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I’m not making a prediction, but with his skills and maturity this early and for that size I could see him going pro after his junior year. I mean legit first rounder. So yes, precedent would be something like play at Akron for 2 years, then go to Duke for a year and then go pro. It would be nice if the Mahaffey clan gave Akron a family discount and he finished his college career at Akron. He would be like Larry Bird putting Indiana State on the map. That said, I want to make sure Evan gets his due. I especially like his defense and calm presence on the floor. He’s going to get fouled a lot so he needs to pick up his free throw shooting, but he’s been great so far. Great leadership. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

This is great! We have such a diverse group of players!

Gotlieb's presence alone accomplishes that.

You’re right I was looking at last year’s NET. Is it too much for me to ask that the numbers speak for themselves? Let teams jump around for a couple of weeks until the dust settles. Again, either be objective or subjective. Don’t use polling in a metric people. Good grief.

NET hasn't been updated yet for this season. You're looking at last years numbers. It's not until early December that NCAA starts posting the rankings. Kenpom uses preseason rankings in their numbers to help smooth things for the first few months of the year. Those rankings get phased out as the season progresses. I think it's around mid-January when they fully remove them. NET waits until December to start publishing the current season rankings as they don't use preseason rankings in their numbers so it takes until December for there to be enough data points to form a ranking. Even then the first few weeks the NET is weird. It probably isn't until January that it looks normal.

Damn…now I’m the “old guy.” 😫 The Zips won a tournament in 1990 (year after Huggins departed). I believe it was at Drake. Zips were led by two Duquesne transfers - Kevin McCarthy and Pete Freeman. Both had sat out the previous season as transfers and expected to play for Huggins. Instead they got Coleman Crawford. I still feel bad for them.

George Washington just last year played at both Old Dominion and at American, which is in the Patriot League. The coach speaking has gone into other mid-major arenas and played road games. Besides, the point he was making was mainly about MTE. Big schools long quit going to mid-majors to play regular season games. That happened 20 years ago, maybe longer. Its only been in the last ~5 years that you're seeing MTE fields that segregated power schools from mid-majors.

I'm not trying to take away from this thread as this is actually one of the more solid mid-major tournaments. That said the GW coach went on a rant about how in recent years you no longer see power conference schools play mid-majors in these tournaments. It's really a shame because it was one of the few realistic opportunities for top mid-majors to secure resume building wins. https://x.com/jjgottschalk/status/1991507432703685037?t=XYpFnUcuzaziuwb0QSBYkw&s=09

This Zips team can be as good or better than the Cheese/Banks/LCJ/Williams team. We’re small in the paint, but who can keep up with us? Eric Mahaffey is half Ali Ali, half Scottie Pippin. In a year or two I don’t know that Bud will be able to afford him.

scouting our next head coach!

That’s a good start to build some momentum. I’ve decided Im going to do my small part too. We’re at a day in age where if we want to fix the problem, we can be a part of the solution. What shouldn’t get lost in this is that the school needs to step up their part too. Reasonable increases from both inside and outside support could elevate this program to the realistic level we’d like very soon..

We just got a 100k donation for the recruiting, absolutely huge!

Hosting the Avon-Walsh state semifinal isn't going to solve $5M worth of issues but every little bit helps. Doesn't hurt getting people on campus either.

🧊 🐐

What an awesome rookie season for Beto. Game winning goal in the US Open Cup v NYCFC. Winning pk in the Eastern Conference semifinal. Winning pk in the USL Championship final. Friendly with Puerto Rico National team v Argentina on the field playing against the GOAT, Messi.

It's the toughest part and one that I don't think Akron is set up to do. It's cultural throughout a university that is successful at it.

NET is very similar to KenPom. The formula isn't exactly the same, but the basic concepts are. It's more about how the committee analyzes the data than the metric itself. I've even seen graphics where the committee breaks out Q1 wins into top 25 wins and non-top 25 wins to give further bonus points to a SEC that might have went 9-9 in conference play over mid-majors that picked up Q1 wins over other high quality mid-majors. Who you beat and who you lost to are already built into the numbers. Why do they feel the need to keep moving the goalposts?

