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It's nice to see his hometown TV station following his career. This also helps spread the Akron label. All of our athletes who handle sports along with ANY tough academic major need to be recognized and commended. It's a great indication that they are taking the SCHOLARSHIP GIFT that we are giving them very seriously. I like that. I know what often happens to kids who select the easiest way out just to play athletics. It's also a sensitive issue for me because I know how much other kids (including myself at that age) would love to have that financial benefit, and would take it very seriously as well.

I was a student about 3 decades ago. And I am trying to get into the mind of a student here......... If you are on campus, and were bored, or wanted a place to go and study, etc.....or....knew that simply getting your card scanned was good for $5 in your pocket, even if you didn't want to stay, wouldn't you think that this would have been enough to get at least 1,000 students into the door, even if they had never been to a basketball game before? What if someone was just standing in the lobby of the JAR, handing out $5 bills to any student who walks in the door. I'm thinking that thousands of people would take that person up on that offer. I think it's pretty close to what happened here, and nobody showed up. Unbelievable.

Or, Brett McKnight's shot in the overtime period directly after.

Sorry Dave, don't have time to read everything, but I have already pointed out that there's plenty of variables, and never said that I'd do it no matter what the situation. I'll just point out again that last night's situation was a pretty favorable one. Yes, we'd both be in the Bahamas right now, for sure.

A lot of assumptions in there. I don't have all day to type. I'm taking 2 possessions over 1 possession, any time I can, hands down. Obviously you think otherwise. Just to be clear, Toledo didn't force a fadeaway. As the article says, that was their guy for that play, they got him isolated, we couldn't double, and he launched the same shot from 15 ft. away that he does all game long.

Maybe if the time was tighter. But, there were 59 seconds left at the time. It would not have been a rushed play by any means to get a 2 for 1 in that situation. But, there's a lot of things to take into account in that situation, one being that you still need to run a play to get a good shot. But, making the assumption that Toledo would have used every one of their 35 seconds on the ensuing possession, plus an offensive rebound, would be an extreme circumstance. Without polling other coaches myself, I can only tell you that Coach K plays this scenario all the time, during both halves of the game, so it's certainly a logical strategy, even to the best coaches. Plus, as we've seen many times, it only takes a few seconds to get the ball into the frontcourt to take a final shot, if necessary.

1) I agree with Dave that you have to take the 2 for 1 at the end of the game. There was plenty of time to run a set play and still leave at least 40 seconds on the clock in order to get the final possession. 2) I don't want to use the absence of Noah as an excuse, but I will say that we probably need an entirely healthy roster to beat all of the best teams in the MAC on a neutral court next month. 3) I'm not Keith, but I really felt like we'd probably leave Nyles on the bench to start the game, and let him pick up some minutes at PG to help Antino as the game progressed, since we had plenty of options at the #2 spot. I felt like Nyles would have been a better option at PG than a walk-on freshman with very little game experience. Just my thought. Although, I felt like Malcolm played admirably.

Amen. We can't even get our alums to act like alums in OUR part of the state.

I think after awhile, people just start to spend more time attempting to justify the excuses.

I'm just curious. If the football team was winning most of their games, and was in the MAC Championship game nearly every year, would anyone be trying to say, "Students will start going to the football games once we start winning"? Again, I am just trying to point out that the excuse people use for lack of student football attendance (we don't win) cannot be applied to basketball.

Keener, Actually, some of the gatherings at Johnny J's in the last few years have been fun and spirited. We've packed the back of that place for some road basketball games, in particular. That overtime win over OU on the road a couple of years ago was one of the best times I've ever had in a bar with Zips fans. If you followed some of the earlier conversations, I think we might just need to find more convenient venues to try out. We've already gotten some feedback that The Valley is just not that easily accessible for everyone, especially during the winter months. Also, a few years back, I remember when the students used to pack that upper section of the old Ohio Brewing Company for both football and basketball, and there was a huge contingency of people in the lower sections for events such as a road Syracuse football game (the one we won in the Carrier Dome during JDs era), and the place was packed throughout for the tourney game against Gonzaga. Those are just a few examples. Zips fans are out there, and we don't need to be doing anything incredible to get a decent party together. With the people on this board leading the charge, I think we can start to the show OUR community that this is AKRON....not Cowlumbus North, and demonstrate that it's fun to follow the Zips.

