Will it be the same song and no dance?
Or is it time for Toledo men’s basketball fans to start practicing their moonwalk?
With the Rockets fresh off clinching a second straight outright Mid-American Conference championship — a remarkable feat without precedent in the 107-year history of the program — all eyes now turn to Cleveland for the league tournament.
Let’s separate fact from fiction as Toledo (25-6, 17-3) looks to punch its ticket to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1980.
■ Fact: Toledo is the best team in the MAC
No doubt about it, the Rockets — featuring conference player of the year frontrunner Ryan Rollins and a better supporting cast than The Godfather — are the most talented, most complete, most fun, most dominant outfit in the league.
They pour in more points per game than all but five teams in the nation (81.5 points) and defend like crazy, holding opponents to less than 40 percent shooting, the best mark in the league. All told, they have the second-best season scoring margin (13.2 points) by a conference team in 15 years, behind only Buffalo in 2018-19 (13.6 points).
Toledo is the surest bet in the MAC, and, for that matter, one of the best bets anywhere. As a measure of its name-taking consistency, UT is a national-best 23-8 against the spread this season.
What a job by Kowalczyk, his staff, and this truly special Rockets team.
■ Fiction: The best team generally wins in Cleveland
No, the MAC tournament isn’t quite a bingo cage of parity, with the top seed having cut down the nets 20 times since the event began in 1980.
Still, that means, historically, the odds of the league’s top team winning the tourney are no better than a coin flip.
Anything can happen over three desperate, madcap nights in Cleveland, and it usually does. Such is the magic and curse of life in a one-bid league.
■ Fact: Toledo is built for March
Great guards. Good defense. Diversity on offense.
Toledo has the right stuff for a single-elimination setting.
Face it, there have been Rockets teams in the past that were a little too soft on D and leaned a little too hard on the 3, meaning they were prone to resembling the March forecast itself: hot one night, cold the next.
This is not one of those teams.
Again, UT defends and is a picture of offensive balance.
The Rockets still shoot the 3 at a conference-best rate (36.3 percent), but, this year, the deep ball accounts for only 26.4 percent their points, down from nearly 40 percent last season. These guys, everyone scores from everywhere, with an almost metronomic efficiency. All five starters — J.T. Shumate (57.4 percent), RayJ Dennis (50.8), Ra’Heim Moss (50.8), Setric Millner, Jr. (48.5), and Rollins (48.2) — are among the top 13 in the MAC in field-goal percentage.
Better still, they play smart and together, leading the conference with a 1.5 assist-to-turnover ratio. Crazy stat: Toledo had more assists (25) than Bowling Green had field goals (23) on Friday.
■ Fiction: See, Toledo is invincible!
OK, maybe not.
To state the obvious, no team is immune from a bad game or a bad break, to say nothing of a bad bounce off the head. (See: Willie Jackson’s concussion during warmups before the quarterfinals in 2019.)
Toledo’s biggest concern? Foul trouble.
As good as the starters are — and as confident as Kowalczyk remains that backups like emerging big man Mihai Carcoana can give him a few good minutes — no one will confuse its depth for the Grand Canyon. Five teams in the country use their bench less.
What happens if Toledo has to mine its reserves for an extended stretch? (The last time this happened, when Shumate picked up his fourth foul a minute into the second half of a loss at Ball State, it didn’t go so hot.)
Also: Is a team that rides its starters for more than 81 percent of its minutes more susceptible to run out of fuel playing three high-stakes games in three days?
Kowalczyk, for his part, isn’t buying it, telling us the season has gone to plan. “I wanted all five starters to average 32 minutes per game, and that’s exactly where we’re at,” he said. “Ra’Heim’s a little bit lower (30.3 minutes) and RayJ is a little bit more (33.5), so our target was dead on.”
He noted, too, that Toledo navigated the challenge of back-to-back-to-back games earlier this season, when it won its holiday tournament in the Bahamas.
“With virtually the same roster and the same depth,” Kowalczyk said, “that proved to us that good things happen if you're smart about how you practice and how you rest your players around timeouts.”
■ Fact: Toledo lacks a true center
For better or worse, your humble correspondent is more vertically unchallenged than the Rockets’ tallest starter (Shumate is 6-7).
And that’s a huge problem ... if UT ever has to play the Houston Rockets, Orlando Magic, or New York Knicks in 1994.
The Rockets will struggle against any team that revolves around a 7-foot Hall of Famer. (OK, and maybe Kent State, which is not so much big as it is long and scrappy, and beat Toledo twice this season. The second-seeded Golden Flashes are on the opposite side of the bracket.)
■ Fiction: It is still 1994
Truth is, the Kowalczyk teams that featured a traditional big man — most recently Steve Taylor in 2017 — have enjoyed the least success.
The game has evolved, and so has Toledo.
While an opponent with a dominant post player is a bad matchup, such talents are a dying breed, including in the MAC, where only Ball State’s Payton Sparks might qualify.
Like that powerhouse Buffalo team from 2018-19 that led Kowalczyk to change how he recruited, the coach is willing to accept the trade-off in exchange for a ballet of movement in which all five players can space the floor. How positionless is Toledo? Shumate, the center, is the league’s best 3-point shooter (51.2 percent).
“If you want to be good in any profession,” Kowalczyk said, “you better be willing to adapt and change.”
Besides, the Rockets don’t give up that much.
Despite the lack of size, they’re second the MAC in rebounding and attack the basket as well as anyone, having made almost as many free throws (423) as their opponents have attempted (457).
Simply, they play as well and hard and in lockstep as almost any Toledo team ever.
Which means ...
■ Fact: This is The Year
Definitely. Probably. Maybe. ... Where’s that coin?
I’ll just say again what I did last year, only mean it even more.
For Toledo, it’s not now or never, especially given that a team set to bring everyone back could be even better next season.
But, man, it sure feels like its time, now more than ever.
First Published March 5, 2022, 10:21 p.m.
