Akognon, Nelson in NCAA field
Now that the snubbed, the underseeded and the mis-sited have had their opportunity to vent, March Madness can get down to what it does best: tell stories. Stories of realization, redemption, vindication, affirmation. The NCAA tournament spills over with them. Stories of reinvention, as well. This is a story like that. Times two.
“Josh Akognon knows how he has been portrayed.
He is the guy who decided not to go in with his buddies on a Powerball ticket, then watched as their numbers came up and they shared millions.
He understands that those who know his story want him to be bitter or regretful, and especially contrite. He is none of those things. He does not begrudge his old pals their windfall. He simply kept striving for his own.
Among the six young players in the first recruiting class that Dick and Tony Bennett brought to Washington State in 2004, Akognon is the one who didn’t, in the coachly parlance, “buy-in.” He, well, rented. He spent two years with the Bennetts as they retooled Cougars basketball, suffering through the losses and hurt, even leading the team in scoring as a sophomore.
He respected the mission and the message, but he wrestled with the emphasis on defense and the governor on the tempo. A natural scorer, he chafed especially at being “a decoy, running through a bunch of screens,” he said.
So he left.
And when he did, Cougars basketball hit the lottery.
Now the Cougars are making their second consecutive trip to the tournament, but the tournament will not go on this year without Akognon.
The school to which he transferred, Cal State Fullerton, won the Big West Conference championship last week, ending a 30-year exile from the bracket thanks in no small measure to the contributions of Akognon, who averages a shade less than 20 points a game.
“It feels great, like I’m a part of something,” he said. “It’s good to know that I’m not the only one out of that Washington State group not going to the tournament.”
“Then there’s Matt Nelson, the only member of another group who’s going back to the tournament.
As a freshman in 2004, he was a starting forward on the first Eastern Washington team to reach the NCAAs – a bit of madness made all the sweeter by the three near-misses that had immediately preceded it. It was, Nelson recalled, “the highlight of my life – until now.”
For the moment it’s been superseded by a wilder ride – Boise State’s return to the NCAAs after a 14-year absence, accomplished with a ridiculous 107-102 triple overtime victory over host New Mexico State in the Western Athletic Conference title game.
Bridging those twin career peaks was a considerable valley – a coaching change at EWU, a miserable 20-loss sophomore season, Nelson’s transfer to Boise and the obligatory, hard-to-take sit year. Maybe all that has something to do with how he’s ranking his euphoria.
Or maybe it’s something else.
“I was a freshman at Eastern,” he said. “I had no clue how much it took to get there. I just followed the older guys. Now I have teammates following my lead, so it’s a little bit more special.”
The transfer is a college basketball staple, of course, though there are extremes. Every Fullerton player began his career enrolled at another school, and Nelson was one of eight players on EWU’s 2005 team who wound up finishing elsewhere. Each transfer has his reasons – and if the old-school sports fan finds the motivations a bit me-first, it should be considered that 50-odd coaches will move along this year for far more mercenary reasons. And without the penalty of having to sit out a year.
Both Akognon and Nelson cited stylistic concerns for their departures, though Nelson also alluded to “other things coming into play.” But whatever their particular discontents, both acknowledged they have been able to apply lessons from their original situations to their newfound success.
For Nelson – an all-WAC player who averages 15.6 points per game, it’s leadership.
“We had good leaders – Alvin Snow, Brandon Merritt, Marc Axton,” he said. “I’ve tried to apply some of the things they did – staying positive, trying to make people better. There was some pressure on that team, but they brought energy and kept people loose.”
Something must have worked. The Broncos were picked to finish fifth in the WAC, but are 25-8 as a 14th seed playing Louisville – the same first-round opponent they had 14 years ago.
Likewise, Fullerton’s Titans – also a 14, pitted against Wisconsin – were mostly considered Big West second bananas to UC Santa Barbara, an underdog role Akognon relished.
“That kind of got instilled at me at Washington State,” he said. “The coaches there are really good at making you understand you always have work to do, that you always come with that underdog attitude. And I love it – I love to prove people wrong.”
They’re wrong if they think he suffered watching the Cougs in last year’s NCAAs.
“It wasn’t painful like, ‘I should have been with them,’ ” Akognon said. “That was like the rest of my family. It made me happy. But it also put the fire in me to get Fullerton to that point.”
If he and Nelson get their teams any further, then it will really be a story to tell.