Cleveland Calling

Admittedly, this is a bit late, as it's been nearly two weeks since this all happened. But hey... I've been busy. First, I had to do what I'm actually writing about, and I to take finals, and I had to come back to Twinsburg and be bored for a while before I actually got around to writing this, so... yeah. So much to do.

Two weeks ago, I made the trip up to Cleveland for the MAC tournament. When the Bobcats have a chance to punch a ticket to the Big Dance, I'm going to make sure I see it. The conference changed things up a bit this year. Previously, the first round was held on Monday with the games on the higher seed's floor. Starting with this year, they moved the first round games to Cleveland... and on Wednesday, with the quarters on Thursday. That's a big change. It also sucks because we lose out on one last game at The Convo.
Another change was the times for the quarterfinal matchups. For the last couple years, the game between the #4 and #5 seed was the final game of the evening, at 9 p.m. But because the MAC wanted Kent and Akron playing the late games, they moved all the times around. The 4/5 game was put at the 2 p.m. time slot.
This was a problem because I had class on Thursday afternoon. If it was at the normal late spot, it wouldn't have been a problem because I could have gotten there with plenty of time after my last class of the day. So what to do? Beg the professors, of course. I pitched them that I needed to be there to support the team because of "organizational commitment" as president of the O Zone. I don't think they bought that argument, but they let me off class for Thursday anyway. Hooray!
So I got ready after my final Wednesday class and got in the Escape and headed for Twinsburg. I had the dulcet tones of Derek Scott playing on the radio as the Bobcats were taking on Bowling Green in the first round of the tournament. I was confident that Ohio would handle the Falcons without much problem, as they had destroyed BG in both of their previous games. I was a bit concerned, however, as BG led early on before Ohio took the lead. They nearly blew it at the end, but they pulled it out. I would have been none too happy to make the drive up to Twinsburg for what would've turned out to be no reason.
Thursday came and I was so excited, I got up at about 7 a.m. and couldn't sleep after that. Lots of energy. I met up with Ross before the game at the Winking Lizard. The turnout wasn't great, but what can you expect on a Thursday afternoon? A win against Miami would put us in the 7 p.m. Friday seminal against Toledo, and you can bet people would turn out then. But first things first, we had to dispose of Miami in the quarterfinals.
It was safe to say that I was feeling good about our chances. Miami had lost to Bowling Green (the conference's worst team) on Sunday in the season finale, and it looked like they were heading to their usual end of the season skid. Furthermore, we had knocked Miami out of the tournament three out of the last four years, including a drubbing in last year's quarterfinals. They knew it and we knew it: Ohio owned Miami in Cleveland.
Before the game, I met with some people that I knew and met a lot of new people. And a strange trend continued. All the season, people have been asking to take their picture with me. It's really weird. I guess it's the face paint and the hair, but for me of all people, it's a weird thing. I'm not used to people I know wanting to take pictures with me, let alone strangers.
A bit before tip-off, one of the promo workers came up to me and asked if I wanted to do the free throw contest at halftime. Sure, why not? I signed the form and got a pass to go down to court level. About five seconds later, I got nervous. I told Jeff McKinney, one of the moderators of Bobcat Attack, that I was nervous. He said I'd do fine. I ran into Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt and mentioned that I was doing the halftime contest. "Oh, well, we won it yesterday, so you gotta keep it going," he said. Wonderful.
When the game started, the handful of O Zoners that could make it and some displaced 110 members (apparently they brought too many) sat in the front of the Ohio section to cheer our boys on. I got to set next to Leon Williams' dad, which was a lot of fun. I met him last season at the UK game, and he's a firecracker. The exact opposite of Leon, who's a very laid back dude. It's nice to be able to sit and talk with someone who has a unique perspective on the team and the game.
Like I said, Ohio has owned Miami in recent years, and the RedHawks knew it. They came out charging. They were attacking on offense and defense, and we didn't have an answer. It looked dire almost immediately, and Miami opened up a double-digit lead fairly quickly. Uh oh. This isn't what we had in mind. The Bobs didn't look like they had the fire or the willingness to put up the energy necessary to beat Miami back. The crowd knew it, too, and that depressing feeling started to sink in. We weren't going to lose to Miami, would we?
