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I've never seen so much angst over a "player" who never played a minute for the Zips, and another who was 0.001% away from being a walk-on. Jimmond Ivey is playing some great basketball right now, if anyone'd noticed.

I'm dusting off an old thread based on quotes on other threads and my observations of Jimond this year. I have come to senior days of many seasons and stood to cheer the players I thought represented my alma mater in an exemplary manner. I won't cheer any player louder than Jimond. From that awkward out of control freshman to being a senior leader, Jimond has given 100% every minute he has been on the floor. He stuck with UA when KD left and others bailed. Last year, I watched him try to counsel and temper Virshon. This year, I have watched him taking younger players under his wing and offer them advice or words of encouragement. His impact on the team has gone far beyond his basketball talents. He has done the Zips proud. Good luck Jimond in wherever life leads you.

Kostelac. Sounds Russian. I'm contacting Mueller. Give me a break.

Akron travels on the road this Saturday to face the Redhawks who are still winless in conference play. Akron, who has yet to win a game on the road this year, likely won't have a better opportunity to pick up a road win than this game here. I hate throwing out must wins this early in the year, but if we hope to be a top 4 seed in Cleveland, this is IMO a must win. Miami is led by a pair of sophomores Nike Sibande and Dalonte Brown who combine to average 31.1 ppg and 9.7 boards. Kenpom ranks their offense 104th best in NCAA and their defense 284th, which is be dead last in the MAC.

Actually multiple players were involved in domestic violence incidents (Diggs and Treadwell) and there were numerous other suspensions under KD. Diggs and Harney also despised each other.

Spring roster link: https://gozips.com/news/2019/1/15/akron-mens-soccer-announces-four-member-early-2019-signing-class.aspx?path=msoc direct link: https://gozips.com/documents/2019/1/15/akron_msoc_2019spring.pdf (25 players: 21 position players, 4 GKs) Freshmen (8) 28 Dion Akhigbe MF/F 5-8 Fr. (R) 29 Nick McCausland D 5-8 Fr. (R) 30 Nick Sibila GK 6-4 Fr. (R) 31 Ricky Ceballos GK 5-10 Fr. (R) Grant Abbott GK - Fr. Henrique Cruz MF - Fr. Johnny Fitzgerald MF - Fr. Will Jackson F - Fr. Sophomores (9) 2 Pol Hernandez D 5-6 So. 3 Carlo Ritaccio D 5-11 So. 4 Marco Milanese D 5-11 So. 12 Colin Biros MF/F 5-6 So. 15 Braden Petno F 6-4 So. (R) 16 Sam Tojaga MF 5-11 So. 18 Ivan Nikolic D 5-11 So. 23 Daniel Oliveira D 5-7 So. (R) 27 Declan Watters D 6-5 So. (R) Juniors (5) 9 David Egbo F 6-1 Jr. 14 Diogo Pacheco MF/F 5-10 Jr. (R) 24 Tor Saunders GK 6-5 Jr. (R) 25 Daniel Strachan D 6-1 Jr. 32 Peter Zecca F 5-10 Jr. Seniors (3) 5 Leonard Sohn D 5-10 Sr. 6 Skye Harter MF 6-1 Sr. (R) 21 Christian Lue Young MF 6-0 Sr. (R) Coaches Head Coach: Jared Embick (13th season/seventh as head coach) Assistant Coach: TJ Kolba (fifth season) Goalkeepers Coach: Ger Coppinger (fifth season)

We don't know how many punches were thrown nor the proximity of the other players/coaches were to intervene. The guy throwing the punches was a 7 footer who actively hits the weight room. He wouldn't need to land many blows to do damage. I'm under the impression the coaching staff and the other 15 or so players did what they could to break it up as fast as they could. It's an unfortunate incidence, but let's just not jump to conclusions.

These thoughts ought to be troubling for anyone who cares about our athletic programs and the athletes in them. If I was K-lac's dad I'd be demanding answers and/or an investigation. You can bet your sweet ass that if this happened to my kid a lawyer would be involved. How can a young man be beaten unconscious with all the coaches, GA's, trainers, managers, strength & conditioning coaches, and onlookers present? Why didn't his teammates intervene? Was it a mugging away from them? Perhaps, who knows. K-Lac's family deserves answers first and the public deserves them second. This is a huge black mark on U of A sports as it currently stands. Transparency is the best and only answer. Perhaps the incident was handled perfectly. If so reveal what was done and let the public judge for themselves. All reports can, and should, be made public. That will not jeopardize the pending court case.

@Akronfan111 Unless we find out Groce errored in the handling of this, this is no way shape or form a black eye for Groce. Purely based on talent, Mark was a fringe DI athlete to begin with and clearly couldn't quite get up to the speed of the MAC, despite showing flashes.

https://www.ohio.com/sports/20190115/on-record-hudsons-will-jackson-among-akron-soccer-recruits

Like the unis but why the heck did Eastern wear dark? Should get a T. And maybe they did, I'm just turning it on.

Thank you. I was about to make the exact same comment after reading much of this thread Let cooler heads prevail. Sometimes kids get lost in the heat of the moment. In my experience, no side is completely innocent in this kind of situation. Kids got heated at practice. Life happens. The most important thing is that they have someone there to help them learn from their mistakes. That's how young people grow into adults (ideally, although not always) haha. There's a lot of basketball left to play. Hopefully Jimond's play becomes contagious and they can keep building some momentum into tournament play.

