kreed5120

I will give it to Chapman he played well against Miami, but in his other 6 games where he attempted at least 1 pass, he completed a meager 44% of his passes and had 2 TDs to 5 interceptions. I'm not going to put Akron's failure this season on his shoulders, however, I also don't feel confident in his ability to be our backup QB.

Why would we play them? All FCS teams are weighted the same so its better to play one that you are nearly guaranteed to beat instead of 1 like NDSU and actually risk losing. Nothing to gain, but everything to lose.

I guess that kind of depends on how many QBs they offered before him and how many of those rejected them. It was pretty clear Bowden and company were high on Kato offering him before even his senior season. That doesn't mean all teams valued him as such. Regardless of how you want to shape it, losing a player you clearly wanted to a conference rival isn't good. We aren't OSU, LSU, or UM who can sweep in last 2nd and use our name to steal recruits from other schools. A 5th year transfer at QB isn't really what we need, nor would it be a desirable destination for a player looking for immediate playing time. What we need is someone that can sit out a year, learn the offense, and challenge Kato for the starting job the following year.

Chapman was terrible even when healthy. I haven't seen Kato throw a pass, but for the sake of the future of Akron football I pray to God he is better than Chapman. At this stage we are pretty far down the pecking order of our QB wishlist. We will end up with someone in this class I can almost guarantee that, but it will be someone the staff settled for, not someone they actually wanted.

If you go to page 9 you will see Cuyahoga County's Conventions and Visitor Bureau numbers. They are netting a revenue of about $8.5M more than Akron per year and that's after contributing ~$1.5M to Gateway, $232K to the convention center, and $1.4M to the Rock HoF. They had a surplus of about $4.7M for 2015 after accounting for all expenses, A number that I imagine will skyrocket for 2016 considering the number of hotels they opened and the rooms they had filled for the RNC. Long story short Cuyahoga County has a huge surplus in bed tax money to spend so spending it on the venue that can bring it large conventions, like the RNC, makes sense. Summit County pretty much has their bed tax eaten up via overhead. Salaries, property insurance, utilities, food services, repair and maintenance, & Supplies eats up 75%+ of what they collect. That doesn't really leave them with any room to finance any large scale arena (or anything for that matter). Cuyahoga County doesn't need to put a new tax on the ballot to fund an arena because it already has revenue generating from a preexisting one to fund it. Summit County would need a new tax as it doesn't have anywhere to pull that money from. http://ohioauditor.gov/auditsearch/Reports/2016/CVB_of_Greater_Cleveland_15-Cuyahoga.pdf

So out of plain curiosity I was wondering how Summit County was sitting with their bed tax and such since that is how the Q is receiving the bulk of its public money. As can be seen on page 12, the ASCVB is currently only running with annual an surplus of $215,000 with a huge portion of revenue eaten up by overhead. https://ohioauditor.gov/auditsearch/Reports/2016/Akron-Summit_CVB_15-Summit.pdf

There was no doubt in my mind LeBron would come back at some point. Even if it was just in the twilight of his career. He made his intentions clear that Akron was still his home even if he still wasn't playing in Cleveland. He would have been getting crap 20-30+ years after retirement from people in his community had he not returned and not being embraced by NEO was clearly something that bothered him.

If that's what it would take, I'd gladly make the trip to Cleveland for that game. Depth perception from our perimeter shooters is often used as a reason why we at times struggle from 3 when it comes to us having to play in the Q in March. Getting a game there in the regular season would only make our players feel more comfortable playing there for when the MAC tourney arrives.

It would be awesome and I'd love to see it happen, but I won't believe it that contract is signed and both schools publicly report it. Edit: To clarify Gonzaga has secured home and homes in the recent past against teams like Arizona and UCLA. Signing a home and home with Akron would almost seem like a downgrade, especially since they know Akron can be bought.

Which brings us to a key point. We need to find ways of scoring the ball when Big Dog is nuetralized via needing rest, in foul trouble, or the rare case that opponent has someone to match him in size. Kwan did that for us against Creighton. He tried doing it again against the smaller defender Gonzaga had on him, but he couldn't finish near the rim when he backed his man down. Great teams will find ways of taking Big Dog away from us. We need someone whether it be Antino, Kwan, or Ivey to step it up and shoulder the load in those situations. In general I'd like to see more ball movement and more players moving without the ball.