I had to meet the promotions girl down on the court at about the four-minute mark, so I excused myself from my seat and made my way down there. The view from there didn't look much better, either. By the time the first half ended, we were down 16. More dishearteningly, the team walked past me on the way to the locker room and they looked like dead men walking. They didn't look tired or fatigued (the excuse O'Shea would later fall back on), but they looked defeated. Shoulders were slumped. Their eyes told me they were beat. Even coach Rhodes appeared as though he wanted to get on the bus back to Athens right then. Suffice to say I wasn't encouraged for the second half.
My friend Brandon was talking to me before the contest started. Apparently he was the one that did the contest yesterday and won. He said something about not air balling and embarrassing yourself. I wasn't really listening. I was too busy worrying about my palms sweating and the fact I hadn't eaten since about 9 a.m. and it was about 3:30 p.m. and I felt like I was going to pass out because of hunger. So I really did a poor job of preparing myself for the contest.
Now, I have to say that I don't do a whole lot well in basketball. I'm short, I'm skinny, I don't shoot well from the outside, and my dribbling doesn't impress anyone. But I do shoot free throws well. In all honesty, I think I can beat a sizeable number of NBA players in a free throw competition. How people getting paid millions of dollars to shoot 60% from the line is beyond me. But I had never done it in front of a crowd before, and I never had a time limit before.
I'm hoping that explains why I completely missed the rim by about a foot on the first shot. I mean, I shot it fine, but my legs gave me absolutely nothing on the shot. My wince was probably priceless. There's nothing like the sound of a couple thousand people groaning because of you, by the way. Fantastic feeling. I think that initial air ball jump started me, though, because I found a groove after that. I had hit something like 6 of 7- I wasn't paying complete attention to whether they were going in or not- when the PA guy said there was 10 seconds left. That completely wrecked my concentration, and I didn't make another one after that. The nice thing was I had already made enough to beat the Miami student, who apparently wasn't sure was a basketball was. I won a $50 gift card to Aeropostale, which is a store I've never set foot in in my life. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the thing. Anyone want it?
The second half was more of the same, really. Miami outhustling us on both ends of the floor, the Bobcats looking like they'd rather eat a cactus than try and mount a comeback, and Leon's dad complaining about the lack of three-point shooting. Like I said, it's good to talk to a guy with his perspective on things. I asked him about O'Shea. He just shook his head and reaffirmed the notion that nobody likes him as a coach or thinks he's fit to do the job. He also said- repeatedly- that Leon needs the ball more. I agreed and asked him if Leon would ever say anything. "No," he responded. "That's not what he does."
So Ohio's season ended with a 19-point beating at the hands of their main rival. Awesome. On the brighter side, I got to talk for a bit with Kyle Whelliston, he of the midmajority.com and ESPN mid-major wunderkind. I always enjoy talking to him when I get the chance. He commented on my face paint and we talked shop for a bit. He said the offense looked like "a mess" on the court and asked what the fans thought of the job O'Shea was doing. We also conversed about the tournament and the MAC in general for a while, which was fun.
Brandon offered me his extra ticket for the night session, featuring Akron/CMU and Kent/WMU. Why not? Interestingly, we were seating very close to the AK-Rowdies, the Akron student cheering section. And man oh man are they lame! Seriously, this was like a convention of dorks assembled to watch a basketball game. It was baaaad. The cheers, the taunts... it was almost comical. I'm not even going to get into it in detail.
We moved to the other side to sit with the WMU fans for the second game, which was much closer than the blowout Akron subjected the Chippewas to. A number of the Bronco fans were quite drunk and yelling about an "Ohio conspiracy" with the referees. I resisted the urge to tell them these were the same refs the conference had used all year, and most of them weren't from Ohio. But whatever.
Somehow, we ended up hanging out with the players and families after the game. And I have to say, they seemd a lot more upset about losing than the Ohio players did... and they didn't even lose to their rival. So I have to wonder, has their fire been taken away? I think it has. Another indictment of O'Shea.
Both Whelliston and Brandon were trying to coax me into going to the semis the next night, but I didn't want to pay the money for tickets. As Ohio had been knocked out of the tournament, I no longer got the student discount on tickets. Whelliston parted with a "I'll see you tomorrow." I groaned. Well, he didn't. My dad bought a XBox 360 the next day, so I stayed home and watched Kent collapse in the second half against Akron and his subsequent foul mood. Unfortunately, Akron and Miami played for the championship, which made me feel like I was being cosmically punished for something. When Penno hit the buzzer beater, I fell to the fround screaming, "Nooooo!" Feel free to laugh.

It was cold in Cleveland (surprise!), but when I got to Athens, it was nice and warm. Apparently it had been the whole time since I left. Sigh.