CLEVELAND — Akron junior forward Demetrius Treadwell was locked in conversation with Ohio senior guard D.J. Cooper before the start of the second half in Saturday’s Mid-American Conference Championship game.
His message, in so many words: I’m gunning for you and that trophy of yours.
Usually Cooper lets his game do the talking, but Saturday’s outing was a different story.
He scored only three points and failed to show the court presence and the ability to penetrate and hit 3-pointers that he became known for in previous MAC Tournaments.
Ohio watched as its three-point halftime lead slipped to an Akron advantage 4:33 into the second half, to a 12-point deficit 10 minutes later and finally to a 65-46 margin as time ticked off the clock.
Ohio had led by as much as nine in the first half, much like it had in the teams’ previous two meetings.
The Bobcats go as Cooper goes, and that was the case more than ever Saturday.
Their first half offense filtered through highly effective senior forward Reggie Keely, but he couldn’t sustain the play necessary to make up for Cooper’s diminished presence.
“D.J.’s such a great player,” Ohio coach Jim Christian said. “Let’s face it: When he doesn’t play well, it’s hard to score the ball.”
But it wasn’t only Cooper who went cold in Ohio’s third-straight loss to Akron. The Bobcats had their second-worst shooting percentage of the season (33 percent) and worst outing from beyond the arc (5 percent).
It wasn’t tactical shortcomings that plagued the Bobcats but rather ill execution. Getting defensive stops became increasingly important with each offensive attempt that fell off the mark, resulting in an unhealthy pressure cooker of expectation that only frustrated the Bobcats on both ends of the floor.
“We didn’t play the next play; we played the last play,” Christian said.
The Bobcats’ cause wasn’t helped by the fact that the Zips closed in on them from all angles in the second half.
Akron has enough size that it could free up a big man — usually Treadwell but sometimes junior forward Nick Harney — to guard Cooper.
That look was nothing new, as the Bobcats combatted it during the regular season, but it proved successful Saturday.
“We’ve played (Cooper) the same way the last four times,” Akron coach Keith Dambrot said. “We’ve had more success, because what most people can’t afford to do is switch out on Cooper and play him with their big guy and still be able to guard Keely inside.”
Coming into the game, it was no secret the attack each team was going to show, even in the absence of Akron’s junior guard Alex Abreu, who was a centerpiece of Akron’s lineup in its regular season meetings with Ohio and was suspended after being charged with marijuana trafficking.
His replacement, freshman Carmelo Betancourt, didn’t run the offense to perfection but played with enough precision to pick apart the Bobcats down the stretch in the second half.
It didn’t take big-game experience for Betancourt, the fourth-straight freshman guard Cooper squared off against in NCAA Tournament or MAC Championship game play, to know the Bobcats’ look of defeat when he saw it.
“They started missing shots,” Betancourt said. “They got desperate. We started playing really good defense. You could see it in their faces.”
Dambrot said the win was especially sweet given the circumstances of Abreu’s suspension and the state of flux that plagued Akron as a result.
He said he saw the Zips turn a page in their preparation Thursday, which led them through two high-intensity tournament games.
It’s a page Ohio won’t be re-reading any time soon.
“We came out here to win a championship, and we didn’t get the job done,” Keely said. “We came to cement a legacy, and we couldn’t get it done.”
jr992810@ohiou.edu
