Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .
The moment of truth is coming in college basketball. The last Selection Sunday blanks just need to be filled in. And yet the warmup act that is conference tournament week still keeps delivering intrigue. Nothing whets the appetite for March Madness like a big scoop of bizarre.
So where to begin? How about the war between brothers in the Mid-American Conference?
It’ll be Akron vs. Miami Ohio for the title Saturday night. That means coaches John Groce against Travis Steele, half-brothers who grew up in Danville, Ind., born 10 years apart. Groce once coached his younger brother’s youth team. It will be a hard night for one of them because the MAC is a single-bid league. To the winner goes the NCAA tournament ticket and all the trappings, to the loser goes a knife through the heart, having come so close.
Imagine the plight of Barbara Steele Saturday night. She’s the mother.
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“You wouldn’t believe what I had to pack,” she mentioned about her trip to Cleveland for the tournament. Friday night’s semifinals meant wearing an Akron coat with its blue and gold theme and sitting on the Zips side. Then when the 100-90 win over Toledo was in the bag, she took off the coat to show a red Miami shirt and moved to the Miami side and watched the RedHawks beat Kent State 72-64.
Saturday night? “I’m going neutral. It’s probably what you’d call Carolina blue. My husband is wearing gray.”
Basketball has been important to her going way back. She was a cheerleader in New Castle, IN in the heart of the hoop belt, where the high school gym seats more than 9,000 and Steve Alford and Kent Benson are native sons and local legends. Her boys picked up her love for the game and that put them on the road to Saturday night.
“John, I would call him the best big brother,” she said. “He would always take his brothers, Travis and Brandon, they went to games with him all the time. He was always looking at players or scouting for somebody. He would put one on each side of him and give them a clipboard, one would do blocks and one would do steals.”
“Travis just stuck with him. That’s kind of what’s brought him into the business. The boys are very close. I’m not saying that about today, they’re not. And I want to say this. They are really good men. If I was a parent and I was looking to send a young man off to college to play basketball, I would definitely think of those two guys. They’re really good role models. I’m very proud of that.”
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The brothers have met four times in the past three seasons. Steele is 1-3 against big brother and two of them especially hurt. Akron beat Miami in the quarterfinals of last year’s MAC tournament 75-63. In their only meeting this regular season, the Zips steamrolled the RedHawks 102-75 in January. “I don’t know if we were ready for that moment to be quite frank,” Steele said. “There was a lot of buzz going around the program, I think we were 6-0 at that point for the first time in league play since God knows when (2006). We didn’t handle it right.”
Akron has lost one game this calendar year and the two brothers are a combined 52-14 this season. But this will be the one that matters most.
Barbara called Saturday night “really kind of a win-win for me a little bit.” But it won’t feel that way to the loser. Afterward, Mom will certainly be around. “I probably won’t see them at the same time,” she said. Good idea. “Whoever I see first I’m going to give them a big hug.”
Here are 16 more recent quirks to get everyone in the mood for March.
- The Duke-North Carolina game was settled in the end by a free throw lane violation. This was after the Blue Devils, with Cooper Flagg and Maliq Brown in street clothes, built a 24-point lead, then nearly blew it all. They were clinging to a one-point edge with 4.1 seconds left when a North Carolina lane violation wiped out a free throw that would have tied the game.
- An ACC title game between Duke and Louisville. One team was picked to win the league in the preseason, the other was picked to finish ninth. The Blue Devils in their 36th ACC championship game, the Cardinals in their first, after going 5-37 against conference teams the past two seasons.
- North Carolina on the bubble. Oh, by the way, the chair of the NCAA committee doing the selecting? Bubba Cunningham, athletic director at North Carolina. Since committee members must excuse themselves when the discussion revolves around their schools, Cunningham may be spending a lot of time walking the hallways this weekend.
- Illinois scoring 106 points to race past Iowa in the Big Ten tournament, and 24 hours later not getting to 60 until the final three minutes in an 88-65 bashing by Maryland.
- Alabama beating Kentucky for a third time, having scored 99, 96 and 102 points against the Wildcats this season. The Tide haven’t defeated Kentucky three games in a row since . . . well, never.
- St. John’s and Creighton advancing to the Big East title game as the top two seeds, one team that has not won the league tournament in 25 years, the other never.
- BYU alum Andy Reid in the house rooting for the Cougars against Houston at the Big 12 tournament. BYU had trouble scoring – the Cougars didn’t reach 30 points until nearly six minutes into the second half – and lost 74-54. You know, kind of like the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl.
- Fran McCaffery ejected on Thursday and fired on Friday. Meaning he didn’t see the 13 final minutes of his last Iowa game.
- Kansas knocked out of the Big 12 tournament with a 21-12 record. That represents the most defeats for the Jayhawks in a season in 36 years.
- Sean Pedulla of Ole Miss going 1-for-12 from the 3-point arc in the Rebels’ last two SEC tournament games. The only one he made beat Arkansas in the final 1.3 seconds.
- Purdue getting rolled by Michigan in the Big Ten 86-68, so a Boilermakers team once 19-5 and ranked No. 7 will head into the NCAA tournament having lost six of nine.
- Eric Dixon, the nation’s leading scorer who had reached double figures in 47 consecutive Villanova games, missing 13 of 15 shots and producing only eight points in a 73-56 Big East tournament loss to Connecticut.
- Kentucky’s Otega Oweh scoring 27 points and beating his old school Oklahoma with a last-second shot in the SEC tournament. Not to be confused with Feb. 26 against the Sooners, when he scored 28 points, including the Wildcats’ last 18, and gave Kentucky the winning basket with six seconds left. The two highest-scoring games of his career have now come against his former school.
- DePaul, trying to win two Big East tournament games for the first time in history, leading Creighton by 17 points, then losing in overtime.
- The long wait that comes with a double bye. By the time Alabama finally got on the court at the SEC Tournament Friday night. 11 of the 16 teams in the field had been eliminated. By the time Michigan finally tipped off in the Big Ten, 10 of 15 teams were out and two league coaches had already lost, gone home, and been fired.
- High Point is in the NCAA tournament for the first time with a 29-5 record and 14-game winning streak, and the five losses by a combined 23 points. Just why is it called High Point? It’s in High Point, North Carolina, which got its name from being the highest point on the North Carolina Railroad. But an hour down the road, North Carolina might or might not make the cut. High Point in, Chapel Hill anxiously waiting. A free throw lane violation.
Meanwhile, Louisville tries to go from last to first and two brothers must fight for one ticket to the Dance. Crazy. Just the way it’s supposed to be.
