Toledo men fall 98-77 to Western Michigan in Saturday’s MAC Championship game

CLEVELAND, OH - With just under 45 seconds left to play in Saturday night’s 98-77 loss to Western Michigan in the Mid-American Conference Championship game, Tod Kowalczyk benched Toledo’s starting five players.

Toledo’s head coach may as well have been crying uncle.

“It’s very embarrassing,” said junior guard Juice Brown. “We didn’t come out with our best effort tonight and it cost us.”

Though Kowalczyk tagged the bloated lead Western Michigan tallied against the Rockets as misleading, he did not excuse away his team’s defeat.

“They attacked where we were weak,” Kowalczyk said.

Anything Toledo managed to do the Broncos did better. The teams exchanged control of the game eight times in the opening half, but the Rockets did not see a lead after the 15:27 mark.

Toledo managed to tie the game up with 1:19 left to play in the first half, but Broncos freshman guard Tucker Haymond put another basket up to give WMU a 40-38 lead.

Junior forward J.D. Weatherspoon put up his second two-handed dunk of the night at the buzzer, cutting Western Michigan’s lead to 42-40 heading into halftime, but the Broncos spent the entire second half building a healthy cushion.

“Obviously an extremely disappointing loss,” Kowalczyk said. “I thought we had great intensity in the first half, but the second half we let it get away from us defensively.”

The Rockets failed to even tie the game up during the second half, eventually resorting to increasingly wild treys in an attempt at a comeback.

Their shots very rarely met the bottom of the basket throughout the remainder of the night. Only two UT players finished with double digit scoring totals.

“I think when you’re down like that you’re trying to make quick scores,” Kowalczyk said when asked about his team’s shot selection. “Did we take bad shots? Yes. Did we take bad shots prior to that? No.

“I trust our guys’ shot selection. When you’re down in the last five minutes you need quick scores, so you’re going to take some bad shots. We’ve got some guys that can make those kinds of shots and they have.”

Broncos senior center Shayne Whittington, one of four WMU players to finish in double digits, slammed a two-handed dunk through the rim with 2:44 left to play.

His second dunk at 1:19 put Western Michigan up 92-74 and silenced the Toledo crowd for the rest of the night.

“Every game we have had a hard time guarding him,” Kowalczyk said of Whittington. “He’s got some length that can bother [sophomore center] Nathan Boothe, and, to be honest with you, I think Pearson had a hard time guarding him.

“Pearson had three bad defensive games against him. I thought he had a great defensive year, [but] he had three really bad games against [Western Michigan].

Boothe fouled out late in the game after only recording six points and three total rebounds.

“We need more from him than we got,” Kowalczyk said.

Pearson, who finished with a team-high 24 points and four rebounds, didn’t have an answer for Toledo’s struggles against the Broncos.

He also was left shrugging when asked about his team’s odds of earning an at large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

“I really don’t know the answer to that,” Pearson said. “I feel we deserve an at large bid.”

Kowalczyk was much more vocal when asked about Toledo’s odds at a tournament invitation.

“We’re 27-6,” he said. “I’m disappointed that our name isn’t being mentioned when others are, to be honest. That needs to change, that perception of our league needs to change. We as coaches need to do a better job; we as a MAC office have to do a better job of getting the word out about how good this league is.

“For us not to be mentioned in the last two weeks, to me, is a slap in the MAC’s face.”

UPDATE: The Rockets learned Sunday night that they were indeed passed over by the NCAA tournament committee. Toledo accepted an invitation to the National Invitation Tournament, where they will face Southern Mississippi as a six seed. Tip-off is set for Wednesday, March 19, at 8:30 p.m. at Southern Miss.