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Merry Christmas to all on this board, even those who I have blocked! I am very grateful for this forum. Thanks to the creators, moderators and thoughtful posters. I look forward to accessing this site each day. I believe the best is yet to come. And yes, Virginia, there is a winning football team coming to Akron.

I was not expecting Coach groce to be out there signing autographs but I was surprised to see he was! Not enough good words can be said about him, he was telling all the people in line “thank you for coming out” and was just very appreciative of all the support the fans have for the team

There is a silver lining: Akron has the best facilities in the MAC, a great FBS opportunity for players to showcase their talent, and a competent president/ athletic director. Under Nemer and Goodrich, those advantages will pay dividends sooner rather than later and the only direction to go is up!!

All things considered he played well & showed huge potential. He probably only finished with 10 points but I actually found that encouraging because even though St. Ignatius is one of the more complete teams in the state, it was obvious from the opening tip that Coach Dru was solely focussed on not letting RJ beat them. STVM has a player named DeCarlo Prince who is 6-4 and supremely athletic & already has a grown man's body. This year & last I'd say DeCarlo has been one of the two best players in the city - along w/ Garfield's Rayshawn Hamilton, IMHO. Anyway, Coach Dru had DeCarlo sticking to RJ like glue all night long. All. Night. Long. Hounding him. Denying him the ball. Fouling him. Any & everything. Played RJ extremely physically all night... literally every second RJ was on the floor. Coach Dru was going to let anyone but RJ beat them. That's the first I'd seen St. Ignatius play and so even though it kept RJ's numbers down I left the game excited that Coach Dru centered his entire defensive game plan on denying RJ the ball. RJ's going to have to add muscle to contribute at the next level as he's still pretty skinny. So he'll almost certainly redshirt next season. But I think most of us expected that anyway. He's a legit 6-6 and can jump out of the gym. He almost had two head-at-the-rim highlight dunks but was fouled pretty hard on both attempts. He can handle the ball & has a left hand & often ran the point & brought the ball up the court to initiate the offense. He didn't shoot a 3 all night, which I wanted to see, but in warmups he's got a smooth stroke. His free throws are kind of knuckle-balls, but they went in. He's a good and willing passer. He's got super quick feet, can move side to side on defense & gets his hips low without effort. (He was also usually assigned to guarding DeCarlo on defense, so those two kind of negated each other). You can tell he's an Akron Zips-type of personality. During warmups & even during the game he was smiling a lot & encouraging his teammates; appears to be super friendly. So John Groce got another high-caliber young man.

I would imagine they figured neither BG or Akron football would be playing in the Semifinal, and it would appear they were correct. 😉

I agree, and I think a starting lineup matters more than some believe. A team can absolutely set a tone early that dictates the rest of the game, and we saw our squad do that multiple times last season. I think Sharron performs better off the bench at this point in his career, too. Personally, I'd like to see more Stankovic and less Halligan. Nothing against Halligan, who plays really hard, but Oggy's ceiling is just so much higher. Evan Eric Lyles Scott Johnson Young Hardman MMK Stankovic Once Barre returns, he can take minutes back from Stankovic. But right now, I'd love for him to get more court time.

Miami after last nights action currently sits at #58 in NET. Akron slightly improved to #48. On paper this has to be one of the best mid-major matchups of the season across all of college basketball. It's a shame that it wasn't picked up for TV. Edit: It was also a failure on the MAC's part as they should have made sure these schools played twice. There aren't many opportunities to pick up Q1 & Q2 wins in conference play. The MAC should strategically schedule to maximize the opportunities.

It's been said many times on this site but replacing all the bleachers with chair backs would be the biggest possible improvement for the JAR. It's not like the slightly reduced capacity is gonna be an issue.

Omitted is Groce's "putrid defense" explanation - opponents aren't "feeling" the Zips defense. We are undersized, soft, and disorganized. It's easy to shoot three's when you have zero fear of getting one swatted back in your face...when your opponent is sagging off and not respecting your range, when defenders are unnecessarily double-teaming and leaving great shooters wide open for corner three's. The Zips can phone-it-in on defense and out-shoot a lot of mediocre-to-bad teams. If that's our defensive MO I still think we're 16-2, or better, in the MAC. But we can't beat a high mid-major or decent P4 program with the pedestrian defensive efforts we've seen so far. That's a recipe for an NCAA Tournament 13-seed, and a 21 point round 1 loss. It was a gift to get Yale and Murray State on a neutral court, free from biased referees and raucous opposing crowds. And we didn't take advantage of it.

