Zipgrad01

I cant blame all of the 3rd down misses on Pohl. He hit quite a few receivers in stride today and they dropped the ball.

Are you typing your messages on an Iphone? I always get "an" from the autocorrect when i text on mine. Just curious.

We are a bad...bad...basketball team. People can forget the NCAA tourney. We wont go .500

I dont think it is fretting. It is more like frustration that we have zero idea what is going on with recruiting compared to almost any other school in the country. You mention Grice, Bickley and Pratt. Where else were they going to go play? They had offers from nobody else. I am talking about the local kids that have offers from multiple D1 schools, including small BCS programs. When we start consistently getting those kids, we will know that our program has truly turned the corner.

And every coach here since the 80's gotten squat for the really good local players. How did that work out for them? I never said that we have to "just recruit local". That is suicide. However, in order to be CONSISTENTLY good, we need to have success recruiting the best local players. I am talking about the kids going to WVU, Pitt, Syracuse, Northwestern, Iowa, MSU, Cincy, etc... We arent in Idaho. We are in NE Ohio. There is no reason that we should get outrecruited for local talent by BG, OU, Miami (Oh), etc.. but we have been for years. Without a doubt I believe that we should get the best kids that we can from all over the country, but we arent a program that can consistently recruit nationally, ie.. Michigan and Notre Dame.

I dont care where people are from either, but it is almost a given that if you cant get a decent majority of your local grown talent you are screwed. If we cant get some of the better players in our own area, what makes you think that we will get some of the better kids in other states? If we think that we will build a consistent winner from a majority of out of state recruits we are in trouble.

I could be entirely off, but I believe that Dambrot is so insistent on running the press because he sees it as a way to get easy points in trasition because he knows that our PG situation is so terrible and we have zero chance of beating teams if we have to do it by running half court sets. It is absolutely painful watching our half court offense. There is zero off ball movement and the only movement in general is about 30 feet from the basket at the top of the key and not much of it moves "toward" the basket. It is all side to side.

Almost every other school has interviews with kids that arent commits gauging their recruiting interests, how they liked their visits, etc... We have none of this. I dont expect them to be able to tell us exactly who our class is by now, but we have no idea who is even interested in coming here. If this is indeed true that absolutely nobody in Ohio wants to play for Akron this far along into Bowdens tenure then we are in trouble. We will NEVER consistently win if we have to rely on getting the majority of our best talent from out of state. I find it odd that recruiting interest in NE Ohio supposedly spiked after Bowden took over and started to rebuild relationships. Now, nobody wants to play here even though the program is showing signs of improvement. This seems odd to me.

I find it amazing that we have a newspaper article done about recruiting and it gives us zero details about any other prospects except the ones that we have long known about. Why are our recruiting targets and their interest always so unknown? It is almost Thanksgiving and we have no idea who 3/4 of our class will be or even who we are going after. It is beyond frustrating.

Stop saying things that make sense!!

Choklahoma!!

Well, I know where I will be that weekend. i cant wait for that!!

Does anyone have any clue what time this game will be?

I think so too. He always talks about how he will never be the winningest coach in his family. I think that he wants his own legacy. What more could cement that legacy than taking Akron from a 1-11 bottom dweller to a top 25 ranked program??

We put the cart in front of the horse when we built the football stadium. We werent that good of a program yet and we were banking on the stadium putting us over the top. The basketball team is a bad analogy. Everywhere I go, including out of state, I have people comment to me how good our soccer and basketball teams are. People know, especially recruits. As long as the team doesnt flop in the beginning of the season, the JAR will be mostly filled every night and it is a downright awful place to watch a game. Building a new arena is the only thing that will put that program on another level. Granted, we dont need a 20k arena either. I think your expections of what you expected for the Can't game were unrealistic and I think your opinion of what the recruits experienced is overstated. Lets win 8-10 games per season for a while before we start talking about cutting our losses because the Can't game wasnt full enough.

A year or so from now nobody will remember who the wins were against, especially future recruits. All they will look at is what our record was.

I seem to remember the JAR being pretty damn empty just a few years ago. Dambrot brought "winning" basketball to the JAR. Winning basketball has equaled better players and more wins. Guess what? The JAR is almost full at all the home games. The same thing will happen in football. Just look at Northern Illinois. They are in the middle of nowhere and they are packing their stadium. They didnt 5 or so years ago.

I love the OSU pricks remarks at the bottom of the article. Why on earth would our students and alumni want to associate themselves with that trash fanbase?

That is what happens when you are 3-33 in 3 years. People lose interest quickly, especially the casual fans in the MAC rivalry or not. These recruits arent stupid. They know that Bowden will have this team on top of the standings shortly.

Has anyone heard if we got any verbals over the Can't weekend? There hasnt been much news lately on the recruiting front and that always worries me.

My thoughts... Quincy Diggs is a beast. He is on a whole different level as far as his athleticism. Tree - What else do I need to say? Harney played well, but most of his points were put backs and dunks. Still, he looks a lot more comfortable on the floor. Betancourt - I thought he looked much better on offense. He still doesnt seem like much of an offensive threat, but it was tough to tell too much in the game because of the competition level. Forsythe - Ouch. Slow. Soft. Doesnt hussle. Doesnt seem to care. To say that he looked horrible is an understatement. He got bullied around the rim by 6'4 D3 players. He needs to figure out if he really wants to play or not because he is the weak link in my opinion and taking a roster spot. Johnson - I am mixed with him. He has nice moves for a guy his size. My concern is that he is too slow to be a center against good D1 competition. He doesnt really get off the floor much at all. He looked much better than Pat. Evans - I really liked his pressure defense. The kid really hustles. He definitely isnt a pure point guard. The kid can flat out shoot and score. He is definitely going to fill the offensive vacancy from Abreu nicely. Cheatham - He is very impressive. He is a long, lean and fluid athlete. He is a very versatile player that could play multiple positions because of his skill set. His jump shot looks nice for a guy his size. Jackson - This kid is going to be a player. Again, a very fluid athlete and I really like his outside shot. Gladden - Has a nice D1 body already. Very good athlete. Doesnt look comfortable playing on the perimeter. He is going to be a heck of a player. I paid much more attention to the newbies and i came away very impressed. The future looks great with these guys and I think their hype was justified.

Looks like just you and me!! Problem is, you have to help with mine. Should be entertaining.

I thought the same thing last year and then we pi$$ed down our leg in the 2nd half.

It is technically illegal, but nobody cares as long as you dont look 12 or are being an idiot. We leave beer bottles sit out and cops have walked by and say nothing. I am sure they would be a little more curious in the student lot, however.

You made a special pot of hash chili for our friends from Portage county??