the 1990 Tournament- twice, in fact. They stunned Oregon State in the first round on Parris McCurdy’s three-point play at the buzzer and took down Louisville to reach the Sweet Sixteen. But it’s the game the Cards lost that make them at least a little bit memorable in Tournament lore.

Their opponent had a lot to do with that. Led by All-American Larry Johnson and two other future NBA first-round picks in Greg Anthony and Stacey Augmon, the UNLV Running Rebels were one of the nation’s highest-scoring teams. And with top-ranked Oklahoma already out of the fight courtesy of Rick Fox’s baseline drive, the Shark and his renegades from Sin City were the odds-on favorite to rake at the Tournament table.

But Ball State had a hand of its own. Every major on-court contributor was back from a team that went 29-3 and advanced to the second round of the 1989 Tournament before losing to the Flyin’ Illini of Illinois. Despite injuries and the defection to Utah of Rick Majerus the 1989-90 Cards went into their meeting with UNLV with a 26-6 record and nine consecutive wins. They were a physically powerful, athletically dynamic and battle-tested team, one that was 55-9 over two seasons with two MAC Tournament Championships and three NCAA Tournament victories.

It was UNLV that started strong, jumping out to a 17-6 lead. When Ball State fought back to within one late in the first half a pattern had emerged. The Rebels would build a semi-comfortable cushion; the Cardinals would counter often enough to stay in it. The Vegas frontcourt owned the paint; Ball State shut down the backcourt tandem of Greg Anthony and Anderson Hunt. Big Larry Johnson racked up 16 points and ten rebounds in the first half; Chandler Thompson, Ball State’s x-factor throughout the Tourney, went around and over the Rebels for a game-high 21. The Cardinals shot 35 percent but hauled down 23 offensive rebounds. Ball State was almost out of it, yet still in it, all night long.

With a little more than two minutes left UNLV led by nine. Then Chandler Thompson knocked in a three-pointer. Moments later Billy Butts laced in another from downtown and suddenly it was 68-65. After an intentional foul Rebel center David Butler split a pair from the line, making the margin four. Greg Anthony was fouled, missed the front end of a one-and-one and Chandler Thompson answered on the other end. It was now 69-67. With twelve seconds remaining Anthony again stepped to the line- and again he bricked the front end of a one-and-one. Ball State would have a chance to either force overtime- or win.

The play was supposed to go to McCurdy, the man who beat Oregon State at the horn. Hemmed in by Larry Johnson, McCurdy was forced to shovel the ball to sophomore substitute Mike Spicer, who wanted no part of it. Spicer dribbled uneasily to the foul line and threw the ball into a crowd. Stacey Augmon came down with it, and Ball State’s bid at one of the biggest NCAA Tournament upsets ever was finally denied.

Yet the Cardinals had accomplished something in defeat. They had challenged UNLV, coming far closer to beating the Rebels than anyone else in the 1990 Tournament. Ball State went toe-to-toe with one of the best teams the game has ever seen that night in Oakland and came out with its pride and swagger intact. Some, more high-profile teams weren’t so fortunate.   

1996 Southeast Regional First Round, Indianapolis, IN: #9 Eastern Michigan 75, #8 Duke 60

In 1996, Eastern Michigan had a better basketball team than Duke. The Artists Formerly Known as the Hurons were quicker and more athletic than the Blue Devils and in five-foot-nothing dynamo Earl Boykins they had the best player on either roster. Head coach Ben Braun and Associate head coach Gary Waters had turned EMU into one of the MAC’s most consistent squads in the ‘90s and the 1995-96 edition was vintage. The Eagles rolled into the Dance with a 24-5 record, garnering the league’s best seed since Ball State’s nine-slot in 1989.

Duke had put together a run for the ages in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, reaching seven Final Fours and winning two National Championships in nine seasons. But with Mike Krzyzewski laid up most of the year with his back problems the 1994-95 Blue Devils collapsed, going 13-18 and finishing last in the ACC. Back on the bench and rebuilding with a young team, Coach K pulled Duke back to respectability the following year. But their 18-12 record and fourth-place finish in the ACC were a far cry from the salad days of Hurley, Hill and Laettner.

