kreed5120

I've heard the Horizon or Summit. No way the MVC would touch them with a 10 foot pole. It's a basketball conference and NIU has consistently been one of the MAC's worse basketball programs for several decades.

I think it also helped that we went out and got a proven winner with name recognition. Had we just promoted one of Dambrot's assistants we might have found ourselves in the same boat. Buffalo decided to promote an assistant whose only stint at coaching D1 basketball previously was a 50-70 record in the Horizon League. That doesnt inspire much confidence. They followed up that hire getting another assistant that had no D1 head coaching experience whatsoever. Edit: I kind of understand why they promoted the first assistant. They still had M'balla and a few other players they hoped to build around to contend. An external candidate likely means everyone leaves and you lose the program momentum. Everyone ended up transferring out or graduating after 1 season anyway so they ended up with a depleted program anyway with a coach that had no prior success of building a winning mid-major program.

Exactly this, there is just so much talent disparity between the haves and have nots. During the regular season it's not a big deal as there are 5-10 games on at 1 time so odds are at least one of them will be good.

Toledo must think it's March already

The old saying in college basketball is get old, stay old. That saying is more true than ever this day and age with the portal being more player friendly. You saw Akron lose a lot of seniors this past season and then reloaded with more juniors and seniors. I feel Buffalo or any team that tries to build strictly through high school recruiting is going to struggle.

To be fair, Groce kind of fell right in his lap. A guy with prior MAC success and a guy that came cheap because Illinois was still paying him for his 1st two or three years as a Zips coach. It was more blind luck than anything. There are probably only 4 MAC (Ohio, Akron, Kent, and Toledo) programs Groce would have considered. Dambrot positioned ourselves to be one of the few MAC schools Groce would have considered.

Also, I think it's premature to congratulate ourselves on any "success". The jury is still out on this team. We're 5-0 and have looked better in MAC play, but the MAC is hot garbage this year. The worst it has ever been. Miami or round 2 of the MAC-Sun Belt Challenge might be our first real test of 2025.

Our football program was a clown show long before NIL became a thing. We can't exactly blame NIL for the state of our program when we were a bottom 10 FBS program for the prior ~20 years before it became a thing.

Yes, they had their own fortune of going from Hurley to Oats prior to collapse. I've long said coaching was the most important thing in collegiate athletics as they wear the hat of both coach and GM. It's still the most important thing, but NIL has emerged as the clear second biggest factor.

I don't think this is an Akron issue. I imagine Akron would schedule a home and home in a heart beat if Duquesne had interest. The reality is A10 schools view the MAC as inferior and aren't interested in "scheduling down". Even if it's not true. Outside of Buffalo-St. Bonaventure you rarely see A10 schools play at MAC arenas.

I think covid compounded the issue. I know I personally never resumed my season tickets after. I think people just fell out of the habit of going to live sporting events and replaced it with other things. For the college students that would probably be things like tik tok.

I question Miami's ceiling under Steele. This isn't the same Charlie Cole Miami. Hockey is arguably the #1 winter sport for the Redhawks (well at least it was pre-covid. It looks like the program has since gone to crap) and its not exactly cheap to run. All these MAC schools have a finite amount of resources and the more they spend on sports like football or hockey, the less they have for basketball.

I see nothing wrong with the promotion. No matter what promotion they run someone will find a reason to complain. If they want to have other nights where they mix in $2 hot dogs or what not, that would be fine as well. What's important is getting students to the game. They might initially come for the $2 beers, but have a great time and decide to return for future games. These will be the next generation of Zips season ticket holders. I had a friend take me to a Columbus Crew game a few years back and I went because of a free ticket plus $1 beer & brats. I didn't really care much for soccer outside of the World Cup. A new fan was made that day.

I really wish we had more concourse space.

I think some would be surprised by what some of these players are making in NIL. Someone posted an anonymous MAC basketball coaches survey. MAC coaches were saying departing players were making anywhere between $25k to $200k+. Granted that was basketball and this is football so not a perfect apples to apples comparison.

Looking at volume stats and not adjusting them for pace I think is flawed. I don't know how it would translate, but I do agree with you philosophy that long rebounds do create opportunities for second chance points. Namely, open 3s when the defense is scrambling to get reset.

Yes, no way the MAC would allow them to remove their football program, but leave their other sports. Especially since their basketball team is consistently in the bottom 1/3 of the MAC

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. The Big 10 and SEC collectively will far supercede the Big 12 and ACC. That said there are still ~25 teams between the 2 conferences. I don't think it's unreasonable that 1 of those 25 teams to emerge as a top 7 or 8 team most years. FSU was supposed to be that team before they fell flat on their faces. As for schools like Wisconsin they come and go. Only the blue bloods are consistently great. Even then they can have down periods, like Michigan did for a number of years. Wisconsin took a step back and Washington who was irrelevant for a number of years made the national championship. Washington took a step back this year and then Indiana emerged. There will always be programs that come out of nowhere and have a period of excellence before returning to their median.

Yes, I think this year was also an anomaly. Both the Big 12 and ACC were weak. I'd expect most years at least 1 of the 2 conferences would produce a real contender.

The committee got a lot of criticism with the initial selection, but the team selection ended up being fairly decent. The SEC proved to over rated and 3 teams for them was more then plenty. Indiana's only 2 losses on the season are to the two best teams in the country. They clearly belonged. I'm still not a big fan of how the playoffs were seeded, but a lot of that had to do with the requirements of the conference champion being given the #3 and #4 seeds.

They would have 0 interest.

There are plenty of competitive teams. The problem is there are 2-3 Super Teams every year. It was like the Golden State - Cavs era of the NBA. The whole season was meaningless because you knew those two stacked teams were going to meet in the finals every year. There were other good teams in the NBA during this time. Those teams just didn't have 3-4 hall of famers who were all still in the prime of their careers. If I wasn't a Cavs fan, I wouldn't have even bothered watching the NBA during that time.

It took until the semifinals, but we finally got a good game that was decided in the final few minutes in the CFP...

I would agree in football as the distance between the haves and have not has grown considerably. You still see mid-majors make noise every March. Heck, the P4 wouldn't even include the Big East, which is consistently a top 2-3 conference.

I saw several of these posts. Initially NIU fans were saying their ratings were 30% better than other MAC teams. That didn't take into account NIU had more games on stations like ESPN2 compared to less viewed networks like ESPNU and CBSSports. When adjusted to compare how NIU did on a particular network vs other MAC schools, there was only a 4-5% difference. I don't really see that swaying the needle much.