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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

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.

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

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

I thought the same thing for the first 5 minutes and last 5 seconds of last year's MAC Championship game.

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.

I hope Miami wins against BG. The better they are the better the win is for us. Would love for it to get flexed but I’m sure Saturday will be crowded with football and other things

still very loosey goosey on 3 point line. they have 10 3s. make that 14.

Kent blows

The Zips head out to Oxford this weekend to face the Redhawks in a 3:00 Saturday tilt. The Redhawks stand at 13-0 heading into Tuesday night’s game at BG. The Redhawks wins include Trinity Christian, Indiana East, Milligan and Our Lady of the Elms. The Redhawks lost their second highest scorer when Evan Isapro went down last week. 6’8” redhirt sophomore wing Brant Byers leads Redhawk scoring at 14.5 ppg. 6”8’ junior forward Altmar Altason, a Bradley transfer from Iceland, contributes 13.2 ppg. 6’5” senior All-MAC guard Peter Suder is scoring 12.3 ppg. They are shooting an impressive .546 from the field and .436 from 3-point range. We’ll find out Saturday if their strong start has been driven by their weak schedule. It will be interesting to see how the Zips deal with their length and perimeter shooting.

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.

ISU can quickly rebuild with All-G5 players. It's the G5 schools that have to go scrounging.

As long as I can still put my feet on the bleacher in front of me 😄

That is why if they do play multiple games against non D1 opponents, one of them should be a noon game during the week and bring out local schools as a field trip. Last night was still fun, but pack in the jar with 3000+ screaming 6th graders

I was impressed by the crowd based on all of those factors also. I don't see an official attendance listed in the box score like usual but it was better than some of the other games. The youth teams and family that were in attendance certainly helped. And I don't think they kids will care who the opponent was, they'll remember the Zips winning by 51.

They do a really good job with youth group experiences. I coached my son's team last season and we did one. They were able to do the high-five tunnel pregame and scrimmage each other at halftime. They all really enjoyed it and the Zips staff was great. I hope they keep looking for ways to connect with kids - it really does matter.

It will be important that we run them off the 3-pt line. I feel we're the better team, but the 3-pt line is the great equalizer in basketball and they're good enough to make us pay if we leave their shooters unguarded. Especially since this is @ Miami.

How in the deep-dive-hell did you find this factoid?

Purdue beats Kent 101-60.

Iona just lost by 7 to the team that entering today was #326 in NET. Not great for us since that is our best win this season.