Before last nights game, I'm counting 9 DNPs this season for K-Lac. He wasn't going to get meaningful minutes this season. Him transferring now honestly is the best thing for him. He could waste a semester of eligibility picking up a few garbage minutes here or there or he can un-enroll and be immediately eligible to play for his next team come the spring semester of next year. Meaning he would only miss the OOC portion of the schedule. Frankly, I would do the same if I was in his situation.

There you go again letting the facts get in the way.

First off, where are you reading that Khadim Gueye got kicked off USC? He left voluntarily to get more playing time. Secondly, Groce had to scramble to sign something like 8 scholarships with whatever was left after pretty much all other schools finalized their classes. Naturally some of these guys weren't going to stick. This brings me to my next point. I'm still counting 6 scholarship players, even after K-Lac departure, who were on last years roster. How is 1/2 equate to just about all? Third, you act like Dambrot didn't have stuff happen under his watch. Starting PG got caught selling drugs and another was accused of being a woman beater. This is an isolated incidence.

FYI - We beat EMU last night.

Were you at the game last night? The fans had a great time. Exciting ending. No one was "clutching their pearls" over Mark's departure. Team played well and chemistry was good. Good win over a really tall and tough EMU team. Out of control? You are just exaggerating and making stuff up at this point. PCCC is only a 15 minute drive. Maybe you should start attending their games. Maybe that program fits your needs

That is not what has been reported.

Not obvious to me. Could it be two bangers were going at it and things escalated and one took it way too far?

The SOB should be sent back to Senegal after he gets out of prison.

I would think it is a good thing. I haven't been able to find much in that regard and there is no time frame to announce anything. If some were looking to transfer (or at least someone of note), I think we would have heard about it, considering GT was pretty quick to report Kostelac was in the transfer portal. I did find someone tweet a few days ago that an unnamed player was looking to transfer, but they were looking for a 1AA/D2 landing spot, so I can't imagine its someone we would be upset about.

A jury acquitted the Kent State player. Why it's important to not pre-judge these things

Have you been out of the country or something?????

Quit trying to make up excuses for a violent assualt. Anybody who knows Mark would laugh at the suggestion.

We must have already had our 3 verbal commits last year before it became obvious Cotton wasn’t going to mesh with the culture Groce was looking to implement?

Huge black mark? Like when the star point guard is a drug dealer? These guys are adults not two little leaugers.

I don’t see it like that. Has nothing to do with opinions on his play. Bottom line, under Groce at his practice a UA MBB athlete was assaulted in front of coaches by another UA MBB athlete and then drove himself to the hospital with multiple injuries. Should have never happened - any of it.

Lucky! Finally.

Nice win Zips. Need tums after that one.

Nice set out of the timeout. Didn't think we were allowed to do anything but throw it up to our biggest guy after watching the last decade. Nice

@akronzips71 In the Portal of Transfer.

Ah, Micaletto. ZipsNation only had you one season. Too bad you did not come to us sooner. Best of luck! #OAZ;AAZ!

Hey 1981 Grad, good to hear from you. There is plenty for us to agree upon even if we end up with two different opinions. I totally agree with limiting minutes. Somewhere in the high twenties to low thirties seems to be the sweet spot for starters. The star player often plays in the mid to high thirties. But you can totally wear down your team going through the grind of conference play if you are not careful. Often coaches will go with light walk-through practices towards the end of the year. I personally would prefer Groce have a large active roster, especially if we get to the point where the Zips open up a running style. The common debate is when you get past a 9 player rotation will you start to lose team chemistry. Anyway, I think it's easy for us to forget about the insane recovery time of these kids. In 2017 the Michigan wolverines had their plane slide off the run way. The next day they got up at 6:00 in the morning, flew from Detroit to Washington D.C. for a noon tip off and in their practice uniforms beat Illinois. They went on to win the Big Ten Tourney (4 games in 4 days). So my opinion is that the Zips had plenty in the tank and in their legs on Saturday. Now as to the refs. I really hate talking about the refs. I am not one to play that card often. But on the same note, there are good refs and bad refs and they do effect games. And in my opinion the other night the Zips had to battle a team that was hitting on all cylinders in the second half while trying to figure out what the hell was a foul and what was incidental contact, etc. In the end, it's the Zips job to figure it out and overcome the refs calls no matter what. They ended up losing their composure and the game in glorious fashion. Hopefully, they will soon have the mental toughness and the horses necessary to overcome such a challenge. But I don't have a problem at all throwing lousy refs under the bus as part of my analysis.

I'm hearing that Groce is about to float an offer to a trio of JUCO transfers.

I hope your man enough to come clean & quit bitching if your wrong, your negativity has to be depressing

I went to the game yesterday. I was a bit interested to see a contest between two new coaches trying to rebuild their programs, not to mention we might have had an interest in Fralick if Kest had retired earlier. There was a good crowd with plenty of BG fans. It looked like the Zips women were going to roll, but BG rallied to make it a game. To their credit, the Zips women didn't fold and won. So far they've won the MAC games they should (WMU had their two leading scorers out with injuries and their team MVP from last year is redshirting for medical reasons). It sure beats watching them lose 19 MAC games in a row. Hopefully Coach Jackson can keep them playing tough for their game against the EMUs on Wednesday.

LMAO WHAT

Seemed like a good kid. I wish him luck. I will always wonder how and why he drove himself to the hospital. Depending on the circumstances, that would get me to put my kid in the transfer portal.