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Yale shot 14 of 19 (73.7%) from the line against Green Bay and 11 of 18 (61.1%) against Charleston. They’re good, but we caught them on the wrong night. And there is a little bush league in that ivy. The fact that the refs let them get away with that hook and hold crap was driving me crazy. We do need better defense. There is still a lot of season left for everyone to improve, including hopefully Barre.

The most criminal part is - they can steal your best players with zero restitution. In any professional sport you need to pay, or make a trade to land a coveted player from another team. In college football you just take them for free. We are a free minor league for the P5 programs...must be nice.

It could be like VCU in the old Bracket Buster. We could play them tight every year, and lose. Maddening to see us leave sharpshooters wide open for corner for 3's down the stretch. But the play that killed me the most was the inbounds play towards the end with only 4 seconds on the clock. The pass pulled the Yale player away from the hoop, so he's down to 3 seconds. He nonchalantly drives baseline and banks in a 2 footer. Soft D and no backside help, even though everyone in the building knew he had to shoot. How many bunnies did Eric Mahaffey smoke? Just as I talk the guy up, he has his most underwhelming showing of the young season. Scott and Tavari were absolutely awesome. Cheese/Banks, LCJ/Castenada, Buford/McLaughlin great. All-time Zips offensive performances. Yale played fantastic. Sliced and diced us all night long. Kudos to them. We definitely need to get better if we're to win anything beyond the MAC this year. Kenpom, SchmenPom.

I would think the majority of it would go toward retaining players. That’s what most of the successful “have-nots” at the P4 level are doing anyway. I also think that approach would serve us best, as identifying, landing, and developing talent hasn’t been an issue for this staff.

At-large was never going to happen anyway. Biggest issue is it's likely Yale will make the field of 68 and this could keep them seeded ahead of us. Could be the difference between an 11th or 12th seed.

Dumb shot.

I'll miss his 3.5 GPA.

I think he could still develop into a solid linebacker wherever he lands, but he was leapfrogged by both Boswell and Hocker this year.

You said persnickety. 😀

Here is an awesome page showing our history in the NCAAT. Enjoy! Interestingly, our 66 total tournament games is approximately in the Top 10 of all programs. https://mcubed.net/ncaa/soccmd1/akron.shtml

That's the sad reality of college sports. It's no different than Major League Baseball and why I freaking HATE P5 and major conference schools. You have two tiers of teams and we're just the farm system for bigger schools now. We develop the athletes and they have the money to poach them away. Maybe every few years a small school can make a run in the CFP or March Madness. But by the next year that program will be completely gutted and will have to start from scratch.

Ohio lost by 23 to George Mason. If anyone is sad about the loss to Yale, go get a pick-me-up by reading BobcatAttack. They're in shambles. Rumor has it Athens isn't sure if it has enough beer to endure the season. Buffalo beat VMI to remain undefeated. Bowling Green beat our future opponent Bucknell 71-66. EMU got plastered by Louisville.

One last thought - the score was high in numbers, but it wasn't fast paced. I was worried if Yale slowed us down, we'd have issues scoring in a half court offense if we weren't running. Our half court offense was great actually, so that is good to see we have a variety of ways to score going forward. Just need a way to at least slow down post scorers going forward

I know Yale played a perfect game but I'm sure their fans are saying the same about us. We had an answer for just about everything they had. Just one bucket short

My man the other team making every shot was in fact not good for us

Props to Yale. They played perfect basketball for an entire 40 minutes. 🤯 They made tough, contested shots, always found the open man out of a double-team, never cooled off from 3, made all 21 of their free throw attempts... ... and we still only lost by 3. Great game.

Which is fine and expected, but Yale still had to make their shots and they did. Easy to fault Akron's defense and as a coach he should, but it was just one of those nights where the opponent was perfect.

In the post-game, Groce was critical of the Zips defense.

Unless it's Virginia - then it's fine.

Milwaukee, Murray St, and Tulane will all be solid opportunities, plus the 2nd SBC game. If we only have a few losses come March and 2 of them are this game vs Yale and the Purdue game, that's a heck of a resume.

Yes, most teams don't have Jokic on their roster.

I try finding all of these on X but so many slip through - and I’m sure there will be many more coming

I have had this thought as well. Should the Zips make it to selection Sunday, I think they are going to need Oggie and Barre to continue to progress throughout the season in order to possibly/hopefully make it to the second weekend of the tournament. I do remember thinking Oggie did well defending Townsend the few times they matched up. If, by tournament time, those dudes progress in the system like some of the upperclassmen, the Zippies could have a decent shot at really being a cinderella this season. I think the Bulldogs and Boilermakers gave Akron a good idea of where they are at currently.

This is an amazing resource!

To quote my 9 year old son playing Fortnite, "We're cooked like fried chicken."

Ryan's next endeavor I fear. Adding insult to injury, MJ comes to the JAR with YSU on Saturday.

I would say that play and Barre fouling Townsend with .6 seconds left before the half-time buzzer. I'm almost certain Barre never saw the floor the rest of the night, deservingly so.

