kreed5120

I guess I was being too generous to TCU.

Would need to put on a lot of muscle as well. He can probably only play the 2 or 3.

This year there was something like 8 million total if you add up viewership for those 4 games with the Miami/SMU drawing the largest audience of 2.5 million. How many people do you think tune into TrueTV on a Tuesday or Wednesday night if those college basketball games weren't being played? 10s of thousands maybe? That would mean putting a random play-in game adds ~2 million more viewers than whatever they were otherwise going to air. I don't disagree that an expanded tournament does more damage than good for mid-majors and am personally not for it. That said, it's obvious live sports, even ones that might not be appealing to most, drive a much larger viewing audience than random re-runs or whatever else True TV runs. TBH I only ever watch that station for March Madness. For that reason an expanded tournament has value to a CBS, Netflix, Amazon, or whoever else bids for the next media contract.

Expanding the tournament doesn't alter the calendar. Just instead of playing 2 Dayton games on Tuesday and another 2 on Wednesday they play 4-6 each day. What you initially proposed was shifting the schedule back multiple weeks. That would make it so earlier rounds would be in competition with the masters and later rounds would be in competition with events like the NBA playoffs or NFL draft. Conference tournaments and March Madness are the only games that 75% of college basketball fans even care about. I talked to fans sitting near me at Rocket Mortgage arena who claimed to be Akron fans, but they knew very little about the team and didn't go to a game at the JAR all season. If you want more regular season games that is still achievable. There are gaps in the regular season that teams don't play for 10+ days. Also, teams could play more than 2 games a week some weeks. I just don't think adding more regular season weeks is suddenly going to make people care more about the regular season. Most just care about the excitement of the single elimination tournaments and/or their office pool brackets. Without it they could care less.

I thought I saw Texas Tech was something like 28th in 3-pt defense coming into the game. They did a really great job of contesting and running us off the line. If you eliminate the broken plays where we got a look off transition or offensive rebound before defense could get set, I think only Lyles and Evan were the ones consistently getting open looks. Evan wisely passed up most those looks. That was probably by design as Texas Tech could live with either shooting them. Scott hit some, but given his logo range it becomes a bit more challenging to limit him.

As @Illini Zip said it's not about getting more mid or low majors in. It's about getting more .500 P4 teams in like Auburn. It would be a similar setup to now. Just instead of bottom 4 conference winners competing for 2 spots it would be bottom 8 conference champions competing for 4. The same with the last 4 in for at-larges would become the last 8. This setup slide anyone below the bubble line 1 seed down since fewer low majors would make it to the round of 64.

This is kind of my thoughts as well. Eric might draw a little more attention than one might expect because of his size and ability to guard multiple positions. I feel of the two he's the one more likely to be lost because someone desperate comes in last minute and offers him something absurd that we can't match.

Even if he signed it's still not a guarantee. I'm almost certain Oats signed an extension with Buffalo and then was in Tuscaloosa a month later.

If I'm to be honest I'm not sure there is much college basketball could do to grow in popularity. March Madness does extend into April already. The Final Four this year extends from April 4-6. If they pushed it to start in April then you would be competing directly with the Masters (April 6th-12th), NFL Draft (April 23rd-25th), NBA Playoffs (starts April 18th), and MLB opening day (it already overlaps slightly here but bulk of tournament is over beforehand). IMO March Madness wouldn't be what it is today if it had to directly compete with those other events that I mentioned. You might disagree and that's okay. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Time will tell. I would imagine we'll know more very soon, perhaps by weekends end. Schools like Butler or Cincy are going to want to fill their vacancies in the coming days that way whoever they hire has a chance re-recruit players on the current roster before the portal opens up.

I wouldn't be surprised if Dustin Ford was offered the job under said scenario. Especially since the closest thing to a Groce hire (coach with previous MAC success) would be Hurley and he doesn't fit the culture we've built. In that case I don't feel it's a given that either leave

Of those schools it's not surprising to hear Gonzaga (doesn't even feel right calling them a mid-major), VCU, and St. Louis are spending significantly more than other mid-majors. I wasn't aware of High Point, but evidently it's an elitist private University. There are talks of expanding the tournament, perhaps to 76 teams. Under that scenario the bubble line would be pushed back so using this year as an example instead of Akron being a 12 seed it would become a 13 seed with an expanded tournament. Things are probably going to get worse for mid-majors before they get better.

Meh, I will still take the $4M extra from the 2 credits Miami got for the MAC by being an at-large. That's money Akron, Miami, Kent, and Toledo can all reinvest into our programs to improve as a conference. I exclude the directionals because WMU will use the money for hockey and the others with use it for football. Edit: Speaking of which the MAC should consider evaluating payout structure for these credits. You have a handful of teams trying to compete, but the other half spending the bare minimum just trying to collect a paycheck. If there is more incentives to be good, more schools will focus on basketball.

You notice when we went to the zone that's when they extended the lead? We also tried using zone in the first half a bit, but they hit a couple of 3s so we switched back to man.

I don't want anything I've said to be misconstrued as pessimistic. There was a lot to be proud of this season. Even without a tournament win it was an enjoyable ride. There will naturally be a lot of new faces, but I'm looking forward to seeing what next year brings. As long as we have Groce and Bud we should be MAC contenders.

I personally didn't like the zone defense in the limited time we played it or trapping. I didn't feel this was an opponent that it was needed for since without Toppin they had no low post threat and Lyles and Mahaffey matched up to them fairly well size wise. I would have preferred to play man, fight through screens instead of switching, and limit any help defense (particularly not abandon Atwell). Those are the things you can control defensively as they're schematic changes.

I can't really weigh in right now. Not certain what production is expected from the redshirts or true freshmen. There will certainly be plenty of opportunities for anyone to earn minutes. We will certainly have to supplement some gaps by utilizing the portal.

You say that as though you can't run a shooter off the 3-point line. There are two sides of a basketball game. You can impact a game defensively despite what you may think. Edit: Go look at the boxscore. Tavari attempted 0 3PA. They ran him off the line and then forced him to drive where they had defensive help. Great defensive teams can take away what you do best.

Regardless of how you feel about perimeter defense I don't think there is no denying the fact that leaving someone who shoots 8.5 3s a game and knocks them down at 45%+ clip wide open isn't a winning strategy.

You don't have to wonder. Estimated figures are out there. I think Texas Tech was around $10.5 million if I remember correctly. I imagine $3-$4 million of that went to Toppin who obviously didn't play. You can still win as a mid-major. The margin of error is just very small. It requires a great gameplan and even better execution.

This is based. At least that's what I believe the youth call it.

If you remove your Zippy colored glasses this is an accurate take. 0 wins over top 125 teams. We were a very good, but not a great team. Our style of play allowed us to run up the score up on inferior competition, but we had too many holes defensively to take the next step. Namely we needed better perimeter defense. Edit: As @Captain Kangaroo pointed out this was probably a game Nate Johnson could have made a difference.

Could have certainly helped disrupt Anderson more.

Didn't do a good enough job of defending the 3 against an elite shooting team. Perimeter defense has plagued us all year when playing elite shooting teams. Could have maybe won a 90-88 game if Tavari had it going offensively.

Going to take late game heroics at this point.