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Well, that beats any newspaper in town. 🤷‍♂️

In the transfer portal era, I think teams are going to look completely different every year. Tomorrow's team is promised to no one. Is passing on the CBI an affront to teams of the past that would have killed for the opportunity to compete, but were robbed of it for whatever reason? A little bit. The CBI is definitely an unsexy tournament. But it is a decent-sized assemblage of like-ability teams, and it would have been fun if the Zips participated and happened to string together a couple wins...even if only against North Alabama and Tarleton. Moot point now...we now forge on to the Portal Season, and prep for 2023-24.

Maybe the 27K is going to the Enrique Fund

If the players did not want to play. I am fine with it. I am sure that is what we will hear but I wonder if it is because the school did not want to pay the entry fee and the travel.

Rob Senderoff. Indiana. Chuckle. The committee has a sense of humor.

It would be great to get guys like Nate, Tavari and Lyles some time extra time on the floor to help prep them for next year. The problem is that if you get them extended time on the floor it likely results in a loss. At that point, you have to make the value assessment of whether an extra 30 minutes of playing time for those guys is worth $27.5K.

The big boys have twisted the metrics enough by switching from subjective, to subjective + RPI, to NET, and now to subjective + NET. Now they can justify sending a 27-7 conference champ that had win 17 straight before losing in their conference tournament championship game to play at a .500 Big Ten team that lost in their opening conference tournament game.

If Cleveland State and Duquesne are willing to spend money on their basketball programs that were not, that would make me sad. Awaiting Guthrie’s comments on why his 22 win team isn’t playing in the postseason. I know Travis, Joyce, Middleton, etc would have given anything to have a crack at the postseason. Ditto Banks/Cheese/Williams and LCJ.

There is 27,500 reasons why they aren’t playing in the CBI.

I really wish they would just expand the NIT to 64 teams, like how the women's is set up, then eliminate these third rate tournaments.

Riq's girlfriend of a couple of years now also plays lacrosse at Akron. That could play a factor in the decision.

One would also think that the disaster that was Ali's transfer season would influence Enrique's decision. He's such a smart friendly, and well-spoken kid, I really really hope he's back. He's a great representative of the program. Another season like this year (or better) and he's within striking distance of top 3 Zips scorers all-time. He projects to about 1,750 right now. Edit: Additionally he projects to 1,322 rebounds which puts him second all-time behind the Zips legend Fred Golding's 1,360 from the 1950's. (I have no idea who Fred is). Not bad for a walk-on.

If Huggins would entertain returning, it would be an interesting decision.

Having followed these teams from a betting standpoint since January, this is a solid non-P5 field. San Jose State has the MW Player of the Year. Southern Utah and Southern Indiana can score with the best of them. Indiana State, Cleveland State, and Tarleton would be excellent competition. And let's be honest, we'd all love a shot at Duquesne.

I think the recruiting advantage is the big one here. I ran into OU’s women’s coach Bob Bolden in Cleveland this weekend. Great guy, former Zip. He had a bad year. He said the advantage to not making the postseason was that the entire staff had the ability to go out and recruit all over the place last week. With that said, you can’t really go out and recruit the portal like that, but there could still be some Diamond-in-the-rough 2023 HS guys out there in addition to advancing 2024 and 2025 relationships.

When people say it isn't about the money, it's usually about the money. Let's say the cost is $25K. What do the Zips get out of this investment? Spend the money on recruiting and get more of of the dollars.

It looks like you're watching Intellivision Baseball 😭

Two ways to look at it - pay to play and get some more development for the young guys. However, there is no guarantee you get more than 1 game which makes it a giant waste in my opinion, though I'd love to see us play for my own personal benefit. The other option is to end the season now and focus solely on recruiting, which getting a good transfer or two is probably much vital to the future than getting guys an extra game or two of development.

Zips vs Duquesne

I'd be interested in a 2 or 4 game series between Akron & Duquesne, not a meaningless end of season exhibition game. The schools are less than 2 hours apart so travel would be cheap, and they are the caliber of a top half MAC school so it would be a decent test to prepare us for MAC play. Similar to what Marshall has provided us over the last 8 years or so.

I wish there was a site that added stats to Portal entries. I'd be like a kid in a candy shop. "I'll take one of these 18 ppg guards, one of those 7 rebounds per game bigs..."

https://www.verbalcommits.com/transfers/2023/D1 I've been refreshing this throughout the day. Primo Spears, Georgetown's best player who transferred in from DooCane the year before, is in the portal again. I'm assuming he'll go for a hardship waiver. He's one of the bigger names in the portal so far.

Here is a little perspective and a lesson in high standards. UNC won 20 games this season and didn't make the NCAA tournament. They were offered a spot in the NIT and turned it down. The NIT is part of American basketball culture and I want it to mean something. At the same time, I respect UNC's reasoning. This is what programs with high standards do. I applaud the Zips for not participating in the CBI. It establishes a standard for the program and the standard is not playing in a trash tournament at the end of the year. The CBI is worse than Tuesday and Wednesday night MAC football games, which is a massively low standard the MAC has set for football.

I don't think Barstool is typically a great source, but he does have a NIL deal with them so I'd guess there's at least some relationship there.

https://verbalcommits.com/conferences/mac is helpful

Jim Tressel promised the committee free tattoos for this to happen.

