kreed5120

Has the MAC even been a 16 seed? That would be an all-time low for the conference.

I don't remember the exact specifics, but the auto-bid credit is split evenly. Additional credits earned go into a prize pool. That pool is then divided based off regular season and postseason performance.

That number does seem very high. Daron Holmes reportedly got $175k from Dayton this season and he came into the season as one of the favorites to win A10 POY. No knock to Ali, but I feel $100k would get you a stud (by MAC standards).

I wasn't looking at the volume numbers. I do see now that you mention it Harris had a pretty miserable start to the year, which explains why on paper his numbers look as bad as they do. It's nice to see he improved as the year went on. Hopefully he can continue to build on that at Akron. Wilson's sophomore season he put up some great shooting numbers. I'd be pleased getting that Wilson. His freshman and junior year he struggled quite a bit, particularly inside the 3-point arc. I'm not sure if he's just not good at finishing at the rim or what. Either way I expect Groce with use him as the proverbial 3&D guy.

I definitely feel better about the team with these additions. Our front court should be as good as any in the MAC. I'm still a bit concerned on whether we'll have enough offense. Okonkwo, from what I've seen, doesn't seem like a player you can run your offense through. Both Wilson and Harris have struggled to be efficient scorers. We're going to need to see improvement from everyone on that end of the floor as I'm just not sure we have that guy who can put the offense on his back.

They were the worst team in the Big 12, but they still finished the season #144 in kenpom. For reference, Akron ended the season at #122, so they weren't that much worse than we were. They just played a vastly tougher schedule. I'm not drinking the kool-aid to think this makes us instant favorites, but in a year that the MAC looks in a disarray, it's not like we need a super team to compete.

One just hopes another year of conditioning and developing places him ahead.

I wouldn't exactly say averaging 17 minutes a game, which is what Seth Wilson played, is hardly seeing the floor. That's nearly a half of basketball.

In that case, they should have went Rick Pitino. He's a vastly more proven coach and it would pee off your main rival. A win-win.

It's probably also a much harder sell now. In previous years it was come to Akron, we have 2 All-MAC caliber players and you could be that final piece we need to make the tournament. I know you have been dreaming of that since you were a kid. Now it's come to Akron. Our roster is very depleted, but you can easily earn playing time.

Kentucky fans doing mental gymnastics to defend this hire when they claimed before Calipari making 7 Elite 8s in 14 tournaments wasn't winning enough. https://tenor.com/x5LA.gif I feel blue bloods, at least in basketball (where you only need 2-3 studs), don't mean as much these days as before the NIL days. Kids are going to care more about securing a bag than going to some storied program that they didn't even grow up cheering for. That enables programs with deep pocketed boosters (Arkansas, Oregon, Texas A&M, etc) an opportunity to narrow the gap if they choose to do so.

Reports are Mark Pope will be the next Kentucky Coach. He has never won an NCAA tournament game...

I don't know if he can or can't help us. If he can, there is no point in redshirting. With how much the transfer portal has exploded, there is no promise of a tomorrow. Unless there is someone I'm missing, only Freeman and Tribble came to Akron as Freshman and graduated as seniors without a transfer in-between during Groce's tenure. The days of guys staying at 1 school for 5 years just isn't as common as it used to be. Also, Ali wasn't hurt by not having a redshirt year. He got an extra year of eligibility regardless from covid. He provided the team defense and versatility. He wasn't asked to nor did we need him to score. That team was probably our most loaded team offensively between LCJ, Cheese, Banks, and Xeyrius.

Ali Ali actually played meaningful minutes as a true freshman on the 2019-2020 MAC regular season title team. He even started 11 games. I'm not going to pretend to be an evaluator of talent, but if Groce thinks he can add something to this depleted roster, he'll play.

Anthony Pritchard has withdrawn his name from the portal and has decided to return to CMU.

In the article it states that the median collective is paying $750k for P5 schools and that number is projected to double this coming year. There is certainly a lot of negative surrounding NIL, but the one positive is I don't think it will be long before you see a lot more players sticking around the full 4-5 years of college. 5 years from now it very well could be that unless you're a lottery pick, the pay is better to stay in college instead of being a late 1st to 2nd round pick.

To be fair, ABJ reporting on everything has gone downhill.

The Vegas odds I saw today had Scott Drew as the favorite. If thats who they land, that would mean Hurley, Oates, Jay Wright, and probably Donovan all turned it down and would be a massive fail on Kentucky's part. Drew has only made made it to 1 Final Four in his 20+ years as a D1 head coach.

Yes, it's why I'm glad Ohio doesn't allow player prop bets for college sports. It's one thing for a guy who gets paid millions as a pro to deal with nimwits. It's another thing for a college student who most likely will never even go pro.

It also begs the question, is UCLA even a blue blood anymore? They obviously have the most titles, but all of that was mostly under Wooden. They have only made it to the Elite 8 4 times this century and only have 1 national title within the last 40 years.

The college game has changed a ton since Donovan was at Florida. It's anyone's guess how well he'll adjust.

UConn now had as many national titles as UNC and 1 more than Duke. Those titles are split between 3 different head coaches. I'm not sure I'd quite put them in the same category as the blue bloods because year in and year out they haven't consistently had that same level of success, but they're certainly entering the conversation.

I'd be thrilled, but with that list of interested parties, I'm not going to hold my breathe.

He's going to have to invest in some stress balls.

It's Canisius, the options were probably Christian or some no name assistant.