kreed5120

Not anymore, but it was previously. By laws were amended after they decided to grant Akron permission.

The system is only going to get worse once revenue sharing is fully implemented. That's another $3-4 million/yr that programs like Utah and Kansas State will have at their disposal to poach our players. I setup a reccurring donation to the NIL, which I'll keep for now, but probably won't bother renewing once the card I have it on expires in a ~year. If role players, like Okonkwo, are getting $500k today then the money I'm contributing really amounts to nothing.

Kicked from the conference. Baseball was a required MAC sport as well, but Akron was granted permission to eliminate it.

The only benefit is it would allow us to keep travel costs down. Using the MVC as an example, it would be a step up in hoops, but I believe Valpo would be our closest conference mate. Per Google maps thats nearly a 5 hour bus ride away. We can get to nearly all the MAC schools in less time than that.

Obviously not that secretive if it's finding it's way to a MAC message board...

I feel it's still TBD how much revenue sharing and direct institutional NIL support will impact the cost of college athletics. If the standard becomes G5 schools paying players $3 million, that means schools like Akron would have to play 2 paycheck games just to fund the players. A cost that doesn't currently exist today.

In the case of Nate, probably not much. The top 20-25 P5 teams are spending an estimated $7-$10+ million in NIL. The Toledo Blade article had other MAC coaches guessing Akron was set to spend ~$1 million. That means Nate received more from Kansas State than Akron had to spend in total, assuming that ~$1.5 million is accurate. As for Nate, it's hard to blame him. $1.5 million for him at his age is pretty life changing. If he's smart with the money and invests the bulk of it, he should be fairly comfortable for retirement by the time his European basketball career comes to an end.

Assuming this was true, I would think that wouldn't roll out Kent. Financially their situation isn't as dire as Akron, but they're still facing budgets deficits. Their president or maybe athletic director a few years back said they were going to prioritize basketball over football. They've pretty much been at the bottom of the MAC in spending and have played 3 paycheck games a year much longer than Akron ever did. Also, they don't play in a city, but they're in close proximity to both Akron and Cleveland.

The portal closes Tuesday. I'm not sure if that means players have 1 or 2 days left to enter their names. Either way I'll be holding my breathe.

I will add Nate has P5 size, strength, and athleticism. At Akron this year he was asked to run the offense, which led to him forcing up several bad shots a game and 1-2 bone head turnovers a game. I by no means am an expert on KSU, but I can't imagine they're bringing him in to be the guy who shoots 10+ fga per game. They probably see him more as a 3rd or 4th scoring option who can defend the opposing teams top guard. If you look at Nate's freshman year, when we had Castaneda and Freeman running the offense and Nate was just a role player, Johnson shot 50% from the field and 42% from 3. They're probably hoping that asking him to do less will lead to him returning closer to those percentages. I'm not saying that will be the case.

Offensively I'd expect him to more closely replace being a more athletic Okonkwo than Nate. He will score by getting put backs on the offensive glass and collecting dump off passes for easy dunks. The added dimension is he'll be able to better run the floor and score in the open court. If he developed a jump shot he'd be a stud. He likely isn't going to be the one creating offense for himself and others in the half court. That's just not his game, which is fine. Groce teams have generally performed best when the offense runs through a ball dominant pg (Cooper, LCJ, Castaneda, Johnson & Johnson).

Evan is already slotted in to replace Gray. He won't even be defending the same player that Johnson would otherwise be defending. If both Johnson's are gone that would mean we'd be down 2 first team All MAC guards and our entire starting 5 from last year. That would be explanation enough why our perceived ceiling would be lower. Besides, my prior higher perceived ceiling accounted for Mahaffey on the team. It's not like he was signed after. Nate literally made the basket that sent us to the tournament and Tavari made the defensive stop that led to the run out. Without them we wouldn't have even made it to the tournment. Yet you're trying to argue we'd be better off with them not here? If that's what you honestly believe we can just agree to disagree. Now if Tavari returns we can manage without Nate, but both gone would be a kick to the groin. We'll see where we go on bigs. I frankly don't think it's worth the money given the premium paid to the position. Guys like Dynes from YSU have received massive bag despite putting up pretty pedestrian numbers in not so great conferences. Dollars go much further spending on forwards and guards as those positions are more plentiful. Not to mention whoever we sign will likely only be playing ~20 minutes a game as they would be splitting time with Lyles.

