'It's probably the best team we had,' coach Keith Dambrot on 2012-13 Akron Zips men's team
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Former University of Akron men’s basketball coach Keith Dambrot doesn’t even have to be asked the question.
Dambrot has long since departed for Pittsburgh to coach Duquesne but, when he hears mention of his 2012-13 Zips team, with no prodding he volunteers his assessment.
“It was a great team. It's probably the best team we had,” he said. “I think we won 19 games in a row, right?”
To die-hard Zips fans, the prominent members of the roster are still memorable. The team featured center Zeke Marshall, point guard Alex Abreu, a trio of forwards that included savvy senior Chauncey Gilliam and promising freshmen Jake Kretzer and Reggie McAdams, heady senior shooting guard Brian Walsh and power forward Demetrius Treadwell, who played with controlled ferocity.
What they evolved into was a well-oiled Lamborghini on the court that loaded up the area’s college hoops fans and took them on a thrill ride.
Akron Zips players got a sense of what could be
A loss to Ohio in the 2012 Mid-American Conference Tournament Championship Game made many of those players hungry for success. The Zips, the No. 1 seed, lost by a point to the D.J. Cooper-led Bobcats and watched as they went on to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament.
“I just remember everybody just being hungry and just like, ‘Damn, that could be us and that should have been us if the cards and everything would've went our way and everything,’” Treadwell, who has enjoyed pro success overseas, said during a recent phone call. “I just remember everybody working their ass off.”
And the Zips knew their potential.
“We knew exactly what we had there,” Marshall said. “We had, in my opinion, the best [mid-]major team in the country at least overall when it comes to, when you look at what we got on paper.”
Their balanced mix of veteran skill and leadership (Marshall, Abreu and Walsh) along with youth (Jake Kretzer, Reggie McAdams and Deji Ibitayo) playing their parts, made for the right brew.
“We just had it,” Dambrot said. “We had everything. We had good size, good shooting. Had elite point guard. We had an elite center. Elite. Good size at the wings, could shoot the ball. Old.”
The one area with vulnerability was point guard, where sophomore Ibitayo and freshman Carmelo Betancourt were relied on to spell Abreu.
Victory over Penn State, close loss to Oklahoma State provide Zips clues
That didn’t matter much early in the season as the Zips worked into their nonconference schedule. There were ups — wins over Penn State, taking a Marcus Smart-led Oklahoma State to overtime at a tournament in Puerto Rico — and lows that included a 77-61 beatdown by Creighton followed by a second consecutive loss to Detroit.
But there was not a third consecutive loss, as the Zips took their frustrations out on Arkansas-Pine Bluff with a 30-point victory. That began a 10-game stretch during which they beat opponents by an average of 17 points.
That period gave the potent pool of talent time to mix. By that time, younger members of the team like McAdams and Kretzer had started to develop.
“I think I got really, really fortunate with working hard early on and getting some opportunities because other guys could not play early on,” Kretzer said from his Cincinnati-area home. “And not only did I earn the respect obviously of my coaches, but also my teammates to be able to play in big moments and, obviously, become a really, really big contributor to the success of that team.”
Kretzer acknowledged the team “had a lot of personalities,” which could certainly prove a hindrance.
The personalities may have conflicted in the middle of that win streak against Buffalo on Jan. 26, 2013. The Zips produced one of their less-inspiring games of the season, falling behind by as many as 20 points to seriously endanger their streak.
“I just really felt like we came into that game sleeping. We were getting our ass kicked and getting embarrassed,” Treadwell said. “And I just remember us turning that game around, and there was nothing that [coach Dambrot] strategically did or anything.”
It was in that moment, Kretzer said, the Zips knew they had the ability to flip a switch on the court, a fact that frustrated the coaching staff.
That game, however, provided an inflection point, propelling the Zips as a team and program forward as they captured national media attention because of their play and some savvy marketing and promotions that took advantage of still ascendant social media such as Twitter.
One such Twitter campaign generated 90 million impressions, which was unheard of for that time, according to a former athletics department staffer.
Coming back to beat the Bulls also confirmed what the players suspected, and they went on to win nine more games.
“Winning that game really told me that we were good,” Treadwell said.
Fortune turns on the Akron Zips men's team
Yes, they were good, but the Bulls eventually had their revenge, and that payback seem to foreshadow the Zips' misfortunes.
