kreed5120

I'm less worried about it now than back when our best player was pushing 300 lbs.

CMU could easily of knocked off Buffalo in the semi-final game. There is a reason the MAC hasn't had an undefeated team in conference play in 70 years. It's too deep of a conference so teams are vulnerable to lose on nearly any given night.

OU OU has a young team that crumbles under pressure. Toledo is a veteran squad that has a big 3 that's as good as any MAC teams big 3 besides ours.

The thing is those fans will jump off the bandwagon quicker than they joined once Akron returns to their mean. Gonzaga has built up enough good will with their fans that they would still sell out even if they had a couple sub par years. Look at the season Buffalo had last season and this year they're only averaging 3,605 fans. There is a huge difference between experiencing a 10 minutes of fame and actually building something sustainable.

The university has to buy tickets in football to stay FBS compliant. There is no rules in basketball that teams have to sell x-number of tickets therefore the attendance numbers at basketball I feel are an actual representation of the actual number of tickets sold (excluding students obviously). What you have is season ticket holders that just show up for certain games or none at all. My one buddy got season tickets one year and the only game he went to was the Kent game.

Yeah, Akron is something like 1 of 60 universities competing in ESports. It's a huge growing industry between younger millennials and generation z. After some initial start up costs I can't imagine it costs much to operate, but I do think it will lead some students to pick Akron when they may have went somewhere else instead. Even though we all think it's dumb, it's probably the one thing Akron was forward thinking about and got right.

Mark Few is making $1.8 million at Gonzaga and in reality that's with him giving them a discount. Groce is already the highest paid coach in the MAC at $650k. Oats just left Buffalo and they were willing to pay him somewhere in the neighborhood of $800k-$1M. Where is the broke Akron athletic department going to come up $2m/year to pay to retain that level of a coach? Heck we couldn't even match the $1M offer that Duquesne gave Dambrot.

You can just look 15 miles down the road for an example of those last 3 schools you mentioned. You can also look 40 miles to the north where CSU built a 13k arena after they thought they made it to the big time with that Sweet 16 appearance. The only way Akron will consistently fill the JAR is if they can become a consistent top 30-40 basketball program. That's not easy to do in the MAC.

Attendance always lags behind success. By Akron's standards we're coming off 2 straight sub par years and entered this season with low expectations. Our season ticket base is probably at the lowest in quite some time. This part of the country will never be college basketball crazy. We had sustained success under Dambrot and we were still only averaging ~3500 a game.

Part of me really doesn't want to play EMU in that Thursday game. We've seen throughout the years that playing at the Q has had a negative impact on a lot of MAC jump shooters as they're use to playing in smaller gyms. For a team like EMU who relies on defense and attacking the paint, this is a great equalizer for them.

I felt the same, but didn't want to jinx myself saying it since we play them Friday. I wouldn't be surprised if PCCC doesn't even make it to Cleveland. They've been so hit or miss all season. They could easily lose to WMU or CMU in the 1st round. They haven't won 4 games in a row since November.

He had to win 3 tournament games before Illinois came calling last time. He inherited a depleted Akron roster so this is really his first year achieving anything. Akron simply making the tournament I don't see changing much. If he wins a game or 2 in the tournament, I could see an A10 or AAC team becoming interested. Whether it's actually much of a step up I'd guess would depend on which school in those conferences came calling. I feel it would take multiple years of success before he gets another chance at a P6 school. One good season at Akron isn't going to make those schools forget his 5 year sub par tenure at Illinois. Edit: Akron should be returning MPOY (Yes, I'm already calling it) LCJ and has some nice pieces to plug into the roster next season. If he follows up this year with another great year next year, I'd think that would be his quickest ticket to return to a P6 job. One could argue a mid-table to below average AAC job would be an upgrade over Akron, but then he'd also have to spend x-number of years rebuilding the roster enough to compete.

In their defense the MAC tournament has been around for something like 40 years and they are the only MAC team that hasn't won it.

I don't think that's much of a surprise. Every key metric (NET, Kenpom, BPI, etc.) has us well out in the lead and even by the eye test we've looked like the best team. The problem is, as we're all well aware, in a single elimination tournament the best team doesn't always win.

Man has the video quality on phones improved dramatically in the last decade.

We really just need to take care of our own business and focus on going 1-0 against Ohio tomorrow. We'd already have the #1 seed clinched had we won @BGSU, but we didn't. We lost our right to control our own destiny.

There is still 1 scenario where we'd win a tie-breaker. We lose to Ohio, beat Kent BGSU loses to Buffalo and beats Kent From there we'd need CMU to finish ahead of Toledo in the standings.

It he stays it probably means he had a Rob Senderhoff type tenure. Dambrot turned down some offers throughout the years so if Groce is anywhere in the realm of what Dambrot accomplished, I see him taking the first non-dead end step up offer he gets. Unlike Dambrot he has no connection to Akron so he has nothing keeping him here except not having a better current option.

I hope Groce gets hired away as that probably means Akron won at least 1 tournament game and had multiple seasons of success. Dru needs to land an assistant job somewhere then have a successful few seasons as a head coach at someplace like Stony Brook (like Boals) before I'd feel comfortable giving him the job. All in all that would probably take 6-8 years, probably more. Akron, along with Buffalo and Ohio, are probably the best coaching jobs in MAC basketball. I don't think we should just give the position to someone because he played here.

Just because we were dumb enough to add two sports that we can't afford doesn't mean Kent should do the same. We should be cutting sports to reduce our deficit, not adding.

Beating them

This has trap game written all over it. Sandwiched between a big road win and our season finale against our main rival. Ohio has been playing some good basketball of late. Not a team that we want to take lightly.

I'm going to be feeling dirty cheering for Kent Tuesday. I may have to take a shower after the game to wash the filth off of me.

Yes, that's true. They're 7-0 in MAC games decided by 3 points or less.

A lot of that had to do with the volume number of shots Akron missed. It's easier to secure a defensive rebound than it is an offensive one.