No idea if we are still on Dylan's consideration list, but his twitter account confirms that he will make a verbal commitment on Saturday. I may be the only one, but I've still been kind of hoping he would find his way back to us some how.

You're not the only one, I'm with you.

Me three.

I get the feeling that the team has moved on from Ennis. We kept recruiting and getting other players, even after we ran out of spots.

Still, we really do need a PG in this class. Desperately.

Seems the Zips are no longer in the running. Ennis down to TCU, Rice and Santa Clara.

http://www.chicagohoops.com/articles1/ennislist.html

Doesn't make sense to me. I would understand if he narrowed it down to better schools than UA, but those 3 are terrible.

TCU was 13-19 last year. really is that impressing?
Rice hasn't made the tourney since 1970. 8-23 last year with only 1 C-USA win.
Santa Clara? 11-21(3-11 WCC)

really man?

He should have stuck with the Zips. he opened up his recruitment, so we opened up ours and brought in players to replace him. We have the luxury of not needing to wait on a waffling high school kid to build our recruiting strategies around.

Still wish we could have had a PG in the 2011 class. Maybe we can get his brother in 2012.

Doesn't make much sense to me either. Of course a lot of big program coaches said the same thing about Zeke when he committed to us. Too many variables go into recruiting, and we may never really know what lead Dylan away from the Zips and to one of these other schools.

Jim Christian bad mouthing us, jk.

We guess about a lot of things we don't really know about. We don't really know if KD went lukewarm on Ennis or the other way around, or maybe it was mutual. For example, if Ennis wasn't getting strong vibes from UA, it would only be natural to cancel the verbal and explore other possibilities.

His hometown sportswriters can talk all they want about his stock rising. But the reality is that if his stock had really risen, it's unlikely that all three programs on his short list would be losing programs. Consider these final 2009-10 RPI rankings:

98. Akron
187. TCU
232. Santa Clara
311. Rice

In any case, I don't plan to worry about the Zips apparent shortage of PGs after this season unless I see KD say that he's concerned. I suspect that we'll eventually learn something previously unknown that will clarify the Zips future PG plans.

Well look at us. Zeke saw a great school, plenty of chances to make the tourney, great coach, and of course we can win. Rice had 8 wins all year! I don't see how a kid would pick a college destined for failure. But hey I guess thats the thinking behind Can't students decisions...

If he picks Rice, it will, no doubt, be for the academics

Sounds like it is going to be Rice. If nothing else, he will be playing in a better conference. They already have a 4-star SG committed to them for 2011, so Ennis isn't the only one buying what their coach is selling.

He must be selling something they can smoke?

if you think your making the tournament with 8 wins good luck. I've never thought of that as an at large bid, but who knows the tournament could expand to 200 teams and they will make it.

Ennis verballed to the zips at some point in time and then backed up after what happened to Sullivan, Steward, and Humpty. I thought that this was worth mentionning.

What do you mean by, "after what happened to Sullivan, Steward, and Humpty,"?

Sullivan wasn't quite good enough to get any PT.

Steward was, very unfortunately, chronically injury-prone.

Humpty was a good player and received a lot of PT.

The fans were strongly supportive of all three.

Could you please flesh-out your observation?

I don't get it. Wouldn't that make him far more likely to see playing time since we hardly have any guards on the team now?

If anything, you'd think the early departure of three Zips PGs would have made UA even more attractive to Ennis, as that would have likely opened up more early playing time for him.

Ennis verbals to Rice

http://www.slamonline.com/online/college-h...commitment-q-a/

Also some good insight in the interview as to why Dylan de-committed from the Zips. Some people who really have no clue what they are talking about need to read it. Ennis has nothing bad to say about UA.

He really sounds like a good kid, and I wish him luck. Sounds like the Rice program has a similar "family atmosphere" to UA's. Apparently he also liked the idea of playing in Conference USA versus the MAC, even if it meant going with a lower-rated team than the Zips. It will be interesting to see how he performs there.