Yeah, it would definitely provide a boost, not denying that. I've myself gotten carried away thinking about the possibilities. Every time realism sets in and it dampers the situation. Short of a billionaire philanthropist coming out of the woodwork or postseason success that generates positive buzz in the community, I'd personally be shocked to see a new arena in less than 15 years. I'd loved to be proved wrong.

I didn't say they own it, but they play multiple regular season games there every year. Summit County/Akron tried to build a multi-purpose arena and it got so much disapproval that it didn't even make it to ballot. What's going to suddenly change hundreds of thousands of taxpayers minds?

Can we just lay these new arena talks to rest. The University is trying to correct a projected $45 million budget deficit by 2019. Paying for a new arena is counter productive to that. Since day 1 all Kasich has done is cut state funding a crossed the board for pretty much everything. The state certainly isn't going to contribute anything. The city tried and failed miserably. A new basketball arena probably isn't likely for another 20 years when Infocision is nearly (assuming they don't refinance) getting to the point of being paid off. http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/12/university_of_akron_to_pay_mor.html

They play a pretty small front court. Their starting PF comes in at 6'5, but puts up pretty solid numbers 12.5 points 6.8 boards on 60% shooting. Kwan needs to exploit his size in the post. Something he failed to do against Gonzaga. Their starting C is 6'7 217lbs, but has missed the last 4 games due to an abdominal injury. No clue if he will be healthy by Saturday. The guy starting in his place comes in at 6'9 222, but has only played about 15 minutes each game accumulating at least 4 fouls in each. Nobody has the size to handle Big Dog 1 on 1. Their 3 starting guards each average 31.8 minutes per game or more (Elmore, Loop, and Browning). Jon Elmore is the only player in D1 basketball averaging 23+ points and 7+ assists. 62 of 65 of Loop's shot attempts have come from 3 and he is shooting .484 from 3. Browning is their 2nd leading scorer and posts efficient numbers a cross the board (.495 FG%, .400 3P%, and .909 FT%). Edit:Offensively we just need to keep doing what we've been doing and feed Big Dog. They will have no option but to bring the double. We should be able to bait them into fouls in the process. Defensively I'd have Robotham and Williams (when he's on the court) babysit their 3 point specialist and have Antino and Ivey guard their dynamic play making guards.

It was IPFW arena or at least an arena they play in frequently. They have 2 different venues. One that seats 2700 where they play a large chunk of their games and another venue that seats ~13,000 where they play select games. It's my understanding the 2 schools co-hosted a tournament. I don't know the full details, but I believe Indiana got 3 home games out of it and played 1 road game at IPFW. Edit: Found the details http://www.journalgazette.net/sports/colleges/iu/IPFW-gets-home-game-against-IU-9581651

And UT-Arlington (Sun Belt) was at Saint Mary's. They happen. Gonzaga had to go on the road for years and knock teams off before teams would agree to come to the Kennel.

Why does that matter? Gonzaga didn't get to being where it is at by comparing itself to Pepperdine. IPFW knocked off Indiana this year and UT-Arlington knocked off St. Marys. Every year these type of upsets happen.

People have been saying that about Akron since ~2009. We know we're as good, if not better, than a lot of those 13-15 seed teams that spring those early round upsets in the tourney or those teams that come out of nowhere to beat a top 15 team in the regular season. We just for whatever reason have fallen short time after time doing it ourselves. I'm not in the camp of it will never happen because statistically speaking we should be due. I can understand however how Zips have grown tired of hearing guys like Dickau telling us how good we are and that we will be making some noise come tournament time. As someone previously said the Zips are like a bad rendition of the movie Groundhogs Day. Year after year the season ends in disappointment and we fail to take that next step. We've pretty much been stuck in a 7 year rut.

NIU hasn't neither, but I believe your're right in everyone else has.

Including both Antino and Hughes missing the front ends of a 1 and 1. Missing the front end of a 1 and 1 is pretty much a turnover.

Ivey got fouled on that 3 pointer with 7:37 left. We didn't score another point the rest of the game...

I'm getting tired of moral victories. I'd like to be able to spring the upset just once.

Next practice can we just shoot free throws for 2 hours?

Difference in this game is free throws