mrelegazna

I'm more bullish on the state of the program overall than I'm seeing from other posters, but there are some concerns, and the biggest one to me is this: Going into the season, the book on the Zips was that their deep frontcourt would carry the team offensively; with the backcourt being thinner, and our best guard being both ineffective and uninterested in shooting behind the arc, this would be a team that bullies teams inside. Instead, this team finished in the uppermost quartile in 3-pointers taken as a percentage of total field goal attempts (41.5%) despite ending up 274th in the country in 3PT%. This makes me worried that Groce is not going to meaningfully adjust his approach to the game based on the personnel he has. We still won that MAC largely because we had a generational talent in Freeman during a very down year for the MAC. We backed into the championship and the tournament, and while we have never won in the tourney, this was our worst loss in it. The was supposed to be one of the greatest Akron teams of all time. So, if my complaint about Groce is fair, and endures...sure hope he finds some shooters! But that gets me to the good news. I do think Groce is a good recruiter and a good motivator, and for these reasons I'd be willing to wager that, whatever the consensus is on how Akron will fare next year once we have an idea of what our roster looks like, we will exceed those expectations.

A complete rebuild was coming regardless of how this game shook out.

I don't remember the details, but he got into a fight.

You can at least be glad that you aren't an Ohio State and Akron fan, like I am. Not only do they (naturally) play each other with a lot more frequency than Illinois plays Akron, but also there's a contingent here that finds it disloyal or contemptible for Akron fans to be OSU fans. We debate it sometimes! I hate it!

I said my heart goes out to him. I take that back.

*My heart does go out to Rollins. *I don't think we talk enough about stellar our defense is. They kept us in this game while we had an all-too-frequent drought on offense, and not for the first time. *Taking the lead in the series against Can't is a nice little cherry on top. So is beating them three times. *We don't look like we have completely shaken off our issues from down the stretch, but we did beat a Can't team that rolled into the finals in style, an Ohio team that made us look terribad in our last matchup against them, and bottom line, we are the one and only champions of the 2023-24 Mid-American Conference.

5 straight empty possessions since I typed that. Apparently I have the power to jinx. KENT'S PLAYING REALLY WELL, SPORTS GODS!

Been a minute since I've seen an Akron game where both teams are simultaneously hot on offense.

Uh, the scorebug is wrong, isn't it? It's counting the 3, which the announcer said didn't count? Am I wrong about something? I have a head cold so I'm a little slow and hard of hearing ATM.

Given that we are only down 1 anyway and Freeman has 0 fouls, I'll take it.

Any idea if/how far they are going to push the tipoff time for TV's sake? The lead-in isn't close to being over. EDIT: Never mind

1. That he was here for so long before going to Duquesne makes "bail" a more apt word to use, not less. 2. "How many mid-major coaches...." That's just it. He didn't leave to go coach Ohio State or Villanova or something. How many coaches can you name who consistently won and then moved to a program that's on par at best with the one they just left? Or if that's too subjective, any non-P5 + Big East job? 3. The "personal ties with Duquesne" stuff might carry some weight if he wasn't born and raised in Akron and a graduate of Akron. Those are some pretty strong ties!

This, this, THIS is why I can't be all Fare Thee Well about Dambrot. If you bail on the program you built for a lateral move at BEST because you think you have a better shot at an at-large in the Atlantic 10, then clearly you CAN'T take it. This was such a slap in the face to Akron over an issue Akron can't control. Go VCU.

Now they're going to be in trouble for not coming through.

I've been watching college and pro basketball for 40 years, and I can't recall a player who was this much better, this dominant, over his typical opponents (the MAC in this case) than Enrique Freeman.

It's not really true that we've been playing down to the competition all year. By my count, before JMU, Akron was 11-6 against the spread in games where they were favored. In other words, beating teams worse than Vegas said we should be beating them 11 out of 17 times. Since JMU, of course, they have been reeling; 1-6 against the spread (JMU inclusive), including failing to cover the spread by 22 points (EMU), 17 (NIU), and 14 (Buffalo). Even if you're not a gambling man, how a team is doing against the spread is useful to gauge how a team is doing vs. expectations, and the guys setting these lines are very, very good at it. They have to be. My overall thought is that, most teams endure a slump during the season, and here is ours, and it's a BAD slump, at the worst possible time. I still have faith in Groce though, and, well, we're just gonna have to see.

Expanding on this for those who haven't seen or heard: The Zips were completely bailed out by Toledo tonight, who were outscored by 12 in the second half at home to lose by 3 to a bad Northern Illinois team. The Rockets have looked very shaky their last 5 games, except of course against Akron, which may speak to that lack-of-killer-instinct ClevelandZip and LZip talked about.

Yeah, he's not even doing BAD, exactly, he just seems unpolished in a way that suggests he's quite nervous. Which makes sense and goes for just about all these student-reporters. Hell, I'd be suspicious of one that DID seem calm and loquacious.

I've missed a lot the Zips' home ESPN+ broadcasts this year - just one of those things - so maybe I'm just factually wrong in what I'm about to say but if not... I'm glad Akron-produced men's bball games don't include a sideline reporter who's a jittery college student, as is the case here. This is VERY common on ESPN+ broadcasts across conferences.

This is great news IMO. Besides UMass being a strong basketball program, I think (or at least hope) there are advantages to branching out into new media markets. I've said before here that while I don't have any objections to the MAC taking on affiliate members in non-revenue generating sports, I don't think the MAC should take schools for football only. I especially hated this with Temple. If you want refuge for your sorry football team, you have to give us your good basketball team. Glad the MAC braintrust seems to have learned that lesson.

