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Our game on ESPNU tonight... “I didn’t measure the trouble I was getting into,” Abreu told ESPN.com about his time at Akron, which will face Western Michigan at 7 p.m. ET on ESPNU on Friday night. “Let me serve as an example.” Great story of someone learning from a huge mistake and turning his life around. Good for Alex and good for Coach Dambrot for helping him.

I think that Ampai is still playing pro soccer in Thailand....so I guess that this is as good a topic as any to post... Ampai posted a photo on Twitter on Jan. 4th of he and his long time lady friend...with the caption "she said yes!! " and a photo of an engagement ring Ampai was the first superstar recruit to believe in Caleb's vision...so he will always be a favorite of this zips soccer fan Congratulations to Ampai and Anna, his fiancee. Much happiness is wished to both of you.

I think Antonio Brown and Kalil Mack, and scores of other successful MAC/NFL players would disagree with your contention that you are in a better position to get into the NFL via a Power 5 conference team. As far as active coaches go, Amato has likely put more players in the NFL than anyone. Bowden knows what it takes to get there too. Akron has the staff and facilities to get anyone who wants to put in the necessary work into the NFL. I'll give Illinois the TV and publicity edge, hands-down. If that's what's important to a recruit, go Power 5.

Saying that teams don't focus on the perimeter against Akron so they drive to the basket and don't take and make a lot of threes is true. They don't drive on us because of our good three point defense though. They drive because the drive defense is the weakness, which leads to less importance of three pointers. That doesn't make perimeter defense your biggest weakness, it's still the drive defense. Don't overthink it.

Akron is a winner? One of those seasons in a blue moon does not put them over any P5 team. Especially when fans actually attend their games and they play on national tv on a regular basis and offer perks to athletes that Akron can't. I hope the kid plays the position he wants, but like Cole, that is a tough option to turn down.

I'm done trying to figure this team out, and I say that as a positive. They are so deep that they can be helter skelter and still beat the teams they should, even if it isn't pretty. Case in point, I was just talking about how Kwan deserves the green light on open threes (as long as they are good shots). He did that tonight, but had his worst shooting night from 3 since the GB game. Go figure. I also said Antino has to calm down his early trigger, and while he played the same way he has all year, it was arguably his best game of the year. The guy hits big shots, so we'll just have to live with the selection. Not saying he's in the same overall realm, but Antino has a bit of Allen Iverson in him. His percentage may not be good, but when you look at the shots he does hit, they seem to come at big points of games. And every once in a while, he will simply win you a game. And I was talking up Big Dog as a potential NBA player due to his touch around the rim and his ability to create offense out of the low post. And he goes on for his worst game in a month. Then Jake and Reggie seem to be trading off big games. Tonight, it was Jake and Reggie was basically non-existent... But there have been games where it is the opposite. All that and we're picking apart a 9 point win. That alone shows how good this team is. And Im not worried about being killed on the glass. That's an aberration. The shooting again was head scratching, but this team continues to get good looks, they are just in a "team" slump. Luckily, a guy or two has been able to get hot and it hasn't cost a win. Even the perimeter defense, which is easily the team's biggest weakness wasn't bad tonight. Wilder just simply hit some tough shots and WMU was in the right place at the right time on about half their 24 offensive rebounds. The MAC is good enough, where this team simply won't go 18-0. In fact, I see 14-4 being an optimistic, but reasonable, expectation. But with that said, this team easily has the highest upside of any Akron team I've seen. I'll put it like this. For the talent they have, so far this year, they have played at about a 5 or 6 level (out of 10) overall, and are still 13-2. If they can kick that up to a 7 or 8, this is a very dangerous team at a national level. If they can put some 9 or 10s together, there is no doubt in my mind that they could beat any team in the country on a given day. It's been frustrating in that they haven't blown out some teams they should have, especially at home, but still it's been fun ride when seeing the best start in school history and adding in the unrealized potential this team has.

Normally not one to get on the officials but these 3 were really, really bad tonight. They were as bad as we were on the boards.