kreed5120

Just when you think the MAC can't possibly get any worse...

Yes, someone shared an article from one of the Massachusetts publications interviewing the UMass athletic director. Apparently UMass has a collective specifically for basketball. The athletic director mentioned few to no other MAC programs have one and that it should give them a competitive edge. Apparently the collective pays out $500k/yr. I can easily see them becoming the MAC team that poaches players like Cochran from other MAC teams.

What benefited Duquesne was there were a lot of upsets in the conference tournaments therefore the 11 & 12 seed line was weaker than it normally is. Like for example, Indiana State would have easily been seeded ahead of them had they won the MVC, but they didn't. In a normal year they would have been a low end 12/upper end 13 seed.

I don't think anyone is being overly critical. They're just acknowledging that Groce went all in with this team and now we have no pieces to really build around for next year. I don't have a problem that Groce went all in, but at the same time I'm not eagerly looking forward to next year. Edit: that's not to say we can't compete in the future.

Overall, I can't complain about the effort. I just don't think this team ever really neared its potential this season. Shooting woes plagued us the 2nd half of the season and we really had no way of defending #11 on Creighton. I'd recommend trying to send a double to force him out of his dribble, but they just shoot the 3 too well to do that.

Exactly this. It's not like we have NIL money to buy a new team. What 4th or 5th year senior that has aspirations to play in the tournament is going to want to come to an Akron team devoid of talent? Groce is going to have to find some diamonds in the rough.

Finally getting stops but it might be a little too late.

Good defense by Hunter there not getting backed down.

It will take a miracle for us to get back into this.

Pointless foul by Ali

Game will get out of hand soon if we can't respond with a run of our own. I don't really know what adjustments we can do other than hope they start missing and we can score in transition.

We really needed to get a 2nd on him in the first half. It's going to be hard getting him into foul trouble now. Especially considering the refs seem to not want to call fouls on Creighton.

I felt we made some mistakes late as we were pressing. During that 8-0 run Tribble tried to go after an offensive rebound he had no chance of getting, which led to a transition 3. Ali picking up a 2nd foul when he should have just got back on defense. We must keep our composure and play smart.

I don't think Akron really wants to get into a first to 90 game with Creighton. We need to do something to disrupt their offense.

Seeing how cheap tickets have gotten makes me regret even more that I couldn't get off work.

I believe they recently transitioned to D1. Within the last year or two.

I'm not looking forward to picking power forward. Freeman, Kwan, Romeo Travis, Tree. I might be missing one or two.

Fun for the whole family

Freeman made honorable me mention AP All-American. Also, of note, former OU stand out Mark Sears made 2nd team All-American https://www.instagram.com/p/C4tlczBOHeO/?igsh=bGFjbm13cjBjdnZj

When your athletic department supports FBS, football is what drives realignment. It's why UMass moved to the MAC. All these examples of sustained success are of teams moving to a better conference. Where is Akron going to go? If we were still FCS football, I'm sure the MVC would have called a decade ago. But we do have football and given it's poor state, it makes us one of the least attractive expansion candidates in the MAC.

The committee has always looked at who you best and where you best them when selecting teams. The intention of the NET was to grade wins and losses, not to seed teams. Indiana St went 1-4 in Q1 games. That's why the committee left them out. All that said, I do believe they should have made the tournament, but it's pretty consistent to how the committee has always picked teams.

The scouting report is out on the Zips. Whoever we face will send double teams at Freeman to force him to pick up his dribble. The Zips supporting cast have to prove they're able to make perimeter shots before teams adjust.

The main difference between the 2022 and 2024 teams is that the 2022 team was playing their best basketball in March after struggling early in the year. This year's Akron team is probably better on paper, but that hasn't really translated on the court. I don't think this year's team ever reached their potential, but they were playing their best basketball in November/December. They stumbled to the finish line in March.

The NIT is already dying. For the past several decades American media has been preaching if you're not first you're last when it comes to sports. Numerous teams are now declining the NIT. Players on NIT teams are entering the portal. It's not just college basketball being impacted either. Minnesota booster had to pay their third string QB $30k just so they would have a QB for their bowl game. OSU was playing in the Cotton Bowl, which outside the playoff games, was one of the top 2 bowl games. Numerous players sat out or transferred. It's kind of funny how places like ESPN has been preaching that the only thing that matters is championships, but now they're shell shocked when fans don't care about games without title implications. I kind of view the NIT changes as they were trying to revamp it to make it gain interest. It has been dying for many years now. What would help it more than anything is if the NCAA moved the transfer window portal back to April 1st or so. By then 95% of the teams would be done playing.

I wouldn't watch the tournament even if it had Toledo instead of BGSU. I didn't watch the NIT in years past when they gave mid-major auto bids unless Akron was playing. And even then I'd only watch the Akron games. Outside of March Madness, the average American doesn't care about college basketball. There are already tons of college basketball games on this time of the year. People already spend all of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday watching the tournament. They aren't going to want to do the same on a Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for games that don't matter.