mrelegazna

Good to know this is simply all Joe's fault, because it means once he's gone, and we hire a decent replacement, poof! Problem solved! I love easy answers! Sarcasm aside, unfortunately like most problems this big they are also complex, with no easy answers (I watch a lot of docs and shows about plane crashes and other man-made disasters, and it is almost NEVER a single cause or issue, it's always a chain or series of them) or single scapegoats. Not just with respect to Joe, but Nemer - I don't think that just because he made a PR statement that contains PR instead of details and wonk means he doesn't care about the problem and/or is ill-equipped to fix (or is secretly fine with it because it will help him cut or drop down the program). Maybe time will tell that he IS incompetent and/or anti-football, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt until we have a lot better reason to feel otherwise. We're just gonna have to be patient, because this isn't getting fixed overnight nor does it seem Joe will be out the door before the season starts.

(First, sorry to dredge up something 4 weeks old and 3-4 topics ago) You know who else did this last year? IU Indy. Brought in the successful coach of the University of Indianapolis. Had ten new guys, 5 of which were from his last UIndy squad, 4 others from DII/Jucos, and a lone D1 transfer. The result? An improvement in league play from 2-18 to 6-14. I find this fascinating, and telling. With the right coaching, you can even do decently in D1 with quote-unquote D2 guys. It's made me pull for them.

Came here to say this. That's what makes this so g_d d_mn embarrassing. I guess no other school has done this poorly on APR since Idaho in 2014? (and miss me with arguments amounting to, "Everyone cheats but us"). And in spite of this, we're also among the worst teams ON the field too, post-Bowden! This all points to not just badness, but downright incompetence. We can only hope Nemer, Goodrich and any other relevant newbloods are competent. What a fun thing to root for. Just be competent. Yay. And despite all this, I do too. Even if we get some serious miracle workers in place, it'll still take a long time. In the meantime, my goals as a fan for this season and the ones in the foreseeable future are "don't be in the conversation for worst team in the MAC" and "Don't be so bad academically that were banned from post-season." Again, yay.

Is this, like, a "if I have no expectations I can't get disappointed" type deal?

Most of you guys are better than X's and O's stuff than I am, but in looking at form and expectations: BAD: Arizona was T3rd in what I think was the second toughest conference in the country, beating their preseason expectations. BAD: Made the finals in the conference tourney, too. GOOD: Finished the regular season 3-5 in their last 8. 5-6 in their last 11 if you include the conference tourney. GOOD: Failed to beat single high major or tournament team in their non-conference schedule.

CBS: How did UNC get into the field? Committee Talking Head: Well, because Memphis beat UAB. If they hadn't, UAB and Memphis would both be in and UNC would be the first team out. CBS (Jay Wright): Great answer. LOL, what an absolute cop-out of a non-answer, which of course gets him a pat on the back from his TV bedfellows. So gross. Just go ahead and declare the 20 or 30 teams that the richest conferences, schools, and TV execs want and call the winner of that tournament the national champion.

in 2019, Buffalo made it all the way up to a #6 seed from the MAC with THREE regular season losses, although their OOC resume included beating two high majors, including to-be-#9 seed Syracuse.

That would mean only one loss all year, right? Even as much as the committee hates mid-majors, I think that would get us all the way to an 8 or a 9.

According to bracket aggregator bracketmatrix, who is currently tracking 111 brackets, 9 have us as a 14 seed. The other 102 all have us as a 13 seed. I think I know what seed we're gonna get! http://www.bracketmatrix.com/

Came here to post this. Unbidden, too. He wasn't asked, "who are some dark horses to look out for?" He was just riffing in general. 👍

They think the refs and announcers we're against them. Of course, every fanbase thinks that, but we're the only ones correct about it.

The Zips held Miami to just 7 points in the last 10:50 and just 4 points in the last 8:32.

As an extra FU, the NIT selection show the next day on ESPNU went to their first commercial saying, "Coming up, find out who ABC U, XYZ State, and AKRON will be playing in the NIT (little Akron highlight montage plays)!" And then we weren't selected at all. Anyone else remember that? 26-7 and no post-season. For any newer fans or young'uns....besides Middleton, that team was lead by Romeo Travis and Dru Joyce III, two local Akron kids (high school teammates of LeBron) that were charismatic, likeable and so, so, so good. This was before the CBI and other smaller post-season tourneys existed. I haven't loved a Zip team as much as I loved that one.

