kreed5120

Speaking of Appalachian State, what ever happened to the return game we were supposed to give them? Did we just buy ourselves out of the deal?

Saul already has one foot out the door. His contract is expiring and even OU isn't dumb enough to extend him.

I pulled the below off the Zips facebook page. The women's team needs to win 1 of its last 2 to clinch a 1st round home game or needs EMU to lose one of its last 2. It seems highly likely we'll have a double header. I haven't made it out to a women's game this season, but I'll try to get there before half-time to my support if they do indeed clinch. I encourage others to do the same.

What's nice is that all the games that matter to us start 30 minutes after us.

I'm well aware of what the bracket buster was. It was organized by ESPN. It started out as an 18 team event featuring the best vs the best, but it eventually grew to having 100+ teams with a bunch of meaningless match ups. After conference expansion ESPN did away with it because with the exodus of big name schools to bigger conferences, there was no way for them to monetize it. If ESPN can't monetize it, nobody can. No, I really don't think UB/Murray State would pull big ratings. Big East fans would watch the Georgetown/St. Johns game instead. Big 10 fans would watch the Wisconsin/Michigan game instead. Big 12 fans would watch the Kansas/Texas game instead. I could keep going. Whose going to watch Akron/Stony Brook game outside of an Akron/Stony Brook fan? Literally any match-up between two bottom feeding P6 teams would produce better ratings. ESPN already owns Loyola Chicago's media rights. If they wanted their games on ESPN, ESPN2, or ESPNU, they would be on those stations already. They are instead relegated to ESPN+ on a regular basis like the MAC is. I'm not denying the games were fun. They were. I just don't see them ever returning. Literally no team outside on Gonzaga on that list (who would have no interest in participating anyways) has drawing power. Basketball schedules aren't made years in advance like football. Both Murray State and Buffalo were expected to be good heading into this season. They could have very easily agreed to schedule one another. They for whatever reason choose not to.

The majority of the big name schools found their way into one of the P5 + Big East & AAC conferences. There are very few compelling match-ups between mid-majors that would produce the TV ratings to justify it being worth ESPN or whatever networks time. Even some of the big name schools, like Gonzaga, who are still in a mid-major conference won't have interest in the bracket buster. They will just pay an Akron or Valpo to come to their place during the normal OOC season. Not to mention the broadcaster putting the tournament on would need to have media rights to both conferences. I liked the bracket buster tournament, but it returning just isn't going to be a reality. The best the MAC can hope for is some sort of MAC/(insert random conference here) challenge. Even then it seems the conferences worthwhile of having one against are already singed up to compete against another conference. ACC-B1G SEC-B12 B10-Big East A10/MWC - Future MVC/MWC - I think this one is ending C-USA or MVC would probably be the 2 best conferences to reach an agreement with. Both are a ghost of their former self and both MAC teams already schedule so I'm not sure if it's moving the needle any.

My ideal scenario would be Akron beat Kent, Toledo loses, and BG wins. This would mean Akron would play BG in the quarterfinals instead of Toledo. I feel we match up better against BG than Toledo. Even in our loss @BG, I thought we were the better team.

Yeah, with an unbalanced schedule the 1st tie-breaker should be conference SOS. Akron played a much tougher MAC schedule than NIU did so Akron at 8-10 who had to play UB, BG, CMU, and Kent 2x should be viewed better NIU playing WMU 2x.

A 3+ team tie-breaker is resolved via combined records against one another. It would go 7) NIU (2-1) 8) Akron (2-2) 9) Miami (1-2)

Anyone know what station will be broadcasting the Ken+ game? I didn't see a station listed for it. All the other MAC games had ESPN+ or ESPNU next to them.

I really don't feel like trying to sort through the scenarios that would enable the Zips to get a 1st round home game with a loss to Ken+ so lets just win to secure the 7 seed

Groce should have benched LCJ weeks ago. It might have been the wake up call he needed. It seemed to be what he needed. We scored 49 against OU. We already have 44 in the 1st half against BG.

Going to need it with Riak's 3 fouls.

I feel that last year was easily Utomi's best season before dropping off this season. He hardly saw the court under Dambrot while he was an extremely efficient #1 scorer on a team that didn't have much offensive firepower. He's probably the player I've been most disappointed in this year despite him being our best offensive weapon. I really thought he'd be in heavy consideration for 1st team All-MAC this year. I still have faith he will turn it around at some point. Whether it will be in Cleveland or next season I don't know. He's just too good to be shooting like he has been over the past 2+ months.

I'm not exactly sure where to place this so I figured I'd just start a new topic https://watchstadium.com/news/college-football-bowl-game-changes-to-begin-in-2020-03-05-2019/

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.