Let'sGoZips94

Hopefully they shower before heading to a new school. Gotta get that Can't stench and failure crap off ya.

Can we start calling the football portion of the university Defensive or Linebacker U?

Kid's got a nice stroke based on his high school video from 2017. I can only imagine he has gotten better. I'm assuming Groce is looking to add a JUCO kid to help fill Utomi's void, then a 4 year kid. I like it.

Yeah, you can read it that way. I took it as Groce referring to Poke & Utomi, with Ivey being included in GT's sentence in error.

Maybe he didn't mean to include Ivey at all... "Big man Emmanuel Olojakpoke and guard Jimond Ivey have joined Utomi in the portal and also are moving on. Groce said he appreciates their contributions as they were two of just five returning players from when he took over two seasons ago."

The issue with that becomes defense. If your best 5 are guards/small forwards, you're going to struggle against bigger teams. Vice versa, if your best players are PF/C, you're going to struggle against guard-heavy teams.

I'm just having some fun. It can be quite depressing and unhealthy to constantly listen to Puddles Pity Party. Smile - it's good for the soul.

How can you tell if we have actual DI players with your eyes closed?

Channel fits right in, especially on defense. He's one of the best passing-lane-jumpers I've seen in an Akron uniform. He regressed offensively after his injury, but I think that will come back next year. I think your eyes have been closed enough that you have the rest of us covered. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing this upcoming season develop.

The rest of the MAC...

Speaking of him, looks like Boals offered him at Stony Brook. I wonder if he'll extend the offer from OU as well. Looks like we have 6 offers out still.

A list of his counterparts and their recruiting status... Cameron Alford, Brownsburg - Alabama A&M (Committed) Ali Ali, East Noble - Akron (Signed) Noah Applegate, Penn - Truman State (Offered) Harold Bennett, Crispus Attucks - ? Ethan Brittain-Watts, Culver Academy - Boston U (Signed; other offers include IUPUI, Miami OH, Ball State, South Dakota) Zane Gross, Silver Creek - ? Jared Hankins, Lawrence North - Indiana State (Signed; other offers include IUPUI, Miami OH, St. Bonnie, SIUE, IPFW, New Orleans) Jalen Johnson, Indianapolis Manual - Alabama A&M (Committed; other offers include SIU, Illinois-Chicago) Zach Kuhn, Shelbyville - ? Drew Lutz, Penn - (Offers include Malone & that level) Jevon Morris, Munster - ? Andrew Owens, Carmel - Findlay (Signed; other offers include Salem, Grand Valley State, Air Force) Jakobie Robinson, Warren Central - McKendree (Committed) Derrick Stevenson, New Albany - ? Karsten Windlan, Carmel - ? Interpret this list how you will - 1st Team All State in Indiana is no joke. Congrats to Ali Ali!

Can't losing is never a bad thing.

Where's Lori Loughlin when you need her? Just offer her enrollment for her grandkid(s) and she'd buy that contract out in a heartbeat! Only $200k more than her last purchase!

Fire Oats for losing by 20 (not even that close) to a superior team. What will be interesting to see should Oats stay, if he's able to replicate the success based on the formula they've been using - long, athletic players with an up-tempo offense. The bear is going to be replacing Massinburg - the guy's an assassin. Harris will be the next toughest to replace. Those two are what separated Buffalo from most mid-majors.

Are they using MAC refs for this Buffalo game? Or did I miss it and someone called prison rules? I also forgot how annoying Hurley is.

That was their only DI player. Roster is a total joke.

Me too, or I have wasted a lot of time finding and typing out reasons to be optimistic.

