Brothers John Groce, Travis Steele will coach against each other for spot in NCAA tournament

The MAC tournament title game will be a sibling showdown.

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

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.

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 now vying for his third NCAA tournament appearance in the past four seasons at Akron and Steele trying to take Miami to March Madness for the first time in his three-year tenure.

The favorite on Saturday is Akron (27-6). 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 (25-8). Akron and Miami have met four times with Groce and Steele as head coaches. 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.

Either Groce or Steele won’t leave with bragging rights alone.

They’ll also claim an NCAA tournament bid.