Four Kent State basketball players were suspended for Saturday’s MAC championship game over a video of them launching a vulgar chant at their upcoming opponent.
Kent State beat Ohio 67-61 in Friday’s semifinal, setting up a game against Akron for the title and an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. After the win over Ohio, however, forward DJ Johnson shared a video to Snapchat showing him and several teammates chanting “f— Akron” ahead of the matchup as well as calling out multiple Akron players. The video has since been deleted.
On Saturday, hours before the final was set to tip, the MAC announced that four players involved in the video would be suspended. Johnson was suspended indefinitely, while three other players — Malique Jacobs, Cli’Ron Hornbeak and Julius Rollins — were suspended for the first half of the championship game.
Jacobs is the most significant of the suspended players. He is the team’s leading rebounder, averaging 12.5 points and 7.8 boards in more than 34 minutes per game. The other players are more sparsely used reserves.
Taunting isn’t really out of the ordinary in college rivalries, but it usually comes during or after games, not like this. The players probably didn’t expect anything like this to come out of that video.
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