trust me when I say that I mean no offense to your arena or crowd, but we can handle it.URI has recently played:- at Duke and was tied with 30s to play at a rockin Cameron Indoor- at Syracuse and won in front of 21,000- at Providence every other year in front of 13,000 our sworn blood rivals (to give an idea of how bad the rivalry is, our mascot got attacked in the bathroom 2 years ago, and PC wont even bring their band or cheerleaders down to Kingston)- at Dayton every year or so- at Xavier every year or so- at UMass in front of 10,000 (a hair less intense rivalry than PC)- at Boston College- against OK State in Oklahoma- at CreightonNow, on to the game at hand.I think the best and only realistic way for Akron to pull this game out is to control the tempo, plain and simple.We love to play as fast and to make the game as out of control as possible to best utilize our edge in athleticism and depth. Our half court offense is decent, but not consistent and making us play in that half court offense for most of the game would hurt.Defensively, you need to have a very sure handed point guard to break it. We will full court press and trap every chance we get for all 40 minutes. After the press we usually provide match up issues as well. We have 7 players between 6'5 and 6'9 and they are all long, fast and can jump out of the gym. We also have a true 7 footer at center who is a solid defender. He isnt the quickest player and is a little lanky, but is rarely out of position.All that being said, I do see Rhode Island winning this game. However I see them winning it by ~7 points.I'll officially say:Lamar Odom - 81Lebron James - 75Close game for most of it with our athleticism wearing Akron out at the end.
