Zippy87

This is fantastic news. I'd assume he was able to do conditioning throughout given the nature of his injury, so hopefully it doesn't take him long to get back out there, especially with 4 regular season games left.

His botched dunks were my favorite

Great game and atmosphere overall. A few quick thoughts: - Probably the smallest Kent crowd I've ever seen at the JAR. Almost non-existent. - Great to see Dawson finally get going. Him shooting at just a decent clip would be huge for this team. - Teams are going right at Freeman, trying to get him in foul trouble. They know how important he is to us on both ends. With no real front court depth, he's got to find ways to stay on the court. We become very average when he's out. - Loved seeing Thornton take it to the hoop aggressively a few times. He's far too passive on offense at times. - Bummed we didn't see more of Tavari. - I can't say enough about the leap Tribble has taken offensively. He shot 1-12 from deep last season and is currently 36% on 58 attempts. - Payton has learned the hard way that sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut. Freeman dominated him. He ended up with 14 but most seemed like they came when Enrique was sitting. - I can very easily see a scenario where our 2024-25 season looks like Kent's this year. I'm going to enjoy every bit of this group and Freeman in particular while I have the chance. - Speaking of Kent, there's a realistic scenario that they don't make it to Cleveland at all. They have Buffalo next (should be a win) but then have CMU at home and Ball State and Toledo on the road.

Interesting subplots: - Akron is aiming to stay on track to get the #1 seed in the MAC Tournament. If CMU stays in 3rd, we'd win a tiebreaker over Toledo since we beat CMU and they lost to them. Win out and it's likely ours. - Kent State, on the other hand, is still fighting to get to Cleveland. EMU, Buffalo, and NIU seem unlikely to make it, which leaves 9 teams to battle for 8 spots. Kent is currently on a 3-way tie with Miami and Western Michigan while Ball State sits one game behind them all. After tonight, Kent has Buffalo and CMU at home and Ball State and Toledo on the road. There's a very real scenario where Kent loses tonight and drops games against CMU, Ball State, and UT and misses the tournament altogether. Wouldn't that be fantastic?

I did the same.

Looks like senior Night is 3/2; women's team plays at 3 PM, men's team plays at 6 PM (so our last home game will not be senior night).

It will be interesting to see how the rotation evolves over the last five regular season games. T. Johnson, Scott, and Thornton have all had their minutes fluctuate over the last few games and Prather has started to see limited minutes. Tavari in particular looked good against Kent the first time, so I'd expect to see a decent amount of him on the court Friday.

I think Tavari can, too. Just don't think Groce fully trusts him yet.

60 of our 64 points came from Freeman/Ali/Tribble/Hunter. We have zero depth.

Freeman/Tribble/Ali/Hunter have 43 combined points. Thornton/Scott/Johnson/Prather/Dawson have 4.

You have to give up some defense to get some offense sometimes.

Freeman Ali Tribble Hunter Johnson I need to see that five get the most time together the remainder of this game.

Tavari Johnson and Ryan Prather Jr need more minutes and Mikal Dawson needs less.

Where would this team be if Ali's transfer wasn't approved?

This team flops like crazy. Did it when we played them at the JAR too.

We realllllllly need Nate Johnson back.

Sure, but we both know that isn't going to draw recruits. This is going to have a significant impact on college athletics and the teams that get ahead of it will have a huge advantage.

Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) contracts have already changed college athletics, and I'm expecting that to continue in years to come, especially when coupled with less strict transfer rules. We'll never operate in the same as as bigger schools, but I do think the schools that do this well will create advantages for themselves, even at the mid-major level. To this point, I've seen our student athletes connected to Barstool, Zips Merch, Sign Here Signatures, and Hey Dude. I'm assuming there are others I haven't seen/don't know about. Athletics will need to plan to try to connect our athletes to these opportunities as much as possible, as I believe this will be something HS and transfer recruits will look at more and more as time goes on.

Not sure exactly, but I've always heard he still has a great relationship with UA and Groce. Could even create a position for him.

Of the top ten projected picks in NBA.com's latest mock draft, 50% are college players. It was 50% in the 2023 Draft as well. Looking at the drafts from 2021-2023, the G League Ignite have had 10 players drafted and 2 others undrafted who eventually signed NBA contracts. It's definitely changed the landscape since the Ignite started in 2020.

Yes, he's in the final year of his contract. Would not be surprised at all to see him to return to UA in some capacity, but not as a coach.

To me, it boils down to this. Most games, you're going to get 35-40 points from Freeman and Ali. Tribble is going to pitch on 10 or more. After that, it's a huge drop-off. Hunter has failed to hit double digits in 8 of the last 11 games. Dawson has failed to do the same in 10 of the last 12. Thornton's shooting has fallen off a cliff since the calendar flipped to the new year. Scott hasn't been great. Tavari has shown flashes of why we thought he could be special but has been too inconsistent. Good teams will be happy to double Freeman and force anyone else to beat them. Someone or multiple someone's will have to step up. Getting Nate back would be huge, too. Still the MAC favorite in a down year. Going to need some of our role players to grow to have any chance to do anything beyond that.

He's going to come home to UA at some point, but not as coach.

I honestly think loosened transfer rules have hurt him quite a bit and are what will probably lead him to retire after this year. KD is notoriously tough on his players and pushes them quite a bit. Eventually, the players see it's because he's pushing them to be better players, but sometimes younger guys can miss that. I believe Romeo Travis even said he thought about transferring at one point. In an era where you basically need to re-recruit every kid every year, I just don't know that his "tough love" approach can be successful.