kreed5120

I feel it was done in an effort to draw more interest to the non-revenue sports. It was a good idea, but really hasn't achieved what it was set out to do. Most fans still really only get excited about the football and men's basketball match-ups (particularly when they meet in Cleveland), which is no different than before.

I don't see the harm in keeping it.

I wish we were playing this Illinois team in year 3 or 4 of Arth's tenure. We're facing an Illinois team while they're down, but they're also facing an Akron team that will be pretty depleted as well.

Hopefully this helps establish a nice pipeline from McKinley to Akron.

I believe Arth said we had a few scholarships still available after national signing day and that was before we lost a few guys to transfer. I'm expecting a large 2020 recruiting class.

Kostalec finished his Akron career with more personal fouls than points or rebounds. He was a nice kid, but there was a reason he was buried on the depth chart. He should do well at Malone.

I'm a 12 roo and I only understood about half of what he was saying. Maybe I should freshen up on my ebonics.

Ali made the Indiana All-Star team. Based off the below report he also had season ending shoulder surgery. I'm not sure if that will have an impact on his availability next fall or not. VIDEO: Much love to East Noble's @IamAlix2 for making the Indiana All-Star team - huge honor! Unfortunately, he had surgery for a shoulder injury and won't be able to whoop up on Kentucky, but best of luck to the future @ZipsMBB guard! @CoachRyanEakins @ENobleSchCorp https://t.co/mh17mDbjFS

We might have also made the choice for him as well. I'm not sure which of the recruits Groce thought higher of. We would have had to cut someone to make room for both. That's kind of a dick move to do this late in the recruiting process.

He committed to LMU.

He seemed to settle for more contested 15-18 footers than I'd like, but overall I was impressed with the tape. He does a good job at finishing near the rim, including throwing down some thunderous dunks.

Does that mean we missed out on Jonathon Dos Anjos?

I'm not sure about that. Progressive Field is pretty empty this time of year as well and baseball is much more popular than soccer in these parts. Haslam is suppose to be building a downtown stadium. That should help attendance a great deal.

I checked out a few short clips I could find of him. He seems to be able to move the court well and has good athleticism. Not sure if he can shoot or not as all the clips I came a crossed were short clips of him dunking. Here is a video of him taking off from the free throw line and dunking.

It had more to do with the fact that once Sayles went down with injury and Kostalec transferred we had literally nobody else to be our #3 C. Considering the fact we currently only have 3 scholarship bigs and 1 of them has finished the past 2 seasons injured, it wouldn't surprise me if we're once again forced to play someone out of position at some point during the long season.

My hope was that we would see him playing ~10 or so minutes a game at center in a small ball lineup. Hilltopper came out saying he sees that being unlikely. He's more knowledgeable than me on the matter so I'll take his word for it. Even Utomi played the 5 in some emergency situations so Xeyrius still might get some playing time there, but from the sounds of it I'd say it will be an infrequent occurrence.

We never really had the personnel to run it and we still don't. I identified the below as why a D'Antoni system wouldn't have worked for us last year. 2) We didn't have bigs who could run the court 7) & 8) pretty much go together. The system requires playing more guys and a benefit is you wear down your opponent. We only had what 8 scholarship players? Instead of wearing down our opponents trying to be a running team, we would in turn wear ourselves down. We needed more depth 10) In order to get opposing bigs away from the basket they need to respect your teams big mid-range & 3-point shooting The last point might be the biggest. "Tough to run without good shooters". I don't think this point needs any explanation.

Akron is looking to buyout 47% of its faculty. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/03/19/big-buyouts-u-akron

Ryan Odom (UMBC) also told St. John's he wasn't interested when they requested to speak to him about the position. Edit: St. John's billionaire booster also seems to agree the program is currently a dysfunctional train wreck. https://wfan.radio.com/articles/news/billionaire-booster-mike-repole-rips-st-johns-over-coaching-search

First off, Utomi was a key piece of our top 25 defense. He played nearly 34 mpg on that top 25 defense and was a versatile defender who played great team defense. Secondly, his shooting wasn't the problem. He shot 37.3% from 3, which is a down year for Utomi, but is still pretty damn good for a volume shooter. In fact, only 43 out of 351 D1 teams shot the ball better than Utomi's 37.3% clip. Your turnover complaint is revisionist history. Akron had the fewest turnovers in the MAC and despite Utomi being the #1 scoring option on the team, he was 4th on the team in turnovers per game with a modest 1.8 per game. You're really expecting Dailey to be the leader on a team he has never previously been a part of? Utomi and Ivey were the leaders on the team and both are now gone. I'd guess Cheese and LCJ will have to be the ones to step into that role now, not Dailey. I have no idea what Toles and Reece will do. Williams I have already shown optimism for. The MAC is going to be really bad this coming year so we might still end up contending, but I'd like our odds much more had Utomi stayed or we added someone who could have helped fill in for his loss. There is a reason Utomi had a long list of P5s interested in him. He plays great team defense, can guard multiple positions, and is a career 39.3% 3P% shooter. I think you really underestimate what he brought to the team.

I thought we could compete for a MAC title next year had Utomi returned. Watching Cheese and LCJ progress along with knowing we'd be adding Williams gave me hope we could make strides to improving our offense enough to win in a very weakened MAC. We already had the best defense in the MAC. Fast forward to now and I don't see a real plan. We have 4 graduating seniors on next years team and an additional 5 the year after. The goal should have been to try to win this upcoming season while the MAC is down and before he have to rebuild. Instead of going out and adding a grad transfer that could help replace Utomi's production, our prized off-season acquisition can't even play this season and we now have to spend 2 years worth of scholarships to get 1 year of eligibility. Looking at the scholarship chart @Illini Zip kindly tracks I just don't see where in the next 4 years that we'll be a serious contender for a MAC title. I'm expecting us to hover around mediocrity. I'm not ready to call for Groce head, but I'm certainly losing faith in him.

Dailey was good enough to be a consistent rotation player at Iowa, but he isn't a D1 caliber player?

He's been gone for a good 7+ months already.

You have to go back to John Mackovic (1988-1991) to find a coach that left Illinois with a winning record. Odds are whoever the coach was going to be they weren't going to be good.

I'd like to see the last scholarship go to a big that can compete for some minutes this season. The only true center on the roster is Riak. Sayles looked pretty bad last year (not to say he can't improve) and it's anyones guess what we'll get out of Reece as we haven't seen him play at the D1 level.