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Kansas State is currently playing BYU on CBS for anyone who might want to watch some Nate Johnson.

Portal commit Christian Young deleted his commitment tweet and is now visiting Southern Miss.

reminder - afternoon game - 3 or 3:30 on espn+

Yes, Tribble was great last year.

Lets face facts, we are just not as good defensively as we were last year. Tribble was a great defender and very tough who could get around picks. Tavari, Scott, and Young are undersized at guards and have progressed more offensively than defensively. Evan Mahaffey is probably our best defender. I think Barre showed some promise before he got hurt. When Halligan came into the game I immediately commented that his defense made him stand out. He then started the next game. We are undersized in the forward and center position leading to double teams in the post and then open perimeter shooters at the 3 line. We miss the defense of Okonkwo and Grey. Our offense is great but our defense will determine how strong we will be this season.

I think @Let'sGoZips94 and @kreed5120 are both right to some extent. The Zips defense this season, including the Yale and Murray State games, has been inadequate, especially om the perimeter. Groce has referenced it repeatedly in the post-games and I'll take his work for it. At the same time, those two teams were unconscious in their shooting. Poor perimeter defense + hot shooting = 97 and 115 points. This team's pace is always going to result in more points by the opponents. More opportunities for the offense results in more opportunities for opponent. Also, the team plays help defense. Watch how they sag on the off ball side of the court. If they're a little slow to recover, there's an open shot. They'll tighten it up but they'll never be the 19-20 team that gave up 66 points a game.

On Twitter/X, I'd post them but there's 20+

Where can you see those offers?

Zips are favored by 2.5 points according to DraftKings. O/U is 177.5

What is a high percentage on a 3P attempt? Miami is the best 3P shooting team in the country at 43.88%. Yale is #2 at 43.07%. That's considered a VERY high percentage based on only 8 teams in the country shooting 40%+ from 3P. Murray State is 47th at a 37.53% clip. Open opportunities might lead to a bump by a few percentage points, but shooting 20% better than your average is an absurd anomaly attributed more to hot shooting than anything else. Yale's 3P performance was probably more indicative of open opportunities (47% that game vs. 43.88% average) than the Murray State game (56% vs. 37.53%). The Yale game was lost in the paint because we didn't have an answer for their inside game and they made darn near every floater and mid range shot imaginable; that's more the byproduct of slanted roster construction (Barre wasn't ramped up yet), not pissing the bed. In addition, I saw both Yale and Murray State make contested shots from all over the court. When a team is on, they're on. Of course both offense and defense matter in basketball, but the statistics show that offense is superseding defense as the primary cause of a game's result. That's where's a shift across college basketball in recent years to gear towards better offense. We've seen this with Akron teams in the past. Teams that struggle to score will almost always struggle to score. I posted this in one of the other threads, but Houston doesn't have any national championships despite being one of the top defensive teams in recent years. Why? They've struggled to score more than their opponents despite superior defensive efforts. It's no secret Groce wants the defense to be better and he should, but if you zoom out from your 2 game scenario vs. EMU & Concord, Groce has spent the last 2 years reconstructing the roster to be offensively focused and dominant. Sending a message in 2 games we should win going away is great and what good coaches should do, but it doesn't mean Groce doesn't realize offense is still the ultimate key to our success. If defense mattered as much, we wouldn't be playing a more run n gun, chaotic style of offense that is prone to open opportunities and doesn't conserve energy for the defensive side of the ball. We can play the what if game until we're Akron Blue & Gold in the face. It's possible a hand in their face on their made shots lowers their shooting percentage. It's also possible it doesn't. Fact is, both Yale & Murray State had mismatches that put the ball in the hoop at an insanely higher percentage than normal. In no way, shape, or form do I believe Akron pissed down their legs in those games. Hats off to both teams for incredible shooting performances. I expect two things to be true tomorrow. 1) Akron's defense will be improved with the recent messages that have been sent. 2) Miami will either be on or they won't; our defense tomorrow won't have much of an effect on their 3P%. This game will be won or lost based on Akron's scoring abilities and turnovers.

Kenpom has the Zips at 57 and Miami at 107. Tomorrow should be interesting.

The staff has a ton of offers out there, some more impressive at face value than others. Go Zips!!

Thanks for the update. Two injuries at once is no fun at all.

I asked him at the Concord game and he had an appointment the next day. He had a walking boot the game before.

A chunk of those FTs were in the last minute when we had to foul. If we played better defensively in the first 39 minutes it wouldn't have mattered if they went ~15/15 or whatever from the line. We would have won comfortably given the way we played offensively

It's hard to put a hand in their face when they are shooting 20 for 20 FT's!

Anyone heard how long Barre will be out? I saw him with a cast on his wrist the last couple of games.

There really is no need to have that large of a gap. IMO they should move up the start of the playoffs. Have the semifinals on New Year's Day with the Championship the week after. They can then open up the portal the day after. That way there isn't all these problems with the portal being open when the season is still ongoing.

I would actually like to see us pressure the ball less this game. Trapping and then being late to rotate has been what has led to those easy baskets where someone cuts to the basket or is in the weak corner for an open 3. We are the more athletic team. I feel if we force them to beat us 1 on 1 they will struggle. Their recipe to beat is by shooting 40%+ from 3 while limiting turnovers. Let's instead focus on running them off the 3-pt line and have to settle for contested 2s.

Did you pay $20 to watch the Murray State game? They had insane shooting performances because in large part we allowed them high percentage opportunities. In basketball you want to limit uncontested 3s and 2s at that basket. We did neither of those. Yale and Murray St. capitalized as great offenses do. Both offense and defense matter in basketball. You seem to only look at the offensive numbers and pretend defense doesn't matter. I'm sure if you tried talking this nonsense to Groce he would very much disagree about the level of our defensive play in those games. That can be seen by how he changed the lineup after the Murray St. in an effort to sacrifice some offense for better defensive play. At the end of the day we played as good as we reasonably could offensively against Yale and Murray St. but it wasn't enough as we had too many breakdowns defensively. If we had a hand in their face when they were shooting those 3s they wouldn't have shot those high percentages.

The 8 made grades!!

Divide that by two one more time. If we need four , why can't we just pair up the champion of each P4 conference? BTW, was anyone able to watch all three hours of GameDay yesterday? I turned it on with an hour and a half to go and the dumbbells on the show were trying to guess the weight of dumbbells. I turned it off knowing the last 90 minutes were only going to get worse.

Getting bodies for the sake of bodies is the Arth Approach. It’s proven that you go 1-11 or 0-12 that way, and when those players hit the portal, no one picks them up and it kills your graduation compliance numbers.

Akron is the #2 scoring offense in the country, behind only Georgia. Miami is #7.

At Akron, Groce has won @ Kent, Athens, and Oxford. He's won MAC tournaments over unranked MAC teams. He didn't upset Buffalo during their golden age. His signature win is probably the 2022 MAC tournament win over Toledo in the semis. Beating an undefeated Miami who has some poll #s at Oxford will be a tall order for Groce.