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If I were wanting to pile on, I could also point out that it says that the MAC Tournament is the "first week of March", in that same sentence where it says that it's being played at Cleveland State. I surely wouldn't call March 7th to March 11th the First Week of March. I think that would mislead people, although it's surely technically the month's first FULL week. Maybe if they were really concerned about accuracy and being informative to their readership, just stating the dates would have been the best option?

Here's a couple of things I might be able to add about the 3-point shooting that were interesting. 1) The 37% we are shooting from beyond the arc is actually the best of the last 5 years, except last year. And last year was only 1% better. So, if someone is making the point that anything about our 3-point shooting (rushing shots, shooting them closely guarded, etc.) is any different than it's been before, the success rate doesn't support that. 2) If our inability to blow people out is being attributed to "rushed 3-point shots", why haven't we had this problem in the past? 3) Keith has openly talked about this being his best offensive team. Guys, I think some might be too quick to put their finger on the 3-point shooting, yet the numbers regarding 3's and our overall offensive productivity are good . I think there might be a problem with consistency. I think this team struggles too often to defend and create turnovers like other Akron teams. And I also think there's no pushovers sitting at the bottom of this league like there had been in the past.

But where's he going to go? That's what a few of us are pointing out. If you think he can "blow by" people, then do it from 10 feet away when he sees an open path, and can get a quick lay in. From 30' away, the help defense would eat a guy alive who's accelerating and dribbling for that distance at 6'-10" tall.

I think a national sports publication just invested more in researching and analyzing Troy Football in one article than Akron's major, local hometown publication has invested in their hometown D-1A team in the last 5 years, combined.

For sure. He's definitely got much, much better games left in him yet this year than what we've seen lately, from a scoring standpoint.

I agree with everything Captain Kangaroo said as well. Precisely, the reason we got into this discussion was that a couple of people suggested that when our 6'-10" forward is closely guarded, out at the 3-point line, he should put the ball on the floor because he "might be able to get a layup". That's just absurd. There's other situations/locations where he would be capable of putting the ball on the floor and scoring, but this isn't one of them. Antino can do that. Jimond can do that. I'll point the finger at those two guys in particular if they are taking bad 3's and not doing some of the other things that the defense might be allowing them to do. Kwan is a front court guy who CAN hit a spot-up 3-pointer. If he's standing at the 3-point line without a good look, passing the ball to someone else is going to be the best move nearly every time. It's no different than nearly every other guy in college and the NBA who's 6'-10" but has some outside shooting ability.

Absolutely. It's a no-brainer. That's why I said it might work if you removed the other 4 defenders from the court.

I think you get blacked out if you are not a Time Warner customer and therefore have a Time Warner log-in as your provider when logging into ESPN3. But it might be different because it's a road game this time?

I keep seeing this come up from time to time. And I did touch on it earlier, but lets dig into this in a little more detail. Yes, I think he might be able to turn and beat someone to the hoop from a posting position 5-10 feet from the basket. I'd actually much rather see him do that rather than take the 10 foot fall-away jumper. But, this thought that he might be able to get a layup when holding to ball 5 feet beyond the 3-point line (like on Saturday) is absurd. He's never going to get there unless the other 4 defenders are off the floor. He's not going to get far enough to drive and dish either. And if he has the ability to drive just into the paint, stop, and hit a 10-15 footer off the dribble, I don't think I've ever seen it, and there's probably good reason for that. Yes, I know he was a guard at one time years ago. But that was before he was 6'-10" tall. Unless he's suddenly acquired Magic Johnson's talent, guys that size rarely possess the ability to get to the hoop from 30 feet out off of the dribble. Shoot some 3's for us when he has a good look. Work for some baskets in the paint. Rebound and defend for us, as he's been doing. That's how he can help us the most. Asking a guy that size to put the ball on the floor to try to beat defenders to the hoop from the perimeter is a recipe for disaster.

Uh Oh. Does our ticket office know this? Does anyone know if we can get similar seating in the new location? Seriously now. Have we finally had enough, and will finally show our outrage and demand more? Is UA Athletics going to tolerate this anymore and start demanding more? This has gotten beyond intolerable. And it just seems to get worse. It's pure garbage. It has to end.

You're right on. IF we have to take care of business ourselves because OU and Buffalo keep winning, then the easiest path to 2 wins is BG and Miami at home. With the lead that we had, I'd hate to see this come down to winning at Kent. But, that would likely be the case if we don't win tomorrow. Even greater than all of that is the need to finally play like a team that can do more than the last 12 or so teams before them. That could start with just winning the last 4 games and showing the league that we have no equal.

