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100% agree. After a 2 year hiatus we're back to watching the type of competitive basketball we'd come accustomed to watching during Dambrot's tenure. Is Ali a young "Deji"? Who's better, Kwan or X? Antino or LCJ? Cheese/Banks or Noah? Big Dog or Riak. Ok, maybe I went too far, but you get the idea. ? No doubt this team has the potential to reach the MAC finals. Hope they can stay healthy, out of trouble and continue to improve. Seems like this is the turning point where Zips fans do the 180 degree switch over from "Why in the world did we hire Groce?" to "How are we ever going to keep him?"

If you remember, KD's teams would traditionally run like a buzzsaw through the first half of the MAC season but then begin to stumble & rarely felt like they had momentum going into the tourney. It'll be interesting to see if Groce can keep the team's momentum cranking & peak at the right time. I also appreciate, more than mere words can express, how Groce doesn't pull hot shooters from the game. ?

Congratulations to Tom Smart.

I think it would have been fun to field a better team to contend with Buffalo last year. For years Dambrot complained about how the decks always stacked against us because nobody good would ever come play at the JAR. There was actually for once a team last year in the MAC that would have given us a crack to get up to 2 tournament resume building wins. I heard over the years people saying they wanted Akron to become the Gonzaga of the east. People overlook another WCC that has capitalized off of Gonzaga's success to become one of the best mid-majors in the country. That team would be St. Mary's who used some wins over Gonzaga to help catapult them. Those two teams emerging also helped attract BYU to the conference, which made the conference even better. I'd love to see the MAC become a multi-bid league.

Bart Torzik gives Akron a 64.1% percent of winning the MAC outright and a 79% of winning/sharing it...Akron MAC champs confirmed ? http://www.barttorvik.com/conodds.php?conf=MAC

The first 2 rounds of the MLS draft occurred today. Tom Smart was selected as the 19th pick in the 2nd round (45th overall) by the LA Galaxy. Rounds 3 and 4 of the draft will occur on Monday the 13th Zips have had players drafted(or signed as homegrowns) in every draft since the 2008 MLS draft

Kwan was one of the KD players that really improved from his frosh to his senior year. As a frosh he did not rebound well or play great defense. However, he turned himself into a great rebounder and very good defensive player. His senior year he was playing amazing and many on this board thought he should be player of the year in the MAC. However, he went into a slump and had a good year but not a fantastic year. The only negative about Kwan is that he never had a great tournament in Clev and Akron did not win a MAC championship while he was with the team. Tough to compare the two players since Williams has not even played a third of a season. They are both good rebounders and play good defense. I like it how Williams is taking better shots and his shooting percentage is way up. I think Williams runs the floor better, drives to the basket better while Kwan could post up a player a little better than Williams.

Kwan gets a bad rap because he was a streaky shooter, but his overall numbers were still really good from behind the arc. He shot .384 his senior season and .351 from behind the arc for his Akron career. @zippy5 is correct that he's the closest we had, but I don't think he's quite as gifted as Xeyrius is.

Just in general Dambrot didn't field athletic teams. We won by playing hard nose D and finding players who fit into his system on offense. We certainly never had any 6'9 bigs would could run the court and handle the ball like Xeyrius.

I hate the 9:00 start to this one. I will have to try to convince the Mrs. to let the kids stay up and make the drive to Akron.

I thought it was the football season total attendance.

I went to that game in Michigan and I remember how slow our guys looked against VCU. Tree was the only one that looked good on the court and had the quickness to stay with an athlectic and hard pressing VCU team. Zeke, as much talent as he had looked very slow on the court against a quick athletic team and was very ineffective. The game was over midway throught the first half.

Should be able to catch the podcast once it posts here https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getfixed-the-podcast/id1481588506

Around cyber space (not having much to do) I found the following: On the PCCC blog a member wrote this brilliant post: "Post: #4RE: Toledo @ Kent State 0-1 MAC teams always concern me." From Canada's Bull Run AKA Stages of Grief: Since the championship years UB started getting the best game against every team. Well UB is a big target and can’t handle the best game even from bad teams. Going to be a tough year unless they ever put it together. AND I get a feeling that our guys have bought into the hype from the past couple years and just don’t think they need to be on every game. This is just pathetic play and other teams are shooting the lights out on us every game From Kitten Attack where hope always springs eternal: Serious note: This team is going to continue to get better and better. Only question I have for them is when the size issue begin to show through after enough games in-league. Otherwise, guard play wins tournaments, and I think we got the legs in Cleveland to raise some havoc In Sweaterville the focus is naturally on football with some waxing nostalgically for Coles: Just checked and found that Charlie Coles had 11 straight seasons at .500 or better in conference play (2000-2011). Since then, we've had 8 straight losing seasons in conference play (1- Coles, 5- Cooper, 2- Owens), and we are well on our way towards our 9th. Ouch.

The workday is made so much more enjoyable knowing that I have two Akron basketball games to look forward to every week. It's either excitement from leading up to a game, excitement of it being gameday, or joy from a win the night before. I missed Akron basketball being good so much.

Not sure why anyone would voluntarily go to the MAC Center when the Zips are playing at home?? My heart doesn't desire an epic PCCC/Zips battle. It would much prefer a 3-12 PCCC squad v a 12-3 Zips squad. Akron was able to ease into the MAC with games against the two worst directional schools. Toledo had a rough draw. PCCC had what were supposed to be "tough" opponents but BG struggled mightily at home against Miami tonight and Toledo is slumping. The best of the East and the best of West clash this weekend with both CMU and BSU coming to NE Ohio. If Zips and Flushes come out of this weekend both 13-3 and 3-0, fasten your seatbelts.