Let'sGoZips94

Look at the previous winners. All NBA players.

He's playing half the amount of time as what he did at NIU, so the 8.8 to 3.5 PPG isn't shocking. He was also a 62%, 74%, and 65% FT shooter at NIU. 45.5% from the line this year is atrocious, but he has a comparatively very small sample size with only 22 total attempts on the year. The disappointment with Thornton comes from the lack of offensive firepower we have in the backcourt. Otherwise, we're getting exactly what he was at NIU.

Has he really been a disappointment? Maybe by Groce's expectations, but I feel like us fans saw a guy who doesn't light up the scoreboard along with "NIU" and are getting pretty much what we expected.

Speaking of what the Zips don't have... We need a t-shirt cannon. Maybe striking fear in our opponents again starts with striking fear in the crowd. 😂

Let's hope this is the basketball team's version of the soccer team's Cleveland State loss in 2010.

Lol. Haven't boxed out all night and it bites us in the ass in the end.

South Carolina needed a 10-0 4th Quarter to beat Jacksonville State last year, and that was with Spencer Rattler at QB. That was towards the end of the season; we'll be catching them as they're still working out the kinks this year. If we would've quit shooting ourselves in the foot, we would've been more competitive with Kentucky last year. I'm not saying it's likely, but it's winnable. Rutgers might be better than South Carolina, but it's still Rutgers. I will forever think of them as a lower echelon B10 team, and all of the Big Ten is beatable outside of Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, USC, and Oregon.

Yes, Rutgers and South Carolina are beatable for any average-to-above-average G5 program. My expectation for the program is to exist in that category.

I don't think it's as much about cloning their work ethic as it is Groce continuing to build his culture here. Banks, X1.0, Cheese, LCJ, X2.0, and Duvivier were all guys that have played the game the right way while wearing the Akron Blue & Gold under Groce. We've seen the most growth in the individual games of Freeman, Tribble, and Ali because they've been here for 3+ years, but we would've seen the same growth with any of the aforementioned players if they were here for longer than a year or 2. Guys like Prather, Nate Johnson, and Dawson will be instrumental next year in cementing the foundation that has been built by Freeman, Tribble, Ali, X1 & X2, Cheese, Banks, Duvivier, and LCJ. Incoming players like Sharron Young could be extremely special if they see what Akron is under Groce and choose to stay & develop for 4 years.

2 winnable P5 games and a challenging conference schedule. JoeMo is gonna have to earn his money this year.

Wow. So Groce was coaching Akron while recruiting AND officiating (the T he gave their player) NIU. Incredible. His agent is going to use that to get him a salary closer to Frank Martin this off season. 😂

Stats play for both sides, though. For every basic 3PM/3PA stat, there's an advanced metric that shows the 3PM might be negated. His minutes right now are going to Prather and Nate. I'm 100% ok with that as we approach Cleveland.

Is WMU the 8 seed currently?

As poorly as we've played, we're at 70 pts with 5 minutes to play.

Prather 👀👀👀👀

Congratulations to Coit on winning the RayJ Dennis Scholarship to a P5 next year!

Not only was it overturned, it was overturned 10 plays later after a media timeout.

Groce and Ford are coaching their asses off. Groce is on a different level this game. Just looked at the NIU player and T'd him up himself after the refs didn't.

Does UMASS coming to the MAC mean we get an upgraded officiating pool? Frank Martin's $1.6M salary won't stand for MAC officiating.

The zebras must think the tickets everyone paid for have "Akron vs NIU w/ Special Appearance REFS" on it.

Prather is heating up offensively and getting more comfortable. He has one more week to get it going, and if he does, he and Nate Johnson would be like 2 big time trade deadline acquisitions for Cleveland.

Not atrocious. Probably 1/2 or 3/5 capacity.

Enrique can sign the cast "Actual best player in the MAC." Damn shame. PCCC's really going to miss his single digit production.

LCJ was 70 pts away from being the 5th all time scorer in Akron history, and he was robbed of most likely 3 games in Cleveland and potentially 1-2 games in the Big Dance. That's criminal. Also pretty wild that in 7 years, Groce has produced 2 of the top 7 scorers in Akron history.

I don't think it matters. The failure by UA to not have player merch, especially Freeman, available to the public is an absolute failure.