I know you're joking, but you might actually see serious responses that are something close to that.

And I think you're going to see something much closer to a 70-55 game this time. That's the only positive thing we can get out of the home loss. I want to see a renewed commitment for 40 minutes of intense basketball.

That's funny that you and Kreed started threads at the same time. I feel like Denny has been at BG for 10 years. I hope we play much better defense against these guys than we did at home. I don't see a 90 point game this time.

Where did you hear this? There's no tournament being played for for several more weeks. I commented on this in another thread. He's already said that they ran a play because he believed that Kwan had the best chance of getting an open look.

I'll guess that before the season started, nobody knew exactly how the entire picture with the Post Guys was going to work out. I would have absolutely thought that we needed another big body to be successful this year. But in the meantime, it appears that Poke has raised his stature and gained trust with the coaches, and that Mike still has some work ahead of him to be able to help us. And like K92 just pointed out, he appears to be particularly drawing the ire of the coaches with his inability to guard people.

Whoa. That's not what I heard. You're making it sound like we were intentionally resting people, or sacrificing our best play. Our starters all played 30 minutes or more, except Kwan. And there were minimal bench minutes beyond Utomi and Josh. What I heard him say is that: If we were going to lose a game, he'd rather it be now, instead of later when it had greater consequence. That was it.

Keith has even talked about this a little bit. A 300 lb. workhorse kind of player could struggle a bit playing Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Thank God for the 12pm game on Thursday. That will maximize his rest. I'm still puzzled about the Hughes situation myself. I'm guessing that "not being able to play extended minutes" is not the issue when he comes in for 1-2 minutes per game. I'll say it has far more to do with his ineffectiveness than having post-injury stamina issues, as some people have suggested. He should be more than capable of playing more than a minute. The staff appears sold on Poke, and have even commented about his defense. Last night, he didn't match up well. But I think if we can get him to about 10 minutes, and get a couple of baskets, a couple of rebounds, and a couple of blocks, that would be fantastic. And he's been able to do something similar to that in many of the games he's played so far. Remember that Big Dog has also been able to get some rest at times with a Kwan/Utomi combo on the front line too. So, it's not all on Poke to get rest for Johnson.

He's in the UA Hall of Fame. But I agree that he hasn't been touted as a famous Akron Athletics alum nearly enough over the years.

One other thing that may have been forgotten last night is that Josh left the floor with assistance, and never returned. Keith said afterwards that it's an ankle injury that's caused previous problems for him? I don't recall a previous problem. I said previously that the odds are nearly insurmountable that we don't win the MAC outright. A home loss against a .500 team certainly puts that a little more in doubt, for right now. But those BG and Miami games mentioned above should still certainly be the clinchers, even if we play no better than we played last. Beyond that, if we recover and get on our "A" game, we can still max out at 29 wins. That should be enough to get us a higher-than-usual Seed as a MAC champ. But if we were to lose both games at Buffalo and Kent, I think we're in the Usual Place if we win the MAC title game. And if we don't win in Cleveland, we're probably getting sent on the road in the NIT again. I'd like to win both of those games, but I especially think that we will be extra-motivated for the road game at Kent.

I had already commented earlier that I counted through the play-by-play, and Kent had a 15-2 run. But I didn't realize that we didn't score for 7 minutes. I guess I have to credit him for pointing out that fact. But yes, the 3-point percentage shooting difference was significant, not the 43 to 42 FG percentage.

http://www.ohio.com/sports/zips/kent-state-70-akron-67-flashes-end-zips-30-game-home-winning-streak-delay-regular-season-mac-title-1.748201# And in the latest chapter of our ABJ writer giving us an insightful analysis of game results, he makes special mention of the fact that Kent "outshot" the Zips by highlighting that their Field Goal percentage was 1% higher than ours. I'm not kidding.

And preferably, it wouldn't have happened at home in front of a sellout crowd That's what make the OU loss much easier to take than this one. I had to scamper out of the JAR quickly so I didn't have to watch a celebration on our floor. No way could I have watched that. That's very true. This was all about our own poor play. And it was mostly on the offensive end, which has been our strength all year. Watch the game and look at the stat line. The only thing that really sticks out at you is that Kent maximized their offensive possessions last night by having an impressively low number of turnovers.

I'd be disappointed if you weren't. Ok, I can see how maybe someone who was just looking for an entertaining basketball game, and wasn't emotionally invested like the rest of us, would have had an enjoyable time.

Ok, then I have some problems, I guess. I didn't leave there thinking "wow...I had such a great time...that was a great rivalry game" Heck no. I walked out of there pissed off because we lost.