kreed5120

Evan Miya grades him as an above average offensive player, but below average defender. Rated #53 in the MAC last season overall. Probably a win for both teams. He's better than what Ball State had last season, but a position UMass probably hopes to upgrade if they want to compete at the top of the MAC next year.

I assume Josiah was given a medical redshirt playing only 6 games with Akron. He actually got engaged a few days ago. I saw several Zips players on Instagram share it on their story so they must stay in touch.

I don't think we've gotten anything officially. That's just a prediction. Considering the page only has 6k followers and can't even spell the players name correctly it's hard for me to give it much weight.

Yeah, I think when I looked a few days ago they only had ~300 out of the ~1500 portal players rated. I don't even think they listed Young in the portal until about a week after he declared. It feels there are much better sources out there for listing and ranking portal players. Unfortunately most of them are hidden behind paywalls.

You can achieve that without an open spring practice. A few years ago they had a concert featuring Soul Asylum and other festivities before a home game. The focus should be on improving the gameday experience, not on a spring practice that maybe a few hundred attend. Most of which are already long-term season ticket holders like @Captain Kangaroo.

It doesn't help he's playing out of position. He's being asked to play on the perimeter, which wasn't what made him impactful at Akron. I understand NBA size makes it impractical for him to play him at the 5 unless it's situational. It's just going to be challenging for him to make the NBA long-term (5+ year career) if he's being asked to play SF or stretch 4. He's hindered by the fact he's not 2-3 inches taller.

Anyone know if Wednesdays press conference will be streamed on facebook or youtube for those of us who aren't retired or self employed?

Concord's Boubacar Djigo has committed to Marshall. That's one fewer Concord player @NWAkron has to worry about being on Akron's roster this year.

I thought theirs looked pretty empty myself. Casuals don't attend spring practices, at least not at the MAC level. The ones who show up are mainly the ones who are regulars anyway.

Could potentially be a good pickup for them if he builds off a solid freshman year. Mainly needs to work on improving scoring efficiency. He seems to rebound the ball really good for a guard.

I haven't seen him play, but by the numbers he looks like a chucker. A career .341 shooter from the field and .329 from 3. I'm not sure if he's an elite perimeter defender and that's the appeal, but his rebounding, blocks, and steal totals leave a lot to be desired. Personally, I hope one of the other MAC teams sign him. I would hope that we could do better. Edit: Evan Miya graded him as the 7th best player on a 12-21 Sun Belt team. The #2302 rated player in college basketball overall.

He appears to have pretty good handles and decent footwork for someone of his size. I could definitely see being able to play both him and Barre at the same time without it being much of an issue. https://x.com/i/status/2043368372922921403 Edit: Last season against us he had 6 points on 2/6 shooting, 4 boards, and 2 blocks. I'm probably most pleased with the rim protection (and obviously 3P%). That was obviously a weakness for us last year. Would prefer if he was a stronger rebounder. Likely needs to put on some muscle to better fight for position.

By God, that's Todd May's music!

I'm interested to see what Cody provides. He had a pretty great year a s a freshman before regressing as a sophomore. I'm not really certain how he's performed in practice.

Yeah, I'm not sure what expectations some had for the portal. Outside of maybe Evan (whose game had limitations), this is probably the most proven player we've gotten in the NIL era. Typically we've targeted under the radar talent that we saw potential in. I don't see why he can't be as good, or better, than Young. He likely can't replace what TJ did and that's okay. ~6' guards who shoot ~50%/40%/90% and average close to 20 points per game are fetching far more money than we can afford. We were never going to be able to instantaneously replace that in 1 signing. Edit: I will add I would be disappointed if this was our only portal signing, but it's not going to be. Hard to make judgements until we see how things fill in.

Overall I'm pleased with the signing. Those were some efficient scoring numbers and the highlight reel looked very Tavari like. Obviously highlights only show the good. Now onto finding a wing and a big as those are our next 2 biggest holes.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

This is likely. If it helps sell a few more season tickets then so be it. As @clarkwgriswold said this event has been poorly attended in recent years anyway. I personally haven't attended since the surplus sale days. 90% of the people who go are probably season ticket holders anyway. The other 10% probably didn't care that much to attend anyway if a $75 season ticket is going to deter them from going.

Apparently spring practice will be open to season ticket holders.

No argument there. The hope is if the MAC does expand to a 22 game conference schedule those would be the games eliminated. Whether it plays out that way who knows.

Some of us are fans of the sport, not just Akron. By we I mean mid-majors as a whole. A program like Belmont could have made the tournament if instead of getting neutral court wins against Toledo and St. Francis they picked up wins over mid-tier P5 programs. They were never given that opportunity.

We need to be at least able to play them on a neutral court. Mid-majors used to be able to build an at-large resumé by picking up 2-3 nice wins in a MTE. Those opportunities really aren't there anymore.

Did you watch CSU 1st round game in the Horizon League tournament? They hosted the game and there may have been a few dozen people in the stands. If even CSU fans don't care about CSU basketball why would Akron fans?

I actually feel it hurts our brand as I'd like to believe we're a level above both those programs. I feel that's the reason the only Horizon programs we agree to H&H with are the ones like Wright State who consistently compete at the top of the conference.

Outside of a few years under Calhoun both programs have been fairly bad. Maybe an outlier decent season here or there. I'm not sure what the appeal is in scheduling either of them.