Tiebreaker procedures from the horse's mouth: https://getsomemaction.com/sports/2023/2/24/BSK_0224232059.aspx This was a published a year ago, don't know if anything's changed. But if I'm looking at it right, it seems that Toledo wins the tiebreaker if Akron and Toledo end up tied for first. I'd love some confirmation or refutation.

Unless this competition has their own broadcasting rights (which I doubt), CBS Sports is out of the equation for this one. They don't have rights to the Sun Belt, which is in play here because JMU is the home team. I believe only ESPN has Sun Belt rights.

My thoughts on this stuff: 1) If you live in Summit County, there's a fair chance that public transportation is an option to you to get to games and not have to pay parking. Don't be afraid of the bus. 2) Someone made this point earlier, but there's a tendency for people to think that attendance would improve if they addressed whatever their personal bugaboos are with respect to going to games, but people don't necessarily think like you (the royal you), so stuff that bothers you may not bother a lot of other people, and stuff you're not bothered by might be a problem for others. In the macro, that means catering to/trying to pull in casual fans probably makes more sense financially than appeasing the diehards when those two groups are at odds. In the micro, I'm looking at start times. People are complaining about the 9PM starts, (that's only 3 of 14 home games, although I realize more could be added), and obviously that's being done for TV purposes. Are you sure it's better to tell CBS Sports Network/ESPNU/ESPN2(!) "no" to a 9PM start time, and forsake that TV money, and maybe get some more butts in the seats at the JAR, then it is to foresake those butts and get on TV? This is still a capitalist society and however we improve attendance is gonna take money. As lowly as you may think of UA marketing or athletics financial offices, I doubt they haven't bothered to look at the $ difference between 7PM ESPN+ start times vs 9PM CBSSN/ESPNU/ESPN2 start times. P.S. I doubt a meaningful number of viewers are looking at empty seats on 9PM Friday or for Tuesday night football games and saying OH MY WORD HOW DISGRACEFUL I SHAN'T EVER ENTERTAIN THE NOTION OF WATCHING A GAME WITH THESE AKRON FELLOWS AGAIN AND MY SPORTING OFFSPRING FORSWEAR TO ATTEND THEIR INSTITUTION. P.P.S. I include ESPN2 in this because if you haven't heard, our home game against Toledo is indeed on the Duece on Friday, February 2nd. I am happy about this! 3) As far as societal changes with respect to going to games, I think Covid really messed that up - I must admit I am way less active and going out-y than I was pre-Covid - and I am not alone. That's the only aspect of our attendance issues that really don't have much of an guess on how to resolve. That said... 4) I think both camps are correct in this "promotional gimmicks!" vs. "promote the hell out of the great product on the floor!" debate. These are only anecdotes, and anecdotes are not data. But while I don't live in Ohio anymore, growing up in Akron, I went to a Zips football game that featured the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders performing at halftime (since they were able to be there during football season makes me think this must have been a season opener and probably and Acme-Zip game, speaking of promotions.) I was probably 8 or 9. In front of us in the stands was an older couple, and the woman was wearing a Dallas Cowboys....bandanna? I'm not sure what to call it. Older women wore them all the time on their heads in the 80s or earlier. Anyway, shortly after the third quarter started, they left. 8-year-old me was SO confused about this for about 5 minutes, before it dawned on me....they were only here to watch the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. So, it's like how someone mentioned upthread about people buying tickets just to giveaways and not staying for the game. Do I wish they would stay and become Zip fans and regulars? Of course. But this is better than not coming at all, right? We get their money, we get to count them as paid attendance, and these are beneficial things, no? Fast-forward about 15 years. I drag my sister (pretty much hates sports) and brother-in-law (only cares about the Browns) to a Zips basketball game. Jimmal Ball era. They had a GREAT time and LOVED it. That's the thing about basketball, IMO, that hasn't been mentioned in this thread. If you have good seats, which are plentiful in the JAR, it is thrilling. No other sport can compare (again, my 2 cents here). We weren't even particularly good around this time! We didn't even win the game I took them to (it was a close loss against Miami IIRC)! Now, full disclosure, this did not in fact make them lifelong Zip fans and the only other games they went to were because I went with them and paid for their tickets. But if I can show these non-Zips, non-sports fans a great time simply by taking them to a game with good seats, imagine what is possible with people (students or otherwise) who already care a little bit? I've also been told in this forum we used to indeed fill the JAR for pitched games vs. Cleveland State in the late 80s. Mouse McFadden vs. Eric McLaughlin. If true, how do we recapture that lightning in a bottle? Should we start trying to schedule CSU/YSU yearly (perhaps even for home-and-homes) and promote the hell out of these now-dormant rivalries? Probably not the worst idea. I also think we should partner as strongly as possible with the city of Akron to try to get the whole city aware of, and hopefully then excited about, the Zips. Living in Texas now, the mucky-mucks at Baylor often point out that there's no real connection to the city it's in (Waco). It's like Baylor is its own city, Waco is its own, and the two don't care about the other. If that's at all the case in Akron, it needs worked on ASAP. I personally don't see much value in trying to get people from the surrounding counties, especially those with their own D1 schools or pro teams, to come support the Zips. But this Akron's team, dammit. Summit County's, too. I grew up in Akron. North Hill. I hate the way people make fun of Akron. I am up to my eyeballs in Akron pride. Zips basketball could and should be a gift to the city. The city and the university need to figure out a way to make that happen.

Cleveland State knocks off Ohio tonight. Going into the game, Ohio held a 14-2 alltime record against CSU and the Vikings hadn't beaten the kitties since 1997 or 2000 or thereabouts, I forget when they said exactly. Watched most of it. Fun game.