GJGood

He was the very last player picked in the 5th round at #175 overall.

I wouldn't mind seeing banners like that in the concourse of the stadium for fans to see on game days.

Personally I'd love to see Jatavis join Justin March with the Chiefs. If that came to fruition I may just have a true favorite NFL team for the first time in a while.

Good point, although, their women hosted their NCAA tournament games at St. John Arena. Value City Arena did have high school state semifinals coming in on Thursday, not sure if they would have requested that no games be played Wednesday to prepare for that though since it seems like all they really had to do was cord off some of the upper deck and put some star logos on the middle of the floor to represent where the teams were coming from.

Good post above. I agree this team needs to learn to play better when tired. I will not complain about the tired thing with respect to the Buffalo game since both teams were playing their third game in three days. The OSU game, though, one team clearly had an advantage in the "tiredness" category. Against OSU it was game 4 in six days and OSU was much more rested. I still wonder why the NIT scheduled the team that played most recently prior to the start of its tourney to also be one of the teams that tipped off in its very first game. The game could just as easily have been scheduled for 24 hours later with the same TV coverage by simply switching the ESPN2 Wednesday 7:00 and ESPN Tuesday 7:00 games. We'll never know if that would have made a difference in our game in the NIT or not but it is possible that it could have. I also think the first thing that tends to go when the legs get tired is the three point shot. Since that was so much of Akron's arsenal this season I do think the Zips could be more susceptible to the fatigue factor in that regard. That being said, though, the Zips do usually use a 10 or 11 man rotation which should keep players a little more fresh. Long story short, I'm only going to consider tiredness as part of the explanation with the OSU game. Against Buffalo both teams should have been equally tired. While the Zips were probably the more tired team against Green Bay I still think that was more a case of a letdown game after beating Arkansas and playing a highly ranked Villanova.

I don't disagree. I am just saying that if we have fallen out of ESPN's good graces for the time being that we can't expect to play in as high profile tournaments as we have the last few years. That doesn't mean there aren't other quality events and teams out there. The other thing is not knowing in what order the teams accept invitations to these events. If you are the first or second team in you don't necessarily know who else will be in the event and once a big name jumps in I am sure that many teams come calling. so I could see a program having the choice of committing early and hoping for decent opponents or waiting until a decent name pops up but risking not being in the event at all. Like I said I don't know exactly how these things work but I would think scenarios like that probably happen. Maybe others here have more insight into how these out of conference tournament fields get populated, especially with respect to teams knowing who else may be in the tourneys at the time they commit to them.

I am certain that the Zips do not WANT to take a major downgrade in tournaments. KD has repeatedly stated that our best chance at opening eyes is by playing 'name' schools on neutral floors. Many of the tourneys or 'classics' we have been in the last few years were actually put together by ESPN. Is it possible that ESPN just turned away from the Zips for this upcoming year? The last few years Akron was probably seen as the highest profile team in the MAC but now Buffalo has gone to the NCAA two years straight, are they getting the spots in ESPN tournaments that Akron had been getting? I think Akron needs to play teams like Air Force and East Carolina more often but in place of Coppin State and Bethune-Cookman, and not in place of Villanova, Arkamsas, or even UW-Green Bay. Still I am not sure how easy it is for the Zips to get into higher profile OOC tournaments.

Once you are in the NCAA tournament conference affiliation is pretty much irrelevant, at that point it becomes a matter of matchups and styles of play. I will generally root for the MAC representative in the tourney because the league needs more respect but I have never understood why fans of Power 5 conference teams root for the other members of their conference once they have already made the tournament. Your conference rivals winning only means that it could improve their recruiting and you probably frequently recruit against them. At the very least as they improve it becomes less likely that your own team defeats them in the future. Its an odd thing. Mid-majors frequently need others in their conference to help open doors for them so I get rooting for your conference brethren but in the power leagues it seems logical that you would not want to root for your closest recruiting rivals. Look at OSU for example. How does rooting for Indiana help them? OSU isn't going to be judged next season by a run Indiana made in the tourney this year but it could help Indiana in recruiting against OSU. Had a school like Buffalo made a run this year, though, maybe it helps the MAC in terms of seeding or even at-large possibilities next year because the MAC may be seen as a more viable conference.

I do think it is possible for the MAC to get two teams into the NCAA. Its just not likely as every time a team puts themselves in serious at-large consideration they go ahead and win the conference tourney anyway. One of these years, though, I hope we see two teams that are at-large worthy in the MAC. I do think the conference overall is starting to trend upward again a bit. That being said I believe you are absolutely correct when you say the entire conference needs to schedule better. That doesn't mean teams expected to be at the bottom need to go out and get a murderer's row schedule but just get more teams that are comparable to themselves and a few where they are playing "up". The MAC schools need to avoid having 4 and 5 true cupcakes (sometimes 1 or 2 can actually help a team) on their schedule and the entire conference will benefit.

Missed that. I guess that doesn't bode well for the future of that one... maybe they should make it double elimination. I could see two advantages to playing in this tournament versus the CBI or CiT. Firstly, since all the games are in the same arena there are no issues of one having had to travel and losing their legs compared to another team. The big one to me, though, is that this event happen at the end of March. The longer you can make the season and shorten the offseason the better for your team the following year. I personally would still prefer the CBI or CIT because I like the on-campus environments those tourneys provide. I especially like the best of three CBI final where both teams are guaranteed a home game.

