CLEVELAND — The Toledo men’s basketball team lost to [Akron], [100-90], on [Friday] in the [semifinals] of the [2025] Mid-American Conference tournament, extending its NCAA tournament drought to [45] years.

In the downtown home of the Cleveland Cavaliers, now known as [Rocket Arena], UT [shot the lights out] but played [less defense than a paper umbrella in a monsoon] and still [fell by double digits].

[“It’s never easy,”] lamented coach Tod Kowalczyk.

What else is there to say?

At this point, March Madness for the Rockets is a game of Mad Libs.

There is a same-song-no-dance template, waiting to be filled in with aching new details.

The details this time: Top-seeded Akron floored it early — splashing in four 3s in the first four minutes — and kept the pedal to the hardwood, shooting 56 percent in a run-and-gun contest in which no amount of Toledo firepower would have been enough to keep pace.

It was another long March night.

And, if ever there were an ending that should force an even longer look in the mirror, it was this one.

That’s not an indictment on the overall state of Toledo basketball.

The Rockets (18-15) have one of the winningest programs in the country and Kowalczyk is an elite coach. An ordinary season after an unprecedented run of four straight regular-season MAC championships is only natural.

But …

When it comes to capturing the validating prize fans covet most, let’s be honest: Kowalczyk and Toledo need to have a philosophical awakening.

Simply, if the Rockets are to vanquish the ghosts of March, this season needs to be the defensive rock bottom that lets in the light.

They need to prioritize stopping the other team as much as they do pouring it on them — in the players they recruit and in what they demand and tolerate once they arrive. Defense isn’t just a skill; it’s a mindset and a culture. 

They need to begin looking a lot like this Akron team, which resembles the best Toledo rosters of recent vintage — their offense a long-bombing ballet of movement — but also guards with urgency. (No, it didn’t look like it here — the Rockets, to their credit, brought it — but the Zips are second in the MAC defensively.) 

There is a clear formula to winning three games in three nights in Cleveland, where the pressure and physicality heighten — Friday’s whistle-happy affair notwithstanding — and offensive horsepower alone is never enough to survive the grind. 

In Kowalczyk’s 15 seasons at Toledo, the MAC tournament champion has ranked among the league’s top four teams in defensive efficiency — per KenPom — in all but one season. The outlier was Western Michigan, which was sixth in 2014 but beat Toledo in the title game, lighting the Rockets up for 98 points.

UT in that span has cracked the top four just twice — it was third in 2019 and fourth in 2022 — and the top six just four times.

This year, the Rockets were dead last and 356th out of 364 Division I teams. Their final six opponents averaged 92.5 points per game.

Toledo was so good the past four seasons that I thought — if the program just kept rapping hard on March’s door — it could overcome its defensive shortcomings and eventually break through.

I’m not sure anymore.

There are a million reasons for Toledo’s tourney drought, and we can talk plenty about the whims of March in a one-bid league, or about this season or that player. (We’re not here to single anyone out. This column is on a trend, not the inability this season of Player X to keep his man in front of him or Player Y botching a ball-screen switch.)

But the most consistent explanation is an alarmingly inconsistent defense.

The Rockets are too often missing the most important ingredient for postseason success.

To state the obvious, look what wins championships this time of year.

Kowalczyk’s biggest league rivals, Akron’s John Groce and Kent State’s Rob Senderoff, might not deliver as big in the regular season. But their teams are almost always tough as hell and defend like crazy, and, not coincidentally, they have a flair for the moment.

Groce is 21-6 in Cleveland with four tourney titles; Senderoff is 19-12 with two titles. Kowalczyk — who has won an astounding 67 percent of his regular-season league games the past 13 seasons — is 13-13.

I asked Kowalczyk late Friday if it’s time to seriously consider building his rosters with an eye specifically on Cleveland, even if it might mean sacrificing regular-season victories.

“We’ve had teams in the top four defensively,” he replied. “We've had them. I agree with you. Our defense was not very good this year, but what was worse was our 3-point shooting. That was worse. You can't win at this level shooting 33 percent on the season. That's a bigger problem.

“We have four sophomore starters. [Akron] has veteran guys. They did a great job in the [transfer] portal. The portal wasn't kind to us in the last year. We lost three good players. We didn't replace them. That's got to get better. If you want to write something, write something about that. That needs to get better.”

Point taken, and we will write about that.

We’ll also write about Toledo’s continued successes. Prediction: As long as Sonny Wilson and Javan Simmons return — and the right transfers complement a heralded freshman class — Toledo will be really good next year. (Sam Lewis has likely priced himself out of the Rockets’ range.) 

But in the bigger picture, if the Rockets are to conquer Cleveland, it does Kowalczyk little good to minimize the real biggest issue. 

And I suspect, privately, he appreciates this season is evidence something must change. 

“Maybe we needed to be humbled a little bit this year,” Kowalczyk said. “We won four straight championships. ... This [season] probably needed to happen. We — and I —  needed to [be] humbled a little bit.”

And, yes, that humility should include the approach to building a March champion.

First Published March 15, 2025, 3:07 a.m.