kreed5120

It's worth noting that 1 game will get flexed to a 6PM start time and air on ESPN2. The game in all likelihood will either be Miami @ Marshall or Akron @ Troy. If the decision was to be made today it would probably be Miami @ Marshall just because Miami is still undefeated. We'll see how the next few weeks play out.

I don't see it going away anytime soon. Millionaire boosters get to pretend to be sport owners without the multi-billion dollar price tag. It will only go away when booster fatigue settles in, but even then maybe a school like Indiana will see someone like Cuban slowdown on his spending, but there is probably another booster worth 100s of millions at some other school that will take his place. Some schools like Alabama, OSU, or Notre Dame have such a large fanbase that they will always be able to attract the corporate dollars to fund the program. If you see anything it will probably be the ~50 schools with the means break away from the rest and form their own league. You're kind of already seeing it with the B1G and SEC raiding the best teams from the former PAC-12 and Big 12.

TBF I'm sure not 100% who enter are expecting to find a better home. I'm sure some are entering because their coaches were very candid with them that they aren't cut for this level. Some also probably want to drop down to get playing time or prefer playing closer to home. It's hard to pencil in how many of the transfers entered expecting a payday or not.

Evan, unlike Bowman, wasn't brought in to shoot. He can impact the game without the ball in his hands. In the games he scores double figures its usually because of run outs or offensive put backs. Not really by creating his own offense. Offensively he's probably overachieved considering he's shooting 10% from beyond the arc compared to his career average.

He only played 7 minutes against Miami. I'm kind of surprised he even got 4 shot attempts off. Then again at least 1, maybe 2 were designed plays out of an inbounds. It definitely seems Groce is shrinking the rotation. Only 6 players played over 10 minutes. 2 players played exactly 10 minutes and 1 player (Bowman) played 7.

I think you're mistaken. Defense is what is controllable. That's why the saying is defense travels. You can't expect to shoot 40% from 3 and 50% from 2 each game in a 30+ game season. That's just not realistic unless you're playing a video game. There will be nights where your shots simply aren't falling, which is what happened against Miami. I didn't feel the looks we got offensively were much worse than we have gotten much of the year. That's why I was overly critical of our defensive play earlier in the year. We were just able to mask it against some very terrible teams given how we were playing offensively. I actually saw improvements on the defensive end against Miami, which is encouraging.

Personally, I just don't see it happening. Having 2 bigs really isn't what this team is built to play. I'm not even sure if Lyles and Barre have played a minute on the floor together. Maybe we could see it for small stretches situationally against bigger teams, but it makes more sense to utilize our guards and wings more heavily as that's where our talent and depth is more heavily located.

Halligan played all of 10 minutes. That's pretty much just the first media timeout in each half. Eric and Scott both eclipsed 30 minutes so played the same amount of minutes they would had they started. Some seem caught up too much on starting lineup. What actually matters is the amount of minutes played and who is in during crunch time.

There was a lot of good MACtion today. Ohio came back from a 20 point 2nd half deficit. Kent State barely survived at home against a not so good NIU. Bowling Green beat UMass 101-100 in OT.

I agree. I will say Miami ratcheted up the defense in the final 5 minutes or so. The first 35 minutes of the game of the game I don't feel the looks we were getting were all that much worse than we've witnessed most of the year. They just weren't finding the net. Miami did do a good job of not turning it over in the open court so we did have fewer run outs than typical.

I'm not necessarily concerned about the loss either. We were never going to go 18-0 in MAC play and this was the most likely game we'd drop. Shots aren't going to always fall so you have to find ways of winning on those nights. Outside of a few breakdowns I felt we played much better perimeter defense. I think we even blocked 2, maybe 3 of their 3 pointers. Had we played defense like we did against Yale or Murray State we would have lost this game by 15-20. We had a chance at the end, which is encouraging given how badly we shot.

Yep, moved to 0-4 against top 150 teams on the season. This IMO was the best we played in those losses, but just not enough shots fell.

Even if we find a way to get this to OT I don't feel great with Evan out of the game.

Lyles should have fouled immediately. Not sure why everyone besides Evan ran back when he was the one that had 4 fouls.

4 on Evan isn't great. He's been disrupting Miami's offense all game.

Miami definitely treating this like a tournament game. They usually play their bench a lot more.

Not a great announcing crew. Akron has been the team attacking the basket.

They're getting much cleaner looks. We're honestly fortunate as they just missed two open looks. We need to bring back that defensive intensity that we saw in the first half.

I haven't looked at the boxscore, but a good chunk of their points have come on 2nd chance point opportunities before the defense gets set. We've done a terrific job of contesting shots this game.

Like the defensive effort in the opening minutes. We just need to do a better job of securing rebounds after misses. Miami is too good offensively to give 2nd chance point opportunities.

A chunk of those FTs were in the last minute when we had to foul. If we played better defensively in the first 39 minutes it wouldn't have mattered if they went ~15/15 or whatever from the line. We would have won comfortably given the way we played offensively

There really is no need to have that large of a gap. IMO they should move up the start of the playoffs. Have the semifinals on New Year's Day with the Championship the week after. They can then open up the portal the day after. That way there isn't all these problems with the portal being open when the season is still ongoing.

I would actually like to see us pressure the ball less this game. Trapping and then being late to rotate has been what has led to those easy baskets where someone cuts to the basket or is in the weak corner for an open 3. We are the more athletic team. I feel if we force them to beat us 1 on 1 they will struggle. Their recipe to beat is by shooting 40%+ from 3 while limiting turnovers. Let's instead focus on running them off the 3-pt line and have to settle for contested 2s.

Did you pay $20 to watch the Murray State game? They had insane shooting performances because in large part we allowed them high percentage opportunities. In basketball you want to limit uncontested 3s and 2s at that basket. We did neither of those. Yale and Murray St. capitalized as great offenses do. Both offense and defense matter in basketball. You seem to only look at the offensive numbers and pretend defense doesn't matter. I'm sure if you tried talking this nonsense to Groce he would very much disagree about the level of our defensive play in those games. That can be seen by how he changed the lineup after the Murray St. in an effort to sacrifice some offense for better defensive play. At the end of the day we played as good as we reasonably could offensively against Yale and Murray St. but it wasn't enough as we had too many breakdowns defensively. If we had a hand in their face when they were shooting those 3s they wouldn't have shot those high percentages.

This is how I'm feeling as well. We've been able to run up the score on the cupcakes we've faced, but pissed down our legs against the 2 quality mid-majors we've faced. Mainly due to being out of position defensively. I'm hopeful we can turn it around, but on the road against a quality opponent this will likely be our toughest test in MAC play. History shows no MAC team has gone undefeated in conference play since 1958. If I had to pick a game on the conference schedule that we're most likely to lose it would be this one.