By Price Brothers
3 14 2025
CLEVELAND— When Evan Ipsaro jumped in the air with 90 seconds to play and flung a pass to the far right corner of Rocket Arena, he knew exactly, without a shadow of a doubt, how the next few seconds of basketball would play out.
“He told me he was going to be open. He told me he was going to be ready to shoot it. He told me he was going to make it when he got it,” Ipsaro said later.
“And he didn’t lie about anything he said.”
That ‘he’ would be Kam Craft, who scored all 17 of his points in the second half to help propel second-seeded Miami to a gritty 72-64 victory over third-seeded Kent State in Friday’s MAC Tournament semifinal.
In a back-and-forth game that featured 11 ties and 19 lead changes, Craft buried five three-pointers after intermission, including two off set plays that head coach Travis Steele drew up in timeout huddles down the stretch.
The most dramatic of those long-range jumpers came with 1:29 to play and Miami clinging to a 65-64 lead.
Craft got open in the exact same corner he’d already hit from twice that period, rose above the Kent State defense, and fired off one of his trademark picture-perfect jumpers.
Nothing.
But.
Net.
“To be able to take something from the board that we’ve never ran before and then all of a sudden do it in those moments: it was impressive,” Steele said, praising not only Craft’s shotmaking but the pass by Ipsaro and a critical screen by Eian Elmer that created just enough space for Craft to convert.
“We obviously wanted to go to Kam…he can make really, really tough shots –on the move, on the turn, which not many guys can do— he has the ability to do that…
“I told Evan, ‘Just jump out of bounds. It will work. You’ve got to trust me. You’ve got to go blind here…just jump out of bounds. He’ll be open in that opposite corner.'”
And so he was.
“You’ve got to play basketball trusting your teammates,” Ipsaro said. “My job was to get Kam the ball. He was going to make the shot, and that’s exactly what he did.”
“I knew I was going to get hot and it just happened at the right time,” Craft said. “All my teammates and all my coaches instill that confidence in me.
“I’m just happy I was able to make shots.”
While Craft played the hero in the second half, Peter Suder did the honors in the first half, gutting out an epic performance with a total of 23 points and a career-high 11 rebounds in 37 minutes. Suder, who had been battling an injury and admitted to ‘not feeling too good’ last night or even when he woke up today, drained his first five field goal attempts to help Miami grab a 25-19 lead with 7:20 remaining in the first half.
“During the game I felt good!”, Suder smiled afterward. “Obviously, I was kind of locked in.”
(That might qualify as a mild understatement.)
Still, in what played out as a nail-biting thriller, the 25-19 scoreline at that point in the game proved to be the largest lead either team would enjoy until the final margin. Despite big shot after big shot from Suder (everything from step-back triples to traditional three-point plays at the rim), Kent State closed the first half by knocking in a three-pointer in the waning seconds to take a slim 33-32 lead to the locker room.
Over the final 20 minutes, the RedHawks and Golden Flashes traded buckets, traded stops, traded momentum, and traded pretty much everything else – all the way to the final media timeout, when the scoreboard showed 60 points apiece.
But just as Craft began the second half with a three-pointer on Miami’s first possession, he stayed hot all the way through crunch time, right up to making one of the biggest shots in recent Miami history to lift the Red and White toward the MAC championship game for the first time since 2007.
That final three also broke the single-season Miami record, as Craft moved past Landon Hackim (93 in 1993-94) with his 94th trey of the year.
And more importantly, it helped secure the 25th victory of the season for the RedHawks (25-8), setting a new school record.
The RedHawks’ defense was also a huge key to Miami making enough plays to eke out the win, as the Red and White held Kent State to 29% shooting from the floor in the decisive second half (after the Golden Flashes made 43% of their shots in the first).
“Our shots are going to fall, so we trust in our offense,” Suder said. “But second half, defensively, we’ve just got to keep getting stops.
“And getting back-to-back stops, I’d say that’s the main thing.”
“I thought our guys fought the entire time,” Steele said. “I thought our defense was good.
“They always say it’s hard to beat a team three times in a year, which it is,” Steele continued. “Especially a program that’s been as good as Kent State’s been over the years…
“We take a lot of pride in executing down the stretch. We win a lot of close games. We’ve got high-IQ guys. We’ve got smart guys. We take care of the ball for the most part. That’s when your focus has to raise, right? There is a lot of pressure.
“Big moments: Everybody’s watching…our guys are built for those moments.”
Now, Miami advances to play top-seeded Akron Saturday night at 7:40 p.m. in Cleveland with a trip to the NCAA Tournament on the line. For Steele, that means facing off with his brother John Groce, the Zips’ head coach. Akron won the only meeting between the two squads in January, but Steele and his RedHawks are looking forward to the challenge.
“The goal is not to make the championship game,” Steele told reporters after Friday’s win. “The goal is very crystal clear. I told everybody since I got to Miami: It’s going to be year three – we’re going to win.
“That is THE goal. Everything I’ve done up until this point has been built towards this moment. The job’s not finished…we’ve got a great challenge for us tomorrow night to be able to accomplish this mission.”
But just as Craft, Suder, and company showed with big play after big play Friday night…
Miami has a team that’s built for moments like this.
Miami takes on Akron at 7:40 p.m. Saturday in the MAC Tournament championship game at Rocket Arena. Click here for ticket information to support the RedHawks in Cleveland! The game will be broadcast on ESPN2.
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