You spell Kent State with a 'D': The Mid-American Conference knows it, so does Indiana
ALBANY, N.Y — The Kent State men’s basketball team has Indiana’s attention.
Especially when it comes to why the Golden Flashes win.
You can keep your 35-point scorer who smiles at the camera every time he drains a shot. The 13th-seeded Golden Flashes (28-6) have made a living on success when they don’t have the ball, and the fourth-seeded Hoosiers pointed to it in their news conference Thursday.
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All that’s left is to play things out in the Midwest Region on Friday, but for now it’s about figuring out what makes Kent State tick.
“They junk it up,” Indiana forward Miller Kopp said. “They run around. They trap. A lot of it seems chaotic at times, but it looks like they have a sense of how they’re rotating.”
Kent State knows exactly what it’s doing, and the numbers prove it.
The Flashes have held opponents to 40.3% shooting (19th in the country), including 31% on 3-pointers (38th). Kent State also averages 8.9 steals per game (17th) and allows 65.7 points per game (56th).
What the Flashes have done the most is earn the respect of every team that plays them.
“Every night we step on the practice floor I’m stressing take care of the basketball,” Hoosiers coach Mike Woodson said. “The key to winning and beating any team is you have to defend and rebound the ball, and you can’t turn it over. If you do those three things, you’re going to put yourself in a position to win. I don’t care who you play. Kent is a great team. They’re well coached. They’ve had a great season up to this point, just like we have.”
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It’s a concept Kent State has bought into from the start, and the proof is in the fact it has played in 14 Mid-American Conference championship games.
When it gets to this time of year many of the upsets come from a philosophy of a collective instead of an individual.
It happened Thursday when 13th-seeded Furman beat fourth-seeded Virginia thanks to great defense by the Paladins in the corner. Garrett Hien picked off an errant pass by Kihei Clark, J.P. Pegues hit a deep 3 and Furman walked out with a 68-67 win.
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Could it happen again with the 13th-seeded Flashes?
“I think we just play hard and play through a lot of mistakes,” Kent State guard Sincere Carry said. “If somebody gets beat on a dribble or mess up a ball screen we can pick up somebody else’s mistake. Just communicate and play hard. Playing hard is the recipe for great defense.”
The MAC noticed when it put Carry and Malique Jacobs on the all-defensive team.
The world will notice Friday if the Flashes get their way.
“How we defend, there’s really two parts of it,” Kent State coach Rob Senderoff said. “Some it is personnel based. We have some tremendous individual defenders. Sincere was on the all-defensive team. As you know, Malique Jacobs was the defensive player of the year. Both of those guys were on the all-defensive team last year.
“They are unique talents on that side of the ball. What we’ve tried to do as a coaching staff is put them in position as best we can to make as many plays as they can on that side of the ball.”
Contact Brad Bournival at bbournival@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @bbournival
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: First-round NCAA Tournament: Kent State defense vs. Indiana offense