Shhhh... Don't let facts get in the way of their misery. _______________________________________________________________ The Zips this past season were 8 deep. Even with the departures, I'm looking at a roster that's 9 deep and that doesn't include the incoming freshman or the 2 open spots. It's ridiculous to say there are only 2 DI players on the current roster, when the rag tag group of 8 were consistently competitive against teams like Clemson, Buffalo, and Nevada, and finished in the middle of the pack in the MAC, while blowing out the #2 team in the MAC (BUGS). Scoring is a fixable problem, and probably the best problem to have, especially for a rebuilding team. I'm going to keep pounding this point. We have the right system in place to be successful. We focus on the key fundamentals - defense, effort, rebounding, free throws - and have built that foundation. Dambrot's system was and still is entirely flawed. It ignores nearly every basic principal in the sport of basketball. This very board had people constantly talking about the lack of ball movement, defensive breakdowns, free throw shooting problems, etc. We eeked out a lot of close victories against sub-par MAC squads despite being more talented (usually). Those issues have carried over to Duquesne. Read their board; "will this team ever emphasize defense" and "free throws are an issue". I'd be curious to see the opinions of the Dambrot apologists when looking at the Duquesne roster. Is it full of so-called DI players? If so, what was the cause of the early 1st-round exit in the A10 tourney and not dominating/being more competitive in a weaker A10 Conference as a whole? In the first round game, they scored 86 points, shooting at a 47% clip. How can you lose a game when you make shots?! You don't play defense, give up 92(!) pts, and shoot 68% at the line. What's going to be easier to fix: having gym rats hit the gym and practice shooting (including free throws), or getting a team to buy into 40 minutes of tough-nosed, heady defense? My vote is the shooting, which again, gives me hope for this next season. Lastly, let's stop crucifying this team and Groce for a 40 pt. loss to Buffalo and 24 pt. loss to a motivated O-BooWho squad. Of the 16 losses we had, 11 were single-digit losses, and an additional 2 losses were closer than their final score (@ Buffalo and @ Toledo). That means there were 3 games we simply weren't competitive in. Heck of an accomplishment for a team with only 4 DI players at the time. I wonder if Arizona had the pitchforks out for Sean Miller for losing to Buffalo by 21 last year, or Boeheim for losing by 12 to Buffalo this year. Do BUGS and Miami want to fire their coaches for losing to a team with 4 DI players by 24 & 29 respectively? The Clown lost to a team with only 4 DI players by 19. We had 1 extreme off-night (O-BooWho) and one off-day that was aided by being inferior to one of the better teams in the entire country (Buffalo at The Q); clearly that's not the norm. So much good to focus on. The sky is not falling. In fact, I feel as if the ceiling is higher than ever before, considering our previous ceiling had a MAC Finals record similar to LeBron's Finals record (oh look, another similarity between Dambrot and LeBron, to add to the excuses and now neither of them making the postseason), and arguably 0 marquee wins (unless you include the few NIT wins against Houston, FSU, and Temple).

Does this mean he is potentially transferring, or 100% transferring once he finds a new school?

Awesome. A player who is going to miss the playoffs repping a coach and school who also missed the playoffs. Perfect match.

He became much more physical as the season wore on, especially towards the end. Defensively he really came into his own as well, consistently gaining strong positioning on his opponents, playing straight up, smart, etc. Guys like Riak are going to be hard to judge when looking at a stat sheet. I was simply impressed by the improvement in effort & physicality throughout the season.

As a brief attendee of THEE Otterbein University, I can officially say... There's nothing to be afraid of. Unless of course we're playing tennis against them. Carry on.

I'm optimistic that with a full year under their belts and another full off-season to improve their craft, our offensive base will be much more solid. Throughout the season we saw growth tremendous growth from numerous players - Riak & Cheese were the two most notable - and I trust the individuals on the team will put the work in to improve for the betterment of the team as a whole. It needs to be noted the system Groce has implemented on offense and defense. They are very fundamental. They require personnel that will dedicate themselves to the fundamentals, something AAU has largely killed off. We have lots of movement now when executed properly, and that goes for both sides of the ball. Two factors have led to the exodus - players not buying into the system, and players simply not fitting in. It happens, and it has been magnified by the state of the program when Groce took over. All season I had next year and the year after next circled because those are the seasons that start to feature the core of Groce Ball with the majority being his personnel. Whatever we accomplished these first two seasons would be whatever, and I was simply hoping to see the basics implemented. I've seen that and way, way more. With the departure of Utomi, it accelerates the roster turnover to becoming mostly Groce guys. As I mentioned, a lot of the fundamentals in basketball have been killed off by AAU ball. It was very encouraging to see so many guys this year buy into those fundamentals again, especially on defense. Seeing that gives me a lot of hope this off-season will yield big improvements all the way around. Also, are we forgetting the MAC is about to potentially enter the stage it was at when Dambrot took over? It depends on what Buffalo does; otherwise, it's completely up for grabs. Fret not. Go Zips!

Bingo. He was recruited to Dambrot's system, starting off in that 6th man role, and really fit in as a pure shooter in the inside-out system Dambrot ran. Groce likes to run, drive, move, and I felt at times it was bogged down when the ball got to Utomi.