Kent State’s game Saturday (Feb. 3) has been canceled because its scheduled opponent, Central Michigan, doesn’t have enough healthy players.
CMU played last Saturday’s game with Miami with seven players; one was injured. NCAA rules say a team has to have seven to play. (Central beat Miami 64-59 despite being shorthanded.)
Flashes fall to first-place Ball State 57-46
Mid-American Conference rules say that if a team can’t play, it forfeits the game. So Kent is in third place in the conference with an 8-2 record, a game-and-a-half behind first-place Ball State and a half game behind Toledo. Both of those teams play tomorrow. Somewhat strangely, the NCAA does not count a missed game as a forfeit. So Kent’s overall record remains at 13-6, as far as I can tell.
Here’s an explanation of how Central Michigan got down to six players from “northcoastrocket,” a mainstay of the main MAC bulletin board:
“CMU went into the year with only 12 players, but two of those fell off the roster before play even started. They decided to roll with 10. Fairly early in the year they lost two to serious injuries. They added a volleyball walk-on to get back up to 9, but in recent weeks lost a couple more to injuries of unknown seriousness. Played with seven against Miami, but another player got hurt during that game, leaving six. NCAA rules say you have to dress at least seven.
“CMU is not the only team to go through this so far this year. For example, TCU started with 14 players but had to forfeit two games after losing eight to injury. They recently added four walk-ons to the team so that they could continue playing games.”