kreed5120

MBalla looked like he was going to be a stud as well. Averaged 15pts 11 boards as a junior. Ended up going to Ole Miss only to be the ~9th man in the rotation.

Believe it or not that's probably a softer OOC schedule than they have many years.

Hedging your happiness

There are usually a couple voters that will throw a few votes to get a team some spotlight that nobody is talking about. High Point with 4 votes is another example.

Buffalo is not in great shape. Options this offseason are either give Halcovage a 3rd year or start over with a new coach in a year 0 situation. Even if they right the ship it's likely going to take a few years.

I honestly don't think this year is that much worse than last year. The MAC has progressively just gotten worse year over year the last 4 seasons. Unless the trend bucks, being the 20-25 best conference is just the new normal.

We look like a team that peaked in January. I wouldn't recommend just mailing it in the final week of MAC play. We need to work on making adjustments to get back to firing on all cylinders. Right now in February we're playing like a team that is marginally better than the rest of the MAC. That gives us good, but not great odds of winning in Cleveland. I'd be feeling a whole lot more confident right now if the MAC tournament started the beginning of February instead of March this year.

Give me Kowalchoke any day of the week. Pinky and Boals have both shown the ability to win in March.

That's fairly devastating this late into the recruiting cycle.

I think it's fair to say all the 9-6 teams are securely in the field as well. A lot of those 6 and 7 wins teams face one another so it's not possible for them all to win out. It's more just about seeding.

There are 14 Sun Belt teams and only 12 MAC teams so 2 Sun Belt teams are left out each year. Marshall volunteered to be one of those 2 teams. Their reasoning is they typically schedule 2-3 MAC teams OOC anyway so it makes them playing in the contest redundant.

This seems like the best alternative. It also would eliminate the need for the MAC to rent the arena for Wednesday for the women. Those games could instead be played Thursday before the men's if it adopted the same format. You would have 4 Thursday, 4 Friday, and 2 Saturday games in total between the men's and women's tournament.

That's an extra day the MAC would have to rent Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, which isn't exactly cheap. Frankly, that's just not going to happen.

The MAC eliminated the on campus first round games to reduce costs as a response to covid. They said it was only temporary, but all the schools are still very much struggling as much, if not more, than before. I don't see them changing course.

Considering if the season ended right now the Zips would be the first undefeated MAC team since 1957-1958 Miami I'd agree. My comment was more that if the Zips don't run the table, it opens up the door for Steele. The best coach doesn't win as often as you might think. Nick Saban, arguably the greatest coach in college football history, only was named SEC COY 5 times. He has won more national championships than he has won SEC COY. The media voters aren't always the brightest.

I think the All-MAC teams will also be interesting. On one end no Zips player looks particularly great in the counting stats voters often prefer. On the other hand the Zips are dog walking the conference so how can a voter not include them.

When Dambrot was at Akron I think Keith only won the award 2 or 3 times. The reasoning being the talent on the roster was held against him. Voters seem to forget in collegiate athletics a coaches job is more than just X's and O's. He's also the GM. Recruiting is probably 60% of the job. I think it would take Akron going 18-0 or 17-1 for Groce to win it. Unfairly as it might be.

Have you seen how bad the rest of the MAC is?

Perhaps has a parent or grandparent from there. Another option is they gave him a passport (or whatever) to play for them. That's pretty common with many countries who want to grow soccer or basketball in their home country, but lack the home talent to qualify for a world cup or Olympics. I know the Phillipines actively has granted citizenship to get players. Turkey gave citizenship to Cedi Osman as well. There are countless other examples, but I don't care to take a deep dive into it.

I know he got busted for 5lbs. He may have been the one to sell to the guys who sold the dime bags to college kids, but it's not like he was some sort of drug kingpin. It's possible he could have just used the money to scale into something larger. Who knows.

There could also be a third. Players are actually allowed to openly get get paid today. A guys like Abreu may not have bothered with the hassle of selling dime bags to college students if he had someone like Wentz cutting him a $30k check.

Anyone get it?

The team that lost back-to-back to directional Michigan's. I guess ESPN just hires anyone these days.

How is Miami #61???

I hope nobody bet on Akron to cover the spread. That would require a monstrous 2nd half.