kreed5120

I think just about everyone has lost confidence. We're taking something between 25-30 shots a game and what's crazy is they're all mostly pretty good looks. Teams seem to be just daring us to shoot at this point knowing our struggles. We just can't hit anything.

How are we 10th in 3 point shooting %? Those other 2 teams must be extremely abysmal. Yeah, I have to believe when Groce assembled this roster he expected them to be a much better 3-point shooting team than they are. Utomi was a career 40%+ career 3-point shooter. LCJ was a modest 34.8% 3-point shooter at LBSU. I don't know what Channel Banks JUCO numbers are, but he seemed to have good form and was hitting them consistently during OOC play. Jimond Ivey was a 34% 3-point shooter his prior two years. Nothing great, but it's good enough that you'd expect him to knock down his wide open looks fairly consistently. The issue is Utomi, LCJ, and Ivey are under performing their career averages by a significant amount. The team wasn't built to feature a back to the basket post up scorer and since nobody respects our outside shooting, teams are packing the paint and forcing us to shoot over them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I felt it was a mistake adding additional non-revenue sports when the ones we have already aren't properly funded. From what I understand the baseball program is supposed to be self funded. I read a week or so back how we got something close to a million dollar donation for a stadium renovation, which is nice, but I haven't heard anything about us receiving large donations to endow scholarship/coaches salary/travel costs/etc.. Is the university going to get stuck covering these costs when/if the donations dry up? As for women's lacrosse, pretty much the entire conference, outside of Kent, is in the Carolinas or Florida. It can't be cheap to bus them back and forth. I have no idea why we started the program. If it was a title IX issue, we should have just not brought back baseball and cut the men's golf team. Take that savings and use it towards resurfacing the track, better funding the women's programs that perpetually underachieve (basketball, soccer, softball), or just reduce the deficit.

The numbers that matter from the above post. Also, our 2022 OOC schedule is complete.

I'm the complete opposite. I'm always looking forward to basketball season even during football season, which is odd because I'm a much bigger football fan than basketball fan. I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with the fact that even when Akron has a "bad" year in basketball, like they are this year, they're still competitive. When the football team is bad, which is quite often, the games are literally unwatchable.

If we had players that could knock down open 3's or a C that could catch a dump off pass and slam it home, LCJ dribble penetration ability would be much more useful. We have neither.

Anyone know how many scholarships we ended up getting funded?

I watched a decent chunk of that video @Illini Zip posted on 2/15. Dawson seemed to do a good job at both finishing at the rim in traffic and at hitting open 3's. It's just a chunk of 1 game, but I feel he would be an instant help on the offensive end. I feel he has some improving to do on the defensive end of the court. I'd expect the team culture and Groce stressing defense to earn minutes will help him make big strides in that department.

I'm excited about the Zips long-term outlook with Arth as head coach, but I'm not feeling good about this season. We lost a ton of talent on the defensive side of the ball on a team that only went 4-8. Combine this with the fact we're going to be implementing a new system on both sides of the ball and I don't think it's going to be a pretty season. I say Akron finishes 4-8 this coming season. The nice thing is we should be starting sophomores and juniors, maybe even a freshman or 2, at about every position so we should be returning pretty much all our starters the following season.

My ill-informed opinion is that he will go in the 5th round.

It's still February. Did you guys really expect for them to start marketing the MAC tournament already? We'll probably hear about any promotions the week of the tournament.

I'd much rather host OU over Ball State the 1st round. I actually feel Ball State has talent, but for whatever reason has been underachieving all season. For the 2nd round, I'd obviously like to stay on opposite side of bracket as UB. Between the other 4 teams (UT, BG, CMU, and Kent) contending for the 2-5 seeds, the only team I wouldn't like to face in the 2nd round is Toledo.

He must have provoked by his teammate fighting for inside position.

We really need to go at least 2-1 in these next 3. That should secure us that 6/7 seed. This weekends game against OU we really need as on paper it's the most winnable game we have left. The last 2 will be tough, but I feel we can split those.

I actually think a Kwan Cheatham type player is what this team is missing. We desperately need a big that can space the floor to open up the lanes for Cheese, Ivey, and Banks. He'd also help fix our rebounding woes. Edit: I'm hoping we get that out of Williams next year. It's a big reason for my optimism next season.

Akron isn't good enough offensively and Buffalo is too good defensively for us to waste 15-20 seconds of the shot clock before setting into our offense. It's why we had 3-4 shot clock violations and some other desperation heaves at the basket as the shot clock was about to go off. I understand not wanting to get into a track meet with them, but we need to find a better balance. We had way too many empty possessions.

The home team supplies the broadcasters. Those were Buffalo employees, not ESPN employees. Akron home announcers are just as bad.

Nothing to see here folks. Just another late game road collapse like we've seen all season.

Defense has played well. We just need to limit Buffalo to 1 shot per possession. Buffalo is killing us on 2nd chance points.

It's the 2nd half that has done us in all year on the road. Lets see if we have it in us to finish strong.

We need Riak in the game whenever Perkins is in. E-Man doesn't have the size to man him.

I'm pretty sure every point Buffalo has scored has come off an offensive rebound. Need to box out.

Combining our performance on the road with the fact Buffalo has won its last two games by a combined 70 points, I'm not feeling good about this one. I hope we can just keep it close enough throughout that we have a chance at the end.

Last I heard is the MAC has an agreement among its members to not play at an FCS school. I'm not sure if that has changed or not because it was mentioned previously that we were contemplating playing @Chattanooga to avoid paying the Arth buyout. I personally could live with a 3 for 1 deal.