kreed5120

Buffalo up 40-33 at the half against BG

Kent really doesn't have much to play for. I wouldn't be surprised to see Sendy play his bench heavy minutes to rest starters for Monday if Akron is able to jump out to a big lead early. I think as long as Kent remains in the game, they will play to win.

Would give this a like, but I've already used up quite a few today and want to make sure I have some for the victory posts.

One has already happened today. UNI still may make the field as an at-large, but whatever MVC team that wins their tournament will now be seeded behind us so in theory we just moved up 1 spot on the seed list.

In PCCC defense they only fell for it because they can't read

Excluding I-Coach here. He'd probably just be now closing in on 15 career wins had he stayed.

In fairness to them their board is pretty dead. Their last game thread against BG is only on page 2. For comparison our last game thread (OU) is on page 9. All of those boards hidden on the back pages of CSNbbs are relatively dead. We along with the Bobkittens probably have the most active board. It's in part do to how captain and the mods have provided us with a very friendly user interface and that we have a good number of active content contributors.

I have no hard feelings towards the guy. I appreciate the 13 year run he provided us. Any animosity I've shown in this thread was more towards those fans who were more Dambrot fans than Zips fans. I'd love to see a season series between the two schools get established. Have it on a Saturday night and honor Dambrot's accomplishments prior to the game. I'm sure he'd be met with cheers.

It heavily depends on which 1 bid conference teams win their tournaments. For example, Liberty plays Lipscomb today for the title. If Libscomb wins, they would slide behind any MAC team while Liberty would be forced to play in the NIT. If Liberty wins, they will be a 12/13 seed and be likely ahead of any MAC team on the seed list. Akron could realistically climb as high as 12 and some other MAC schools as high as 13 depending on the number of upsets.

That was actually a pretty good piece by Pluto.

They would have to go on a run in the A-10 tourney just to get an at-large to the NIT. Only way they're getting to the tourney is by winning A10 tournament.

It's why a bring a seat cushion to games

I'm less worried about it now than back when our best player was pushing 300 lbs.

CMU could easily of knocked off Buffalo in the semi-final game. There is a reason the MAC hasn't had an undefeated team in conference play in 70 years. It's too deep of a conference so teams are vulnerable to lose on nearly any given night.

OU OU has a young team that crumbles under pressure. Toledo is a veteran squad that has a big 3 that's as good as any MAC teams big 3 besides ours.

The thing is those fans will jump off the bandwagon quicker than they joined once Akron returns to their mean. Gonzaga has built up enough good will with their fans that they would still sell out even if they had a couple sub par years. Look at the season Buffalo had last season and this year they're only averaging 3,605 fans. There is a huge difference between experiencing a 10 minutes of fame and actually building something sustainable.

The university has to buy tickets in football to stay FBS compliant. There is no rules in basketball that teams have to sell x-number of tickets therefore the attendance numbers at basketball I feel are an actual representation of the actual number of tickets sold (excluding students obviously). What you have is season ticket holders that just show up for certain games or none at all. My one buddy got season tickets one year and the only game he went to was the Kent game.

Yeah, Akron is something like 1 of 60 universities competing in ESports. It's a huge growing industry between younger millennials and generation z. After some initial start up costs I can't imagine it costs much to operate, but I do think it will lead some students to pick Akron when they may have went somewhere else instead. Even though we all think it's dumb, it's probably the one thing Akron was forward thinking about and got right.

Mark Few is making $1.8 million at Gonzaga and in reality that's with him giving them a discount. Groce is already the highest paid coach in the MAC at $650k. Oats just left Buffalo and they were willing to pay him somewhere in the neighborhood of $800k-$1M. Where is the broke Akron athletic department going to come up $2m/year to pay to retain that level of a coach? Heck we couldn't even match the $1M offer that Duquesne gave Dambrot.

You can just look 15 miles down the road for an example of those last 3 schools you mentioned. You can also look 40 miles to the north where CSU built a 13k arena after they thought they made it to the big time with that Sweet 16 appearance. The only way Akron will consistently fill the JAR is if they can become a consistent top 30-40 basketball program. That's not easy to do in the MAC.

Attendance always lags behind success. By Akron's standards we're coming off 2 straight sub par years and entered this season with low expectations. Our season ticket base is probably at the lowest in quite some time. This part of the country will never be college basketball crazy. We had sustained success under Dambrot and we were still only averaging ~3500 a game.

Part of me really doesn't want to play EMU in that Thursday game. We've seen throughout the years that playing at the Q has had a negative impact on a lot of MAC jump shooters as they're use to playing in smaller gyms. For a team like EMU who relies on defense and attacking the paint, this is a great equalizer for them.

I felt the same, but didn't want to jinx myself saying it since we play them Friday. I wouldn't be surprised if PCCC doesn't even make it to Cleveland. They've been so hit or miss all season. They could easily lose to WMU or CMU in the 1st round. They haven't won 4 games in a row since November.

He had to win 3 tournament games before Illinois came calling last time. He inherited a depleted Akron roster so this is really his first year achieving anything. Akron simply making the tournament I don't see changing much. If he wins a game or 2 in the tournament, I could see an A10 or AAC team becoming interested. Whether it's actually much of a step up I'd guess would depend on which school in those conferences came calling. I feel it would take multiple years of success before he gets another chance at a P6 school. One good season at Akron isn't going to make those schools forget his 5 year sub par tenure at Illinois. Edit: Akron should be returning MPOY (Yes, I'm already calling it) LCJ and has some nice pieces to plug into the roster next season. If he follows up this year with another great year next year, I'd think that would be his quickest ticket to return to a P6 job. One could argue a mid-table to below average AAC job would be an upgrade over Akron, but then he'd also have to spend x-number of years rebuilding the roster enough to compete.

In their defense the MAC tournament has been around for something like 40 years and they are the only MAC team that hasn't won it.