kreed5120

There was a whole offseason of team workouts that Groce had to evaluate Mosengo. As @Hilltopper said, if at team practices he thought Mosengo was good enough to play, he would have played. Groce has had no problem playing true freshman who he thought could contribute. He redshirts the guys who after seeing them in practice, determines they're not good enough to see the court. I do agree with your premise that a transfer that can play today is better than a raw freshman if you have the choice between the two. The problem is when you're sitting on an empty scholarship and there is no mutual interest between you and whatever players are left in the portal. You're not just going to let a scholarship go unused.

Transfers are a two way street. In order to get someone that can come in and be a key contributor day 1, that player has to also want to come to Akron. Like I'm sure Groce would have loved to have gotten a 6'6-6'7 wing that could score double figures and guard positions 1-4 to replace Ali, but the problem is all schools want those type of players. Many of which are more enticing destinations for 20 year olds who don't even know where Akron is on a map. Sometimes you're forced to have to take a lotto ticket on guys to fill out the roster and hope they develop into something special. Groce can't hand pick his roster like a Gonzaga, Kentucky, or Kansas can. He has to look at what's available and fight for the guys who fall through the cracks.

I feel what some here seem to be missing is we're losing Hankerson too. That means there will be minutes available at the 2 guard position too. That means it's still very possible for us to bring in a transfer to give us 25-30 minutes a night plus still giving Clark and Tavari opportunities to both play. IMO until Tavari becomes a better decision maker on the court, he's more a 2 guard anyways.

I wonder if this was a result of Groce being straight with him about what his role with the team would be next year. Either way hopefully this frees up that much needed scholarship for a veteran pg.

The MAC is what it is. Every 10 or so years we'll have a team good enough for serious at-large consideration. Whether or not that team wins the MAC tournament, like Buffalo did, or not is the determining factor of whether or not it would be a 1 or 2 bid year. So many MAC schools are cheating out on basketball these days. I don't even see the MAC being as good as it was ~5 years ago, when it was arguably the 8th or 9th best conference.

Also, two games against Sun Belt teams (opponents still TBD) Edit: I know they said they planned to schedule one game in Nov/Dec and the other in February. They also said they'd be using records to match up similar teams. If that's the case I see Marshall finished 3rd in the Sun Belt, the same as us in the MAC. I wonder if that's who we get assigned to or if they will assign that game based off preseason rankings instead.

I'm fairly certain that only pertains to undergrads. You were always allowed to grad transfer while maintaining eligibility. I saw nothing about them eliminating that. https://www.ncsasports.org/recruiting/ncaa-transfer-rules#:~:text=NCAA graduate transfer rules&text=You must graduate from your,school that has your sport.

He at the very least needs to develop a midrange game this offseason before NBA scouts would bother looking at his tape. The NBA game is much more a guard driven league compared to college. There aren't many bigs in the league with limited range anymore as teams don't want the driving lanes clogged. What Freeman has going for him is he's a capable defender on guards so he does fit the positionless basketball mantra the league is moving towards.

This is just you projecting. The rumor was he transferred to be closer to his family and girlfriend, not because he thought he was too good for Akron. Yes, he regressed with Butler in a year where he missed the preseason and the first month of the season due to injury. While also learning a new offense with a new coach and facing stiffer competition. He's not the first person to transfer up and regress. He certainly won't be the last. In Groce system, he showed he can be an All-MAC caliber player. To me that's much more relevant than how he performed at Butler. Effort can only get you so far. You saw that this year when we showed we just didn't have what it took to beat Kent and were vastly exposed against Toledo. We're losing arguably our best player. I'm not saying Ali is as good as Castaneda, but he can certainly give us ~75% of what Castaneda did, which makes stomaching the loss more manageable. Edit: At the end of the day as a fan, I want to see Akron do well. IMO an Akron team with Ali is going to be much better than one without him. That to me is why I said it's obvious.

We wouldn't have even made it past Buffalo in the 1st round of the MAC tournament without him, but hey let's not let facts get in the way of a good story

Groce started him as a true freshman and I don't recall him ever getting benched. I never questioned his effort on either end of the court when he was here. I don't see why it would suddenly be a concern now.

That would be a hell of a hire and signal to me that BGSU is serious about trying to elevate their program.

The answer seems pretty obvious. He'd instantly be the 2nd best player on the team and our best perimeter player. This team lacked perimeter shooting even with Castaneda. Remove Castaneda and we're probably (as the roster stands right now) the worst shooting team in the MAC. Anyone who wouldn't take a proven .400 3P% shooter because him leaving hurt their feeling needs to grow up.

It's not that they didn't get invited. They choose to not participate.

I didn't look at the bracket, but it looks like they got the home game because of arena renovations. That makes more sense.

How YSU got a top 4 seed, but Toledo didn't is beyond me. By every measureable Toledo was ahead of YSU. Michigan deserves the 2 seed they got as they were literally a bubble team. It should be OSU playing @ Toledo & YSU @ Michigan.

The NIT only seeds the top 4 seeds in each region. They assign opponents by proximity to keep costs low. That's why Toledo was assigned to play Michigan.

I'd be interested in a 2 or 4 game series between Akron & Duquesne, not a meaningless end of season exhibition game. The schools are less than 2 hours apart so travel would be cheap, and they are the caliber of a top half MAC school so it would be a decent test to prepare us for MAC play. Similar to what Marshall has provided us over the last 8 years or so.

I really wish they would just expand the NIT to 64 teams, like how the women's is set up, then eliminate these third rate tournaments.

Boals is a good coach. I'd expect OU to be a contender most years. They were just rebuilding this year.

The real solution is I think we need to transfer someone in for the position, like we did with Castaneda. Handing the keys to the offense over to someone Groce pretty much benched the second half of the year for his poor decision making would seem like a recipe for disaster. That's not to say Tavari couldn't win the position mid-season. I think he had a really high ceiling. He just seems really raw and I'd prefer him more as a 2 guard at this stage of his career.

Anyone who thinks we don't need more bigs clearly forgets the games against Toledo where we asked 6'2 guards to guard 1st Team All-MAC Shumate. Theoretically on paper we have guys with size, but that doesn't matter if they aren't good enough to see the court for meaningful minutes. Dawson should help some as he can play the 3 or 4, but we need to add someone else to the rotation that is >6'5 who can give us ~15 productive minutes a night.

Is he though? It seemed Clarke passed him in the rotation once he returned healthy. Tavari has been a bit careless with the ball. He's a better scorer, but Clarke seems like the better facilitator on offense. The thing with Clarke is you need him surrounded by capable shooters as he's never going to be a guy who can take over the game offensively. He's also a vastly better on ball defender. Edit: I do think Tavari has the higher ceiling, but the game just seems a little fast for him still. He needs to improve his in game decision making.

We're in it because we've actually played pretty good defense in the half court. Our miscues offensively combined with Kent capitalizing on them is why we're trailing.