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I think Akron will be top 80 or 90 to start.

This guy is a true Princeton genius. Sitting out this season to preserve eligibility while finishing his Princeton degree. He'll then get paid 6 figures minimum to finish his final season of eligibility next year.

Last year the first NET rankings were released the first Monday in December. If that remains true, we should see them Monday. Beware they are usually pretty puzzling the first few weeks since NET doesn't use preseason rankings to help smooth them like NET does. This will lead to a couple head scratching teams ranked very high. As we get into conference they will begin to sort itself out.

Yes, it pretty much means we've played much better than our record indicated based on our SOS. I think we would pretty middle of the road prior to the Yale game.

Correct but I'll have a better idea based on their ability to handle adversity on the road. It's a lot easier to stay in and/or pull away in close games at home than it is on the road. They have 6 guys who are offensive threats - 4 are double digit scorers and a 5th is averaging 9 ppg - and the 6th is a freshman sniper from St. Iggy. They have 3 more guys who play decent minutes but are not threats offensively. Based on what I've seen when I've watched their games, they are not as defensively focused this year compared to previous Kent teams, meaning they rely on hot shooting to win games. They've given up 100+ points twice and nearly a third time to 299th KenPom Cleveland State (95 pts in their 1st meeting on a neutral court). They're also quite small. Gillespie is 6'8" and Whaley is 6'7". Those are their top 2 post players by far. Whaley is also built like a North Pole Left Tackle - short and half the weight in the buttocks. Morgan Safford is their next tallest contributor at 6'4" and the rest of their guards are 6'2" or shorter. Without a lot of versatility and size, from what I've seen, they have 2 ways to win - hot shooting night or an off night from the opponent. Both are much easier to accomplish at home vs. on the road, so that stretch in late December will give us a decent idea of this analysis of them is accurate.

Just a note that Kenpom has us ranked 302nd in "Luck" with a -0.76. Don't really know how that number is calculated, but that must've shot way down after the yale game

Even then I don’t think we will truly know til January

Mac games are always tough except last year when we kicked everyone's butt.

I don't quite know how good Kent is. They haven't played a true road game, they haven't played a top 100 KenPom team, and 3 of their games have come against two teams ranked 268 or worse in KenPom (2 of those were Gillespie's best games). I'm going to reserve any (dead) flowers I may have for Kent until their @ Portland/ @ UMass/@ Purdue stretch (their only true road games).

Gillespie has had a strong start to the season, no doubt. But his line was interesting in the recent game vs. Cleveland State, which was the second time they played him/Kent in a week. 12 pts, 11 reb. 8 TO. vs. what he did the first time they played, 30/13/1. He's going to get his rebounds. But CSU cut his scoring more than in half, and forced him into a bunch of turnovers. Whatever CSU did, defensively, is now on tape for others to mimic. It will be interesting to see what his game (and Kent's) look like a month from now.

Kent State is tough, and Delrecco Gillespie is playing as well as anyone in the country. I think we're going to have to bring our B+ game to beat them & Amani's going to have to bring his A game.

I agree. I don't see us going 17-1 this year. I think it will be more like 15-3.

Feel pretty comfortable saying the Zips are clearly the top MAC team this season, as expected. But it must be said, overall, the entire league seems to be deeper with teams capable of pulling upsets or two over the course of the season, even without contending for the best team in the league. Games at Eastern Michigan, Bowling Green, and Buffalo all look like trap games right now, to go along with road games at Miami and Kent State. No way does it look like Akron loses all five of those. But are there one or two that give you pause. Just curious, because it looks like the fight for those last two MAC Tournament seeds is going to be pretty tight, which means one or two of these teams could be both desperate and dangerous.

Nobody goes to Tuesday/Wednesday games. I reject out of hand that high school football keeps stadiums from being full. It assumes the addressable market is only people who attend high school games. There are people who believe the only addressable market for college football in Ohio either go to, or watch OSU games. It's complete nonsense. BG sold out their game against Toledo this year, and the OSU vs Texas game started at exactly the same time. There is a market for people who want to attend college football games. The MAC needs to tap into it instead of being afraid of the many excuses for not doing something. The MAC needs to make it such that high schools are changing their game times for the MAC game of the week. For the record, I think high school football is trash and haven't attended a game in over 10 years.

ChatGPT is great, but can a server rack take a tshirt cannon shot dead center from 10 yards?

I think Arizona was bigger and more athletic at all positions including their bigs. I had to look them up, but here’s a few that Eric and Harris might have helped guard against. 6-4 pg Caleb Love, 6-6 F Trey Townsend and 6-8 F Carter Bryant. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered much, but I remember these 3 guys for a reason.

That is a great idea, in theory only. Now your direct competition is High School Football and that will be a non starter for a lot of Football fans that would have to pick between the two.... Edit: Now that I think about you idea more, lets just start playing at 9:30am on Saturday Morning as the lead in for College Gameday(as a example)

I think our problem against Arizona was we didn't have enough 6-9 and 6-10 guys. They had athletic bigs.

He’s going to retire from pro ball before he takes an NFL snap. LOL

I still have PTSD from last year's game when they bullied the Zips.

I was at the game last night at Assembly Hall. Nate was the best player on the court in the first half for KSU. Things went downhill a bit in the second half as the Hoosiers surged back. I have family in Bloomington who have IU ties and season tickets, so I had on a red B-Town shirt and a gold Zips "Z" hat. I passed a couple in the hall who yelled Go Zips, so we spoke briefly and agreed we were showing some support for Nate. Too bad he had to play in those lavender uniforms.

Wish we could get a signature win against a marquee name brand school like Cincy! Good for the MAC as a whole though.

That game dropped Cinci about 35 spots on Kenpom and moved EMU up ~130 spots. I absolutely love it.

Eastern upsets Cinci.

EMU pulls off the upset.