ZachTheZip

Bring this thread back from the dead, because Tennis is 23-2 and 7-0 in the MAC. One match left, and it's with Ball State who is 19-2 and also 7-0 in the MAC. BSU also hosts the MAC tournament this year.

The context clues are there. I bet if you made an educated guess just based on the posts in this thread, you'd be pretty close to the mark.

Or hired somebody with connections to him.

If the athletics department has any kind of intelligence (not a guaranteed thing), they'll have Groce make an appearance at the football spring game. It's mostly the same fans and boosters between both sports.

A fair evaluation. PFF knows their stuff. It hurt to read "a large percentage of his targets were uncatchable inaccurate passes" through. Bad memories.

Tennis continues their win streak today 5-2 over WMU. They're on a collision course with Ball State. Wonder what it's gonna take to break into the Top 50 of the ITA rankings. You'd think a 21-game win streak would get you there.

If the MAC can't find a replacement quickly, WVU will leave, probably for Conference USA. I doubt the MAC would sponsor a sport with only four members, effectively making us all Independents. At that point we would be free to join another conference.

http://www.hudl.com/profile/7229634/ian-stewart

Might as well get this started.

Woah, woah, who's talking about sustaining that level? Wasn't everyone in this thread just saying that they'd be OK with losing more games if it meant a tournament run? You don't sustain a high level by losing more games in order to luck into a tournament win or two once in a while.

Lexie Handley threw a no-hitter on April 2nd. http://www.gozips.com/sports/sball/2016-17/boxscores/20170402_sca5.xml

Oh please. He was dead to you while he was still here. I can't recall any you ever posting a single positive thing about Zips athletics or ever celebrating any accomplishments in any sport since you started posting. It's just bitching about the programs, the coaches, the fans, the players, the posters here, the administration, and everything else non-stop for a freaking decade.

You'll care when it's Akron players that are beating up women and ending up in handcuffs.

At Illinois, he had four players arrested in one year (one was previously arrested the year before) in the 2015-2016 season. http://writingillini.com/2016/03/17/illinois-basketball-kendrick-nunn-arrested/ Kendrick Nunn - Domestic Battery http://writingillini.com/2015/08/22/illinois-basketball-darius-paul-dismissed-from-illini/ Darius Paul - Under-aged drinking and resisting arrest. Got kicked off the team. Previously arrested for vandalism, public intoxication, and resisting arrest while on a trip to France. http://writingillini.com/2016/02/19/illinois-basketball-leron-black-arrested-now-what/ Leron Black - Aggravated Assault https://writingillini.com/2016/03/12/illinois-basketball-jaylon-tate-arrested-enough-is-enough/ Jaylon Tate - Domestic battery

Groce has plenty of skeletons, but instead of the closet they're in jail.

Never said that the current players would get arrested. But Groce has a lot of holes to fill on the roster, and the ability to stay out of jail is clearly not a priority in his recruiting strategy.

Armon Bassett, right off the top of my head. But more relevant is the five arrests his players had while he at Illinois. If anything, the problem has increased over time. The only thing stopping me from thinking it will continue to increase is that it's already at such a high level that it would be difficult to do much worse.

So, how many players getting arrested are you guys willing to tolerate per season? If it's anything less than two, you might end up disappointed

Being a good assistant and being a good head coach are two very different things. Groce would make a great recruiting coordinator for a bigger program. Doesn't mean he can develop players or out-scheme the better MAC coaches.

No, but you can get a good start by eliminating the names that would guarantee mediocrity or poor results. That narrows the field by a pretty significant amount. Then you do your due diligence and pick one, and hope you got it right. Groce, by the way, would not pass muster by using this method.

And they fired him anyway. What does that tell you?

How was his recruiting at Illinois? What makes you think after running that program into the ground (by Illinois standards) he'll have any recruiting cache left?

Cooper is the main factor in Groce's successes in the MAC. Without him, his coaching career would have been over long ago. He parleyed it into a Big Ten job that he promptly crashed into the ground. Why do we want this guy taking charge of our program? In the desperate hope that he can pull another surprise star player like Cooper out of his ass?

Larry Williams's career will be defined by this hire. It says a lot about him and how he operates that he chose Groce out of all the possibilities.

He did that with the previous coach's players. Just like he win in the NCAAT at Illinois in his first year and went downhill from there.