John Groce’s Akron wins MAC title in dramatic fashion over his brother’s team

The MAC tournament title game was a sibling showdown.

Akron coach John Groce and Miami Ohio’s Travis Steele faced off Saturday in Cleveland with an NCAA tournament bid at stake.

Groce’s squad rallied form 18 points down to pull off a wild 76-74 win over Miami after Nate Johnson hit the winning floater with 2 seconds to play.

Groce and Steele are half brothers, born 10 years apart. Their mother is Barbara Steele. They grew up in Danville, Indiana. Steele credits Groce for instilling a passion for basketball in him at an early age and for inspiring him to get into coaching.

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When Groce was part of Herb Sendek’s staff at NC State in the late 1990s, Steele was playing high school basketball. In a Field of 68 podcast appearance earlier this year, Steele said his first exposure to college basketball was spending summers with his older brother and attending camps and practices that Groce coached.

“I was John’s shadow growing up,” Steele said on the podcast. “I always wanted to follow in his footsteps in a lot of ways. He’s a big reason, quite honestly, why I’m where I am today.”

Once Steele expressed a desire to get into coaching, Groce helped him climb the ladder. Steele was a student manager at Butler when Groce worked there under Thad Matta and then spent the 2004-05 school year as a graduate manager at Ohio State when Matta became the coach of the Buckeyes.

The career paths that Groce and Steele have taken since then mirror each other in many ways. Both endured difficult head-coaching stints at the high-major level, Groce at Illinois and Steele at Xavier. And both have rejuvenated their head coaching careers in the MAC, Groce earning his third NCAA tournament appearance in the past four seasons at Akron and Steele coming oh-so-close to guiding Miami to March Madness for the first time in his three-year tenure.

The favorite on Saturday was Akron (28-6). The Zips won the lone regular-season meeting against Miami by 27 points. They won the MAC regular-season title by three full games over the Redhawks (25-9).

But Miami had the upper hand nearly the entire way on Saturday, building a lead as big as 34-16 and holding a 46-34 edge at halftime. But the lead slowly started to slip away, and in the end, the Zips made one more big play.

Akron and Miami have now met five times with Groce and Steele as head coaches. The older brother has won all but one of those matchups.

While Groce and Steele aren’t the only sibling head coaches in Division I men’s basketball, they’re the only ones crazy enough to take jobs in the same conference. Dan Hurley (UConn) and Bobby Hurley (Arizona State) coach on opposite sides of the country. It’s a similar story for Scott Drew (Baylor) and Bryce Drew (Grand Canyon).

Seldom in college basketball history has there been a sibling battle with this much at stake.

Groce didn’t leave with bragging rights alone.

He also claimed an NCAA tournament bid.