Nevertheless, Eastern was just a tad bit awestruck when they hit the floor of the Hoosier Dome and saw those crisp white-and-blue uniforms on the other side of the ball. The Eagles were tight at the outset, falling behind 15-8. But they were finding something out about their opponents. The Blue Devils just weren’t that good. Christian Laettner and Grant Hill were not walking through that door. As the half wore on the tide began to shift. Boykins and backcourt partner Brian Tolbert were beginning to dominate counterparts Chris Collins and Jeff Capel. The Eagles shot just 31.6 percent in the first half but walked off the floor with a 26-26 tie and renewed confidence in their own ability. The second half would belong to them. 

The next twenty minutes were an Eastern Michigan clinic. Everything worked. ‘Lil Earl ran the Duke guards ragged, knifing through them for lay-ups and breaking their ankles on jab-steps. Tolbert exploded to the rack and rattled home line-drive jumpers. Forward Derrick Dial banged away inside and out while rough-and-tumble Theron Smith swatted away five Blue Devil shot attempts. The Eagles were downright molten, shooting 69 percent for the second half. They opened the stanza with a 13-4 run and inevitably, inexorably, pulled away. The final score was just as decisive as the game itself: Eastern Michigan 75, Duke 60.

Not surprisingly, the best player on the floor was Earl Boykins. The tiny man from Cleveland Central Catholic was mighty big indeed, scorching the Blue Devils for 23 points on 8-of-15 from the floor with five assists and four steals. His running mate Brian Tolbert chipped in with twenty. “I wouldn’t say we were in awe of them, but we were looking at the ‘Duke’ on their shirts.” Tolbert later said of his team’s slow start and hyper-speed finish. “In the second half… we started playing the guys in the shirts.”

1999 Midwest Regional First Round, New Orleans, LA: #10 O.G. Miami 59, #7 Washington 58

Basketball can be a one-man show, but it still takes a team effort to win in a team sport.

The 1998-99 Miami Redhawks did all of the things good teams do- rebound, defend, avoid turnovers and make free throws- and were well-coached by the savvy Charlie Coles, bouncing back strong from his near-fatal heart attack during the ’98 MAC Tournament- but they racked up their 22-7 record and MAC regular-season title mainly on the shoulders of one man. Senior forward Wally Szczerbiak was one of the nation’s best players, averaging 24 points and 8.5 rebounds. Impressed by the exploits of Wally World and non-conference triumphs over Notre Dame and Tennessee, the selection committee made the Redhawks the last MAC at-large entry to date.

Their first-round opponent was one experienced in the art of Tournament giant-killing. Washington had reached the 1998 Sweet Sixteen as a #11-seed and returned the core of that team in point guard Donald Watts, off-guard Deon Luton and center Todd MacCullough. With a number of solid players at his disposal, head coach Bob Bender may not have felt the need to design his game plan to stop Szczerbiak- something MAC opponents had done all year. Wally will get his points; shut down his supporting cast and Washington’s superior overall talent would settle the issue.

Whether it was the plan or the execution, it didn’t work. Wally came out firing, scoring his team’s first six points as Miami jumped out to an early seven-point lead. Accustomed to wearing a bulls-eye on his chest, the scorer from Long Island was pleasantly surprised by Washington’s docile single-team approach. “Those were the most wide-open looks I got all year,” he said later.

But the Tournament-tested Huskies weren’t going away quietly. Donald Watts was on his way to a huge night- 28 points on 8-of-12 from the field and 8-of-8 from the line- and he led the Huskies back into contention. An 11-2 run put Washington in front and from there the teams swapped paint, trading the lead back and forth, neither taking complete control. Miami went into halftime with a 29-26 lead. Szczerbiak had 21 of those points. It was a good time for Bob Bender to re-evaluate his initial strategy, and maybe he did. But it didn’t matter by then. After Washington opened up a 43-37 lead seven minutes into the second half, Wally World slipped the leash again. Scoring from near and far, he keyed Miami’s most critical run, a 17-6 spurt that put the Redhawks up by five. They would not trail again.

All told, Szczerbiak took 33 of his team’s 55 shots, grabbed twelve of his team’s 25 rebounds and scored 43 of his team’s 59 points. But it was his defense that proved decisive in the game’s dramatic final sequence. With time running out and Miami clinging to a one-point lead, Wally partially blocked a Greg Clark shot to preserve the upset.

Sure looked like a one-man show. But it wasn’t. Damon Frierson, Miami’s answer to Carl Nicks, added twelve points and four assists. Rob Mestas went scoreless but dished out eight assists. Miami’s front line stifled MacCullough, holding the future pro to just two second-half shots. The Artists Formerly Known as the Redskins committed five turnovers while forcing eleven. Szczerbiak dominated, but he did so within the flow of his team- he made 18 of his 33 shots. “This was a great team effort,” Charlie Coles said later, and he was correct.

