Let'sGoZips94

Wow. That makes BG's exodus look minuscule.

Arizona and Kentucky on a "who'd you beat" resume is impressive. After all, aren't these schools offering players that kind of money already? Oats has another factor in his favor: Bobby Hurley is having some success at ASU.

So with his new annual salary in the $550-600k range, a school that wants Oats would have to pony up $1.5M for the buyout?

What is his buyout like?

They beat Georgetown two years prior, as I mentioned. That's 2 seasons. Can't went to the Elite Eight earlier in the decade. Akron had made the tourney 3 times in 5 years, and possessed the nation's longest winning streak. What more do you want from the MAC?

This.

What?

The big 3 of Buffalo's guards accounted for 75% of their scoring. Go look at who Groce has offered. There's a reason he's targeting a bunch of guards. It gives me confidence he knows what he's doing.

During the peak of Akron's dominance, OU beat Georgetown and then made a Sweet Sixteen run two years later. The year after the Sweet Sixteen run, it took the nation's longest winning streak and a creative marketing ploy (the hashtag) for voters to put us in one of the polls. We need nobody but ourselves.

For bracket purposes, Zona losing here would help me out. This does nothing for Akron, and I'm not rooting for Buffalo to win.

It was mutual. They "gave up" on each other, which I think is a bad way of putting it.

Bittersweet. I think his potential, talent wise, was quite high. But ultimately he wasn't the best fit for this team and the culture Groce is trying to build. Having two scholarships open is huge in my opinion.

Is this our version of BobcatAttack's TOS thread?

We would have at least reached the MAC tourney semi finals. All bets would have been off from there.

Until Dambrot retires, I don't think the comparisons will ever be put to rest. Dambrot made it well known his frustrations with Akron and the MAC. Duquense and the A10 is pretty much exactly what he was looking for. Nobody cares about Duquense; we care about Dambrot at Duquesne. Let's see if it was Akron/the MAC holding him back, or if his ceiling is lower than he thinks and has been reached.

Dilly Dilly

So the A10 puts 3 teams in the NCAA tournament, yet still finishes behind the MAC in conference RPI. How bad is the rest of that conference? Skip, have you heard if any Pittsburgh-area mechanics have reached out to Duquesne to offer their services? There was a lot of oil leaking from the men's basketball program during the second half of the season. Who knows if the rest of the engine/transmission blew with the double digit loss to a 20-loss team in the conference tournament...

How Hawkins still has a job is beyond me.

I actually found that data doing a quick search to confirm that this indeed will be Buffalo's third trip to the NCAAs in the last four seasons. It was sitting on the Wikipedia page. I'm not sure what other factors you want to look at. Just thought it was interesting that they seem to be more competitive on that stage than we were during our great run. A jab a Dambrot? Maybe. But hey, facts are facts, right? What's wrong about comparing this particular team against themselves, to previous years against themselves? If this team, with its decimated roster and all, was playing its best basketball at the end of the season, and previous teams weren't playing their best basketball at the end of the season, wouldn't that suggest that this team had a stronger finish? I'm not saying this team would beat those teams, but this team was playing its best basketball in the final month or so of the season. That's a fact.

Bingo.

What I see from this... Anthony Grant build a solid program, and left the program in a decent condition. Shaka took over and built a very strong program. Eventually left for Texas, but left VCU with a presumably strong program still. Will Wade took over, riding the wave that Shaka's success created. He progressively got worse (NCAA 2nd Round in his first year, NCAA 1st Round in his second year), but quickly jumped ship for LSU, leaving behind a bit of a mess for Mike Rhoades, who failed to make any post-season tournament (declining the CBI/CIT, correct?) in his first year. So what you're saying is the drop off occurs when the previous coach leaves the program a bit of a mess? Thank you for drawing that comparison to the '17-18 Akron program. Also, thank you for bringing up VCU as a comparison. One of Dambrot's assistants left to coach VCU, and made his own luck/success at VCU, taking that school to the next level and into the A10. Did the CAA win those NCAA tournament games? Nope. Did the CAA beat those high-caliber schools? Nope. Shaka and VCU did. They didn't need the CAA's help. And that's why I'm optimistic about next year and the future in general. I think we have a guy at the helm of our basketball program that isn't going to look for others to help him become successful. He's going to build the success on his own.

See, you take all of my comments as shots at KD. Some of them are, some of them are strictly comparisons. This is the thread for thoughts on the season that just ended. Some of the board members have a positive, optimistic outlook after the season. Others believe it was quite a disappointing season. Our most recent history has been used to come to both conclusions. Zip44 insinuated that nobody can duplicate what Dambrot accomplished during his time here. I simply used Buffalo's current run as a rebuttal. I find it funny that arguably the best marketing slogan during Dambrot's time at Akron was "Think Bigger" yet I and others are constantly ridiculed for thinking bigger.

+1

Buffalo is making their 3rd NCAA tournament appearance in 4 years. It's being duplicated and possibly bested right before our eyes. Side note: both of their previous appearances were single digit losses. Still losses, but much more competitive on that stage.

I'm not saying what Akron has accomplished was easy. The reason for their success wasn't strictly based on the MAC's overall weak field. I also never said the players didn't play hard (not saying they did, but it wasn't good basketball, that much I know). The OSUcks loss was inexcusable considering OSUcks SUCKED that year, and all we had to do was shoot better than 40% from the free throw line to win that game in regulation; the FT problems in that game are magnified by the overall poor free throw shooting by Akron during Dambrot's time here. I'm not giving Groce any breaks that I didn't afford to KD. My issues with KD came in second half of his 13 years as head coach of the Zips. Actually, I will be grading Groce much tougher in years 3 and 4 due to the overall higher level of the program that KD took it to. Groce doesn't have 13 years in my book to accomplish what Dambrot did in his 13 years. Groce has 3-4 years to get me to the next level that Dambrot wasn't able to accomplish in 13 seasons.