kreed5120

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.

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.