NWAkron

Game was moving along at a nice pace...missed lay up by Parrish, offensive foul off the ball by Utomi, lots of fouls and Huskies coming back.

Nice crowd. Sayles has his arm all bandaged up. Wow, we don't have many players.

We are 3 point favorites. Need this one. Hopefully, the crowd can carry the Zips over the finish line.

We were all hoping to hear that he would be playing soon. Hopefully, he will be ready for the Kittens.

Can't open it. What does it say?

Sort of agree. If a player is that great, they will find him whether he's playing for Akron or Kansas. Marcus Keene is in Italy now after not making it out of NBA summer leagues.

So yet another thing for us to worry about

Greed. It's one of the deadly sins and will eventually destroy what is good about college basketball. So the MAC could be like a feeder league. I'm not sure how many STAR players there are in the MAC that would get the call up to the big leagues.

Meanwhile in Athens, the Kittens are going through some tough stuff right now. I believe their downfall is tied to Jim Christian but more recently to when Jerron Simmons dribbled out the final seconds against Kent in the semis last year and then bolted for Michigan. But I digress.

I wonder if their blog is having the dreaded "At-L*¢£" discussion. I don't recall any seniors on their team this year

NIU started out strong at SUNY Canada but were then blown out. I think we are all jockeying for those first round home games at this point. And my hope is that someone like Ball State will trip up Canada in Cleveland. But I digress.

I'm not going to rationalize or defend what can't be defended, but I can be realistic in that the parts aren't there when we have two centers out of the game. This is a really tortured analogy but imagine not having both Big Dog and Kwan out for a couple games last year. Or maybe going without Zeke and Forsythe for a few games. Im looking at the big picture and hoping end of February beginning of March will give us a few surprises. I also really appreciate the wise analysis from all of you.

looking at the box score, it looks like we only had 7 players in the game. looking forward to a healthy, almost full team against Northern Illinois this Saturday.

Did Torrey Patton play tonight?

Meanwhile, the Kittens are getting Buffaloed at home by Toledo. And so it goes in 2018.

Mixed feelings on that half. Should we be ahead of should we be down by more? Considering our thin bench, I'm not going to complain too much about lack of fouls called. Malcolm makes some odd mistakes for a grad transfer. Maybe because he's not really a point guard. Cotton still playing great.

Crucial 3 minutes for Zips going into the half. Could slip away now.

Refs letting them play.

I don't see Sayles on the bench. Wait, there he is. Just not dressed for game.

Full slate of games in the MAC tonight. Other than Buffalo's likely massive destruction of the Huskies, it's tough to predict the outcomes. I'm going to take Ball State, Toledo, Western and Miami for the wins. As for the Zips, well, it all depends.

https://www.ohio.com/akron/sports/university-of-akron/university-of-akron-basketball-freshman-virshon-cotton-hopes-to-build-upon-recent-success Decent article on Cotton.

They've jumped over KSU and OU as my most hated team in the MAC.

That really was a classic ending. KLac, Rec Center, and Cotton for the win! One of those games where the fans wanted it so much for the players more than themselves (if that makes any sense).

There were a lot of inconsistent calls and maybe he impressed the refs with his move and they rewarded him

Watching the end of the BG game on espn3 was just painful. I think 8 out of the last 10 possessions had fouls called. Of course, BG had to wonder why they all of a sudden didn't get the calls when KLac barged into the lane for that put back and bodies flew all over each other after the deliberately missed free throw. Back on topic, Eastern is always an enigma. They have all this talent and a former coach of the year but always crash and burn in the tournament and the regular season.