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You guys are way to hung up on traditional positional definitions of who is on the court.

To be fair, it wasn't just him. We were completely guardable with one man at every position. If we had someone that TT needed to double team, that would have freed Hardman for some open looks. But TT had no issues guarding us straight up. To me, that's why the loss Nate and Okonkwo was a killer, and the loss of Sharrone isn't. Sharrone's too short to compete at today's P4 level (NCAA tourney). In the MAC he's fine, but in the tourney he gets exposed. All the Zips did. We needed to get bigger at guard this year. I think we did? Eric Mahaffey (not Fr, but year 2, 3 or 4) is the type of player we need if we ever expect to win an NCAA tourney game. I don't know if that type will ever play at Akron again.

There is a show on Fox promoting this summer's World Cup. Each episode focuses on a specific host city and its culture, especially related to soccer. Each city has a liaison who is interviewed by the commentator throughout the show. UA's Steve Zakuani is the liaison for Seattle. I thought this was really cool to see and wonderful to hear why he chose to live in Seattle after his career. It is always good to see fellow Zips thriving in other parts of the country and throughout the world. https://tubitv.com/series/300019445/fifa-world-cup-26-stories-from-the-cities

One could say JoeMo makes a fiscal contribution by taking less pay to be here than what his true market value is.

Thursday night ford will be throwing out the first pitch at the RubberDucks Game

I suspect Ford will follow Groce's lead and bring in the most talented kids (with character) he can find and adapt the system to his talent.

Great win! (also, it should obviously be "flies" not "fly's". 🫠

Correct, it wasn't just Hardman, but we saw first-hand why his metrics from @kreed5120's site were so unfavorable. Nate wouldn't have required a double team. He wasn't overly athletic, quick, or threatening from deep. Okonkwo maybe down low but I think that's a stretch, too, considering he only averaged 2.9 ppg as a fully developed 5th or 6th year "senior" at Utah. Young will be missed for his energy, not his height, and we're seeing the future for Akron guards - taller. Tavari and Young got completely covered up by longer TTU players. We have now gone from 2 sub-6ft guards to 6'1" being our shortest (expected) key ball handler (Perkins at 6ft-even would technically be shorter but I'm not expecting a redshirt freshman to be relied on heavily, especially with Tahj/Wilson/Head on the roster). Eric is good and has a ridiculously high ceiling but he isn't the answer at this stage in his career. His game is still raw and his decision making is questionable at times. Not so sure Ty Pence will be much of a downgrade, if any at all. Athletically I'm sure there will be a little bit of a difference, but experience/decision making/etc. should all be upgraded with Pence given his experience. White is also a similar type player but with more physicality.

This pretty much sums up how I feel. Honestly, you seem more invested than I am. I might catch one or two games on TV each year, and I don’t go to any in person. My past experiences at games were so bad that I’d need to be paid to sit in Infocision for three and a half to four hours again. And it’s not just about them losing. I’ve sat through plenty of awful Browns seasons over the years. It’s more that the product Akron football puts out just doesn’t feel worth it to me, and I don’t really see a clear path for it to get better.

And they kept their basketball program?

People will always look for return on an investment. I donate and support men's basketball because I have seen my support and the support of others lead to consistent success on the court, MAC Championships, and NCAA Tournament berths. The sad reality for football is we haven't had a winning record in the conference in almost a decade. We've only had an overall winning record in 9 of 40 seasons, and only 1 of the last 20. The ceiling for the program is winning the MAC and playing in a smaller bowl that only matters to fans of the two teams playing and degenerate gamblers. And we are pretty far away from that ceiling. I attend a football game or two each year. I obviously hope they do well. But I can't blame fans/alumni for not giving their hard-earned money to the program instead of giving to men's basketball, men's soccer, or another winning program at UA.

He couldn't create his own shot which is what we saw vs. Texas Tech. He was completely bottled up.

Yes, I think his offensive efficiency is probably even better than the graph shows. He has a very quick release and could get shots off at will. The issue is when he wasn't making 3s he was kind of unplayable as he wasn't able to contribute in other ways.

Wow, Hardman. His slice looks like if you asked 100 people what they would do if they won the lottery and his mark on the pie chart is "Give it to Charity".

MMK I'm not sure logged a single minute at PF last year and was ahead of Barre in the rotation. Why would you assume he's 3rd string C? Also, I think several of the other guys can play minutes at the 2. Personally, I like the size. It allows us to switch more on defense without finding ourselves with a 6'7 wing backing down our 5'11" guard in ISO. Having to send help defense as frequently as we did last year was what led to many breakdowns defensively last year.

So with the rule change that was announced a few weeks ago that allows basketball teams to take international trips on a yearly basis, is this something we will see the Zips take advantage of?

Great article about Malik https://wakingthered.com/2026/04/21/23339/malik-henry-keen-to-make-most-of-toronto-fc-opportunities-we-always-have-to-stay-ready/

That site only shows 2 years of data. He does only have 1 year left.

Zips add Ty Pence.

Boals seems to have found more money to compete. They paid to keep Simmons and the 2 guards they've added couldn't have come cheap. I think they will be improved.

He also came off the bench a chunk of the time on a team that made it to the NIT Final Four. He's going to get more PT here, which will likely make him a 12 ppg, 6 rpg type player. That's All Conference in the MAC.

God bless Luke Getsy. Getsy pumps... he throws to Hixon and it is... CAUGHT! FOR A TOUCHDOWN! - Mike Tirico with Herbstreit by his side and Erin Andrews in her prime on the sideline.

You need to look at the advanced stats. His eFG% was .592 and .598 the year before so this past year wasn't a fluke. He rebounds really well for being a wing. Plays good defense. IMO he's a lot like Eric where he does a lot of things very well, but isn't elite at any 1 thing in particular. I really hate looking at counting stats as it's frankly lazy. Would you want a player that averages 20/game, but chucks up 30 shots a night to get it? Of course not. But if you insist at looking at counting stats remember he only played 23 mpg. If he projects to play 30 mpg you can bump his numbers up ~30%. I would also expect him to a more focal part of the offense so his usage will increase compared to Illinois State, which in turn will increase the counting stats.

She has been a generous donor for years. Part of me still wonders if she clicked 1 too many zeroes 😅

Luke Getsy made a 5K donation to football. Edit: @kreed5120 beat me to it!

WLAX seems like the one sport where the addition of UMass may pose a real problem for other schools. That's our only conference loss. Lacrosse is obviously much more popular in that area of the country.

I don't believe the others accumulated enough playing time to be graded. Eric was obviously the big loss here. They actually graded him as a high major starter/mid-major all conference for next year, which to me checks out. As I said before the percentiles are position based. Burton with a higher playmaker score doesn't mean he's a better playmaker than Eric. It just means he was borderline elite for a big in that category while Eric was good relative to other wings.

They are playing really well, definitely also taking advantage of other teams mistakes.

The Lady Zips have now won 9 in a row and sit in 1st place with a 15-3 record in MAC play.