kreed5120

Outside of LCJ and I suppose Roscoe, I felt we had pretty good size at the perimeter positions. Particularly for a mid-major. IMO it played a large part in why according to KenPom we were a top 25 defense. Being able to guard multiple positions while also being able to disrupt shots and passing lanes is valuable on the defensive end. Ivey - 6'5 Utomi - 6'6 Cheese - 6'5 Toles - 6'6 Banks - 6'4 LCJ - 5'8 Roscoe - 6'2

When you're consistently losing coaches to P5 schools it means you're doing something right. NIU has had 3 coaches hired away in football in the past 10 years and I'd say over that same time period they've been the best football program in the MAC. Next man up.

Hence why the coach was fired and why expectations are low. Bama also made the tournament every year between 2002-2006 so its not like they haven't shown the ability to conistently make the tournament. I don't know if Oats will succeed or not. Plenty of guys have tried to make the jump and failed. Look no further than our head coach. I just view it far from being a dead end job. The right coach could quickly have them as a top 5 SEC team.

Its not like the Alabama job is going to come with lofty expections. I believe 7 SEC teams made the tournament this year. As long as he can make the tournament most years and sprinkles in some tourney wins every now and then, he should be fine. Its not like he's taking over Boston College and has to compete with a bunch of basketball blue bloods. The SEC has some good programs, but the only powerhouse is really Kentucky.

The league in itself seemed completely rushed. The league was announced in the spring of last year then 10 months later they're playing actual games. In those 10 months they had to pick cities, find venues, organize/negotiate tv deals, get corporate sponsors, build rosters, get coaching staffs, and sell season tickets. I'm sure there is plenty of other things I'm missing. I don't know if a spring football league will ever work, but this league was way too rushed and obviously lacked a large financer from the start. It's honestly no surprise this league is on the verge of failing.

They still have some highly touted recruits on their roster. I have to imagine they will be promoting from within to avoid the mass exodus of players.

http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/26372845/aaf-jeopardy-folding-says-majority-owner

What player with a long list of options would ever choose to play for NIU? In just the state of Illinois alone, I'd place their basketball program behind Bradley, Depaul, Illinois State, Illinois, Loyola, Northwestern, and Southern Illinois. Heck even UIC might be a more attractive place for a player since it's actually in Chicago. NIU went all in on football neglecting their basketball program. It's why they're so far down on the totem pole in basketball. What they really need to have some success is find under the radar talent that fell through the cracks. It's hard to find that talent in an area as heavily recruited as Chicago.

The problem with the CBI, CIT, and even at times the NIT is that often times one team shows up and wants to win and the other comes in deflated just wanting their season to be over. I don't know if that was the case or not with any of the other MAC teams as the only games I watched were Buffalo's.

UNLV is in need of a rebuild, but with 20 NCAAT appearances, 10 Sweet 16 appearances, and 1 national championship I wouldn't quite label it as a little fish in a bigger pond. The problem with the UNLV job is the fanbase is never going to be happy unless Oats returns it back to its glory days of the mid 70s-early 90s. It was a good pass on his part IMO.

He did just sign an extension the same day Buffalo knocked out Akron. I think that does show a willingness of him of wanting to stick around. I'm hearing the buyout of the new deal is in the $700k range. I'd think an Alabama or UCLA could easily cover that $700k with their petty cash fund plus offer him a deal in the $1.5 million+ range. I think he might be willing to take a little less to stay at Buffalo, but if some program comes and offers to double his salary, I think it would be hard for anyone to turn it down.

Can someone explain something to me? Texas Tech started a 6'8 center and ran a 8 man rotation. The tallest player they had coming off the bench was 6'5. Based on some comments I've seen on this board, I was under the impression that you can't win meaningful games unless you have multiple 6'11 bigs. How was Texas Tech not only able to beat Buffalo by 20, but also able to make it this far in the tournament with such a small lineup? Is it possible that there is more than 1 way to win a basketball game?

It felt weird seeing a MAC team favored in a tourney game. Normally I'd be excited to see a MAC team get a win, but this just felt expected.

As Zip-o-matic stated, some university has to serve the purpose of being the school with low admission standards. Perhaps the Akron/Kent school could house some satelite grad school programs there.

I'm well aware that Akron would become the designated STEM school of NEO. That's fine with me personally.

There are a lot of things to not like about California politics, but I think it's hard to deny that they're ahead of the game when it comes to operating a functional public university system. Below are a list of public universities they have that are in the top 100 best public universities based upon US News and World Reports annual rankings. Akron, Kent, YSU, and Cleveland State should be working together to offer NEO residents the highest level education possible at the lowest cost. They shouldn't be competing to see which one of them can build the largest rock climbing wall. 1) UCLA 2) UC - Berkeley 5) UC - Santa Barbara 7) UC - Irvine 10) UC - Davis 11) UC - San Diego 26) UC - Santa Cruz 35) UC - Riverside 60) San Diego State University 67) UC - Merced https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/top-public

The below link will update you on all of the MAC's moves as they happen. Of note, Jason Carter is leaving Ohio. Not really surprising given the coaching change. http://verbalcommits.com/conferences/mid-american

ESPN just signed the AAC to $1 Billion/12 yr deal. As part of the deal ESPN will be airing tier 3 AAC basketball and football games on ESPN+ https://awfulannouncing.com/ncaa/espn-1-billion-deal-aac-espn-plus.html

It seems a bit too soon to compare a team whose made it to 12 Sweet 16s and has 2 national championships to a team that has a combined 1 tournament win in program history. If they're still doing what they are now in 5 years, I'll start talking about it. As of now there are tons of schools that thought they were going to be the next (insert power house basketball program here). Look at Cleveland State as a prime example. Now they're stuck with a monstrosity of an arena that is bleeding the university much like Infocision is doing to us.

No matter who Akron hired to replace Dambrot they'd be b****ing. Dambrot was already the highest paid employee at the University of Akron and the highest paid basketball coach in the MAC. Akron was never going to be able to match the salary nor the millions of dollars worth of upgrades that Duquesne was prepared to offer. Akron was only going to be able to retain Dambrot by Dambrot accepting less to stay. He elected to instead take the money and run.

Elton Alexander wrote a piece in The Plain Dealer on Buffalo and the MAC. Pretty much his opinion is that Oats will be at Buffalo for the foreseeable future and has raised the bar for the MAC. He questions whether one of the other MAC programs will emerge as a candidate to compete with Buffalo or whether Buffalo will just run away with the conference much like how Gonzaga has with the WCC. https://www.cleveland.com/sports/2019/03/ncaa-tournament-2019-buffalo-bulls-still-have-work-to-do-and-so-does-the-mac.html

I definitely feel there needs to be some sort of balance. You don't want to keep a bunch of players on the roster that aren't good enough to play on a top tier MAC squad, but if a coach isn't showing loyalty to his players it may lead to guys like Utomi asking why should they show loyalty to the coach or university by returning when they have better options available to them. Not to say that was the case in this situation or not as frankly I don't know.

I like E-Man, but it's probably for the best. We didn't need to have 3 offensively deficient centers on our roster.

I by no means have any knowledge of the situation, but if I had a gun to my head and had to guess where Utomi would play next year, I'd say Houston.