kreed5120

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 ?

I thought this was a dead period for recruiting?

Academies cost money to operate. NFL teams are currently getting fully developed players at no cost. They have no financial incentive to change the system.

They have to pay him the money anyways. For all I care they can have him mop floors and clean toilets. I suppose that would save the cost on 1 janitor.

The two really aren't comparable whatsoever. One consistently competed at the top of the MAC. The other didn't. You can guess which is which.

I can't fault the guy for taking the money. If I was in his position I'd do the same. I can't name 1 college coach that declined the buy out money they were entitled to from their contract. It's kind of unrealistic to expect Bowden to do it.

Dambrot is responsible for all 5 of our MAC regular season championships and 3 out of our 4 NCAAT appearances and you wanted him fired???

Overall I've been impressed with the defensive effort all season. We typically play sloppy 1st halves then good 2nd halves. We've really struggled in creating ourselves quality looks when forces into playing a half court offense. Without looking at the numbers I'd guess rebounding would be another area we struggle with.

NET rankings, which is what the NCAA plans to use instead of RPI moving forward, has Duquesne ranked 113. If they have a strong at best maybe they get a NIT at-large. They aren't going to the NCAAT without winning their conference tourney.

I find it odd we play our 3 biggest rivals (Kent, Ohio & Buffalo) at home 1 year then play them all on the road the next