Not trying to pick a fight with any of the "too sensitiive" people on this board, but to answer your question, think about it this way:
If you had job offers at different work places and one of those places went and fired 3 of their employees at your same position, would that make you lean towards the other places?

FIRED?!!!!! What are you smoking/shooting/snorting?

Someone here is mis-informed as to what actually happened the past several months.

This is all moot.

Mr. Ennis has chosen a different path. To play for Ben Braun @ Rice. Fact is the spots here were filling up. We wish him well and move on with the guys have chosen to be here.



Go Zips!

More like the 3 employees left and there were 3 positions open at a better job.

But he picked a "job" at a worse company so whatever...

There's history on Akron's side for an Akron target transferring back from Rice: Wendell Bates! Mac nuts to whoever remembers his high school, and grad year.

Go back and take a look at the interview with slamonline.com that I posted a bit ago in this thread. It will give you an idea, straight from the sources mouth as to what really went down with Dylan's decision to de-commit. Then, if you still wish to, come back on here and try and argue your point.

If you don't wish to read I can pretty well give you a summary of what went down with Dylan. The Zips were his first and only offer at the time he made the commitment. Later on he felt that he had rushed into the decision because he was so excited just to HAVE a D-I offer. As more offers started to come in, he started wondering if he hadn't made a decision too early and decided to open things back up. Nowhere in the interview does he mention anything about, "well they just had 3 other guards quit/dismissed from the team and I didn't feel comfortable about going there anymore." If you wish to keep arguing that point, so be it, but just know that it finds no basis in fact.

I read the article and I don't see where his response was a positive for Akron.

I read it pretty similar to you, but I take a different bent. That school wasn't good enough for me and I deserve better. Can you believe I selected the first school that offered and it was a piss ant school like Akron. Listen you can tell me what you think he was saying all you want, but committing and the de-committing to a program I support is a slap in the face to me. I think he thought he was better than Akron and wasn't grateful for being offered at all.

Believe what you want but I hope this is the last we hear of Dylan Ennis on an Akron Zips message board.

Fair enough. But he chose Rice...

Your point would be entirely valid if he didn't eventually commit to Rice (a team that has won 20 games TOTAL in the last three years). Your interpretation also loses a certain level of validity with quotes like this from Dylan, "The University of Akron is a great school in every way. From school to players to coaching staff." It is hard for me to see him calling us a piss ant little school that isn't good enough for him when you see a quote like that.

Look, am I happy that Ennis left for another program? No. But, I'm not taking it as some sign of the apocalypse for the program like some, and I don't take it as a slap in the face either. I've used Zeke's recruitment as a bit of a comparison with Ennis earlier in the thread and I really do think there are a lot of parallels. I remember reading the Pitt boards after Zeke committed to us and a lot of the same comments were being made there. The bottom line is that Akron was the best fit for Zeke in his mind. Unfortunatly at the end of the day we weren't the best fit for Dylan Ennis in Dylan Ennis' mind.

Two other possibilities to explain the likely choice of Rice:
1. The kid is a genius and figured out Houston is a better place to spend winter than Akron (if this was his reasoning he probably should have gone with Santa Clara).
2. He saw their mascot and thought the place was the biggest Hooters in the world.

No reason to get excited either way. This is just a verbal commitment, and Dylan has already proven that for him, there is no "commit" in commitment.

Noticed his name wasn't on the Rice roster?

Wonder if he's regretting anything now-a-days?

It's not on the Rice roster because he won't be enrolling for about 5 months. Dude is a senior in HS now. He was always a 2011 recruit.



Go Zips!

P.S. Is Abreu tied to a chair watching Joey Rodriguez highlights yet?

Wow...he's going to be a 20+ year old Freshman?!

To your P.S. - I hope so!

Yes, but he's Canadian so at todays exchange rate he is only 19.4 American years old and may be younger by the start of next season.

And don't ya love his mullet, eh?