kreed5120

I'm puzzled how Preston made 1st team. Not because of his talent, but because he only played in 9 MAC games. He didn't even play enough games to qualify for MAC stat leaders. Your best ability is your availability.

It's going to be important for Trimble to find his shot again. I'm not feeling as good about our chances as I was a month ago, but we still have the best player in the MAC so we will have a fighters chance no matter who we face.

I'm kind of surprised to see both EMU and NIU make coaching changes during the pandemic. Neither program has invested much into their basketball programs in a long while so one would think they would try to keep costs down.

It seems teams have figured out how to attack our defense. When we were playing our best basketball, we had the #1 defense in the MAC. The defense has really faded over the last month or so. We were still able to squeeze out some narrow victories early when our defense first regressed, but now those narrow victories have turned into losses. We still have the best player in the MAC so we certainly have a fighters chance in Cleveland. The offense has just been too inconsistent to make me to think we can rely solely on it to win 3 straight games. We need to get back to playing defense like we were in January.

My memory appears to be failing me. I'm not sure why I thought he didn't play that game

We got to play OU twice without Preston. I'd say the scheduling was very fortunate to us. We just failed to capitalize.

Pretty pathetic showing to lose to Ohio by 17 when they were without their best player. I suppose it's better to have one of these dud showings now instead of in Cleveland. In all likelihood this loss likely means Toledo won the regular season title as they're now a full game up with the head to head tie-breaker so pretty much up 2 games with 3 left to play.

I have no problem with GT critiquing the Zips. Those statements were fair and accurate. The problem is as the Zips beat writer he should know Akron as of now would own a tie-breaker over Toledo therefore we don't need Toledo to do anything. What we need is to win the games in front of us and hope covid doesn't prevent us from playing fewer games than Toledo. As of now both teams are scheduled to play 19 games.

That was my take away too. I'm guessing it was intentional on the MAC's part that way it gives Akron, Ohio, and Kent all a chance to get to 19 games played. By my math Buffalo would be at 18. Those are the only teams that have any realistic chance at winning the MAC this year.

Considering how Toledo has no bench it's probably the only way he can get off the court for a water break

I saw an article not too long ago that Akron is looking to sell or lease some of their building space as they no longer need all this square footage since enrollment is no longer pushing 30k. It seemed like a solid plan to get some of this debt off our books.

Hopefully Miami wins tonight and can separate itself from WMU Edit: Then again I hope WMU wins tonight too

You aren't going to win many games when you shoot under 40% from the field. Luckily for us we were playing one of the worst teams in all of division 1

Last 10 minutes is normally when good teams pull away from the not so good ones.

Boston college must not care that much to try to win in the ACC if Gates is one of their top candidates. It's not me trying to knock Gates either. He seems to be doing a good job at CSU, but he's only in his second year. It seems very premature for him to get P6 offers.

JAR needs to allow alcohol sales

As of now we would own a tie-breaker, but we're not actually tied. Toledo is up 1/2 game.

Yes, anything can happen in a single elimination game. What I was more so wanting to get at is the only team that I want to avoid playing as long as possible is Toledo. I like Akron's chances against any of the other teams.

The only team that concerns me is Toledo.

If you have two teams that are tied for first, the first tie-breaker is head-to-head. Akron and Toledo split the season series. The next tie-breaker would be win percentage against 3rd place team. That's currently tied so it would move onto the 4th then 5th etc. until one has a better win percentage against the other against that same common opponent. Since our losses are to the 2 MAC cellar dwellers and Toledo's were to 2 middle of the MAC teams, we come out ahead.

We would assuming we end the season with the same record. As of now Toledo has 1 more win than us.

I always like winning the MAC regular season because if we fail to win the tourney, we still get the NIT as a consolation prize. Any postseason basketball is better than no postseason basketball.

The NET rating is only 3 years old and there wasn't even a tournament played last year. That means only once has the selection committee picked a tournament field with the NET ranking being used as a metric. You might have NET confused with RPI.

I wouldn't be surprised if the NIT gets cancelled

There are 32 auto bids meaning there are only 36 at-large bids up for grab. Roughly 22 of those auto bids are from 1 bid conferences so really between the remaining 10 auto-bids and 36 at-large bids the committee is looking to put up what they feel are the most deserving 46 teams. If Akron finishes with a NET ranking of 60 their name won't even be mentioned as a candidate on the selection show. If you play in one of those 1 bid conferences, you net a net ~40 to be in serious discussion. As of now we have 0 Q1 wins and 2 Q4 losses. We will be fortunate to get an at-large to the NIT if we fail to win the MAC tourney.