The Akron Zips (26-6, 17-1 MAC) punched their ticket to the 2025 Mid-American Conference (MAC) Championship after defeating the Toledo Rockets (18-15, 10-8 MAC) 100-90 in a thrilling semifinal matchup at Rocket Arena in Cleveland.
Toledo never led once in the entirety of the game, due to a complete performance on display by Akron.
“We shared the ball; I thought early on we made a lot of threes, and then [Toledo] started building out their defense a little bit,” Akron head coach John Groce said postgame. “We then drove it some, cut some; we’ve kind of seen it all this year after 30+ games. I thought our guys made a lot of good plays, unselfish plays, took what was there, [and] understood what we were looking for.”
Jubilation for the Zips, but on the other side, disappointment and frustration for Toledo, who fail to reach the MAC Championship under head coach Tod Kowalczyk, with their last appearance coming in the 2022-23 season.
“It’s never easy to lose a semifinal game; that’s a really good Akron team,” Kowalcyzk said. “We made some adjustments…if you look at the stat sheet, it’s almost identical. The difference is they made more threes than we did in a 10-point loss. That’s the difference when you do the math.”
While stats were similar between the two teams, Akron’s three-point shooting made a huge difference in the outcome of the game.
Reigning MAC Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year, Nate Johnson, had a career night in scoring for Akron with 31 points on 10-16 shooting. For Toledo, Sam Lewis also had a career-high 23 points on 6-12 shots.
The Zips had four other players in double figures along with Johnson. Guards Tavari Johnson and Isaiah Gray each finished with 15 points while Shammah Scott had 14 as well. Amani Lyles scored 12 and also grabbed nine rebounds for Akron.
Akron finished the night shooting 56.1% on 32-57 attempts, along with making 10 total 3-pointers. They won the battle in the paint against Toledo 38-36 and had more scoring from their bench with 34 to UT’s 28.
For the Rockets, Seth Hubbard had his best night scoring in a Toledo uniform, scoring a team-best 28 points, shooting 8-13 and 9-10 from the charity stripe.
In the first half, the Zips got going from three early, hitting four triples in the early minutes of the game to go on a 14-4 run.
The Rockets shot 14-29 in the first half and went 3-10 on three-point shooting. They were out-rebounded 13-10 by the Zips in the first half and got only four points of production from their bench, while Akron had 16.
Akron, who never trailed in the first half, shot 17-26 from the floor and went 5-7 from three-point range. The Zips also took 14 trips to the charity stripe, making all but one attempt.
The points in the paint for both teams were even in the first, with 20 points for Akron and 18 for Toledo.
Going into halftime, the Zips enjoyed a nine-point lead over the Rockets, with the score 52-41 in favor of Akron.
Offensive fireworks continued in the second half, but Akron remained in front despite multiple Toledo runs to cut the deficit. After the first media timeout, the Rockets were still down by eight.
In the second, the Zips made 15-31 attempts from the floor and shot 5-11 from beyond the arc. For the Rockets, they shot 15-30 and made only two 3-pointers, shooting 28.6%.
While the Rockets outscored Akron 49-48 in the second half, it wasn’t enough to overtake the Zips.
Akron will go on to face Miami for the MAC Championship and a chance to go to the NCAA tournament tomorrow night at Rocket Arena at 7:30 p.m.