Still hands-down the toughest loss of my life of sports fandom, especially since Cedrick Middleton is perhaps my alltime favorite Zip.

My favorite part of this is how the thread title about Dambrot referred to him as "Ol' KD" for YEARS until the end, when all of the sudden THAT WAS TOO DISRESPECTFUL! AND WE SHOULDN'T BE MAD AT HIM ANYMORE! and it was changed to just Keith.

In fairness, the MAC website showed #1 vs. #8 as the noon eastern game for weeks now.

But NIU comes through for them! They got all of the elsewhere help they needed, with NIU and WMU both winning as road dogs. Alas, they couldn't help themselves and had their doors blown off from go by a Miami team locked into their seed. It is to laugh.

Note from a hoophead and neutral observer:

St. Francis first ever win over an FCS team. Last week they lost 18-10 to Dayton, who is non-scholarship for football. 😂

As I said elsewhere, no shade to anyone involved in scheduling, I'm sure it's hard, a ton is out of your hands, cancellations happen, and (although this is being debated), I suspect that a lot of teams see little upside to scheduling Akron, and turn us down. But in some respects, I feel like this is the worst OOC I've seen from the Zips in my 35-or-so years of fandom. We didn't get a single P5 school; I wonder when is the last time that happened? I personally really want these games, we've come close against teams like UNC and Louisville (when they were still good) and beaten plenty of P5 also-rans. I think these are good for confidence and visibility. Now, you can argue that in the past we've scheduled a couple P5s but also had too many Chicago States otherwise, and were therefore worse schedules. That's fair. It does seem clear that Groce is prioritizing playing teams "at our level," so to speak. On this front, I think they did an okay-ish job but not as good as last year. No conference basement-dwellers, but also few that really challenged for conference titles last year; only St. Mary's and the two Ivy schools. Like last year at UNLV, we are going out west for ONE game before coming back. Can that be good economically? Can we really not couple that anyone else? Can we not get a home-and-home against anyone out West to give us more bang for our travel buck?

UT maybe, Kent maaaaybe, but surely there are schools the would be happy to play Miami and would not be happy to play us. Also, personally, as I am not in the athletic department office on a daily basis, I am loathe to insinuate anyone involved with Akron scheduling is falling down on the job.

Funny you mention them. Read on. Speaking as a college basketball scheduling nerd in general and early-season tournament nerd in particular, I have some bad news: these school-hosted four-team tournaments never "pave the way" for more legitimate opposition down the road. Omaha, Alabama State, and Lamar are about the level of opposition even when Power 5 schools host them. UTEP's Sun Bowl tournament probably comes closest to bringing in tough foes, and it's not like we had to get through Duke and Kansas to win that. Example 1: Ohio State's tourney will have Evansville, UW-Green Bay and Campbell (granted, a notch better than ours, but only a notch). Example 2: Missouri's tourney will have Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Pacific, and they're still trying to fill the fourth. I don't really understand the point of these, unless it's to give the host a confidence boost and a trophy. Here's my source, which is a great resource: https://www.bloggingthebracket.com/2024/5/13/24140186/2024-25-mens-college-basketball-exempt-multi-team-events-mte-thanksgiving-early-season-tournaments

Huh. Just goes to show you how subjective taste is. I think Vanderbilt's is the most boring and therefore bad of the group. Simple block letters may be sported by some iconic schools but you can't shortcut your way to icon status by copying their logo, and I say again, Vanderbilt's is boring. The Michigan block M is boring. I actually like Western Michigan's...the drawback to having brown as one of your primary colors is obvious, so I admire any team with the guts to do it. Come to think of it, all NE Ohio football fans should understand what I'm saying. I'm neutral on both Akron's and George Mason's. My alltime favorite Akron logo is the A with the kangaroo head.

Now I'm imagining a guy who's bitter because he's cold-called the athletic department offering to be the strength and conditioning coach and was turned down despite his pleas of "but I made lance corporal in the Army!" and "I pretty much tear up Wadsworth crossfit!"

Have Freeman and the other Akron graduating guys actually graduated, and as such, are they able to graduate-transfer anywhere?