kreed5120

It seems a bit too soon to compare a team whose made it to 12 Sweet 16s and has 2 national championships to a team that has a combined 1 tournament win in program history. If they're still doing what they are now in 5 years, I'll start talking about it. As of now there are tons of schools that thought they were going to be the next (insert power house basketball program here). Look at Cleveland State as a prime example. Now they're stuck with a monstrosity of an arena that is bleeding the university much like Infocision is doing to us.

No matter who Akron hired to replace Dambrot they'd be b****ing. Dambrot was already the highest paid employee at the University of Akron and the highest paid basketball coach in the MAC. Akron was never going to be able to match the salary nor the millions of dollars worth of upgrades that Duquesne was prepared to offer. Akron was only going to be able to retain Dambrot by Dambrot accepting less to stay. He elected to instead take the money and run.

Elton Alexander wrote a piece in The Plain Dealer on Buffalo and the MAC. Pretty much his opinion is that Oats will be at Buffalo for the foreseeable future and has raised the bar for the MAC. He questions whether one of the other MAC programs will emerge as a candidate to compete with Buffalo or whether Buffalo will just run away with the conference much like how Gonzaga has with the WCC. https://www.cleveland.com/sports/2019/03/ncaa-tournament-2019-buffalo-bulls-still-have-work-to-do-and-so-does-the-mac.html

I definitely feel there needs to be some sort of balance. You don't want to keep a bunch of players on the roster that aren't good enough to play on a top tier MAC squad, but if a coach isn't showing loyalty to his players it may lead to guys like Utomi asking why should they show loyalty to the coach or university by returning when they have better options available to them. Not to say that was the case in this situation or not as frankly I don't know.

I like E-Man, but it's probably for the best. We didn't need to have 3 offensively deficient centers on our roster.

I by no means have any knowledge of the situation, but if I had a gun to my head and had to guess where Utomi would play next year, I'd say Houston.

Akron is looking to buyout 47% of its faculty. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/03/19/big-buyouts-u-akron

Pay to play tourneys for both genders. One step closer to gender equality.

I didn't realize the women's game had a tournament below the NIT.

He only fouled out twice the entire season. That's not bad for a starting C. He picked up some dumb fouls over the course of the season, who doesn't, but I never viewed that as a weakness in his game like I viewed it in Kostelac and E-Man. His weakness has been that his hands have been bricks this year. Even when he does catch it in the low post the ball has been either stripped or he misses a bunny or dunk. I actually like Riak for his defensive presence, but there is no mistaking he needs to work on catching a pass in traffic and finish at the rim.

Maybe he can teach the rest of the team how to box out next year.

I believe he's trying to say we should have spent money on a new basketball arena instead of a football stadium. So much tax money gets poured into subsidizing the cost of the Knight Center each year. Adding a second convocation center just so Akron could have a shiny new arena would have been a further drain on taxpayers. If we can't muster the fan support to make it profitable for the university to build, which seems to be the case, we should continue to play at the JAR. We should have learned our lesson from the 75% empty football stadium that a build it and they will come philosophy doesn't work.

Losing our #1 scorer off a team that finished last in the MAC in offense certainly is going to hurt. Groce is going to need to turn water into wine to make us contenders next year. I don't know how he can do it, but for our sakes I hope he does it. He still has 4 years at 650k per year left on his deal. Like it or not we're pretty much stuck with him for the next 3 seasons as I can't see Akron buying out more than 1 year.

Akron consistently has one of, if not the highest, basketball operating budget in the MAC. If your solution is to spend more how do you propose we fund that? That money needs to come from somewhere. Its not like the university is swimming in extra money at the moment that they can reallocate to basketball. Yes, when someone proposes we drop down to D3 they will be laughed at.

I wish Utomi the best of luck wherever he ends up. I'm sure when he committed to Akron in 2015 he wasn't expecting a coaching change and a complete team rebuild. I hope wherever he ends he has an opportunity to make it to the big dance.

This one really hurts. With Utomi I was thinking we'd have a chance to be a top 2-3 team in the MAC next season. We'll see how the roster shapes up, but my new expectation as of now is something along the lines of 7-11. I'm going to hold out judgement until after the start of my season, however, I'm going to begin to sharpen my pitchfork.

I guess that just depends on what the team violation was. I'm guessing it was something fairly major for him to be suspended on senior night. They could very well want to see him break the record, but didn't want to set a bad precedence by showing him preferential treatment. They knew he'd be guaranteed at-least 2 additional games (MAC + postseason tourney) to get the 51 points needed for the all-time record.

Walker is 32 points away from becoming Kent's all-time leading scorer. I'm guessing that played a big part in why they're continuing their season.

I don't know if Akron got asked or not, but based off the below teams it seems the CIT has pretty low standards. Without looking at each teams resume, I'd have to guess Kent is one of, if not the best team, in this field.

Not really a surprise. Now that the novelty has worn off from the CIT and CBI it seems many teams aren't interested in a pay to play tourney.

Mount Union won the OAC this season and still managed to only draw 137 fans to this mid-January game. If the goal is to kill any interest in the basketball program than yes drop down to D3. http://athletics.mountunion.edu/sports/mbkb/2018-19/boxscores/20190118_3966.xml?view=boxscore

You can't pick and choose your conference by sport. Where your basketball program is where your olympic sports need to be. The lone exception is if your conference doesn't sponsor a sport then it can join another conference for that sport as an affiiliate. C-USA basketball has gone way downhill since Memphis got poached. Hell pretty much the only way to watch any the games is via facebook watch. They have next to no national tv games. Even calling it a lateral move would be generous.

Outside of the #1 seeds, which the NCAA committee picks, I don't think there is any mistaking that the NIT committee picks the teams and match-ups that they think will sell the most tickets. It's no coincidence that Toledo is playing an in state school just like it was no surprise when Akron played Ohio State.

Yes, I know who it was directed towards. I just figured I'd actually provide something towards having a productive discussion instead of endless rants.

Honestly, I feel a good place to start is by programs like EMU, NIU, and Miami actually start to invest in their basketball programs. Miami was once the face of MAC. It's incredible to see how much they've fallen in the last 20 years.