by We come to you from Cleveland, Ohio celebrating 25 years of the MAC Tournament! This year’s men’s tournament kicked off Thursday morning between the one-seeded Akron Zips at 20-11 on the regular season, and the eight-seeded Bowling Green Falcons who finished 14-17 on the regular season.
It would be no one in particular taking over for the Akron Zips. With MAC player of the year Nate Johnson completely disappearing, six different players got to score in double digits, as it was all about putting team basketball on display today.
Bowling Green was led by senior forward Marcus Johnson who had 23 points, 7 rebounds, and 2 assists. The Falcons had just two other players scoring in double digits.
The Zips started off the tournament without skipping a beat from their best regular season ever in program history. By shooting 80% from three, and holding Bowling Green to 43% shooting in general, it was no wonder why Akron pulled out to an early 12-6 lead by the first media timeout.
The shooting montage by Akron would continue. It was remarkable, actually. The Zips’ first 11 field goal attempts came from three, making seven of them.
Shooting at nearly 64% with 7 assists to go along with it, Akron started to pull away early on with a 21-8 lead. The Zips would finish with a whopping 21 team assists.
The game would finally settle down a bit once Bowling Green put more focus on the perimeter defense. Despite still down by 12 with 7:34 left in the half, the Falcons finally got some scoring going, trailing 15-27.
Dominating the boards and the paint is what really kept Bowling Green in it throughout the first half, as they were still struggling from the field shooting just 30% up to the under-4 media timeout. The Falcons were just having trouble cutting into the deficit and they still found themselves down 20-31.
Both sides maintained their pace of play to end the first half, as Akron led 42-30. The Zips shooting from three eventually came down to 52%, but it was still well above their regular season average at 36%.
Bowling Green knew they had to slow down the Akron three ball to have a chance in the second half. The Zips did start off 0-for-2 to start the second half, but began to find other ways to score the ball like they did all season.
A quick 5-0 run by Akron in under one minute forced Bowling Green to call their first timeout of the game with 15:20 left to play. The Zips found their biggest lead of the game so far at 17, having a 55-38 hold on the Falcons.
Unfortunately for the Falcons, the deficit would get even bigger for them thanks to a 13-8 run by Akron. The run was capped off by a remarkable four point play by junior guard Bowen Hardman who had himself 10 points in just 11 minutes off the bench. The Zips new biggest lead was at 69-46, being up 23.
It was pretty crazy to think about considering that Bowling Green trailed by just 12 at halftime.
But this is what you could expect from the Akron Zips who went undefeated in MAC play throughout the regular season. They would get their lead to up as many as 37, at 92-55 with 3:29 left in the game.
It was complete domination from the Zips who ended up with the 96-67 win. Thanks to a huge second half outscoring Bowling Green 38-19, it was no wonder why the score was so lopsided come the end.
The biggest difference maker in this game had to be the three ball. With Akron making 16 of them, and Bowling Green making just 5. By the end, the Zips made sure to make it known who the best and deepest regular season team in the MAC was.
The win for Akron advances them to the MAC Semifinals on Friday night at 5 PM where they will face the winner of Ohio and Toledo from round one.
