KALAMAZOO, Mich. - David Brown made a pair of go-ahead free throws with 26 seconds left, and the Western Michigan men's basketball team earned their first victory over the Akron Zips since the 2007-08 season, winning 57-54 at University Arena on Wednesday. With the win, the Broncos improve to 15-8 on the season, 8-3 in Mid-American Conference play.
Western Michigan trailed Akron 28-20 at the half but the Broncos took control of the game in the final 20 minutes, out-scoring the Zips 37-26 and holding them to 33.3 percent shooting from the field. WMU owned the rebounding edge 17-12 in the second half and forced nine Akron turnovers, which they turned into eight points. The Broncos controlled the paint over the course of the entire game, out-scoring the Zips 28-12 down low.
Brown finished with a game-high 17 points, running his streak of consecutive games with double-digit points to 28, while also adding six rebounds, four steals, and two assists. Shayne Whittington scored 15 points, including 13 in the second half, and pulled down a team-high seven rebounds. Tucker Haymond and Connar Tava each finished with 12 points.
Akron led by as many as 10 points in the second half, taking the big edge on a three-pointer from Jake Kretzer to make it 35-25 with 17:59 to play in regulation. Brown began cutting the lead with a trey of his own at the 15:11 mark to make it 38-32, and Tava scored a second-chance bucket with 12:05 to play off a Haymond offensive rebound. Whittington got the crowd fired up with 10:36 remaining when he drove the lane for a make and drew a foul from Pat Forsythe, sinking the free throw to cut the lead to 45-43, and the big man tied the game on the next possession with a 15-footer from the left side.
The teams battled back and forth for the rest of the half, with WMU taking its first lead of the second half at the 1:16 mark on a bounce pass from Tava to Brown for the lay-up. Quincy Diggs tied it 15 seconds later with a pair of free throw makes, but Brown sunk a pair of his own with 26 ticks of the clock left to re-take the lead for the Broncos. Whittington added an insurance free throw with 10 seconds left to ice the win.
The first half started slowly, with both teams' defenses dictating the tempo early. Tava gave the Broncos an early 4-2 lead with a jump hook in the paint, but Diggs drained a three from the left corner with 14:29 remaining to put the Zips ahead. Akron opened the lead up with a small run, making it 10-4 on a make from Kwan Cheatham followed by a free throw. Reggie McAdams capped the run with a three-pointer from the same spot with 6:31 remaining in the half to run the lead to 19-7, but Brown made a pair of free throws on the next possession, and Tava laid a ball off the glass to cut the lead to 19-11 with 5:40 to play.
Haymond slowed another Zip run with a triple form the left corner, taking the cross court pass from Austin Richie and converting it to make it 21-16 with 3:50 left. However, the Zips scored seven of the final 11 points of the half, extending the lead to 26-16 with another trey from McAdams; Tava threw down a dunk in the final minute to cut the lead to 28-20, the deficit the teams settled on at half.
