kreed5120

We've made it to the big time fellas. Edit: Link to this thread in his article.

I'm not sure what's happened to the MAC but outside of Ohio the last MAC team to win a tournament game was CMU in 2003. Weird for a conference despite being a "1 bid conference" is regarded as a respectable mid-major.

Teams are given 4 fouls and on the 5th the opposing teams shoot 2 free throws. At the 9:59 mark team fouls are reset to 0. It should help the Zips considering they had to be among the nation leaders in misses on the front end of 1 and 1.

Who honestly knows how that season plays out without the losses of those 2 players. Maybe we beat Kent with Abreu and get a better seed therefore not having to play VCU. Maybe Abreu has another 4/15 shooting night like he did in our loss to Buffalo and we lose to Kent in the semifinals. Personally, I'm not going to dwell on what could have been as there are just too many moving variables.

I actually feel Big Dog against their bigs is the one advantage that we have and will need to exploit if we have any chance of winning. Here are their F/C that play regularly along with how much they play: 6'10 200 23 MPG 6'9 235 11.4 MPG 6'10 230 16 MPG 6'7 230 20.3 MPG

It appears we have some competition in the coveted 21 win department.

They had some pretty terrific promotions, including that LBJ jersey giveaway. I myself have noted there are some changes I'd like to see in the Gameday experience, but overall I feel they do a great job. Short of paying people, which they have somewhat did in the past with free tuition giveaways, I don't see how they'd consistently crack 4,000 at the JAR. Tickets are already about as cheap as they get. A new arena I agree would probably provide a short-term boost, but attendance would eventually trickle down to today's numbers. Short of becoming the next Wichita State or Gonzage I don't see that changing. Edit: It's more likely Dambrot has taken this program as far as it can go given the constraints of playing in the MAC and our less than ideal facilities. Every year he puts us in a position to succeed, but we still need the ball to bounce our way a few times if we are to win. Our 3 point % against Kent showed "luck" wasn't on our side. This team was always going to need offense to win. I could have told you they were going to lose given their % from 3 and the free throw line.

*sigh* enjoy your like.

We are at the top of the MAC and as Zippy5 has pointed out we have distanced ourselves in recent years as the MAC #1 program (Winning 3 out of the last 5 MAC regular season titles). We've won 52 games and still counting the past 2 seasons combined and I'm pretty sure Big Dog/Kwan will be the winningest senior class in UA basketball history. The problem with being at the top is there is only 1 way to go.

Amen. This kind of mentality is why Dambrot has "only" 3 COY awards. People just expect us to go 15-3 in the MAC and win the tournament. Victim of his own success I suppose.

Stagnant is our perpetual 5-7 football team whom you always make excuses for. I distinctly remember you saying you'd take a Solich Ohio over a 2-3 year Fleck reign. Now you seem to be back tracking from that as Dambrot, unlike Solich, has won both the MAC regular season and title game multiple times while still being competitive year in and year out. Of course I want more as does everyone else. Dambrot has shown his loyalty multiple times by passing up more money to stay with his alma mater and we have people like you trying to criticize and minimalize what he's accomplished.

https://mobile.twitter.com/RossBjorkAD/status/841352257622929409 Illinois State head coach tweeted out that he was looking for a home and home next season against a P6 team. Ole Miss AD responded that he'd love to work something out. Edit: Looks like a done deal. https://mobile.twitter.com/DanMuller/status/841366488791552000

A good place to start is to awknowledge that a $40M-$45M 5k-6k seat arena is more practical than a $80M 9k seat arena. Now only if we can find a generous donor...

I take back most of the bad stuff I've said about him...

Wish you were an active member these days. We need more logical minds such as yourself around here.

The only upgrade "available" would be the AAC and they have no desire for a perpetual 5-7 MAC football team that attracts 10k fans on a good day.

I feel we have been rattling the cage. We've moved to being a team that focuses on creating looks from 3 or near the basket while minimizing mid-range attempts, which is what advanced metrics says we should do. We've expanded our recruiting footprint, perhaps at the expense of losing some local guys we wanted to schools like Buffalo. People, including myself, have complained about the sub par OOC schedule, but we're going to be playing in a very stacked Diamond Head Classic next season. It's certainly not because we haven't tried new things that we haven't made it over the hump. The MAC is a very competitive league and even in our best years we aren't above dropping games in conference to teams that have a comparable level of talent as us. Dambrot does a great job of getting the most out of his players and putting them in a position to succeed, but it's not like we are landing 3* and 4* players. We're landing guys who have flaws that made it so they trickled down to Akron whether it be TDM or Antino being "too short" or E being "too raw or Big Dog putting on a lot of weight after suffering a leg injury. I feel our problem is more Jack and Joe related and less X's and O's.

I feel UT-Arlington has a decent chance of 'upsetting' BYU. I'm not sure when the round 2 game would start, but traveling from Houston to Arlington would be a short commute.

I wasn't sure if you guys were aware of this. Syracuse is set to play UNC-Greensboro in the 1st round...

0 RPI top 100 wins and losses to Miami, YSU, and Bowling Green. No doubt in my mind our resume this year was much weaker than last years and last years was deemed worthy of being a 6th seed regardless if you like it so a 7th this year makes sense.

Here is the bracket. https://mobile.twitter.com/rushthecourt/status/841089919502102530

So they looked at the resume and picked the best teams like I said they do. Great, thanks for answering.

Committee chairman said OSU and UNC-Asheville were the 2 bubble teams that were left out. Of course letting Valpo in over OSU was the committee making decisions solely based off of $$$ as so many of you like to claim...

Scrolling through this thread I see several Bowden apologists being critical of Dambrot... I'm disappointed as anyone with how this season turned out. I'm losing faith that we will ever see Dambrot win a NCAAT game, which is a damn shame because there have been lesser coaches that have achieved that feat. Regardless, of how the final x-number of years of his career play out, he's going to go down as Akron's greatest basketball coach. Looking down the road 10, 20, 30 years from now when the Zips have trouble making it past the 1st round of the MAC tournament, which is bound to happen at some point, that's when we'll realize how good we had it under Dambrot.

Losing in the finals last year didn't sting as much to me as it did this year. Last year after losing to Buffalo I was confident that we were returning the #1 team in the conference. I can't say the same for next year. We clearly have no replacement ready in the wings for Big Dig and Utomi has shown flashes of being great, but he will be a very undersized 4. Big Dog was the one that created open looks for everyone else. We are pretty much going to have to implement an entire new offense. All that being sorry I can't get excited for a 2nd rate tournament. This might have been Akron's last best chance to make some noise under Dambrot.