kreed5120

Barberton Bob

I felt we looked pretty flat offensively outside of the first ~10 minutes. Not enough ball movement and often forced to put up not so great shots near the end of the shot clock. Still a 10 point road win in MAC play against a fairly good opponent. I'll gladly take it.

Scott seems to being forcing up shots. Wol is hitting a lot of contested shots.

Glad to see we're attacking the basket again.

Tavari on the bench seemed to play a role. He was tearing up the zone prior to going to the bench. He'll need to be careful to not pickup his third foul.

We're certainly playing well at both ends of the court. I'm puzzled how BG is a borderline top 100 team. They haven't looked like it thus far.

They are one of the few MAC teams that I haven't seen play this year either. I'm not saying they aren't good players. Just that I don't think BG had to outbid other P5 or even high majors for them. They probably had some offers from mid-majors, but BG was likely the best they received. A lot of players in the portal either get overvalued or undervalued.

All the MAC schools I believe opted into revenue sharing so they all have some amount of NIL. Some, like Akron and UMass, alot more than others. Neither of those players were exactly lighting it up at their P5 schools so it's not like they would have needed 100s of thousands of dollars to sign them.

Time will certainly tell as I'm sure in the coming years the case will make it to court. I will say that many employer contracts for R&D or sales positions includes non-compete clauses and those have held up in court over time. I do think it's possible the same could hold up with college athletics, but I am no lawyer or a legal expert. I'll leave that to the legal experts.

Demond Williams just days after signing a contract with Washington announced that he was going to enter the portal. Washington and the Big 10 stood their ground and were going to challenge him in court. He announced that he will return to Washington instead of leaving. I feel having enforceable contracts is a step in the right direction for college athletics. I know some here despise anything P4 related, but good on Washington and the Big 10 standing their ground. That should have trickle down effects to the G5 and other mid-majors in other sports. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/47554312/demond-williams-jr-transfer-stay-washington

I still feel college football is a bit like MLB baseball. OSU, Georgia, Alabama can still buy themselves into the playoffs most years, but other P4 still have their windows of opportunity. I doubt Indiana will be here in 10 years. At that point Cignetti would be 74 and likely retired. Indiana still managed to maximize their window of opportunity by pairing a terrific coach with renewed booster interest. When Indiana's run fades perhaps an Illinois or Minnesota emerges in its place using that same footprint Indiana established.

It's all mostly just filler content lol. I'm more pointing out that they aren't going to plan their schedule around what would give MAC basketball the best ratings. They have a lot of other programing that is as equal or marginally better. The game would only attract 10s of thousands of fans (mostly degen gamblers) regardless when it's played. I understand not wanting to play during the semifinals that way you can watch both, but frankly someone has to.

TK is a terrific regular season coach. I just don't think his finesse style of play leads itself to winning in March when the level of physicality gets ramped up. You need guys diving on the court for loose balls or fighting off 2 defenders for an offensive rebound. You see that kind of energy from Akron over the years and even Kent. It's no surprise those are two teams that you see consistently make it to the later rounds.

CBSSN already has other things for those time slots. They aren't going to run infomercials all weekend during football games. They have to air something. Like I said before the MAC games are just filler content. They aren't ratings drivers. Never have been.

CBSSN needs filler content for their station regardless. Besides, there will be fewer people watching the CFB playoffs Friday than there will be people watching the NFL playoffs on Saturday.

Toledo still prioritizes football. No way would have they gone to the MVC if they were ever offered. As for the rankings, I would say Akron is probably the best at the moment. You're correct there is doubt if this will continue long-term given that much of our funding comes from 1 booster so if something happens and that money quits coming in we would be in a similar position financially as most of the other MAC programs. UMass is probably setup the best long-term. They already have more money to spend currently and they have a deeper pool of boosters. They mainly just need to find the right coach.

That Toledo job is sneaky good depending on the criteria you're looking at. Kowalchoke l think is the 3rd highest paid coach and has been at Toledo for 15 years. He has never made the NCAA tournament and their fanbase still worships him. They constantly come up with excuses for them being "robbed". Meanwhile, at Akron Dambrot made 10 straight MAC finals appearances and multiple trips to the Big Dance. A vocal minority wanted him gone because he didn't make the tournament for a 4 year stretch. I guess that's just the difference between a winning program and another that is content with being good, not great.

I feel we should have challenged ourselves more in OOC play. We only played 2 true road games if I'm counting correctly. One of those was against Purdue, which we weren't going to be competitive with. The other was against a below average Tulane, which is okay. It would have been nice to play more in the line or 3-4 to better prepare ourselves for hostile environments. Playing quality competition on the road is much different than at our or even at a neutral site.

The problem is the NCAA has no power. Whenever they try to enforce something the courts step in and tell them they can't. While many of the suggestions that try to establish order would be good for the sport. None of them would likely be enforceable without the players forming a union and a collective bargaining agreement being reached. The players have no incentive to do that though.

It's worth noting that 1 game will get flexed to a 6PM start time and air on ESPN2. The game in all likelihood will either be Miami @ Marshall or Akron @ Troy. If the decision was to be made today it would probably be Miami @ Marshall just because Miami is still undefeated. We'll see how the next few weeks play out.

I don't see it going away anytime soon. Millionaire boosters get to pretend to be sport owners without the multi-billion dollar price tag. It will only go away when booster fatigue settles in, but even then maybe a school like Indiana will see someone like Cuban slowdown on his spending, but there is probably another booster worth 100s of millions at some other school that will take his place. Some schools like Alabama, OSU, or Notre Dame have such a large fanbase that they will always be able to attract the corporate dollars to fund the program. If you see anything it will probably be the ~50 schools with the means break away from the rest and form their own league. You're kind of already seeing it with the B1G and SEC raiding the best teams from the former PAC-12 and Big 12.

TBF I'm sure not 100% who enter are expecting to find a better home. I'm sure some are entering because their coaches were very candid with them that they aren't cut for this level. Some also probably want to drop down to get playing time or prefer playing closer to home. It's hard to pencil in how many of the transfers entered expecting a payday or not.

Evan, unlike Bowman, wasn't brought in to shoot. He can impact the game without the ball in his hands. In the games he scores double figures its usually because of run outs or offensive put backs. Not really by creating his own offense. Offensively he's probably overachieved considering he's shooting 10% from beyond the arc compared to his career average.

He only played 7 minutes against Miami. I'm kind of surprised he even got 4 shot attempts off. Then again at least 1, maybe 2 were designed plays out of an inbounds. It definitely seems Groce is shrinking the rotation. Only 6 players played over 10 minutes. 2 players played exactly 10 minutes and 1 player (Bowman) played 7.

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.