Valpo Zip

So Josh is headed to Robert Morris, TDM and Hughes to Duquesne. Any word on where Noah landed?

Valpo was supposed to have 5 international players on their roster last year. One of them transferred and 4 played throughout the season. It is a great recruiting tool if you have good scouts.

I often felt that the team was shooting way too many threes. If anything, I would have hoped KD would ask Kwan to post up more and shoot less thress. I can't believe people wanted Dog to shoot more.

So you don't think that your post is bashing the guy?

So, being the highest paid coach in a conference that he couldn't win in the last 4 years was not enough?!

https://www.fanragsports.com/cbb/adapt-die-robert-morris-andy-toole-dealt-college-basketballs-transfer-epidemic/

Do these people understand that KD is the one who left and that he was NOT fired?!!! What was the AD supposed to do?

That's a ridiculous statement to make. If anything, it makes more sense to assume that if Brian Walsh makes that shot, Groce stays at OU for another year and brings in Caris Levert and OU makes the Elite 8 the following year. If Ifs and buts were bolts and nuts!

The more interesting part: is Dambrot willing to reserve 4 scholarships for average MAC players (Except Tino) to sit out a year and play afterwards?

I love this hire. John Groce was on top of my list at day one. He is the obvious choice. The only questions I had were the following: 1 - Considering the institution's financial situation, would the athletic department decide to go cheap with a non proven assistant to save money? 2 - Considering that he will be making around $1.5M in the next two years, does Groce want to come to Akron or relax and take a year off? The answers of the two questions came out perfect. The athletic department and the institution decided to invest in the future of Zips basketball and John Groce has the fire to learn from his experience at illinois, re-load his guns and work twice as hard to show the world that he deserves a top coaching job.

Geno Ford never won anything. Couldn't win the MAC tournament at KENT and was terrible at Bradley. I am not sure why he will be considered for the job.

My bad! I apologize for jumping to that assumption/conclusion. I hope someone from our AD is reaching out to coach Paris. If he is the one that is going to be selected for the job, It will be a shame to lose him because the offer came a day or two too late.

Is anyone else concerned that Paris prefers UT Chattanooga over Akron?

I heard the Weathers brothers from Miami are transferring out. It would have been nice if we had a coach to go after them

You're right, it is 128 teams. My bad I had a brain fart I said we play 11 of them because we typically play an FCS team every season.

Wishing coach Dambrot the best of luck. I hope I am wrong but I do not see him being able to make Duquesne an A-10 power house. I feel that being top 3 in the A-10 is much tougher than winning the MAC in a down year.

I totally understand that. But the established culture with the basketball team has been that the only games that matter are the 3 in Cleveland. average fans did not know that Ball state is now a good program and they knew that the outcome of the game didn't matter. With all due respect, the comparison to the football games is an apples to oranges comparison. In FBS football, you have a total of 108 teams. You play 11 of them. Every single game becomes important. Even if you play in the worst conference and you schedule the worst competition (which we don't), you can still claim that you are playing top 108 teams. How many Top 108 teams did Dambrot schedule per year?

Any coach we hire will leave us at first chance. We need to get over that. A coach moving up will leave the program in a better place. It happened in VCU, Dayton, Xavier, Butler. Why not Akron? My dream coach will be someone who would coach here for a few years and do amazing things and get poached by Syracuse or Duke in 2022.

The 1500 hardcore fans will consistently go to the games regardless of who the opponent is. They even enjoy attending the exhibition game because it allows a sneak peak at the freshmen who will redshirt for the year. They enjoy seeing Big Dog dunk over a 5-8 kid from Malone because Dog is a good kid and he wears the right jersey. When we play Coppin State, hey, it is a D1 win. But there are only so many of those fans. For the average fans, they want to be entertained. They want to see competitive basketball where the game goes down to the last play... not a game where the outcome is known even before tip off. Few years back, attempting to defend his scheduling strategy, Dambrot said stuff like: we will never get an at large bid, the OOC doesn't really matter, and the only games that matter are the 3 in Cleveland. Fans pick up on that. People don't want to go to games that do not matter. Kent games always mattered, OU games always mattered. And the numbers show that.

Thank you coach Dambrot and best of luck at Duquesne. This is Larry Williams' opportunity to shine. I hope he doesn't go the cheap and lazy way promoting any of the current assistant coaches. I know that others have listed these names before me. But my list of people that should be interviewed in my opinion is (in that order): 1 - John Groce 2 - Jeff Boals 3 - Lamont Paris

McFadden was never a finalist anywhere and Dambrot shall not be getting any additional raises. He makes a $1M a year and he has the most comfortable situation a coach can ever dream about. He has the freedom to hire his buddies as assistants and schedule whoever he wants and keep his job until he retires. I think he is too smart to finish his career losing at Duquesne.

I was answering the question as of why midmajors don't schedule other tough midmajors.

I don't think that I will be revealing a secret when I say that the main concern of the coaches is to maintain their jobs. For the most part, they are evaluated by the number of wins at the end of the season. Therefore, the number of wins is their biggest concern and they get to pick who they play against! That is a rigged system!!! Imagine if kids go to school and are evaluated by taking exams that they get to write. Would they write any tough questions? Or imagine if you and I go to work and get to pick our own duties and assignments? would we pick any tedious tasks?

What exactly are we talking about here? do you want to schedule a home and home with the likes of Duke, Kentucky, or any P5 school? It is NOT surprising that they will turn you down. It doesn't make $en$e not for us and not for them. Just like we bring Tiffin and Coppin state and Radford to the JAR without giving them a return game, we should do the same with P5 schools. As for Michigan refusing to buy us late in the scheduling process, it probably is true... but what does that mean? There are 60 other P5 schools that we should try. Finally, and most importantly, I do not have a problem if we do not schedule any P5 schools... I do not. As long as we don't schedule any cupcakes either. There are enough decent midmajors that we should play. And if all decent midmajors have trouble scheduling, why don't they schedule each other for H & H?

I agree with you. But my question is: Which one of these teams did we exactly "poison"? Why are they so "scared" to schedule us?