My prediction is that the P5 cartel will continue to concentrate their financial power and control. Perhaps breaking off into their own super league making them essentially the new D1 and turning the rest of D1 into D2 and so on down the line. They will just assume that their business model of paying the best players in the country big money will maintain their elite status. But all it will take is for 1 really great team in the new D2 to refuse to play for them or with them to cast doubt on the whole project. At that point negotiations will take place or the NCAA will completely implode and we start again with who knows what.

Here’s an interesting Loyola Chicago Ramblers tidbit. They actually have a 1963 NCAA championship banner hanging in their gym. Now granted back then the NIT was the premier annual college tournament, but you can say it aged well to their benefit.

Thanks. I think it’s fine being the aim (why not aim high), but I’d settle for 6 and bowl eligibility. Our OOC isn’t the grinder it has been in some other years, but it still includes 2 P4 teams and a good G6 team. Likely we go 1-3 in OOC which would require 6-2 or 7-1 in conference play. That’s the conference record of a title contender and I don’t see that happening next year.

https://x.com/ATGoodrich/status/1991967431481586107?t=BKzouw0SYzLAxiSbuM8nCg&s=19

Akron won the Sun Bowl Invitational in 2016. But I think it might have only been 4 teams.

I’m getting out of my truck in the Nordonia parking lot prior to the McDonald-Mogadore playoff game tonight and a kid gets out of the van across from me in an Enrique Freeman #25 Akron jersey? Odd gear to don at that football game. McDonald 42 Mogadore 21. My Blue Devils roll on to the state semi’s. 👿🏈💪🏽

From someone on Iona's board... "Akron is better than anyone we'll see this season not named St John's. They would destroy anyone in the MAAC." MAC, MAAC - we own it all. 😉

Our 18 pt loss at Purdue is going to look very good all year long. They are up on #15 Texas Tech in the Bahamas 81-49 with 2 minutes to play. Update: They won the Baha Mars Championship over #15 Texas Tech 86-56.

The last paragraph: “Join us, as we “MAKE THE CLIMB” and help us as we work to as hard as possible over the next eight weeks to get to eight victories next season.” Maybe eight isn’t the hard line, but it sounds like that’s the aim.

This week’s Zips weekly definitely makes it seem like Moorhead and Goodrich have a solid relationship. Moorhead made a few positive comments about him.

So if I’m understanding this right, eight wins is the expectation next year. That essentially means going somewhere between 7-1 and 5-3 in conference play and hoping to steal one — or maybe even two — from Wake, Minnesota, and UNLV. That’s a tough ask, especially considering the schedule was about as favorable as it’ll ever be this past year. I had us pegged for 5–3 in conference against five new head coaches and winning both Wyoming and UAB. We all know how those turned out, so no need to revisit it. If eight wins is truly the expectation, then Goodrich has to find a way to get Moorhead the money he needs to retain most of our top players and expand the coaching staff. I’ve never questioned this staff’s ability to evaluate and bring in talent. An increased recruiting budget would also help, but I don’t see it as the biggest hurdle when so many of these coaches have years of experience and deep recruiting networks already built. If the expectations have been raised — which I’m all for — then the resources need to rise proportionally. If Goodrich can get this done for Moorhead, 2026 suddenly becomes a lot more interesting. I’m curious to see how it unfolds.

Only through my blue-n-gold-colored glasses.😅 But no, not really.... certainly not as a freshman. I was surprised when word on the street was he might be starting last season prior to his injury. He played PG as a senior in HS, so has handles & high IQ. But he's grown a few inches & hasn't lost a step! 🤯

Tyrrell is now available. 😁

I think you misread a lot of things. 😉

According to the official website 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, which would be 8:00 p.m. Eastern standard Time.

