mrelegazna

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?

It's hard for me not to get into the weeds here with abstract basketball philosophy with this sort of stuff. Outside shooting, I believe, is VERY much a mental game once you've achieved a certain level of shooting competence (for which I would describe pretty much all D1 guards and most frontcourt players as it pertains to outside shooting). You have to have confidence in your stroke. And, I believe, the most difficult time to manifest that confidence is when the other team is on a big run and has all the momentum. So difficult, in fact, I don't think you should be doin' it! So many times this year I've begged the Zips on my TV to stop shooting 3's and jumpers, get it inside by either feeding Enrique or penetrating. I know these guys think they can hit that knockdown three that will stop the bleeding, shut up the other team, and get back on track, just by doing the same thing they do thousands of times in practice and dozens of times in games, but it's not that simple. You have to have some sort of understanding of how momentum swings work, and how to break momentum when it's in the other team's favor. I don't pretend to know how to do that, exactly. I think it has something to do with staying in the moment - there is no yesterday, there is no tomorrow, there is no 2 minutes ago, there is no 2 minutes from now - there is only this shot - but not only is that easier said than done, but how the hell do you immunize yourself as much as possible from the other team's runs while taking advantage of the confidence boosts to your shot that having momentum in your team's favor gets you? Again, I don't know how to solve that puzzle, but a) if the Zips don't have one already, I would implore Groce, and indeed every Zips coach from now to the end of time to hire a sports psychologist, full time, to work on just this type of thing. b), Groce needs to stop giving the green light to everyone at all times, which I kind of suspect he gives players. A lot of posters have made great points about how Groce brings in unselfish, good people as players, and the transfer portal so far has hit us far, far less than most programs. This means Groce is earning players' trust, and this is probably one way he is doing it: I believe in you (and therefore, your shot) in all circumstances. That's obviously well-intentioned, but if I'm coaching a basketball team I am absolutely putting the kibbosh on all jumpers, from anybody, at certain points of the game (namely, as described above, when the other team is on a run). I would try to instill in my players that such prohibitions have absolutely nothing to do with my faith or belief in them or their game and everything to do with knowing the best way to get ourselves out of hairy game situations. It's an easy and frequent lesson that there's no player bigger than the team. But there's also no player bigger than the GAME. The game works a certain way, and if it's going a way you don't like, you might have to check your ego in order to correct it. Great post. I think something happened - who knows what, maybe nothing concrete - around the James Madison game that took the venom out of their stingers pretty much permanently. They got their groove back in spurts in the MAC tourney and the first half against Creighton, but this team just stopped playing as well as they can, and definitely not out of a lack of effort. So again, I think a sports psychologist is in order. To answer your question, the team met my preseason expectations, and fell short of my midway-through-the-season expectations.

Reminds me of an anecdote from one of the memoirs of Lewis Grizzard, a syndicated columnist in the 80s. I'm paraphrasing because I can't find it online, but he was the sports editor of a paper that ran a story about a HS girls basketball star. "What's amazing about Mary Jo Sue Ellen," said her coach, "is that she's made 18 of 20 of her free throw shots this year." Except the o in shots got turned into an i and went to press like that. "You idiot," said my boss. "I'm suing," said Mary Jo Sue Ellen's dad. "What about the other 2?" asked one guy who called in.

Holy hell, how did I forget about that one? Must've blocked it out. A+ typo.