Washington is a very deserving national Champion. They are the best team that I have watched this year. 6 wins.......none of them at home win at Oregon State in round of 64 win at #5 SMU win at #12 Stanford win at #4 Maryland win over #16 Furman in college cup semis win over #15 NC State in finals has any team defeated 5 seeds and won all of their matches on the road on the way to the title?

21 points, 16 rebounds for Enrique last night 💪

Fast start ✅. Too bad the 2nd quarter was maybe the worst in the Gensler era. My good feeling was short lived. Talked to Portage Lakes Paul and Wadsworth Wally and they aren’t happy either.

First ten minutes and the last 5 were great. The rest, not so much. The bench was very good last night. I like seeing Bowen and Eric start to heat up. Watching Eric grow up over his career is going to be fun. I sure hope we get to watch 4 years of it.

By my count this currently gives us 14 signings. 10 offense: 6 OL 1 QB 3 WR 4 defense: 2 LB 2 DB We still need some DL and an upperclassman QB. Ps. Zips' OL coach Joel Rodriguez is one hell of a recruiter.

WR - ODU transfer Titus Myers was on campus today. The staff was big on him coming out of HS.

Getting bodies for the sake of bodies is the Arth Approach. It’s proven that you go 1-11 or 0-12 that way, and when those players hit the portal, no one picks them up and it kills your graduation compliance numbers.

My guess would be - Joe needs to win next year, and you don’t win with Freshmen.

Knowing how the game ends still didn’t prevent me from stressing for the whole 13 minutes of highlights. But the payoff is so worth it again, thank you!! Our guys had a ton of grit that night. Also, I’m not going to miss Ipsaro this year. Just saying.

My son and his friend stuck around for post-game autographs and the players were great. Really makes it easy to be proud of the program.

I’m loving seeing the youth showing up to the games. Been seeing a lot of youth basketball and football teams coming to games and filling in for the students. Great for growing the game and the fandom

I also like the in-conference aspect. It means they've been able to see your program up close and like what they see.

Joe and coach Rodriguez do seem to find talent. But the unfortunate thing is It always seems to take 3 or 4 games to figure things out . We are competitive after that but having 3 or 4 losses before jelling makes a 6 or 7 win season pretty difficult

Bump for updates and a few notes. - EMU signed the largest class in the first signing period, with many of the signees being freshmen. - Toledo has lost nearly half their freshmen signees due to the coaching change. I don’t think that matters much anymore with the portal having become the more relevant recruiting source, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway. - Supposedly, UMASS has used their NIL funds towards retention of 15 players, and 13 of them have indicated they will stay at UMASS. - I’ll continue to update this thread as I see more activity.

It's no coincidence that the two kids who play the hardest on defense started tonight. I suspect the message got through.

I look at all those Q4 wins for the Zips and it makes me scratch my head. The names of those programs are far from what I think of as programs that are typically Q4… hopefully a bunch of them build their numbers going foward.

Reminds me of the old Jerry Tarkanian line: "The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky they'll probably put Cleveland State on probation for an additional two years."

I think you're mistaken. Defense is what is controllable. That's why the saying is defense travels. You can't expect to shoot 40% from 3 and 50% from 2 each game in a 30+ game season. That's just not realistic unless you're playing a video game. There will be nights where your shots simply aren't falling, which is what happened against Miami. I didn't feel the looks we got offensively were much worse than we have gotten much of the year. That's why I was overly critical of our defensive play earlier in the year. We were just able to mask it against some very terrible teams given how we were playing offensively. I actually saw improvements on the defensive end against Miami, which is encouraging.

Sure glad he didn’t. Especially since it hasn’t looked like Young took a step forward this year.

At least he’s getting paid.

I asked him at the Concord game and he had an appointment the next day. He had a walking boot the game before.

At Akron, Groce has won @ Kent, Athens, and Oxford. He's won MAC tournaments over unranked MAC teams. He didn't upset Buffalo during their golden age. His signature win is probably the 2022 MAC tournament win over Toledo in the semis. Beating an undefeated Miami who has some poll #s at Oxford will be a tall order for Groce.

We need DL help and I think he’s a borderline all conference player. I’d take him back.

Lane Kiffin is a loser. This is the best playoff ever. The favorite to win the national championship is Indiana, a school that has the most losses in college football history. How about this December/January madness!