Go back and read my post in its entirety. The first sentence said TJ isn't officially gone yet. The 2nd sentence said it pertained to only if he does leave. If he returns, I think the Zips are still well positioned. Nate is a loss even if you want to downplay it. That said, if Tavari returns we can replace much of his production in the aggregate with our depth at guard. A luxury other MAC teams wouldn't have. Okonkwo seems to collect a lot of strays here. He was fine in his role, but he wasn't going to be the guy to make or break the team next year. He can be replaced in the portal, but at the same time I don't see us majorly upgrading the position. Reece Potter (who averaged fewer points, rebounds, and blocks than Okonkwo while playing similar minutes) is reportedly requesting $300k in the portal. Whoever we bring in will likely be unproven and looking for an opportunity.

Let's start off by establishing I simply stating our ceiling for next season has likely been lowered. I never stated that we couldn't win the MAC. In fact, I said the opposite. What I said is our odds of winning the MAC are less than what they would have been 1 week ago and the seed we'd get if we do win will likely be lower than had we been able to run it back. Any objective person without Zippy tinted glasses would agree.

Tavari still isn't in the portal officially as I can tell. If it happens, I would have to think Miami enters the season as the favorites. That's obviously not to say that we can't still win the MAC, but it's going to be a much more uphill battle with these departures. We looked positioned to be one of the more hyped mid-major entering the season. Similar to a Drake or McNeese. Now at best even if we find a way to win the MAC, the best we could realistically hope for is being a +15+ underdog 13 seed.

I've thought about avoiding the forum until April 23rd since the portal closes on the 22nd. At least then I'd know what kind of aftermath we're dealing with.

I feel the criticism of players has been a far minority of the posts. I would think just about any one on this board would leave their current job if another offered to double or triple their salary. The majority of the complaints is about how the current system in broken. At least with pro sports, which is what D1 basketball has become, there are mechanisms in place to keep order (multi-year contracts, max deals, soft salary cap, no tampering with players on others rosters). College basketball is the wild west. It's just utter chaos.

I never understood the appeal. The last thing that I'd need is multiple women nagging me to take out the trash. One is plenty.

I don't think it's anything. The page only has ~1300 followers. It seems to be jumping to conclusions solely based off of where Nate is from. Tagging those pages in hopes of driving views to his post.

Where are you seeing that? The last post that I see on his page is his announcement about entering the draft.

I feel you're just setting yourself up for disappointment. If it was just 1 of them leaving because Akron felt they couldn't afford both, especially given our depth at guard, that would be 1 thing. Losing both is extremely devastating. I'm not even going to bother commenting on the state of the roster until the portal closes. This could get ugly fast if others join. We would have been better off had we known of these departures in March. Into mid-April we likely missed out on guys we would have otherwise targeted. Others are likely close to deals with teams they've built relationships over the past several weeks.

If anything was orchestrated it would have been the players holding their own meeting and deciding collectively that they were going to get a bag instead of running it back. No way Bud and Groce pushed out 2 1st Team All-MAC players. Whoever we bring in to replace them likely won't be as good.

When you have 'teamism' and make a commitment to stay there is probably a lot of pressure to not be the one to let your friends down. Once someone else breaks it, it likely becomes easier for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc guy to follow suit.

Also, how disconnected former athletes are from the program. Men's soccer raised the most by a significant sum. A large chunk of that money came from former players.

That was my thought as well lol