This whole Toledo/Akron thing is starting to remind me of that string of major losses to OU a few years ago. They just played great against us and carried the swagger and momentum into the next matchup. Toledo has now spanked us at each other's venue the last two meetings. It needs to end. And just like the way we started to switch on the ball screens up top vs. Cooper when we started to get the edge on OU, we need to trust that Keith will come up with a way to take this group of Toledo personnel out of their game, and turn this thing around. The sad part is that the Zero temp. tomorrow night is going to leave a lot of no-shows in the bottom part of the arena. On a night when we will surely need all the help we can get.

If you're right, and it takes 18 game winning streaks and 27 win seasons to get a decent amount of our own students legitimately interested in attending a FREE basketball game, then we're in trouble. Again, I'm in agreement with you that it takes significant things to pull Joe Akron off of the couch, but our own students on our own campus is another issue.

I agree with you about winning something significant to bring in the "Joe Akron's". But Balsy was talking about the students. and I will always correct someone who tries to contend that students will come if we just win. We already DO win.

My shirts no longer fit either. Along with the 50 old concert t-shirts I still have, which my wife begs me to throw away. And she continues to be unsuccessful Honestly, I went to games in the early 80s because I wanted to go. I was a student at Akron, and a sports fan, and I really wanted to be a Zips fan. All of the giveaways were icing on the cake for me. Anyway....That's the entire question, Kangaroo. Are large enough numbers coming back? Kohl's and Fridays and places like that make it work because of the tremendous amount of repeat sales volume that follows.

Balsy, we've used that for years to explain the lack of student participation at Football games. But, how can we possibly apply that to Basketball? We do win, and win a lot.

Sure, in theory that is effective, IF those other people that come along are also not coming just this time, only for the money. You'd have to ask yourself how many people will become repeat attendees, and possibly future ticket buyers, to at least cover the cost of the promotion. Don't get me wrong. As a longtime fan, I want to see more people in the building. But for the purpose of this discussion, I am looking at this as a business person and I don't see an ultimate financial benefit to the party that's paying for the promotion.

That's a great idea to make them have to spend the money at the U. I understand someone seeing this as basically a payback of student fees that were already paid. My comment about "compliments of UA" is in reference to the fact that so many students who will be receiving these payments are already going to the game anyway. In those cases, it's like the U is just throwing money out the window.

Dave, After following recent developments regarding Joshua, and reading this article, I have the same questions. It's actually pretty crazy to see a PG coming in, who will be carrying some high accolades, when there will already be two Soph. PGs with pretty meaningful freshman seasons under their belts. Could this be one of those "it's a good situation to have" kind of things? Did we underestimate the early contribution potential of the two current freshmen when we pursued Joshua? Did we possibly wrongly anticipate that Joshua would evolve into a 2 Guard? I'm sure we'll all be watching how this shakes out.

I can already tell you. 1) Some unexpected students will be at some of these games for the money. 2) The rest of the students who already go will get a free $20 in their pockets, compliments of the U of A. I just hope it helps the team, IF the new people get into the game instead of treating it like a social gathering, a place to do homework, or play on their phones. However, with the Below Zero forecast for Wednesday night, the overwhelming majority will be those in #2, which means that my alma mater will just be handing out free money.

Remember the notorious story last Fall about the Cincinnati professor who wouldn't let his student wear OSWho crap in his classroom? We don't think that way here, unfortunately.

LOL I actually had to look at it several times, and was just shaking my head at the continued lack of ABJ focus on the home team. For a second, until I looked at the date, I was wondering how an old paper could have gotten mixed in with the new one. But, we didn't lose to Central

Is there any chance that's because the Red and Silver team was playing very close to there in East Lansing on the same day?

To cap off a disappointing loss...... You'll all be comforted to know that our "hometown" newspaper covered this game with a "staff reporter", and the score and opponent were listed on the front of the sports page yesterday as CENTRAL MICHIGAN.

No doubt. If someone wants to point fingers, Kwan was 2-9, Big Dog was 1-8, and Noah at 4-19....which included missing his first 10 shots !! Actually, I'm rather stunned that Noah took 19 FG attempts. I think that's an indication of our desperate attempt to keep pace with them in the scoring column. On a side note, I'm sure I am not the only person who's thrilled to see Jake starting to hit shots and be a part of the scoring effort again.