Freeman has been with the Minn. but has not been on the roster for a game. I found this analysis of his game while a 2 way player from SB nation: Enrique Freeman Regular season: 13 GP | 31.4 MP | 14.5 PTS | 7.8 REB | 2.0 AST | 0.6 STL | 0.8 BLK | 2.0 TOV | 2.4 PF 52.4 FG% | 31.0 3P% | 75.0 FT% It’s been a slow start for Freeman this season. His minutes and overall numbers are down from his first season in the G League with Indiana, but he’s still been productive. In his most recent game with Iowa prior to being called up with Minnesota, he had his best performance for the season. Freeman scored a season-best 26 points on 10 of 13 shooting from the field against Westchester, a great encapsulation of his no frills type of effort. One of the more promising developments for Freeman has been his stroke from deep. Part of the intrigue of the 25-year-old was his potential to shoot from distance, but after shooting 20% on 2.5 attempts in November, it didn’t look promising. However, in his seven December games, he’s improved that to 37% on 3.9 attempts per game. If he can continue on this trend, then Freeman might have a shot at developing into an NBA player one day.

I did some quick googling of each player, mainly looking at their Transfer Market pages to get a sense of the competition levels they were playing at. Giannis Gazis: https://www.transfermarkt.us/giannis-gazis/profil/spieler/1226505 Most recently played for Panathinaikos U-19s, appearing in 4 matches. His page also notes that he played for Greece U-17s Noa Testa: https://www.transfermarkt.com/noa-testa/profil/spieler/937514 Most recently played for the 2nd team at FC Lausanne-Sport. Their 2nd team is in the 3rd tier of Swiss soccer. Played in 6 matches and recorded an assist. Johan N’Ganzadi: https://www.transfermarkt.us/johan-nganzadi/profil/spieler/743397 He is already listed as an Akron player on his profile. Most recently played for a 5th tier team in Belgium. Played for several youth teams of larger clubs including Genk (2018-2020) and Standard de Liège. His page notes that he played for Belgium U-17s.

It appears that the zips ......have also added another domestic recruit Idahir Deanda - Midfielder...... his instagram profile is private....but he does show @zipsmsoccer https://www.instagram.com/idahir.deanda/ top drawer soccer shows that he is from Ohio...but has played for Indy Eleven academy https://www.topdrawersoccer.com/college-soccer/college-soccer-details/men/akron/clgid-438/tab-commitments#sectionblock start your research, zips fans.....sounds like a great recruiting class

Porter was a senior at Wichita State when Shammah was a freshman. They bonded over their work ethic, see each other as big brother/little brother and have maintained contact. PS- I survived every Literature class through Cliffs Notes.

The Zips get a 10 days Christmas break before Concord comes to the JAR on December 29th. Concord currently stands at 6-3, playing a bunch of teams that belong on Captain’s list of teams he’s never heard of, including Frostburg State. In the confusing geography department, they’ve also played California of Indiana and Indiana of Pennsylvania. Kraig Gilbert, a 6’8” sophomore forward leads the Grapes in scoring at 19.2 ppg. 6’8” junior forward Boubacar Djigo averages a whopping 14.2 rpg to go along with 14.2 ppg. He played for Lutheran West in high school.

For a Monday night, Christmas break game against a D2 opponent, I thought the attendance was pretty good. It was a fun night.

I can’t wait to watch him work through his mistakes this season, blossom into a 2nd team all MAC OL in 2027, and transfer to Pitt or Purdue! #fourtypercentzip #barelylearnedthefightsong

The crew from 2022 is certainly on the naughty list.

Just watched Wright State hold on at home vs EMU. I can't decide if I wish I was blind so I could never see that, or if I'm now going blind with how bad that game was.

I do not know how you found that..

The state of Ohio seems to be doing quite well when you consider there's over 350 D1 schools and only two from Ohio are in the bottom half. Also, love to see that one of them is OU.

Imagine showing up in a foreign country just before the beginning of training camp. You barely speak the language. All the other players have been part of the program for month or even years. Everything is different. The food, intense practices like you have never experienced with a demanding coach, classes in subjects you never imagined and not to mention American women everywhere! I would call that culture shock!

The last memorable EMU game for me was a couple of years ago when Emoni Bates was 1-12 from the field and I think we were beating them by 50 points at some point in the 2nd half.

Neither Shammah, nor either of the Mahaffey brothers had strong games vs. Murray St. Yeah, we still put up 100 points but our defense is concerning. And Murray St. looked very good.