Too little, too late?

Or did the Toledo men’s basketball team find its pulse just in time?

We’re about to find out.

As the Rockets wheeze to the finish line, the flicker of life they showed Tuesday night against league-leading Akron in cutting a 24-point second-half deficit to three will go down as the last stand in a lost season.

Or it will prove the first sign of their second wind.

“I’m not ready to chalk this year up,” forward Javan Simmons said after the 96-87 loss at Savage Arena. “There’s no way.”

“I hope people ain't giving up on us,” he added. “As soon as they write us off, that's when we come out swinging, all right. We’re still dogs. We've just got a find way to eat. We're going to find a way.”

Stay tuned.

If you’re in the group that is giving up — and suspect some of Simmons’ less dogged teammates are trending that way, too — I hear you.

I’m not sure I would go there.

Not yet.

For now, let’s just say things are not great.

After an unprecedented run of four straight Mid-American Conference regular-season championships, the Rockets (16-14, 9-8) have returned from orbit and are in a tailspin, losing six of their last seven games.

The last time they endured a worse stretch was Tod Kowalczyk’s first season, in 2010, when a glowing Savage Arena was still a Superfund site after the Gene Cross disaster.

This free fall is harder to figure, although easy to explain.

Simply, the star veteran transfers who were good players on bad teams — Seth Hubbard (Western Michigan) and Isaiah Adams (Buffalo) — have not delivered as expected, while the younger homegrown players — sophomores Sonny Wilson, Sam Lewis, and Simmons, to name a few — are but talented pieces in an ill-fitting puzzle. Leadership is missing.

This is the rare Kowalczyk team that’s less than the sum of its parts.

It happens.

Look around almost everywhere else in an era in which rosters change with the wind.

The real anomaly is winning four straight championships; not enduring a down season.

Still, the frustration is understandable.

If we’re being honest, as much joy as the Rockets radiated the past four seasons, this is not a fun team to watch.

They play as if they’re trying to give your high school coach an aneurysm, showing no interest in passing and a passing interest in defense.

Gone are the free-flowing offensive ballets of seasons past. There are glaciers that move more than Toledo, the ball sticking to its hands like rubber cement. The Rockets record an assist on just 46.5 percent of their baskets, which ranks 305th nationally.

What’s more, with the exception of Lewis, they don’t have the kind of floor-stretching, create-from-anywhere playmakers — think stars like Marreon Jackson, Ryan Rollins, RayJ Dennis, or even Dante Maddox — who can offset that static.

“We don't have shotmakers,” Kowalczyk said, “and that needs to be addressed in our recruiting and transfer portal.”

As for the other end of the court, the less said, the better.

While the defense is rarely a strength of one of the nation’s most prolific offensive programs, this year’s production should feature an NC-17 rating.

The Rockets are 355th of 364 Division I teams in defensive efficiency, per KenPom, and do nothing well, guarding neither the basket nor the perimeter. They allow the opposition to shoot 56.1 percent on 2s (342nd) and 38 percent on 3s (355th). For context, Akron shoots a league-high 36 percent from beyond the arc. Toledo’s defense makes it seem like it’s playing the best shooting team in the country every night.

It’s not getting better, either.

Just the opposite, if you want to make the case that some players are ready to call it a season, you might cite the broken lights in the gym the past three games.

Here’s the production of Toledo’s past three opponents:

● Kent State: 105 points (season high) on 59 percent shooting.

● Buffalo: 87 points (season high) on 63 percent shooting.

● Akron: 96 points on 57 percent shooting.

We can talk plenty about strategy and fundamentals — Kowalczyk has lamented Toledo’s ball-screen defense all season — but, ultimately, when it gets this bad, it’s clear the issue is more basic.

I asked Kowalczyk how much of the problem is pure effort and urgency.

“I just think they're feel-good guys,” he said. “When things are going our way, they play with that chip. When things aren’t going our way, we get awfully quiet, and that's been not just during our losing streak. That was when we were winning, too. ... I don't want to say it’s effort. We've had some games where we didn't have great effort. Most of these games, we've had really good effort. We just didn’t play very smart.”

Fair enough.

Looking ahead, I have little doubt Kowalczyk — who it bears repeating is one of the top basketball minds in the nation — will get it right.

Major roster changes are coming this offseason, and, if there’s a silver lining to the defense scraping rock bottom, perhaps it’s that it will cause Kowalczyk to re-evaluate his recruiting philosophy. It’s time to begin building the roster with an eye toward the three-games-in-three-nights grind of the MAC tournament, where offensive horsepower alone never carries the day.

Meantime, the Rockets will keep looking for answers, hoping their newfound spark can become a flame next week in Cleveland.

At least, they showed Tuesday they can get plenty hot, splashing in 63 second-half points on 73 (73!!) percent shooting.

The bad news: They allowed Akron to shoot a just-as-absurd 68 percent after the break and couldn’t get a stop when it mattered most.

It was the story of a season that may just be one of those years.

“I'm not willing to say that yet,” Kowalczyk said. “I hope the loyal longtime Rocket basketball fans understand we just won four straight championships. Never been done before. Last year we had a string of 20 consecutive MAC wins that was broken. Never been done before.

“We've had a lot of things happen in a good way and we're struggling right now. It's easy for everybody — players, coaches, media, fans — to point fingers. But I know this: We’re going to point the finger inward, we’re going to look at ourselves, and we’re not going to let any outside influences distract us.”

First Published March 5, 2025, 8:37 p.m.