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It's been decades since I was in school, but I was wondering if the math is still the same. If you are a full time student (12 credit hours), you would have about 96 hours at the end of 4 years. That would be 32 short of the 128 I needed to get a Bachelor's Degree at the time. But, you were still a "full time" student, still eligible to play athletics, and still could have received an Associates Degree along the way.

I'm pretty much on the same page with you. I am also hoping that he somehow gets picked somewhere in the actual draft because of the possible plug that could benefit our program.

I'm very stunned, for sure !! Although, I never anticipated that VCU was going to pay him even more money to stay.

Without getting into specifics, lets just concede that it is a combination of BOTH.

I think that when you build something BRAND NEW, it SHOULD be the best out there. If it's not, it is going to look inferior too fast (See JAR Arena). When the field house was built, some people said it was the best training facility in Ohio, bar none. When the INFO was built, I heard some of the same comments. If a new basketball arena is assembled from scratch, it should aim to fit the same criteria. If you want to be a big-time athletic program, then you better look like a big-time athletic program.

When this does finally all start to come together, I think it will be good to have a "shoot for the stars" mentality. We did a pretty good job of doing things with the INFO that will benefit us well into the future. I feel the same way about the Fieldhouse. Unfortunately, that same vision didn't happen when the JAR was built 30 years ago. It was significantly better than what we had, but so much was missing. Please, lets not do that again. If there is no "wow factor", then don't build it.

Exactly !!!!

I hope you're not implying that I am against loyalty. I'm not. VCU has done just about everything a smaller school can do to keep a coach. But, how much will his loyalty be tested if one of the most storied programs in all of college basketball comes calling, and the money is right?

I agree with you. We can anguish over the way the basketball season ended, but we won't see the next chapter in Akron Basketball start to form for another 6 months. In the meantime, football needs our support. We need a successful football program to bring our overall sports portfolio to the level where it needs to be.

It's already been surprising that a guy as young as Smart seems resistant to taking advantage of some big leaps in his career. I'd collapse on the floor if he passes up a UCLA type offer.

Dave, Dave, Dave, You have a lot of time on your hands. I'm not discrediting anyone's accomplishment. Just simply replying to the title of the thread. We won 20+ games (regardless of which order they were won), had one of the best records in the MAC, made a run in the MAC tourney and went to (or won) the MAC tournament title game, and exited early in the postseason. If you can find a way to make that seem dramatically different from the past 7 years, have at it.

It asked to describe the season. Winning 19 games in a row was great, but in the end, it still resulted in basically a similar number of wins in a season as we've had for the last 7 years. It's funny how you mention the regular season championship. A couple of weeks ago, pretty much everyone on this board found that fact to be pretty insignificant when I posted about how nobody stayed after the Miami game for the net cutting.

I'm still amazed at the number of people I have seen and talked to in the last couple of days that did not pay attention to the circumstances, and just assume that Akron was really just a bad team that maybe didn't belong in the tournament. Very frustrating. I hope it doesn't have any lingering effects on the program. But perception is often much more powerful than the truth.

I have to admit that I started rooting for Michigan to run up the score in the 2nd half. I'll never know if VCU was malicious or intentional in what they did to us on Thursday night, but I still didn't like it, and enjoyed watching some payback.

Already happened. Did you miss the game against VCU in the JAR last season?

I guess the question has to be asked: If a MAC title game can draw only 12,000 into a huge NBA arena in Cleveland, how much could we reasonably expect to draw for just an Akron regular season game? I don't know. I'm having a hard time imagining that we could draw enough numbers to create any "hornets nest" kind of atmosphere that far away from home, with a huge crowd, and everyone in the place pulling for Akron to pull off a big upset against a top-tier opponent. Wouldn't the ticket prices also have to be much more than usual?

I agree with you. But, I think there's others who don't see it that way.

I would also consider his comments to be somewhat of a breakthrough moment. It's really too bad that the Q is an hour away. I'm sure most of us old timers would remember the game against #2 Pittsburgh at the Richfield Coliseum in 1987. We almost won that game, and it was a great crowd. It might be a little more difficult to bring that "homecourt crowd" to Cleveland, but it might actually be a great opportunity to try to get others throughout NE Ohio more exposed to Akron Basketball.

I made a point about this in another thread, but I will repeat it here. Why are some people so convinced that making a run in an NCAA tournament is somehow the starting point of the only path to a perennial top-notch program? First of all, it doesn't happen very often, especially from our league. Secondly, the odds are tremendously against each individual team making a significant run. Every single year, about 30 lower seeds enter the tournament with that dream, and every year 29 or 30 of them leave the tournament without accomplishing it. Multiply that by a few decades, and the odds that YOUR team will be the one that has the magical run is pretty remote, and grows even more improbable when you don't have yearly appearances. Thirdly, I'd like to challenge anyone to convince us that George Mason, or even Ken+ State, OU or Cleveland State have become noted success stories since their tournament runs.

The plus for me has to be the first ever Top-25 Ranking. Other than that, did we do anything that was much different than what we've done for the last 7 seasons?

I'm glad someone brought this up, because I had this conversation with a group of friends today while watching tourney games, most of whom are Akron fans. Yes, it sure appears as if VCU has taken a run in the tourney, and parlayed it into what now appears to be a big jump in the overall status of their program. But please, I sure hope our Zips don't sit around waiting and waiting and waiting for an NCAA tournament appearance that produces a magical run. Waiting for these fleeting opportunities is senseless, and I don't understand how a few people on this board think this should be THE plan to catapult our success. How fleeting are these opportunities? Simply count the number low seeds that had magical Final 4 runs over the last couple of decades, and compare it to the number of low seeds that did not. And it still doesn't ensure that it will accomplish anything. It's not as if teams like Can't State and George Mason have been huge national success stories since their tournament runs. Schedule more teams that can produce those opportunities. We have about a dozen chances to do that every season, and we don't use them wisely. Maybe the fact that we were considering asking for a road Bracket Buster game is an indication that our strategy on this matter might finally be moving in a better direction.

I have to keep asking myself: What happened in 1 year in regards to the difference between VCU and Akron? Did we just play out of our minds when we played them at the JAR in 2011-2012? Has VCU recruited that well over the last couple of years? I just don't see how two programs could have gotten separated from each other by that kind of margin in just one year. It was beyond dominating.

What game were you watching?

There's no doubt that some things are lacking from their resume, in our eyes. But, I do believe that it holds true that it's hard to pass on a team with an RPI under 30.

I've seen that mentioned as well, as I indicated in my post. And just think, they got so close to scoring two more big road victories, if they would have pulled out the overtime games at Akron and Arkansas State. The fact that we were possibly thinking about volunteering to play a road Bracket Buster game tells you that our people have possibly picked up on the value of having more opportunities to win on the road. I wonder if we might see that type of adjustment reflected in our OOC schedule next year?