Blake Bacho: Rockets got careless

Juice Brown said it left a bad taste in his mouth. Justin Drummond called it an opportunity he’d probably never get back. J.D. Weatherspoon stared silently at nothing in particular, as if he was still trying to process what had happened.

The University of Toledo men’s basketball team, the squad everyone had predicted would represent the Mid-American Conference in the NCAA Tournament, fell to Central Michigan last Friday night in the semifinal round of the MAC Tournament.

And now three of the most talented seniors to ever don the midnight blue and gold are forced to watch the Big Dance from home, wondering what went wrong and what might have been.

“I think we took some guys for granted,” Juice said after the 75-66 loss to CMU. “It came back to hurt us in the long run.”

Take your pick at which guys Juice is referring to, because there were more than a few teams that seemed to take the Rockets by surprise this season.

Toledo fell at home this year to a Northern Illinois team that finished 14-16. The Rockets also dropped a late-season road game to Eastern Michigan that would have earned UT a share of at least the MAC West crown.

But Toledo’s issues both began and ended with Central Michigan.

UT never figured out how to beat CMU this season, but the Rockets sure mastered how to lose to the Chips. Toledo fell to Central Michigan in UT’s conference home opener, then again in the season finale and once more in the MAC Tournament.

Turnovers were the biggest issue in the losses, a problem that had Toledo Head Coach Tod Kowalczyk mystified.

UT committed 12 turnovers during last Friday’s contest, while Central Michigan finished with only five.

“Our turnovers clearly ended our season,” Kowalczyk said after the loss.

Turnovers can usually be attributed to carelessness which can come from overconfidence. That brings us back to Juice’s comments after Friday’s season-ending defeat.

The team was anointed before anything had been accomplished. You could feel it inside Savage Arena each and every night, even as the home losses began to pile up for the Rockets.

With four returning starters — three of them seniors — from a squad that just last year had set a school record for wins in a season, it seemed inevitable that Toledo would be heading to the NCAA Tournament.

But that bubble has been popped. Those seniors will never play another game as Rockets. Next season, Toledo will have only two returning starters.

The depth chart beyond that duo is more than a bit murky.

Stuckey Mosley will take Juice’s place at point guard and all signs point to him stepping into that role quite nicely. But the bench players that will be expected to compensate for the departed production did not impress this past season.

Sophomores Jordan Lauf and Zach Garber were inconsistent. Freshman Kurt Hall caught fire towards the very end of the Rockets’ campaign, but he hasn’t yet proved he can be a constant producer.

In one swift motion, Toledo will go from being a veteran team with high expectations to a young squad with plenty of question marks.

But maybe that’s what the program needs.

Toledo set the school record for wins in their first season of postseason eligibility following a ban that had been handed down for past academic issues. There had to be a chip on the shoulders of all those Rockets that hadn’t yet had the chance to compete for an invitation to the NCAA Tournament.

But after last season, that chip seemed to fall off. What was left over was entitlement.

The Rockets overlooked opponents because they had their eyes fixed on the Big Dance. What was forgotten was the conference season and MAC Tournament that needed to be conquered first.

It’s way too early to try and guess where preseason polls will predict Toledo to finish next season.

We can be fairly certain, however, that they will not be picked to win it all, as they were this past year. The loss of three senior starters will cause many to see the Rockets as a team in rebuilding mode.

Combine low expectations with the thirst for redemption and you have the recipe for an underdog story. Maybe next season, Toledo will be the team that is overlooked much to their opponents’ later regret.

The Rockets definitely won’t have the expectations going into their next campaign that they had coming into this past season. That might prove to be just the blessing in disguise they need to get over the hump and into the Big Dance.