kreed5120

AD is kind of a figure head position anyway. It's not practical for one person to be a SME in ~15 different sports. What's important is they put people in place that know what they're doing, work with the school and donor base to make sure the staff has what they need, and work out contractual obligations with internal and external staff. Bud kind of already has stepped in and became a volunteer GM for the basketball program. He's already giving the program more attention than what any AD conceivably could as its his sole focus.

At the time this game was scheduled South Alabama was ranked #2 in their conference. Since then they have lost 3 out of their 4, 2 of which was to an abysmal ULM. Their lone win was an OT win against an equally bad Rajun Cajun squad. I'm not sure if they've dealt with injuries or what, but their play has regressed significantly in the past couple of weeks.

To be fair, all year would be 2025. Had he said all season, it would be St. Mary's. I still think on the grand schemes Miami is better than Ball State.

AJ Clayton is back for Ohio. They should be improved moving forward.

Moorhead is obviously a respected coordinator. The thing about OSU is they pretty much have their pick of the litter. Kelly left being a head coach at a P5 program to become their play caller. He's now going to be the top paid OC in the NFL. Their defensive coordinator just got hired away to become the highest paid coordinator in CFB. Whether you're wanting a 2nd chance to revive your career or you're just wanting a brinks trunk of money, getting an OSU coordinator position seems like an easy path to the top.

I was going to make a similar type of comment when I saw this post this morning. I decided it wasn't even worth responding to lol.

The sites back up so the tears may start flowing again.

The Stryker family gave WMU athletics $50 million around the time of covid. I'm not sure how WMU went about spending it.

In the big picture we're all the Pittsburgh Pirates. Duke, UNC, Kentucky etc are the Dodgers/Yankees. Programs like Dayton would be like the Guardians.

I believe UMass is somewhere in the neighborhood of $250k-$300k and it was reported they would have biggest NIL in MAC hoops. That would make me guess Akron is in $100k-$200k range. Large enough that it's a competitive advantage. Not large enough that other programs can't overcome if they learn to get their sh*t together.

Have you seen the MAC?

I don't make much of the NIU win as they are, even by their standards, having a horrible year. Per NET there are only 10 teams worse than them in the entire country. I'm more confident after the Kent game. Not because Kent is good, but because Kent is the type of team that would have bullied us around in November with their physicality. We've definitely have been more assertive and cleaned up many of the things that were plaguing us earlier in the year.

Every year the NBA has players from overseas that get drafted at the end of the first round or 2nd round who never come to the NBA. My guess is they wanted his draft rights in case he decides to join their league in the future. A two-way NBA contract has to pay better than the Puerto Rico league. He probably only plays in Puerto Rico if his NBA career flames out.

I said stay in the game with a chance of winning late. They were certainly in the game against Ohio in the closing minutes. I never said if they force us to play their style of ball that they would definitively win.

By the metrics (NET & Kenpom) Kent is still ranked as the 2nd best team in the MAC. Kenpom has their defense ranked #53 in the country. Kent can only stay in the game (with chance of winning late) by making it physical, slowing the pace, and forcing Akron to play sloppy offense. If Akron's able to control the tempo, I think we'll be able to win fairly comfortably (10+).

Hopefully that day comes on a cold February evening, not in Cleveland in March.

You forgot 4) shoot too many 3s

I believe the last time a MAC team went undefeated in conference play was Cincinnati in the 1950s. Based off that I'd say your assessment is fair.

We lost to all the good teams we played OOC. That was my point. Several we were run off the court. Ohio is decimated with injuries and done for. Outside of Miami the rest of the MAC is a dumpster fire, including Toledo and Ohio. I don't deal in hypotheticals. We are what are record says we are. Edit: it's not like I'm arbitrarily viewing the games. We're 11-0 in Q4 games. We're 1-5 against Q1, Q2, Q3 opponents. Miami was our first non-cupcake win. I think it's reasonable to want to see more.

Also, I would say rebounding is very much a counting stat. The faster pace a team plays, the more shot attempts and misses in a game there will be on average. Therefore there will be more rebounding opportunities. Ideally, you would want to look by rebounding margin, which Akron is doing well at #75, and more preferably by rebounding rate. That way you can see what percentage of misses you rebounding compared to your competition. My main concern is you say our numbers have improved in January, which is true. That just happens to correspond when our opponents got conveniently much easier. Miami was the first decent team we've beaten all season. Beating the teams you're supposed to beat is always a positive, but I want to see better consistent play against other higher quality competition before I buy in. If we play the second leg of the MAC-Sun Belt challenge like we did against Miami I'll buy in. Right now I'm cautiously optimistic.

My concern about the Zips this season is over the course of the season you're going to have off shooting nights. Do they have it in them to win a physical, gritty contest when the shots aren't falling?

The Zips traveling to DeKalb always feels like a trap game. We always seem to underperform there. Even our wins often seem ugly.

OSU kind of left Notre Dame in the dust fairly early. They clawed back in midway through the 4th qtr, but by that point many had already turned the game off and went to bed. Had it remained close for the 1st 3 quarter, it likely would have been much closer to last year's numbers. Edit: Speaking of football as a whole, viewership had been trending down. Then sports betting came a long and that created some renewed interest as it gave degens interest in games that they might not otherwise care about. Perhaps a pull back from sports betting interest is what we're witnessing now. I don't know if that's the case or not. My speculation is purely anecdotal as I've personally lost interest in betting regularly like I was before and the same appears to be true for my group of friends as well.

I have a friend that used to be a sales manager at a car dealership. He told me that I'd be surprised to hear the credit score of many of the high income earners (doctors, lawyers, etc) that have come into the dealership. Many Americans are financially illiterate. Lifestyle inflation is very real.

It's not publicly known. Who knows where discussions are at on the back channels. I would think they would have plans at least verbally in place on the back channels before making the move, but then again that just might be me giving them too much credit. If Chicago State could find a home, I'm sure NIU will find one as well. It's more of a matter of where.