Mike Hlas, CR Gazette –
Well, well, well. Look what school has the gall to send another of its athletic teams to Iowa City.
Why, if it isn’t Central Michigan, which had the audacity to steal a football win from Iowa at Kinnick Stadium in September.
That will not happen Monday night in men’s basketball at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Why? Because Central Michigan is not good.
Wait, its football team isn’t good, either. The Chippewas took a 3-6 record to Eastern Michigan Saturday.
But I don’t want to besmirch the CMU cagers, since Keno Davis is their new coach. Davis had a 28-5 career coaching mark at Drake, leading them to an NCAA tournament. But he didn’t inherit nearly as much with the Chippewas as he did with the Bulldogs. CMU was 11-21 last year, and the top four scorers from that team are gone. Which may or may not be a bad thing.
Wow, CMU was bad last year. It was the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. It was 311th in the nation in free-throw percentage, 318th in field goal percentage. Bad combo.
The Chippewas haven’t had a winning season since the 2002-2003 season. Since then, they are 85-177. They’ll be 85-178 after they leave Iowa City. But their next game is at home Friday against Olivet College. Olivet was 4-21 last season, and lost twice to both Adrian and Calvin.
Former Iowa player Kevin Gamble, who was on Davis’ staff at Providence, is a Central Michigan assistant coach. So with Davis and Gamble, the Chippewas should get a warm welcome from Iowa fans, if nothing else.
And those fans shouldn’t be too snooty. Central Michigan has just as many former players in the NBA (Chris Kaman of the Dallas Mavericks) as does Iowa (Reggie Evans of the Brooklyn Nets).
Coincidentally, Kaman and Evans were involved in one of the NBA’s less-proud moments in 2006.
