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You might have been just a tad early with that one ?

Outstanding coaching, effort, and win. 15 pt. victory against what should be a top 4 MAC squad. Balls beat Georgia Tech by 18 and Buffalo by 20.

If you are looking for a nice screensaver or background...

I assume the game ended too late to get to press. Last night's game was fun. Nice to see the crowd get into the game. It appears that the Zips are finally starting to gain some attention from their success. Some day, when I get a little time, I want to go back a couple of years and find some of the very critical posts about Groce as he was struggling with a roster thrown together at the last minute. It should be entertaining for those of us who encouraged patience and painful for the "Chicken Littles" who were so critical.

They also talked about hairstyle for a solid minute, Manny's bar floor being slippery with beer, and how lungs were important in basketball. They were about as focused as Bill Walton.

Could listen to them interview X all day. That guy is COOL!

I agree - if you want to be a pro - come to Akron.

Oh god. The cannon

And the last two MAC undefeateds - Pinky (Kent) and the Brain (Zips). CMU closed it to a point late against the fightin' Pinky's but couldn't quite pull it out.

I apologize. We did know about Luke Brown. His offer is listed on VerbalCommits dot com. I'm busy right now but a bit latter I'll try to find and post some highlights. Thanks again & welcome to ZipsNation! Go Zips!

Why? I thought that was a good representation of the 50 football fans who showed up this year. ?️

Hadn’t caught wind of that offer yet. Thanks for the tip!

I am in agreement with @TennZip here. I believe 2019 was a "one off". But I also believe that THIS Spring training and matches are critical to this happening. Need to bring everyone together and understand each other and each other's characteristics and style. Stop relying on their Academy's style and begin to build the ability from the past teams to play by instinct, not by thinking.

@Captain Kangaroo made a post in the recruiting forum about Utomi fitting in here, I wanted to comment but didn't want to get too far off topic there. Winning is fun first and foremost. And KD's style won a lot, so we had a lot of good times. But man, winning the way we are now sure is fun. We're probably more athletic than most or all of his teams, but you can debate it. The difference that I love that isn't very much debatable is the pace and ball movement as opposed to the inside-out game CK mentioned. It's a ton of fun so far this year.

Have to give it to the poster who last week said LCJ was in the running for MAC POY. He should be getting his second straight POW honor as he put up a stat line of 22.5 7.5 2.5 this week. I still think Xeyrius is the best player on the team, but LCJ is the motor that gets the offense running.

That's my biggest fear. I cringe every time someone passes the ball to Riak. Reece is more competent offensively but is undersized against some bigs. I will give Reece credit for knowing his offensive limitations as well as always going up strong. After those two, there's no depth. On a night when the 3 ball's not dropping, they could run into some trouble. On a related note, Mark Kostelac has played in 5 of 15 games at Walsh, averaging 7 minutes and 1.6 points a game.

NWAkron was "all in" from the beginning.

All I could find in the ABJ coverage of the game was one stock photo of Groce and a small article. I think I saw GT at the game. Maybe the late finish didn't make deadline for the print edition. Muncie paper did a bit better https://www.thestarpress.com/story/sports/college/ball-state/2020/01/11/akron-basketball-beats-ball-state-mid-american-conference/4440595002/ https://gozips.com/sports/mens-basketball This has a super interview with X and LCJ. LCJ is class act. He mentioned how Sayles came in for a few minutes, got a rebound, and a slam and changed the game. I think GT said that's the loudest the crowd has been during the Groce era. I was surprised myself how quickly everyone was on their feet. Also, there are some highlights and you can see Reese's dunk and his reaction after that led to the T.

I hope someone recorded Groce's halftime talk. So we can use it again sometime.

That's quite a superlative. The most bizarre? How so? Like going on the Ball State fan page and reading things like: "They are not THAT good. We can beat them in Cleveland." "This could be our only conference loss." "They are clearly on another level. We don’t really have a chance against them if we see them in Cleveland." "It seems like there's always someone in the East who's "on another level" compared to us. For awhile it was Kent State, recently it was Buffalo, now it appears to be Akron." "We can win the west. But Akron right now is superior, and Kent might be too." "It's like recruiting has consequences or something."

Kind of fun to watch it on CBS sports and hear that NCAA tournament music

And just like that... THEY PLAYED THE BEST HALF OF THE SEASON.

Two Taylor Made balls made it to the unwashed masses tonight. 57 landed with the blue hairs.

I think the crowd counting down the shot clock has faked out balls taint at least twice.

Ridiculous T on Reece

Ummm, this is a little fun.

CBS is having some awful technical difficulties, presenting viewers with the worst NBA 2K view known to man. 12 pt. lead for Akron. Keep the foot on the gas!

Why are we guarding teague at the 3 point line? He's a .250 3p% shooter. Play off of him and dare him to shoot. He's blowing past our bigs on the drive.

This has the feel of a game that could get chippy. I'd like a rule that Riak can only shoot off of rebounds. LOL.

I would put the odds of CJ leaving the Zips at slim to none.

You can find a stream here. https://www.reddit.com/r/ncaaBBallStreams/comments/en0d2o/game_thread_akron_vs_ball_st_0900_pm_est/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Every night in my dreams, I see it, I FEEL it

I went looking for it earlier. Titanic Hoops had their twitter handle shutdown for what I'm guessing was copyright infringement.

Groce spoke last night on Zips Live about how he has become a leader on the team and how all of the kids look up to him (not literally of course). I think that speaks to his commitment to the program.

We do seem much more athletic, which should help our chances in Cleveland. It's tough to win 3 games in 3 days when your best player is pushing 300 lbs. I still feel the one weakness this team does have is we don't have a good back to the basket post scorer. It's not that we need it to be a focal part of the offense, but when we're going through a shooting slump and the other team is going on a run, it would be nice to be able to dip the ball down low and get an easy 2 every now and then.

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.

More 2021 recruiting news from VerbalCommits dot com Jalen Blackmon, 6-1, 155, CG, Marion HS, Marion, IN Kooper Jacobi, 6-6, 180, SG, Silver Creek HS, Sellersburg, IN