A bunch of my fellow posters have short memories. Other than the NIT, most of the Zips participation in these other tournaments have left us with a bad taste in our mouths.

The cost is $27,500, to be exact, and I don't know what additional expenses there are. I agree recruiting is where the money would be better spent, assuming we find shooters. Still disappointing we aren't getting the younger core more experience.

Amen. This tournament is absolute trash. If you associate with trash, you are trash. Imagine making the worst college football bowl game....imagine of they played a bowl game in the Bahamas and called it the Bahamas Bowl. This tournament is 10 times worse. How does this tournament help the players?... It doesn't, the extra practices are punishment for mediocrity and they aren't going to become better players by playing in it. Going deep in to the NIT could make a player better because the competition gets really good. How does it help the students?....It doesn't. It's not like they were going to go to the games. How does it help the alumni or fans?...I can't think of how it does in a meaningful way. How does it help the general Akron community?....I can't think of a single way. There is a good case to be made (I don't agree, but it is a good case) that there are too many bowl games. This trash tournament should be eliminated. The illusion it is some kind of program builder is just rubbish. If you aren't good enough to make the NIT, it's time to pack it up for the year. Not making this tournament is like complaining that your 6-6 football team didn't make a bowl. You probably didn't deserve it in the first place and the coaches would be better off on the recruiting trail.

Wow, how the games have evolved...

I might have been a little harsh with that comment^. Watching SportCenter Top Ten Plays, all the college baseball highlights were recorded with a single camera behind the plate. Of course the televised games have trucks of HD equipment rolling in to put on a major production. Otherwise it's a single camera in/on the press box.

I do want to see them keep playing. I highly doubt the money has anything to do with it. If Groce and the team had the opportunity but needed the money, they would be scouting for the opponent now. There’s a really solid group of teams that got “left out” of all of the top 3 tournaments. Akron has had much worse teams continue playing. I’m curious as to how the CBI accepted teams, like if they extended the first invite, or it was a first come first serve. A nice statement from Guthrie and Groce would be nice. I would watch this team play in BF Egypt on a fuzzy phone quality video 100x before I would ever watch the 13-14 team lose to IPFW.

Or maybe the coaching staff have more important things to do than travel to Florida to play in the Discount Tire tournament. But hey, if the god like former coach does it, it must be the right thing to do. I appreciated when Bobby Hurley said or maybe it was Oats, after losing in the MAC tournament, that his team's goal was to play in the NCAA and if not that the NIT. Therefore, he wasn't accepting any invite to a lesser tournament.

Dukes open the CBI as the 5 seed vs Rice. Looking at the bracket they should expect to make at least the semifinals! Good luck to our second favorite coach! 😊

If not, it definitely should be

When and how do we hear from Guthrie or Groce about this? I would love to hear the reasoning.

It looks like the CIT got postponed twice for COVID and then came back last year as the The Basketball Classic. The web page just lists 2022 details and nothing about 2023 so it looks like we saw X's last game which sucks. I will be interested in what the AD has to say about the decision-making process for post season play. I really wanted one more run with this crew.

Now that the NIT has selected their field I expect we should hear if Akron decides to do a post season tourney.

Faith has to work on her conditioning in the off season. Reagan, Layne and Molly could all run circles around her as could opposing bigs. She wasn’t going to be on the blocks ahead of the other 3 bigs and being on the perimeter helped her get back on defense. The couple of games I was at where she got significant PT she was gassed quick. That being said she has a lot of potential and can be a real contributor next season.

Had to review the story! Senderoff basically got what John Loyer got from Hughins at Cincinnati -- the convenient target treatment. Kelvin Sampson was the real responsible party. And...hmmm, whatever happened to him 🤔😉 https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/news/story?id=3086559

I love the end of a Zips basketball season in how it brings out people we never otherwise see on ZipsNation- people that come to p!$$, moan and b!+ch after a loss and those who come to celebrate and bask in success. The most amusing are those who are actually in both groups.

Mr. Coach of the Year only preached one side of the ball all season and it bit them in the butt hard with their inability to execute defensively when it mattered in the title game. Shocking. Kowalchoke loves those NIT banners and participation trophies. Legitimately can say I would not like Carry in an Akron uniform. I'd maybe tolerhate him, but that's about it. Part of what we hail about Groce's Akron squads is the character level and how the young men that wear the Akron Blue & Gold conduct themselves. Akron's pep band wear polos & khakis, while PCCC's pep band wear wrinkled t-shirts. Akron players typically carry themselves well, while PCCC's players are punks that look for the camera constantly. 14 miles separates the two schools, but the contrasting differences are way further apart.

I'll tell you what, it's not easy to say!!

I unfortunately agree with everything you say here.

Toledo occasionally used the defense against Carry that the Zips used in the championship game last year, but didn't consistently do it. Toledo panicked in the end and rushed one on one matchups for the last 10 or 12 minutes. I've been harsh on Senderoff over the years. I even came up with "Mr. Pinky" and should have copyrighted/trademarked it! That being said, he had his team ready for the tournament and they answered the call on numerous occasions. Carry and some of his teammates aren't the most likable kids for their opponents, but what we see as cockiness and showboating is seen as confidence and having fun by their fans. If Carry's sweetie was a UA undergrad, many Zips fans would have seen him similarly.

If they can find a group as pathetic, classless, and douchey as this current group of Lightning Chickens, props to them.

Another Kobe and another Johnson will really hurt my brain next fall