kreed5120

Delusions of grandeur. At times I see people post thinking Akron can join the AAC or a conference like that. As if they would want our perennial 0-4 win football program. In general, online forums don't have the most rational fans.

They will instantly compete with Akron and Toledo at the top of the MAC. Their win totals are going to improve when they replace games against Dayton and VCU with Northern Illinois and Western Michigan. Using this season as an example, they're ranked 5th in the A10, but they're still currently ranked ahead of the MAC top ranked team (Akron).

A loss, combined with a Toledo win and CMU loss would slide us down to the #2 seed.

Yes, the A10 also isn't what it was 10 years ago. Now it's pretty much a 1 bid conference, like the MAC, but much harder to win. It probably made the pill of leaving men's hoops easier to swallow.

Reality it was a huge mistake to bring in a guy with no FBS experience without requiring him to have a Chuck Amato type of OC/DC. He was way in over his head. You see it all levels. Some people are fantastic OC/DC/ position coaches, but when promoted to a higher role fail miserably.

@Hilltopper might be able to assist here. He's usually privy to these type of things.

A lot of selective readers on the internet these days.

Travelzoo usually has deals every year. Someone here typically posts the code once they find it out.

I would have to take some time to view the rest of the MAC in order to make predictions. I will say Freeman should be a runaway favorite for MAC POY. Groce should won COY, but I could see Barbee winning it instead. CMU was projected to finish dead last in the MAC, but are currently in 3rd. Even though teams 3-12 all suck I can still see voters giving it to Barbee for "overachieving". Not that I would agree with it.

They might also hope it drives better attendance for the women's game to give them a better send-off.

We don't even have a starting 5.

It's impossible to blame this all on 1 person. Although Scarborough certainly didn't help. Pew research published this study in December. In the US College enrollment peaked in 2011. In 2022 there were 1.2 million fewer enrollees attending college compared to 2011. That would mean it's not just Akron feeling this burn, but most places. There are fewer Gen Z than there are millennials and a fewer percentage of Gen Z are going to college compared to millenials. In the coming years I'd expect more and more small private Universities to fail as they burn through their endowments and more consolidation. I feel Proenza is more to blame for Akron's poor financial standing. He dug the University into massive debt expanding the campus. Now we have all this excess space that we're paying for that we really don't need. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/12/18/fewer-young-men-are-in-college-especially-at-4-year-schools/#:~:text=College enrollment among young Americans,fewer young men pursuing college.

I would tend to agree, but based off the success Toledo had pushing the ball in the second half, I expect them to make that a key part of their game plan. It really comes down to which team can dictate pace.

I'm most confident in Ali figuring it out within the next month. Mainly because he has shown in the past that he can be that player and isn't coming off of any major injuries. I don't think he'll be a .400 3P% shooter moving, but .350-.370 is serviceable. Especially since he's been very efficient inside the arc. We'd probably have another 3-4 losses right now had he not returned. We really need one of the other guards to step up and provide some floor spacing. The longer this drought continues, the more aggressive teams will become at clogging the paint and double teaming Freeman. You just aren't going to win games that matter if you can't make 3s in today's college game. It's way overpowered.

Has anyone seen a spread yet for this game? My guess is that it will essentially be a pick'em. Perhaps Akron favored by 1/2 a point

Outside of joining some board or being consulted in a coaching search, if something opens up, I agree.

Teams at or near the top of college basketball can change. Florida was dominant for a few years when they were getting NBA players. OSU had their run. UMass had theirs. That has never changed. I'm not even referring to the best of the best players. A basketball team is made up of more than just one player. Emoni Bates was drafted by the Cavaliers and we saw how badly EMU was last year. I'm saying the 500th best player today in college basketball is vastly better than what it was 20-30 years ago as the player pool is exponentially larger. There are many more competent players that teams can fill out a roster with. Go back to the Wooden days at UCLA. A big reason why they were so dominant is the talent pool surrounding them was very bad. It has been a similar case in the women's game. Only just now in the women's game are you seeing more and more teams compile competitive rosters. Edit: Also, I mentioned cohesion in my prior post as a factor. Both can be true. The teams at the top don't have as much chemistry as they used to and the teams under them have more complete rosters therefore they can't simply dominant on talent alone.

Those players playing overseas aren't guys who would have been playing in college basketball 10, 20, 30 years ago. European born players have generally always played overseas before coming to the NBA. Look at Dirk, Tony Parker, Gasol brothers, etc. The difference now is that in the last 10-15 years the sport has grown a ton there so now they're producing more high caliber players. What you should be looking at is which Americans are going overseas or joining the G League. Those would be the players that are being taken away from the college game. In my previous post I didn't mention how much the game has globalized in recent times. We have more people playing basketball than ever. That could also be a factor in why top teams don't look as dominant. Mid-tier teams have a much larger pool of players to recruit and the scraps they settle for are better than the player they settled for 20-30 years ago. It could also be why we've recently seen a 16 seed beat a 1.

I also think NIL is a factor. You used to see a school like Kentucky have a super team of freshmen. Now those McDonalds All-Americans are more spread out. Sure Kentucky can afford to land a couple top recruits, but they can't afford to pay a full team of them. A school like Maryland, Iowa, etc can sneak in and outbid them if they view that player as a star player, but Kentucky views them as a 4th or 5th option. Edit: I would add in the transfer portal exploding is another thing. Basketball is very much a team sport. There is value in players playing with one another for years to develop chemistry. It's not like baseball where you can easily plug and play.

If Wally was playing today there is little to no chance that he would have returned to Miami for his senior season. Someone like Kentucky, UNC, or Duke would have offered him low to mid 6 figures to transfer. If you're a mid-major, you have to win with team basketball. In reality, Freeman is probably the closest thing we'll see to Wally in an Akron uniform for a long time.

Even if that does happen, they're still vastly better than any MAC team. On a neutral court they would be favored by double figures against Akron.

It's because the numbers are based off of tickets sold, not the number who scan tickets to get in. When I was a season ticket holder I'd make it to roughly 10 out of the 15 games. Life happens and the vast majority of season ticket holders can't make it to every game.

Yes, for starters Wake Forrest is very much in the discussion for at-large. They would curb stomp the MAC this year if they were in this conference.

The blown defensive assignments was what jumped out to me. You will have bad shooting nights over the course of a season. Defense is supposed to be what travels and helps you win on nights your shots aren't falling. JMU tore our defense apart. It seemed every shot they put up was a high percentage opportunity.

He's already 65 and was pretty vocal when he was at Akron that he never planned to coach into his upper 60, 70s. I feel his intention was to always retire around 65.