Kent State played a half to forget

OMAHA, Neb. | They sat on the podium, and they were stunned, shocked, speechless. Kent State had been a terrific basketball team all year. The Golden Flashes rolled through the Mid-American Conference. They rolled through the MAC tournament. They destroyed Akron in the championship game.

They were a good basketball team. Really. They won 28 games. They came to the NCAA Tournament as a No. 9 seed and with real thoughts of making some noise, shaking up the brackets, making everyone know their names. Lots of people were picking them as a team to watch, a team that might scare Kansas in the second half and so on.

Then, on one Thursday in March, the Golden Flashes went out against UNLV and played what is probably the worst half of basketball in NCAA Tournament history.

“I don’t think you could ever see it coming,” Kent State coach Jim Christian said.

Christian is one of the bright young coaches in college basketball, a guy already being mentioned for some big-time jobs. He looked as if he had been clubbed with about nine left hooks that he never saw coming. Of course, it had actually been much, much worse than that. His team came out fine — Chris Singletary made a layup 34 seconds into the game that gave the Flashes a 2-0 lead. It would be their only lead. They scored four points the next 15 1/2 minutes.

How bad was it? There are no words. There are numbers. Kent State scored 10 points in the first half. The total sent NCAA statisticians scurrying; no one could find a team that scored fewer points since the shot clock was put in. The Flashes missed all their three-point shots and both their free throws.

And then there were turnovers. The NCAA likes to keep a statistic called “assists to turnover ratio” — this is simply assists divided by turnovers. You would like to have a number greater than 1 … Kansas, for instance had 632 assists this season and 440 turnovers, a 1.42.

Kent State had one assist and 17 turnovers in the first half. The Flashes’ ratio: .06.

It was horrifying, just like that nightmare where you’re trying to run but you never actually get anywhere. UNLV did not play an especially good half either — the Runnin’ Rebels made only 39 percent of their shots in the first half. They committed nine turnovers. They still led by 21 points.

“Coach is not going to lie to us,” Kent State’s Haminn Quaintance said. “He let us know that we weren’t playing with any heart, which we really weren’t.”

But it wasn’t really a lack of heart. It was the moment, the intensity, the understanding that this really was the big dance, this really was how everyone was going to view Kent State basketball, like it or not. When things started going bad, they kept going, kept tumbling, until the Kent players were suddenly unable to even catch the basketball. They botched layups. They tripped over their own feet. They collapsed.

“The first half of basketball was just so unlike how we played all year,” Christian said. “We just came out, played with no confidence, just made silly mistake after silly mistake.”

After a halftime talk and a realization that it couldn’t get any worse, Kent State came out and played more like itself in the second half. But they all knew it was too late.

Kent State played it out until the end. Christian called some late timeouts, the Golden Flashes players attacked, even though the game was out of hand. At that point, though, it wasn’t about the score. It was about showing some people — whoever was still watching — what Kent State basketball was about.

“I just hope that people really appreciate the year they’ve had and all they’ve accomplished and not dwell on this one game,” Christian said.

“That was my message to them after the game: ‘You had an unbelievable year. There are going to be critics every time you step out for the rest of your life. Don’t let anybody take away what you’ve accomplished this year.’ ”

Yes, this is the hard part of the NCAA Tournament. Games in March do blemish great seasons. Most of the people who watched Thursday’s game probably had not seen this Kent State team play before. Those fans will remember one terrible half. This is another part of March Madness.

To reach Joe Posnanski, call 816-234-4361 or send e-mail to jposnanski@kcstar.com. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com.