Blake Bacho: There’s always next season

There’s always next year.

For most, this saying is simply wishful thinking. For Detroit Lions fans such as myself, it sometimes sounds like flying pig talk with a dash of pixie dust mixed in.

The saying is a way to ignore the mediocrity that a program has fallen into in favor of simply fantasizing about what could happen the next time stadium lights flicker to life.

The University of Toledo men’s basketball team, however, is far from mediocre.

The rafters at Savage Arena hold all the proof anyone needs of what UT can achieve on a basketball court, and thanks to men’s head coach Tod Kowalczyk’s success over this past year, that space is about to get even more crowded.

But after all the UT records his squad rewrote, Kowalczyk’s men fell flat against the best the Mid-American Conference had to offer.

In the MAC Championship, Western Michigan exposed the Rockets as a team that needs at least one more year of improvement before they can earn a NCAA Tournament invitation.

And thanks to a 66-59 loss to Southern Mississippi last week, Toledo’s brief stint in the NIT Tournament ended long before they could even sniff another championship game.

But the Rockets will improve.

Four starters from this year’s MAC regular season co-champion squad -guards Justin Drummond and Juice Brown, forward J.D. Weatherspoon, and center Nathan Boothe- will return next season.

They now know what it is like to play together for a championship, and they will be hungry for another opportunity.

For Drummond, Juice, and Weatherspoon, who will all be seniors, it will be the last chance they are offered to play for an NCAA invite. Next year will take on even more meaning for them.

Toledo’s freshman trio, which came off the bench to provide crucial momentum so many times this past year, will also be back to help UT’s starters.

Guards Jordan Lauf and Jonathan Williams, and center Zach Garber will get another offseason to learn how to play college ball, and that looks likely to move one of them from the bench to the starting five next season.

And new blood will enter the Toledo system as well. Under Kowalczyk, the Rockets’ recruitment program has blossomed, and it will continue to do so in the future.

Whether the next generation of Rockets can fill the basketball shoes left by senior guard Rian Pearson, however, might be the deciding factor at next year’s MAC Tournament.

If Toledo can still be the top offense in the conference without Pearson, then there is no telling what they can do against Western Michigan in another championship match up.

And if UT can learn to consistently play defensive as aggressively as they play offense, then maybe it will be the Broncos that get trampled next year.

During UT’s time in Cleveland for the MAC Tournament, Kowalcyzk pointed out that this past season had been the first that the Rockets had spent on an even playing field with the rest of the conference since before he arrived in Toledo nearly four years ago.

The well-documented penalties levied against the program for past regime’s low academic scores had finally been lifted. In this first year of freedom, Toledo went all the way to the conference’s championship game.

And they broke the school record for most wins in a season along the way. Now, with another year of full practice and scholarship opportunities, they can go for their own record next year.

The last time Toledo sent a team to the NCAA tournament, there was over a decade to go before I would even be born. It has been too long a wait for the Rockets’ dedicated fan base, and this team is the closest UT has come in a long time to breaking that draught.

Getting over that hump next season will be the goal on everyone’s mind, regardless of what players and their coach say in press conferences and interview sessions along the way.

In every player’s mind, and in Coach K’s mind will be the same thought, one that started when they piled into busses and drearily headed home from Cleveland two weeks ago.

There is always next year.