Golden Flashes have the right stuff

While we waited for the rest of the country to embrace the Cinderella run to the Elite Eight by Kent State, we found ourselves looking for the answer to the same question:
How in the world did Youngstown State beat these guys?
OK, so that may not have been the most pressing question by the national experts (and now who do you suppose "Dukie V." will root for in Atlanta this week?), but I'll bet it was on their list somewhere.
Really, the Golden Flashes' impressive postseason run wasn't that much of a mystery, if you paid any attention to some of the less-animated national panelists.
Digger Phelps, for instance, the former Notre Dame coach who snapped UCLA's 88-game winning streak 27 years ago, has argued for years that the teams with the best guard play and senior leadership usually go the farthest in the tournament.
Witness, then, Kent State's three-guard lineup of Trevor Huffman, Andrew Mitchell and Demetric Shaw. All are seniors, fifth-year seniors at that, who played in 21 combined NCAA Tournament games, including Saturday night's South Regional championship against Indiana.
Their roles: Huffman, the walk-on who relished taking the team on his shoulders when the game was on the line. He finished his career as Kent's all-time leading scorer.
Mitchell was a defensive stalwart specializing in thievery and Shaw, the 6-foot-3, emotional leader of the team who drew the opponent's best offensive threat despite being constantly outsized.
Not ironically, Huffman was the defensive focus of Indiana. He was held to just eight points by the Hoosiers, attempting only seven shots. The other starters, Antonio Gates and Eric Thomas, had the size, muscle and athleticism to match up well with any kind of opponent. They could both post up smaller defenders and streak past bigger ones.
One Big East coach, appearing on ESPN earlier in the week, predicted Pitt would knock off the Golden Flashes on Thursday, saying, "Kent's already played their national championship," referring to their win over Alabama the weekend before.
To his surprise -- not to mention Pitt's -- these Golden Flashes weren't your typical Cinderella. Their run wasn't based out of some emotional race to a conference championship.
Kent State was the best team over the 18-game Mid-American Conference regular season schedule and underscored it with an impressive three-game sweep in the conference tournament.
Expected to be here: Led by Huffman, Mitchell and Shaw, the Golden Flashes' collective attitude upon reaching the NCAA Tournament wasn't one of unexepected shock or amazement.
The low points of the season were losses to YSU and Buffalo. Following the loss at Beeghly Center, coach Stan Heath admitted there was a closed-door session in the locker room following.
Players and coach alike were able to voice their complaints. Since then, the Golden Flashes lost just one game, the previously mentioned setback in Buffalo that was avenged less than two weeks later with a 38-point drubbing.
With each win, the collective confidence of this team grew. When the NCAA pairings were announced, Heath wasn't thrilled with the No. 10 seed but accepted it and went about preparing the Flashes for victories over Oklahoma State, Alabama and Pittsburgh.
Despite Saturday's 81-69 loss to Indiana, this Kent State team reached a pinnacle never before achieved by a MAC squad. It won 30 games and reached the elite eight. Perhaps they even lent an air of credibility to the conference for future years.
XRob Todor is sports editor of The Vindicator. Write to him at todor@vindy.com.