But even so, it was the finest NCAA Tournament performance ever for a MAC player.

2002 South Regional Semifinal, Lexington, KY: #10 Kent State 78, #3 Pittsburgh 73

As the 2002 Tournament moved into the Sweet Sixteen round, no team in America was more molten than Kent State. The Golden Flashes came into the South Regional winners of twenty consecutive games by an average margin of nearly sixteen points. They won the usually balanced MAC in a runaway, going 17-1 in the conference, and continued their dominance in the Big Dance. Led by scoring guard Trevor Huffman and power forward Antonio Gates, Kent barely broke a sweat in disposing of Oklahoma State and eighth-ranked Alabama in the opening rounds. Other MAC teams had made it this far- Ball State in 1990, Eastern Michigan in ’91, O.G. Miami in ’99. None of those squads had made it look this easy.

But it was about to get a whole lot tougher. After several lean years the Pitt Panthers broke out in a big way in 2001-02, winning the regular season Championship of the Big East behind a stingy defense and the clutch play of guards Brandin Knight and Julius Page.  Pitt was at its lockdown best in the opening rounds of the Tournament, holding Central Connecticut State and Cal to 37 percent shooting and an average of 52 points in two one-sided victories. Playing its best ball at the right time, the Panthers were clearly a different animal from Kent’s previous two opponents.

The Flashes would be battling history as well as Pittsburgh. No MAC team had reached the Elite Eight since the Tournament expanded to 64 teams. The last MAC team to get beyond the regional semifinals was Ohio University way, back in 1964. Getting here was at least a little familiar to the conference. Winning here was not.

But there hadn’t been a MAC team like these Golden Flashes, and there hadn’t been an opportunity like this one. Kent would be facing a green opponent, one playing in its first NCAA Tournament in nearly a decade. The South Regional had just been rocked by Indiana’s upset of top-ranked Duke in the first half of the Rupp Arena doubleheader. If Kent defeated Pitt they would meet the Hoosiers, the team they had beaten in the first round of the 2001 Tournament. The road to the Final Four- yes, the Final Four- was suddenly wide open.      

Right from the start the Flashes showed Pitt that the Big East wasn’t the only conference that played defense. The normally efficient Panthers committed eleven turnovers and shot 37 percent in the first half, at one point going more than five minutes without a basket. Despite shooting an even frostier 33 percent Kent led by as many as nine and walked into intermission with a 29-23 cushion. The second half started as more of the same, with Kent grimly holding onto its lead against a Pitt team playing with renewed aggression and purpose. But the strength of the Panthers was beginning to tell: Kent’s possessions were sloppy and after a terrific first half Trevor Huffman was barely touching the ball. Pitt finally caught and passed the Flashes midway through the half, taking a 45-43 lead.

From there the game became a tit-for-tat drama. Brandon Knight and Trevor Huffman picked up their fourth fouls just seconds apart just past the ten-minute mark, putting each team’s top playmaker on the verge of oblivion. A 14-5 Kent run put the Flashes up by six with five-and-a-half left, but Pitt responded with its own two-minute, 7-0 burst and went ahead, 60-59. Sixth man Eric Thomas keyed a run that gave the Flashes a four-point lead, but the Panthers came back with a pair of buckets to tie it with 52 seconds left. The stage was set for the most controversial sequence of the night.

With Huffman out of the flow and his backcourt counterpart Andrew Mitchell ice-cold from the floor, the obvious choice to take the go-ahead shot was Antonio Gates. The future All-Pro tight end had gone over and around the Panthers all night, with 16 points on a variety of tasty moves, and he did it again here. Taking a feed from Huffman, Gates drove, spun, powered through Pitt guard Jaron Brown and knocked in a five-footer off the glass as the whistle blew. It looked like a basket and a foul, mostly because it was. According to the officials it was a jump ball, apparently because Brown had briefly gotten his hand on the ball while he hacked Gates.   

Now Pitt had a chance to win the game at the buzzer. They held for a final shot as the Rupp Arena crowd booed lustily. They didn’t get one- or not a good one, at any rate. Julius Page’s contested three-pointer clanged off the rim as the horn sounded. The teams went to overtime tied at 66-66.