Tavari and Eric Mahaffey made it. Townsend was the MVP unsurprisingly

Besides Barre, I’m hoping to see Oggie take a big step forward on the defensive end this year. His size and athleticism could have been a help to us if he was more experienced.

Oddly enough, the half court adjustment is what cost us the game. It took us most of the first half to figure out how to play in a half court offense, and that's where we saw the 4 turnover differential decide the game. We ultimately could never fully recover, although a large part of all of this is Yale never missing to allow for Akron runouts. Ce la vie. Just an incredible basketball game.

Plus, they'd get to play in the JAR. That's like playing in the Palestra, Madison Square Garden or Cameron Indoor.

I'd sure like to play Yale every year. Hopefully the last two years have planted a seed.

Yale basically played like how we always wanted us to play in 24 with Enrique except we could never hit as many of those kick outs

When Yale took their big off the floor and moved Townsend to the 5 I felt we actually did better defensively with Lyles on Townsend. Yale still scored, but at least the shots they were taking were more challenging. We made it too easy for them in the 1st half. In hindsight we probably should have mixed up the defense more frequently. Throw zone a few possessions, play some man, and sprinkle in some hard double teams here or there. Running the same defensive set for long stretches made it too easy for Townsend to disect the defense.

They also lost a lot of guys on cuts to the basket.

Yep. That Yale team was sure clutch. EVERY time they needed to make a shot they did. I'll give our kids credit for sticking with it and fighting through.

Schedule for the Round of 16 Saturday November 29 #13 UConn at #4 Maryland 1 pm #10 High Point at #7 Georgetown 5 pm Grand Canyon at #8 Portland 10 pm Sunday November 30 Hofstra at #16 Furman 1 pm Duke at #14 Akron 4 pm St. Louis at #11 Bryant 6 pm UNC Greensboro at #15 NC State 6 pm Washington at #12 Stanford 8 pm

Time to give Barre a real chance. Lyles isn't playing well at all and you're going to get destroyed inside if we are too undersized. Barre has his flaws but motor/energy hasn't been one of them.

I agree, place Evan on him and then play man. He'll score some, but we need to stop their cuts to the hoop.

So the guy who's been Yale's head coach for 27 years has their record for all-time career wins. Who'd have thunk it?

Remember 1986!!! Current Duke coach John Kerr was the star of that team. I think he scored the lone goal in the final. Another prominent player on that 1986 Duke championship squad was Ken Lolla.

Halligan's contribution is that he's a good defender, works hard and doesn't hurt you when he's on the floor with turnovers and bad shots. He's Marvin but on the perimeter.

All the more reason to smash Duke and send them back to Durham with their butts hurt. That and 1986.

…”Students admitted free w/valid Zips ID courtesy of President Nemer and AkronZips donors” … 👏👏👏

Look at Tavari...he was pretty underwhelming his first 2 seasons, and he's been lights-out ever since. Lyles was a 5 mpg & 5 fouls per game center. Now he's dominant. Lots of examples of guys who get better every season.

I do support a MAC vs MVC challenge like we are doing with the Sun Belt. A major difference between the 2 conferences is in the MAC when a coach has success he leaves for greener pastures. In the MVC that successful coach takes his school to greener pastures. Believe it or not, Kansas, Louisville, Missouri, Nebraska, Wichita State, Creighton and more were all members of the MVC at one time ages ago. So for ISU to leave would be par for the course. I just don’t want it.

I've had a decent chuckle every time I watch this team dominate D1 competition or think about how we have 5 guys on the bench that would probably be starting or significant role players at the very least on most mid majors. What a job Groce, his staff, and Bud Wentz have done at building this program back up.

From very limited research...I think that 7 of the 17 teams that the Zips played this year......will play conference semi final games this week. Below is the schedule....for the 7 games...I am picking up the game times by going to the NCAA scores website... Hopefully, they have good info Wednesday November 12th West Virginia 12-3-3 record ....will play 3 seed Marshall in Sun Belt Conference semi - 7 pm Cleveland State 7-3-6 record...I think they are the top seed...they will play 5 seed Robert Morris in Horizon League Semi 4 pm game time Western Michigan 6-9-3 record.....they will play 2 seed Drake in MVC semi...7 pm Vermont with an impressive 12-0-5 record...they will play 4 seed New Hampshire in semifinal - 7:30 pm St. Louis....very good 9-2-6 record (only 2 losses - Akron and Indiana)...they will play 4 seed Davidson in A10 semi - 8 pm Thursday November 13th Cornell 12-2-2 record.....will face 3 seed Penn in Ivy League Semi - 3:30 pm Mighty Akron 11-3-3 will have a rematch with UConn 10-3-4 - 5 pm Season over for these zip opponents VCU 6-6-5 Northern Kentucky 4-10-3 Ohio State 6-10-0 Butler 5-10-2 St. John's 9-5-4 DePaul 2-8-7 Seton Hall 7-3-7 Xavier 5-6-4 Marquette 7-7-2 Creighton 8-4-4