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Thought Barre had an excellent game for the minutes he was in.

It's big to Akron IMO. This is the type of game we typically drop inexplicably. Being on the road, this might end up being a Q2 win come season's end, too. Very solid performance. Akron shot above 40% again from 3; Akron has one of the best offenses in the country.

The Zips head to Vegas next Saturday to face to the Murray State Racers in the Jack Jones Classic. The Racers are 7-3 with wins over Bellarmine, Morehead State, George Washington, Little Rock, Nicholls, Mississippi Valley, Omaha, Northern State and Xavier, and losses to SMU, Middle Tennessee and McNeese State. Of their three losses, two came in the Caymans against Middle Tennessee, 90-87, and McNeese State, 73-70. Their other loss was 102-91 at SMU. From the Bellarmine website going into their game with Murray: MSU shoots 29.3 threes per game, 36th-most in the country, and ranks 99th connecting at a .360 clip. Defensively, the Racers are in the bottom third of the country allowing 77.3 points per game, a trait that could spell good fortune for the hot-shooting Knights on Saturday. Javon Jackson, playing at his fourth school in as many years, averages a team-best 16.3 points for MSU, 4th in The Valley. The senior guard has taken 116 shots, 52 more than anyone else on the team, but is shooting just .388. Fred King, a former Louisville commitment who played three seasons at Creighton, shoots a team-best .733 and is second behind Jackson with 12.2 points per game. On the perimeter, Bellarmine will need to keep an eye on Mason Miller, who is shooting .512 from deep.

That makes this loss tougher with the higher seeds losing but still an unexpected season. Great job guys!

Was worried that we were going to struggle but we won by enough in my opinion. I know Tulane isn’t great but we’ve been so bad in true road games OOC I’ll take it.

So the Big East had two chances to get to the College Cup and got neither. The College Cup will be a 15 seed, a 16 seed, and two unseeded teams. St Louis last won in 1973, and none of the other three have ever won a national championship.

I think the outlook for 2026 Zips Men's Soccer is bright. This was a very successful season. Qualifying for the exclusive 4-team Big East Tournament by winning the last regular season game on the road at Creighton and getting to the NCAA Elite 8 are huge accomplishments. I feel awful for our seniors - Mitch Budler, Daragh Reilly, Ashton Kamdem, and Stefan Dobrijevic - who have done so much for us and deserved a trip to the College Cup. Thank you all for your time at Akron. It has been a pleasure watching and supporting you all. BEST WISHES!!! Once a Zip Always a Zip!!! See you around!

Tevari currently playing as well as any Akron guard that I have seen in the past.

I haven't chimed in but wanted to share the following post from the boogeyman himself Connor Stalions when talking about the MSU hire - It's insightful. "People need to understand coaching is just one piece of the pie. More times than not, it’s a huge factor because talent & resources are usually close. But at Northwestern, it’s not even in the same ballpark as the rest of the conference. The academic standards make recruiting damn near impossible. The administration doesn’t care about winning. It’s basically an Ivy League school in the Big Ten. Pointing to a couple bad seasons (from a record standpoint) is lazy. Speaking from personal experience (yes, at a much different scale): I coached at Mumford HS in Detroit as the DC for a few months. We had 3 coaches & 18 total players in the program with a team-wide average GPA of a 0.9 when we arrived in the summer, and had to play JV & Varsity games with those 18 players (do the math on that). We somehow won a game. But of course we lost to Cass Tech 70-0. Went to Belleville right after the regular season as the OC and won 70-0 first game in the playoffs. Do you think I didn’t know how to coach then all the sudden learned in one week for a 140-point turnaround? No… We won at Belleville because we had Bryce Underwood, Elijah Dotson, etc. We lost at Mumford because we didn’t (and played against CJ Sadler, Don Tabron, etc.). While talent gaps are much greater in high school, I’m explaining the point that coaching only matters when the talent gap is manageable." Akron like Northwestern's issues are largely structural (and financial here), and Moorhead is not to blame there. Without addressing those underlying issues, a coaching change seems cosmetic. Unless they could line up someone like Jason Taylor. They are working to address the underlying issues though.