The UA men’s team historically has had its struggles while playing in Buffalo. A second-half run propelled the Bulls to an 81-67 victory, ending the Zips win streak on March 2, 2013.
All win streaks in sports come to an end. But the Zips eventually had a bigger problem with which to contend.
On the court, they rebounded to beat Miami on March 5. But, two days later, police arrested Abreu and an acquaintance for trafficking in marijuana. Abreu was suspended from the team indefinitely and eventually left the program.
Marshall, who was Abreu’s roommate, said he warned him and was disappointed by what happened.
“This is me looking back, maybe he wasn't in the place to see the long-term consequences of what his actions were,” Marshall said. “But even at the time I would tell him, 'Well, if you're going to do this, do it after the season.' ... I'm like, 'What we have here, don't mess it up.'”
Abreu's loss was the equivalent of a nuclear bomb being dropped. What had seemed to be a magical season evolved into a season of doubt without him.
Treadwell said the immediate consensus reaction was that of emotional deflation. The team wondered how it could win without its star point guard. The coaches, including Dambrot, said the right things.
“But it really rattled us. It was a very tough for everybody, man. It really, nobody was expecting anything like that to happen,” Treadwell said. “And then, sorry, basically our best player, our engine, you know what I mean? It kind of shook everything up.”
The Akron Zips move on without Alex Abreu
It shook up the Zips to the point of losing their regular season-finale 68-64 to archrival Kent State, but the way they played showed them they still possessed the talent to win.
With a week to prepare for the MAC Tournament, Dambrot and his staff went to work. In doing so, he showed just how good of a coach he was then and remains now.
Although Betancourt took the reins directing the offense, he was a freshman in a pressure-packed situation. It forced Dambrot to rethink his backcourt, giving some of those duties to forwards Gilliam and Nick Harney. Gilliam stood 6-foot-5 and Harney 6-foot-8, and their size proved to be an advantage against their opposition’s smaller guards.
“Him giving us that extra size defensively at the point guard position made our defense a lot tougher,” Treadwell said of Dambrot. “Defensively we just put everything together at that point we were so tough to score on. We knew we weren't going be that good on offense because we had a freshman playing point guard and our backup three out there trying to play, so we just had to go out there and play defense on everybody.”
The Zips then beat Kent State in the MAC semifinal and defeated Ohio handily in the MAC Tournament championship game, earning a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
Adversity suddenly becomes a close friend for Akron Zips
A reasonable person might assume that losing the team’s star point guard would be enough and UA’s situation could not get any worse. But the NCAA selection committee and fate possess cruel senses of humor.
The former, never passing on the opportunity to ring every moment of drama out of the tournament, seeded the Zips No. 12 in the South Regional. The opponent: Virginia Commonwealth, coached by Dambrot’s former protégé, Shaka Smart, now coach at Marquette, at the Palace of Auburn Hills in Auburn Hills, Mich.
As for the latter? Fate decided to turn UA’s newly revitalized hoops dreams into a nightmare.
Kretzer recalls that food poisoning struck. Walsh struggled to play, and there were rumblings he took IV fluids just to do so.
“I think he dressed, but he was back and forth in the bathroom a couple times during the game,” Kretzer said. “So, I mean, that affects you in a multitude of ways.”
Walsh played nine minutes, missing all four of his shots from the floor.
Backup center Pat Forsythe was also struck. He played just three minutes. Compounding matters, guard Deji Ibitayo, who was key for depth, sat out with back spasms.
Former Akron Zips players hold no grudges, have no regrets
“I think that team could have made a pretty good run with a little luck,” Dambrot said.
That's something with which his former players agree. What’s clear, however, is they have no regrets and hold no grudges about how the season ended.
Marshall, who was a prospective NBA first-round draft pick for much of his college career, laments the choices he made that may have cost him that opportunity. He said he doesn’t ruminate on them. He’s able to chuckle about them and what happened to the team, thus moving on.
“Just like I can't dwell on the fact that we lost our opportunity, I did what I could and I have to live and die by my brother saying at the end of the day he made a mistake,” Marshall said of Abreu. “And we all have to pay for it whether I like it or not. So that is what it means — be men [and] accept accountability.”
Reach George M. Thomas at gthomas@thebeaconjournal.com
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Ten years ago, Akron Zips men's basketball team was in the spotlight
