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Good post. The truth hurts. Groce & Co. pretty much whiffed on *Scott & Thornton. **Tavari didn't develop like I'm sure they were hoping. Dawson has regressed since his injury & year off. Nate Johnson got hurt & hasn't returned to form. PF ***Jermaine Marshall transferred out for mort PT. He'd be a senior for us this year. C ****Aziz Bandaogo transferred out for more PT. He'd be a junior for us this year. We've had a lot to overcome. * I still think Scott has a lot of upside. ** Seems as though Groce & Co. were banking on a breakout year for Tavari. *** Jermaine was named to the SoCon All-Tournament Team and had 23 & 8 in Samford's championship game win. **** Aziz would be one of the best mid-major C's in the nation this year. 🫤

Ali and Freeman made 1st team. Tribble was an honorable mention. Freeman and Tribble made all-defense.

Unanimous 💪💪

Ali was that guy in many games. Tribble in others. The EMU game was all Ali Ali until Tribble and others missed all the free throws in the final minute. Fact of the matter is, @Zippy87 nailed it with the roster construction issues. There simply isn't enough production from the top end of the back court and depth in the front court. However, I don't buy that it's a league-wide problem. PCCC lost InSincere but still has 2-3 guards that can put up 20+ on any given night. NIU has a guard that just dropped 30+ on us. BUGS got the top JUCO scoring guard and he's a stud - if they had any type of depth outside of him, they'd be a real problem. Sears and Dennis are the 2 big guards that left for P5 programs in recent years, but the league has had quite a few top scoring guards transfer in and be here for several years - LCJ, X2.0, Cheese, InSincere, Preston, etc. Fact is, Groce & Co. simply whiffed on backfilling X2.0's production. They have a mountain of an off season ahead of them to not only find big time production at the guard position, but also fill the front court shoes of Freeman. In the meantime, they have an even bigger mountain directly in front of them called the MAC Tournament that starts tomorrow. If they don't have these guys refocused and bought back into Akron Defense by tip off against Miami, they'll be climbing the off season mountain sooner than expected.

No Payton?! Blasphemy!!!

You hit the nail on the head!!! How many times after a MAC game has Scott or Thornton been on the post game? By my count zero. Plus you have Nate getting injured and Dawson struggling on offense. If you add in Hunter having an off night it is just too much pressure on 3 guys.

He wasn't even on Mr. Pinky's first team late in the season! LOL.

In 2022 my group of friends were the first people not to get tickets at pizza 216, so we all frantically used code Rizzo to get the cheapest tickets then moved over to the student section

we just need to figure out who our version of JR Smith and Tristan Thompson are

A unanimous MAC player of the year, a first team player and a honorable mention. We should be able to win the MAC with this talent. Time for other players on this team to step up!!!!!

Congratulations to Joel Sangwa …. 👏👏👏

The cherry on top is another trip to the Big Dance (and a W in the tourney but I'm not going to get greedy at this point). Well deserved award for one of the greatest the MAC has ever seen.

It has to be something we don't see in games. He's as offensively talented as any of the point guards on the team. He has his defensive issues and occasional bad decision but there has to be more at issue, like not practicing hard or completely buying into the "Groce way."

Isn't he a Junior? I think at this point, he is what he is.

Not sure that would help since he is playing division 2 basketball at Indana U of Pa and they lost to Walsh. Averaging 18 points but only shooting 25% from 3.

I'm referring more to Exchange and Route 8. The "happening" parts of campus (Info, soccerl, baseball, food, bars, etc.) butt up against a really ugly and higher crime part of Akron. Having a good relationship with the city is important, and I'm not against that. But the city of Akron has being headed in the wrong direction for a while now, and the University failed to section off its campus from the negative parts of Akron. When they built the Info, it would've been perfect to build up the multiple block perimeter that surrounds the Info to promote more of a college atmosphere. Updated real estate, bars, food, landscaping, etc. Instead, the perimeter view/experience is Exchange with its rundown buildings, lack of restaurants/bars, etc. Downtown has had some positive developments, but that's not exactly a great walk to get to the Info, JAR, FirstEnergy Stadium, etc. It does nothing to build the atmosphere for game days, which is a huge part of the college experience.

Not to pile on but Garvin Clarke would have been a Junior this year.

One thing I will add about this, is I was going to UA when it was at peak enrollment. At the time, we had all the res halls that are currently on-campus, plus Grant, Gallucci (not sure if I spelled that right), and Quaker. Quaker is currently shuttered and they’re looking to sell it, and Grant and Gallucci are in the landfill. So, I would think that compared to peak enrollment, both on-campus and off-campus students are down.

Would you expound upon this point? Personally, I love where the Info is located. I'd also be thrilled with a downtown basketball arena across from Canal Park. I'm also excited about the potential of the renovated Polsky Building bringing arts & music to Main Street. I've always believed the more vibrant Main St. & Exchange Streets are the better. I'm of the opinion the U & the city (downtown, specifically) are a symbiotic relationship. It sounds as though you and I are on different pages in this regard?

Having grown up in Cincinnati, I can tell you that crime there was and continues to be much worse than in Akron. I've done everything in my neck of the woods to talk up Akron and UA. I sent my son to UA and he loves it. I wish we all coud reach a larger audience as alumni and parents.

UA needs to do something to combat this stigma of UA being unsafe. I don't know how the university would go about it, but OSU and UC have the same exact problems, people often don't think of that first when talking about those schools. Everywhere in the country has "crime", the urban centers just have more people for more police reports. If UC can get to 50k enrollment, there is no reason that UA can't get back to at least half that number

Especially given his past.

Wtf. Is this the weirdest coaching off season ever?

I was at an alumni event in recently and Dr. Miller said all dorms were full.

I don't think Western Michigan was doing anything in particular to stop us. We scored 84 points but we didn't play typical Akron-caliber defense, or anything close to it in the 2nd half. EMU loss was lack of execution + nobody could hit an outside shot aside from Sammy. And then we lost close games at Toledo and Ohio, two teams we've historically struggled against at times on the road. Don't get me wrong, it hasn't been pretty the last two games and this is a flawed team, but with a week to reset, their chances of winning 3 games are as good as anyone else.

Using an Oxford analysis between SpaceX and NASA isn't the bolstering claim you think it is. NASA's bread-and-butter is innovating new nonexistent technology, and is hampered by political interests of Congress. While SpaceX's replication of already existent technology (that wouldn't exist without Public Funding and decades of work and research by NASA footing the upstart cost) is to be commended, their ability to innovate is nothing short of a disaster. "Failure is not an option" has been replaced with "well, it cleared the tower before it blew up!" level incompetence. No privatization generally means less-quality and less public control, which means less sense of community and less caring. Not to mention, NASA isn't actually saving that much money using SpaceX when compared to when it ran the SpaceShuttle in terms of the payloads themselves. There's a lot of bad reporting out there (that doesn't do the math they just take the reports of a private company with unopened books as gospel), and SpaceX is burning through investment cash...which demonstrates it's not running profitably (so it's all an illusion).

Taylor Housewright backflips away from Akron