kreed5120

I personally credit Mark Few for Gonzaga's run of success. Monson had that 1 great year Gonzaga that he used to land himself that next big job, but accomplished nothing thereafter. There have been a lot of mid-majors that have went onto having their 10 minutes of fame George Mason, Davidson, Loyola Marymount, FGCU, and even Kent State just down the road just to name a few. What separates schools like Gonzaga and Wichita State from the pact is they have shown they aren't 1 hit wonders.

If the staff feels he's a significant upgrade over what we have, I have no problem with it. If not, there is no point. I wonder how many available scholarships we have?

I said eligible big with D1 experience. Kostelac doesn't have D1 experience. We also have 2 incoming PF that haven't logged a minute at the D1 level. I worded it poorly.

In regards to the bolded section isn't that a testament to how good we believed Big Dog, Kwan, and others on the team to be? We struggled even that much more anytime Big Dog was on the bench and Poke was in the game in his place. The same guy that will likely be asked to play a much larger role this season and is the only eligible big next season outside of Aaron Jackson, if you want to call him a big, that has D1 experience. Kwan was still our best defender. Kwan regressing from being a 1st team All-MAC contender to him and Antino combining for a grand total of 5 points in the MAC championship is what did the Zips in. Our supposed 2nd and 3rd best player combined for 2/12 shooting. That's hard to overcome for any team. Big Dog was the center of our offense and the opposing teams knew it. He constantly had to fight for position and work through double teams. Despite that he still managed to make >62% of his shots. That's off the chart efficiency.

Yes, Blackburn is most definitely downplaying Big Dog's importance. The Zips didn't make the tournament like we wanted, but they still set the program record for wins and beat a pretty good Houston team. We had the regular season title locked up by mid February so I'm not sure what you mean struggle to lock that up. There have been better players than Big Dog that have played for the Zips and one would certainly hope we have better ones in the future. In the long-term I'm confident we'll be fine with Groce, but in the short-term going from a front line of Kwan and Big Dog to the inexperienced and unproven frontline next year we'll be seeing a significant downgrade. I don't see what's so hard about awknowledging that a player on an underachieving team was still a pretty damn good player.

I don't think Big Dog was the best player in the MAC, but he was certainly one of the best players in the MAC and was the main reason why Akron won the MAC regular season title and made it to the MACT final. The fact you're trying to minimalize his importance to the team when it is evident he was far and away the best player on the team is comical.

I deleted after recounting Edit: I had it posted for 2 minutes before deleting and already had 2 comments. Nice to see this level of activity during the offseason.

I saw a stat that stated over 25% of the players who declared early for the draft this season went undrafted.

Look who runs Vicotry Rock Prep where both Loren and Deng played...Loren Jackson's dad. http://www.victoryrockprep.com/director

I can't remember the specifics and he deleted the tweets a few minutes after posting. It wasn't anything heinous, but it just gave me the impression he had no desire to want to be here.

Where did I comment on his talent??? His tweets rubbed me the wrong way when Dambrot announced he was leaving.

I'm actually glad to see Dalton leave. It's the first player I said that in regards to.

An earlier article stated he sat out last year for basketball unrelated reasons and spent the year at home for "personal reasons". Perhaps he's wanting to play someplace close to home. If that's the case maybe the team Akron is really battling for his services is Niagara, not Georgetown.

I just assume all heights are overstated by 1-2 inches.

I do agree that TE is a bit of a luxury pick, but we are in desperate need of play makers on the offensive side of the ball and the receiving class was pretty weak so I understand the move.

We now own both the Texans 1st and 2nd round picks next season. Hopefully they finish poorly.

They also traded up and finished with 3 1st rounders overall.

http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/akron/ua-students-tweet-earns-his-class-free-popsicles-gatorade-after-tweet/434879667

Adding a guard that can contribute immediately makes a lot sense, especially since we only have 1 scholarship senior.

It was a tad exaggeration as I'm not entirely sure where we will finish as the MAC should be in for a down year losing 12 out of its 15 ALL-MAC team players and that doesn't even include Campbell, Antino, and Noah. My bigger point was I don't feel the Zips would have been good either way.

We have 10 scholarship players that can play next season. I see no harm in having 1 player that has to sit out 1 year. We'd still have 2 more scholarships to play with.

Can't really fault him for not getting playing time on a very talented Florida team. If he was good enough for Florida, he is good enough for me.

They very well might end up being terrible evaluators of talent. Time will tell. Either way I feel they have a really good plan. Now it's just a matter of if they can turn that draft capital into players that can actually perform. As long as teams are willing to continue giving up next years 3rd rounder for this years 4th rounder, I expect the Browns under this regime to always expose that market deficiency.

It's a small upgrade I'll say going to the MW conference school. I imagine he hoped for something better. Personally, I think given everything else we lost, him returning wouldn't have made much of a meaningful impact. Instead of finishing 8th now we'll finish 10th in the MAC. What this does do is free up some minutes for our younger players which should hopefully help speed up their development.