Overtime hinged on two plays, one by each team’s best playmaker. Huffman’s came first. With 58 seconds left Huffman, who had almost a spectator since halftime, sliced through the line and kissed in a lay-up high off the glass for a 72-71 Kent lead. Trying to answer, Knight drove into traffic, threw up a wild attempt that missed badly, and compounded his error by foolishly fouling Gates- his fifth. It was the end for Brandon Knight, and it was the beginning of the end for Pittsburgh. Closing like a team with four NCAA Tournament wins in two years, Kent knocked down their free throws and finished off the Panthers, 78-73.

Huffman scored 17 points and hit the game-winning shot. But Kent’s real monster that night was Antonio Gates. Playing inside and out, power forward and point forward, Gates scored a game-high 22 points, grabbed eight rebounds and dished out four assists. Pitt had no answers for him. Thanks to the power of Gates, the flair of Huffman, the toughness of Mitchell, who gathered five steals and was lights-out from the foul line despite a miserable shooting night, the Flashes were going to a place the MAC hadn’t been for a long time- the Elite Eight.  

2010 Midwest Regional First Round, Providence, RI : #14 Ohio University 97, #3 Georgetown 83

The pundits could be forgiven for overlooking Ohio University as the 2010 Tournament got underway. After all, the Bobcats had finished the regular season as the ninth-place team in the Mid-American Conference. But dynamic guards are an ace in the hole at Tournament time- and Ohio had two of them. Freshman point guard D.J. Cooper led the Mid-American Conference in assists and steals, while off-guard Armon Bassett was the league’s fifth-leading scorer.

Georgetown, meanwhile, was rewarded its third seed and dark-horse Final Four chic thanks to a run to the tournament title game of the rugged Big East. The Hoyas had three guards who averaged double-figure scoring during the season in Austin Freeman, Chris Wright and Jason Clark, with All-Big East center Greg Monroe manning the middle. They were a physically powerful team built for combat in what was by general consensus the best conference in college basketball. Ohio, meanwhile hadn’t managed a winning record in a conference that hadn’t won a Tournament game since 2003. In do-it-yourself brackets across the land Georgetown’s name advanced in permanent ink.

The Hoyas and Bobcats sparred warily in the opening stages, trading the lead four times in the first ten minutes. Cooper’s three-pointer put Ohio in front 20-18 with 9:34 remaining in the first half. It was Cooper’s first basket of the night- and the Bobcats would not trail again. With Bassett pouring in sixteen, Ohio took over the game late in the first half. They led by as many as fifteen and cruised into halftime with a 48-36 lead. If the mercurial Bobcat backcourt had been off the radar in the pregame, they were filling the screen at intermission. Cooper and Bassett were proving too quick and too explosive for Georgetown to handle.

They would prove it further by dominating key sequences of the second half. Cooper assisted three times in an opening blitz that stretched the Bobcat lead to nineteen with 13:14 left. Then the freshman point guard turned assassin. A Cooper three-pointer broke a 5-0 Hoya run that cut the lead to fourteen; less than a minute later Cooper hit another three to answer an old-fashioned three-point play by Georgetown’s Hollis Thompson. When Chris Wright hit a three-pointer to make it 73-60 Ohio, Bassett trumped it with a three of his own. Georgetown climbed to within seven late in the second half- and once again little D.J. Cooper was the biggest man on the floor. The freshman scored nine straight Bobcat points in the run that put it away for good.

The Hoyas had been routed, their Big East-tough defense ripped for a season-high in points. Bassett racked up thirty-two points; Cooper dished out eight assists and added twenty-three points of his own. Between them, Ohio’s guards dominated both halves: Bassett scored sixteen in the first half, Cooper seventeen in the second. The Hoyas never did get a handle on either of them. And although Ohio’s season ended two days later at the hands of Tennessee, it was still the most memorable weekend of basketball the fans in Athens had seen in a long while.

                                                                         *****                                                                    

The last several seasons haven’t been so kind, however. Since 2003 only one MAC school- Ohio last season- has advanced to the second round, and for the most part the first-round losses haven’t been particularly close. Akron’s #15-seed this season is the lowest for the conference since 1993, and true to recent form the Zips exited quickly and quietly, shooting a rim-bending 36 percent in their opening-round loss to Notre Dame.

But as history shows, the MAC will rise again. It would help if the best team actually won the conference tournament, of course. If and when that happens, the league can finally write another chapter in the book of MAC shining moments.