There’s a reason it’s called “March Madness.”
“It’s March,” Ball State redshirt senior guard Tayler Persons said. “Anything can happen.”
Along with Persons, Ball State (15-16, 6-12 MAC) honored seniors Trey Moses and Austin Nehls prior to its contest with Northern Illinois (15-16, 8-10 MAC) for senior night Friday.
The Cardinals fell to the Huskies, 64-57. The loss solidified the Cardinals as the 11 seed in the Mid-American Conference Tournament. While the season hasn’t gone as planned, Persons walked off the floor with his head held high.
“Sometimes it doesn’t bounce your way, and it doesn’t go as well as you thought it was,” Persons said. “I just want to leave a legacy of how hard I worked … I have no regrets. That’s the biggest thing for me is just leaving with no regrets.”
Moses said he believes his teammates are a special group, and he had a message for them before the game.
“If you look at what we’ve been through in these last two years, losing Zach [Hollywood], having two teammates kicked off, the injuries we’ve had this year, the year we’ve had this year — a lot of teams would have just gave up,” Moses said. “This team fights every single game. This is the most connected team I’ve been on. They’re all a fun group to play with.”
Moses didn’t have his best scoring game Friday with five points, but he led the team in every other major category including rebounds, assists, steals and blocks. He finished one rebound shy of his personal best and recorded a new career high in blocks with five. Moses also became Ball State's all-time leader in games played.
“It’s the basketball gods looking out for me, I guess,” Moses said. “You rebound as well as I did tonight, you defend as well as I did — If I scored two points, that’s not a bad game.”
The Cardinals got out to a hot start, jumping to an 18-4 lead in the first eight minutes. Not six minutes later, it was a one-possession game. Head coach James Whitford said a shooting slump and lack of offensive rebounds caused the gap to close.
“We can’t just sit there and hope we make every shot. It’s useless,” Whitford said. “We got to kind of own up to the fact that, listen, it’s hard for us right now. Hopefully that breaks through, but if it doesn’t, we have to make sure we’re getting second-chance points.”
Ball State went into halftime with a one-point lead, but Northern Illinois took the advantage in the second half, growing their lead to as large as nine.
Persons tweeted Thursday evening about how Friday would be emotional, playing in his final game in Worthen Arena. The 5,524 who attended outnumbered every home crowd of the season by nearly 700.
“It was great to have a great crowd here for my last game. I just appreciate the fans sticking with me and all the people telling me how much they appreciated watching me play,” Persons said. “Today sucks honestly just because it’s my last game. I wanted to win for everybody.”
Whitford said he still has confidence his team can make a run in March because the record doesn’t accurately reflect the quality of the team.
“There’s not one metric that wouldn’t say this is the best Ball State team we’ve ever had other than our win-loss record, which by the way, that’s the only thing that matters at the end of the day,” Whitford said.
Ball State will travel to Eastern Michigan Monday for the first round of the MAC Tournament.
Contact Zach Piatt with any comments at zapiatt@bsu.edu or on Twitter @zachpiatt13.
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