kreed5120

Kent is just a tough place to win. They schedule 3 games a year against the likes of Alabama, OSU, Clemson, Oklahoma, etc. That means they have to go go 6-3 in all other games just to make a bowl. Their facilities are absolutely terrible. As I understand it what they budget for assistants is near the bottom half of the MAC. Their AD publicly has come out and said the athletic programs focus is basketball. Lewis likely just felt he achieved all he could at Kent and it wasn't even enough to get him into the discussion for what I'm guessing is his dream job at his alma mater (Wisconsin). He probably feels going back to being a P5 OC increases his opportunity to get where he wants to be.

P5 OC to MAC HC back to P5 OC. I have to imagine his plan when he took the Kent job was to use it to catapult himself to a P5 by year 4 or 5. Since that's not happening it appears he decided to jump ship.

I suppose the plus of not making a bowl this year is it frees up the coaches and assistants to spend more time on finalizing a class.

Your first link is just CBS personal rankings. NET rankings are published on the NCAA official website. https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basketball-men/d1/ncaa-mens-basketball-net-rankings

Yes, honestly even if Colorado has few quality caliber P5 starters you'd think a coach would want to retain players for depth. A coach in basketball may be able to turn over an entire roster in one off season in basketball. In football there are 85 scholarship players and of those I'd imagine 50 or more see meaningful snaps over the course of a season due to injuries, sub packages, special teams etc.

The first official NET rankings are out. For those not aware this is the metric the NCAA created to replace RPI for the purpose of evaluating resumes and to help seed teams. This is how the MAC currently stands. 1) Kent St. - 24 2) Akron - 137 3) Toledo - 156 4) Ball St - 165 5) Ohio - 182 6) Buffalo - 185 7) CMU - 220 '8) NIU - 287 9) BGSU - 295 10) EMU - 325 11) Miami - 329 12) WMU - 338

The MAC East during Lewis tenure has also been by far the worst division in all of college football. Despite this he is 19-17 in MAC games. Edit: IMO no MAC coach should get much consideration for a P5 job, but Candle has the best resume of the current MAC coaches 53-32 (35-19). Two conference titles.

This seems like a lateral move at best. I wonder if his reason for leaving was that he was 25-24 at Louisville and fearful that he'd be entering next year on the hot seat had he stayed.

If Lewis is seriously the best Cincinnati can do, they would just be better off promoting their offensive or defensive coordinator to the position. At least doing that would help them avoid the mass exodus of transfers.

Would it be fair to assume that the reason our pass defense was #1 last season was because we were so bad at defending the run that teams didn't bother throwing the football?

With Deion leaving Jacksonville State I'm sure they can be eliminated from this list

I believe the last time a team went undefeated in MAC play was Cincinnati in the 1949-1950 season. That's when the MAC played an 8 game conference season. Nobody is going to go undefeated this season.

Being objective they have looked like the best team in the MAC so far. Thankfully there is still a lot of season left to play and you don't get any prizes for being the best MAC team in November/December.

Zips going to Zip...

Actually they're State University of New York at Buffalo. It should be SUNY at Amherst

I'm fairly certain that kid ended up choosing a different school too

Here is the complete rankings with an explanation of how it's calculated. It looks like Michigan State and Auburn are tied for 3rd among 5-7 teams so I assume if Buffalo loses, a bowl will have an option between either team. https://collegefootballnews.com/2022/11/ncaa-academic-progress-rate-football-rankings-1-130

Also, you pretty much have to keep "recruiting" guys on your own roster that you want to keep because if not they may transfer elsewhere.

Yes, it goes off of APR. I'm not surprised to see Rice #1, but I would have never have guessed UNLV would have placed ahead of Georgia Tech or Vanderbilt

I'm pretty sure outside of football college hockey is the most expensive sport to operate. That's why there is only 62 D1 men's teams. In order for Penn State to add Men's Hockey the Buffalo Bills owner had to endow something in the neighborhood of $100 million to cover the costs. Penn State athletics is obviously in a much better place than Akron financially.

I kind of just expect the portal to keep growing and growing. It wouldn't surprise me if each of the next 5 or so years sets the new record for transfers by beating the previous years total.

😴

Yes, and when Dawson started making them that's when the offense took off. If we don't get better perimeter shooting from guys like Hankerson or Hunter this teams ceiling is making the MAC tournament semifinals. That's not to say those guys won't improve as the season progresses, but if come March they're shooting like they are now, we're going to be in a world of hurt.

I feel the big difference is last years team had better shooters. Dawson and Ali were proven perimeter shooters, which made it harder for teams to send hard double teams at Freeman. When they did Freeman is a proficient enough passer to get them the ball for the open 3. Freeman is still making those passes, but the difference is Hankerson, Hunter, & Tribble aren't making them where as last year Dawson & Ali would make them. If I'm playing Akron I'm sending weak side help to double Freeman any time he touches the ball in the paint.

Reality is unless Hunter miraculously turns into the shooter that the coaches claim he is, we're going to struggle to win any game that we need to score 70 to win.