We know what happened to Akron in the NIT and most realize that Buffalo bowed out of the NCAA in the first round to the Miami Hurricanes. I thought is was worth mentioning, though, that Ohio has made it to the CBI semifinals and will host Morehead State Wednesday night. If the Bobcats win they will face the winner of Vermont at Nevada in a best of 3 series guaranteeing games being played on both campuses. Ball State has had two late comeback wins and is now in the quarterfinals of the CiT. They will play at Columbia of the Ivy League Wednesday night at 7:00. That game can be seen on collegeinsider.com website. Our arch rival declined to accept any postseason invitations. Finally, Northern Illinois will play in the inaugural Vegas 16 postseason tournament. That three consecutive day event has 16 teams in a single elimination format but is unique because all 15 games are played in the same venue. NIU will open play in the tourney against UCSB on March 28 at 2:30pm. This will be a battle of teams which share Akron as a common opponent this season.

For what it's worth I work with a guy that goes to most of the state semifinals and all the state finals every year. He told me KD was sitting three rows in front of him during the Friday night D-1 semifinal game between Westerville South and Garfield Heights. Since I saw Westerville South in person I know their top 6 players are 5 seniors and a junior Ohio State commit so I think it's safe to say if he was there with recruiting in mind he was looking at someone from Garfield Heights.

I concede that the RPI numbers of the squads I suggested may not be the very best. I am comparing them, though, not to the other schools suggested on here but rather to Coppin State, UAPB, and South Carolina State. I also was trying to look at more than just RPI but also recruiting and rewarding our players opportunities to play in front of their families and friends, especially in a "pay game" scenario. I still remember how KD talking about how much of a team building exercise it really became when the team would stop at the McKnight's home in Lancaster on the way to Athens to play Ohio University.

John Glenn looked to have a lot of really good players but they s3emed like a balanced team without any one or two players that stood out above the rest. I thought Lima Central Catholic looked to have some really good individual talent. They were a senior oriented team though so probably not any way the Zips could in on any of those guys. The same is true for Westerville South, they starts four seniors and their 280 pound junior in the middle is already an OSU commit. Lima Senior had some good players too. The one guy (other than SVSM guys discussed in other threads) that stood out to me as far as a potential Zips recruiting target was a guard for tiny Willoughby Cornerstone Christian. His last name is McQueen and I think I heard the announcers mention that he is just a junior. Would the Zips look to Division IV for a player? He plays for a northeast Ohio school so that would probably increase the chances of landing him if he was offered. I assume looking at the current makeup of the Akron roster that we will need a good ball handling guard as we get closer to Antino and Noah reaching their senior seasons.

I am watching some of the OHSAA state championship games today. Does anyone know if Akron is actively recruiting anyone playing any of the games today? If anybody else is watching have you seen anyone you'd like the Zips to pursue? I thought it may be an interesting topic to start.

I agree. It is an area I think we can make some recruiting strides in as well. I'd like to see us play some schools like Northestern, Hofstra, or even Columbia in addition to more well known east/ northeastern schools like Georgetown and Boston College.

My only thought is that there has to be at least a handful of teams nationwide that are in the same boat that the Zips are. Those are the schools we need to schedule for home games or home-and-homes. I don't know how many are a bus ride away (there may be a few though). We may need to be limited by geography somewhat but how limited do we need to be? This may be just my opinion but I think with multiple players from the Houston and Cincy areas on the team next year and beyond we should look into playing road games in those areas so those players on our teams get a homecoming came of sorts. Whether it be a Houston, Cincy, or Xavier type or a Rice or Northern Kentucky it would still be a nice thing for those players and certainly no worse than playing a Coppin State, UAPB, or Bethune-Cookman. plus playing in Cincinnati and/or Houston couldn't hurt recruiting-wise wither.

I agree with this except if we must play MEAC-like teams, at least make them MEAC title contending teams and not the around 320 RPI MEAC teams. Plus I'd still want one more high major/ MVC/ A-10 type game but against a middle of the pack team from one of those leagues. Teams like Georgetown and Georgia come to mind for me (winnable but also attention grabbing).

Who did Buffalo play at home other than the Bonnies? I see St. Bonnie playing Buffalo being similar to Akron playing Cleveland State (similar level within a geographic proximity) which will now happen every other year. It just so happened that St, Bonaventure was really pretty good this year while Cleveland State was not. That hasn't always been the case and probably won't be the case every year. I like the toughness of the Bulls schedule overall. I would think, however, that you want to give the fans and season ticket holders some home games too. I don't think Akron's road/ neutral schedule this year was all that bad. I would have liked to see one more middle to top of a top 7 or 8 conference team in there though. The biggest problem was the home schedule. The Zips need to get better teams into the JAR, whether that is home-and-home series or just one and done.

Not sure if it would have made a difference or not but I think it's clear that the Zips should have had a top 4 seed and a home game, even if OSU wasn't the opponent. Also, you'd think that with so many NIT teams having their conference seasons ending early in the week last week that they would've given the teams that had to play most recently the Wednesday games instead of the Tuesday ones. I am sure that is driven by TV but they could have swapped tomorrow's 7pm with today at 7pm.

All the local Columbus ESPN radio affiliate mentions with Akron is the three ball... they are going to be really surprised when they see what our 300 pounder can do in the lane. I am sure the OSU team is aware but the local media sure doesn't seem to be. I'd love to get the chance to listen tomorrow after a Zips win.

It is. I wouldn't mind seeing a good Ivy League school like Columbia or a good mid-major like Northeastern come in from that part of the country. I also would love to see IPFW come in here for payback from the CiT a couple years ago. It also couldn't hurt to get a MVC team to agree to a home-and-home.

Not that its going to be a problem, but how would OSU even host a game in the next round? Their women are hosting in the NCAA and its OHSAA championship weekend as well.

Yes, and in order to this he must stay out of foul trouble... I always worry about how games like this against "name" competition will be officiated, especially in a true road game.

I would think from a recruiting in Ohio standpoint it certainly does.