kreed5120

You get a parking pass to the deck with GA season tickets. I'm guessing that's who you're mostly seeing coming in and out of the deck before and after games.

What's surprising about their 19% day from behind the arc is I thought they had a lot of quality looks. Not many of them looked forced. We did enough to scrape out a win. Hopefully we find our shooting by Tuesday, we'll need it against CMU.

What caused the stoppage?

It would be nice to give Roscoe some minutes in the 2nd half. We need an offensive spark.

It would be nice to have a big that could finish at the rim...

In the words of Charles Barkley, Toledo looks turrible.

I figured since the MAC is starting conference play today I'd revisit this to see how the MAC closed the OOC season. I added 3 additional mid-major conferences to the mix. The MAC improved their KenPom average from 139.25 to 135.50, which is about 30 spots better than the average MWC team. The MVC had a strong finish, but the MAC still leads them by a healthy margin. They also still lead the A10 and C-USA. The AAC by the numbers looks like it should get more at-large bids than the PAC-12. Bravo to the season they're having. The MAC actually looks pretty comparable to the WCC except for the fact we're missing a team as good as Gonzaga. It surprises me they haven't been poached by a larger conference yet. I may revisit this before selection Sunday or after postseason play if anyone is at all interested in seeing how things finish. Edit: After I posted I noticed that I only included 9 MVC teams into the total while still dividing by the 10 total teams they have in the conference. That explains why they looked so much better than they did 2 weeks ago. I've updated the graphic.

Hawkins is 150-106 (.586) against the MAC and has made 2 NCAAT appearances. He's done well enough that it would be hard for WMU to justify firing him, but hasn't done well enough to be poached. He's pretty much the Frank Solich of MAC basketball.

Northwestern is never going to contend for national titles. Much like Notre Dame, their handicapped in recruiting because they're a private university that has very high admission standards. Unlike Notre Dame they don't have the brand. The reason Fitzgerald gets thrown around so often when it comes to NFL hires is because he's a great x's and o's guy who finds ways to maximizes his teams potential and is able to compete against schools that frankly are more talented on paper.

This year is the best the MAC has been in two decades. Buffalo barring a MAC regular season letdown is already an at-large team and Toledo is currently on the edge of being a bubble team. Toledo would probably need to beat Buffalo to have any real chance of sneaking in with an at-large. Outside of those that MAC is filled with a lot of good to mediocre teams with really no cupcakes.

Illinois has always been a mess in football. The only time I can remember them being relevant was when they had Juice Williams. They're a basketball school and always have been. It makes their fall to the bottom of B10 surprising.

WMU is the only MAC team with a 200+ kenpom rating (211). At home this needs to be a game we win if we hope to get a decent seed in Cleveland.

I'd actually be surprised to see Kostalec return next year. He's burried on the depth chart and its not like any of the guys ahead of him are graduating seniors.

This just doesn't make much sense to me. If we're going to sacrifice a home game why wouldn't we instead just take $1.3 mil to play at (insert P5 school) then give Chattanooga their 300k while pocketing the mil for ourselves?

Personally, I'm skipping the game because I'd just rather stay home and watch the Browns game. If I lived 10-15 min away I'd probably go to the game then make it home before kickoff, but I don't. I have season tickets and will probably make it out to a dozen games. I feel I'm doing my part.

You're a better fan than I am.

Yes

I feel in general a lot of the good media exposure Arth has received is do to the fact that he's a likable character who from his time at Saint Ignatius and John Carroll has an established relationship with many of these columnists and pundits. I kind of expected the hire to cause more scrutiny, but it really hasn't. We've talked on this board for years about wanting to get the community invested into the Zips program. Arth has come in and appears to have the support of the local media and has emphasized the need to recruit Ohio. If he's not successful in bringing Joe Akron out to games, I'm not sure we'll ever see it happen.

That was my initial thought too, but like your follow up post stated it would seem odd to have 1 coach for ILB and another for OLB. I've never heard of such a thing. Maybe its more common than I realize.

I feel a lot of it has to do with the fact players treat it like a vacation. Players are leaving somewhere that's 20s and snowy and traveling somewhere that's mid 60s and sunny. The C-USA and Sun Belt teams are use to this so they still approach it as just another game.

Is there 2 spots left? One I have to assume is WR. The other I'm not 100%. I don't see ILB but Williams might be handling that too.

Yeah, I won't be attending this one

Can we quit comparing Dambrot to Groce? We didn't fire Dambrot to bring in Groce. Dambrot decided on his own free will to leave. We brought in Groce to rebuild our gutted program. Personally, I like the progress he's made from year 1 to year 2. Others may disagree.

It's hard to go on a run when we keep sending them to the line.

You make it sound like winning NCAAT games as a mid-major is easy. You have to win a single game elimination tournament to get there then have to beat a team that has exponentially more resources devoted to their program. We also won NIT games at Florida State and Houston. If you want to count Penn State as "a big game opponent" (which its not) Akron beat them by 25 in 2012 ?