Groce knows he has a team that can push the MAC's traditional ceiling when it comes to seeding. Margin of victory matters, hence why we're not dribbling out the clock until the very last possession in these blowouts. Iona was previously 4-1, having beaten Princeton by 20, Fordham, Kansas City, and Hofstra. They just dropped to 176 in KenPom with the loss, but have had a solid start to their 1st season under the new HC. Akron is up to 74 in KenPom and can really start making some moves with likely Oregon State and either Yale or Charleston left in this tournament, plus Milwaukee, Tulane, and Murray State coming up. That was quite the performance despite about 7-10 minutes of less than stellar play. Eric Mahaffey's best game, Young rebounded nicely, Tavari really got everything started, and Evan was all over the place. This team is just so impressive.

Yeah but where are they? Oh yeah, paradise! Also, quick “Teamism” note. If you’re on this team, you’ll roll with your crew anywhere.

What a great answer after their run to end the half

Eric going end to end for the dunk was sweet!!

We're still pretty good

I agree about Finley. If he’s in form, we’ve got a shot to take one of—if not both—Wyoming and UAB. Instead, we wrapped up non-con play with the same record we always seem to have against P4 opponents. We’ve been waiting on Murphy for a while now. If the portal hits us the way I’m expecting, 2026 may be the perfect window for him to finally come into his own. I haven’t heard anything about White either. I’m assuming it was a season-ender since he never came back. He’s already used a redshirt, but he should be able to get a medical one if he chooses. Getting him back healthy would be huge, especially if we’re operating under the assumption that DeWalt is out of eligibility.

BTW I may be in the minority but I said this last year when all the Joe rumors were swirling. Very similar this year. I absolutely agree with whoever mentioned it in the past few days .. the rumors are all being generated by Joe’s agent. Watch other rumors pop early in the search cycles for OCs in the NFL etc. I believe Joe’s options to leave for bigger and better pastures are extremely limited. I don’t believe James Franklin will look at him as a first choice or maybe second/third based on how he’s building his staff. I also think he remains comfortable from the standpoint of family life, nice house in Hudson, grandkids around - his son is off next year to play college ball and he has his routine at Akron down to where maybe he can keep a better eye on his son’s career va working his ass off as a OC for some other program with less familiarity. I could be completely wrong but this is my gut feel.

That's a completely different scenario in which academics were the priority, and it was pre-NIL. It was also about one in a million that it happened at Akron. Nice story nonetheless.

Akron Felt is no more, the old owner didn't pay taxes for multiple years. One of the former employees started his own business doing the same thing. https://www.simos.cc/ He has totally rebuilt the business but is doing a great job, we use him to do all the repairs on the RubberDucks uniforms, highly recommend

@Z.I.P. 11:30am today for you if I'm not mistaken. You're welcome, you lucky, Hawaii-living son of a nutcracker. 😂

Tyrell does things at a high school that actively recruits. Same thing was true at Cincinnati Moeller with Faust. Means they can successfully recruit at the high school level- often opposing teams that don't recruit (remember they are not "allowed to recruit"). In Mt Union's case- literally 25% of all male freshmen are football players- most will never see the field- its a numbers game that benefits their overall enrollment- different animal. Recruiting is different at D1 college level where everyone recruits and now including money. Also- can they coach as well as they recruit? The situations are literally apples and oranges. The one doesnt translate to the other in most cases.

Sounds like some "Akron" moves. We've previously hired HC's that did great things at John Carroll and Cincinnati Moeller.

Was. This is the Portal Era. Keep up, RoyalBlu.

Horrible QB. Leads the MAC in TDs. Second in the MAC in total yardage. Scholar athlete of the week in the MAC this week. Joe found a guy like this with essentially no NIL money and convinced him to stay for 2 seasons. Good luck finding better in 2026. I like Broughton a lot. I hope Zips fans get to see him at Infocision one day.

This is another reason I'm very hesitant to knock JoeMo. This year was Year 4 but... it was really more like Year 1 than Year 4. Next year will be Year 1 all over again. Every year is Year 1. I hate it.

Those incessant f-ing drums and chants...please tell me they won't ever be used again.

Congratulations to Beto Ydrach and the Pittsburgh Riverhounds.