kreed5120

21+ win season probably not, but an 18-20 win season for them would have been a very realistic forecast coming into this season. Last year, coincidence enough, UTEP finished 6th in C-USA and went 19-14. Dambrot most definitely didn't expect a 2-7 team that is playing like one of the worst teams in C-USA. Had we gotten that 18-20 win team, this would have been the perfect final OOC game to prep ourselves for the level of competition we'd expect to see out of teams like EMU, Toledo, and CMU come MAC play. Edit: I'm counting 4 Texas players on the roster (Antino, Dalton, Poke, and Utomi) plus Robotham whose from Vegas. I'm counting 12 days between the end of the Sun Bowl Invitational and the Zips next game. Playing this game in El Paso certainly makes it easier for those 5 players to make it home for Christmas if that's the intention. Also, we recruit Texas pretty hard. Perhaps we have a recruit or 2 coming to these games.

UTEP has averaged 21+ wins over the last 7 seasons and only had 1 losing season in that time. Preseason polls had them finishing 6th in C-USA (for what it's worth Marshall was 4th). WKU was projected to finish 3rd and is currently 4-7 with a loss to Detroit Mercy. It's so hard to project how mid-majors teams will finish year to year. They for the most part don't have the depth of top conference schools so an injury or in the case of UTEP a starter quitting the team 3 games into the season because of a dispute with the coach can quickly derail a season.

Those attendance numbers are reported by the University and any STH counts towards that number regardless whether they show up or not. I have a buddy that bought season tickets and hasn't even gone to a game yet.

Just glancing down there it seems the same seats are empty game after game. I wonder how many of those empty seats are corporate bought?

My only complaint was the 16 TO. We can get away with that when we are shooting as well as we did last night, but on nights where we shoot at or below our average those can come back to haunt us.

Have to imagine Dambrot expected something better than a 2-7 UTEP team when he agreed to play in this. Irvine, despite not being good actually has some size. Their starting C is 7'2 255 and they have a 6'10 320 pounder on their bench. Akron might actually need to run some offensive plays to get open looks instead of relying solely on Big Dog drawing the constant double team.

So I heard that Marshall/Akron just signed another 4 year home and home contract so expect to see them on the schedule for the coming years.

Well it's game day folks. Akron appears to enter this game as 8 point favorites. http://www.oddsshark.com/ncaab/odds

Can I buy a vowel?

I read Canada has something like 12 players in the NBA this season. Screw building the wall. How about we start going there to look for croots?

Aren't we already a little deep at guard? I'm counting we have 6 guards under scholarship (Noah, Antino, Martin, Ivey, Ty Dalton, and Josh Williams). At the same we will have Hughes, Sayles, and I guess Aaron Jackson at the 4/5. If there is an extra scholarship to be had, we might want to consider adding some depth to our frontcourt.

Looks like we are his 4th offer. http://247sports.com/Player/Alex-Ramart-88311

I agree. McCollum might be the only one "we let get away." I say this because he is on record as saying he had his heart set on playing for the Zips and was disappointed he wasn't offered.

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.