kreed5120

Marshall is currently up 33-25 at the half against #24 Florida.

It was actually nice to see us not settle for so many 3's against a smaller, less athletic front court. Had someone told me we would shoot 50+% from the field, 40+% from 3 and 80+% from the line I would have guessed we would have won by 25+. Give Merrimack credit, they're a gritty team.

We played Toledo twice in 2017 and lost by a combined score of 93-49. We then went onto being embarrassed 50-3 by FAU. We were consistently blown out each time we faced real MAC contenders those last 3-4 years so not sure what makes you think we were close to being at the top. If there was an OSU of the MAC it would be Miami, but they haven't been consistently good for 20+ years. MAC schools typically cycle whose at the top. Even Kent had a season or 2 of being pretty great. All MAC schools play in B10 shadow so that isn't unique to us. In 2017 we finished 7-7 so that is indeed not >.500. If you prefer I'd say Bowden finished with a losing record 5 out of 7 seasons that's fine. I never said we have to finish every season over .500, but 1 or even 2 out of 7 isn't good enough. In Frank's 1st 7 seasons he had a 10-4 season, 2 9-5 seasons, and 1 8-5 season. Bowden had 1 8-5 season. Bowden wasn't anywhere close to Frank. Those schools play in conferences that compete against Alabama, LSU, Georgia, Ohio State, Florida, Michigan, Penn State, etc. In the MAC you can literally go from worst to first. CMU went 1-11 last year and will be the favorite in the MAC title game this season. Those kind of opportunities don't exist in the B10 or SEC. Ohio fired Brian Knorr after 4 seasons to hire Frank Solich. Figured I'd use that as my example since you already name dropped him.

All of those guys got extensions at some point in their tenure. You're right this isn't the B10. That being said Akron isn't in a situation like Rutgers or Maryland where they have no chance of succeeding. They play in the MAC East. Hands down the worst division in all of FBS. There are no Ohio State's or Michigan's holding us back. There is no reason Akron can't be a legitimate contender in the MAC. You might be content with being a perennial 5-7 team, but I'm not. Bowden literally had 1 winning season in 7 seasons. Every other FBS school would have fired him as well.

The fact that all those guys (less Ianello) each got 6-9 years tells you all that you need to know. Winning programs wouldn't tolerate consistent losers therefore would have moved on much sooner than we did. When you set the tone that 5-7 or 4-8 is good enough, that's what you're going to get.

So when's the parade for the winless season?

We needed DBs desperately this season. If I recall correctly we started the season with like 9 total on scholarship, which isn't many when at times you need 5 on the field at once. Glad to see we established some depth at the position.

This years Duquesne OOC schedule makes some of his prior Akron OOC schedules look like a gauntlet. I'm guessing all the tourney caliber teams must have been "too afraid" to play Duquesne this year...

Some nice thorough analysis. I don't think I'm as sold on the defensive front 7 as you are. We're 126th in the country in total sacks and are giving up 210 rushing yards per game.

This isn't college basketball where you can turn over a roster in a year. It wouldn't make sense for the staff to force anyone off the roster unless they feel that person is a bad influence on the team. We're going to be well under the 85 man scholarship cap even with a full recruiting class so there is no benefit in forcing guys out.

@DannyHoke I'm not trying to cherry pick as a lot of what you're saying I agree with. I still wanted to clear up a few things. 2) I went and looked at articles for this previously. I think his contract expires in spring of 2022 unless he got another extension that I'm not aware of. 3) Each MAC school gets something in the neighborhood of a million dollars from ESPN. I'm sure you will hear exposure and other things tossed out, but it's 100% because of money that they do it. Akron doesn't pick the days it plays the games. That's pushed down from the MAC who makes the schedule. 5) I'd say men's soccer, women's basketball, and men's basketball really aren't inflated. Some people may not use their season tickets on certain nights, but those numbers do reflect legitimate ticket sales. Normally sometime in the spring the ABJ publishes an article on how many tickets the University buys to meet quotas. Not much of a surprise, but it's a large sum.

We were out rebounded 24-12 in the 1st half. We actually held our own in the second half as we finished -12 for the game. Riak and Xeyrius did well in boxing out and getting boards. This is probably the one opponent we'll face all season that will be able to exploit Reece size.

The 16 point half-time deficit was just a little too much to overcome. It's kind of hard to fault Xeyrius for taking those 3's. Those were all good looks within the flow of the offense. He was brought here to be a stretch 4 so those shots are well within his game. He's shown at Dayton he can make them. It has to be a mental thing at this point.

Have to like the effort Zips are playing with. Trimmed the 22 point deficit to 10 before that made 3. Banks and Cheese are both playing pretty great.

Louisville has 24 rebounds to our 12. We need to do a better job of boxing out in the 2nd half.

I agree single game tickets are overpriced. Saying that if cost was the only thing stopping people from attending, the student section would be packed on a nightly basis.

We certainly have some nice pieces this season. I feel Xeyrius is a huge wild card for us. If he continues to shoot 24% from 3 and 31% from the field, we're probably the 4th-5th best team in the MAC. If he could get those efficiency numbers back to his year 2 Dayton numbers, we're right there competing at the top of the MAC.

He also stated on the ESPN+ broadcast that he is confident in starting any of his top 8 guys, which shows he doesn't have the same level of confidence in Sayles that he has in the other 8 rotational players. Outside of SCUS he's only been getting 2-5 minutes per game. I kind of expect that to continue. He might get a game here or there where he gets 10-15 minutes if one of the bigs miss a game or gets into early foul trouble. Sayles I felt has always had some good footwork and post moves. He just seems to lack that touch. I wonder how much having back-to-back season ending injuries impacted his growth.

ABJ should hire you to write the game previews. You do a better job than George. Akron, Louisville, NCC, YSU, and SCU are all competing in some made up round robin tournament so they will all end up playing one another once.

Looks like we had the same thoughts ?

I'd say that was our best half of basketball so far this season.

That chase down block though...

Outside of Cheese, who Groce seems to want to utilize as Manu Ginobili type 6th man, Banks is the only one who can consistently knock down an open jumper. He's not going anywhere. In fact, when we get into conference play and the bench shortens, I expect his minutes to go up.

I'd guess between 15k-18k.

The defensive unit as a whole did enough to win last night, but we still gave up 237 yards on the ground and 4.6 ypc. The defensive front 7 certainly is going to need to improve a ton this offseason. When you consider the fact we haven't had a pass rush all season, I don't feel our secondary has been that bad in coverage. Teams just run over us week after week.