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Upon further examination, you are right. Only 2 of the 11 seeds have to "play in" to get to Thursday. The other two 11 seeds are already in the Thursday/Friday brackets. So, it's really a 50/50 chance that you have to play-in if you are an 11 seed.

I don't know that. Maybe you're right. All I can see is that both At-Large play-in games have been between 11 Seeds the last few years.

Kreed explained it above. It's the spots for the last 4 teams that got At-Large bids. I've been to the play-in games. They were a lot of fun, and Dayton fans support it well. But, the Nation isn't paying much attention until Thursday at Noon. That's why I said I'd rather be a 12 than an 11 seed.

Unfortunately, those noisemakers are against MAC basketball rules

Correct. But you said earlier that we could maybe play ourselves into an 11 seed, which means that we'd have to lose the MAC Tournament, and I don't even want to think about facing that scenario unless it happens.

40+ Cavs games per year. and 80+ Indians games per year. vs. 15 Akron Zips basketball games per year.

I was just thinking about this. We've had some bad luck over the years. But, wouldn't it suck if we were fortunate enough to get to an 11 seed, but then have to play a Tuesday night game in Dayton just to get into the showcase games on Thursday and Friday? I think I'd rather be 12.

I'm not sure if it helps to discuss whether it's better to have more good teams, or less bad teams, when determining the strength of a conference. I was only pointing out that Kent's SOS was really impacted in 2008 by those horrible teams in the bottom half of the MAC, despite the fact that they went out and scheduled so many top level teams that year. But obviously their overall formula worked well for them that year. I'd like to see us do something similar. But for this year, all we can do is look at what we can accomplish with what we have in front of us. And we have no option except to post an eye-opening win total, and hope for the best, like I said previously.

Like I've said all along. Just keep doing what we can do as fans. Show our support for the Zips in every way that we can in the City of Akron, and keep buying tickets. if the City is ever to get on board with this project, it's because they see the benefit. They obviously don't see it right now. And that points to things that are beyond our control as well, such as the potential to book other events at such a venue, and whether or not the arena brings other investment to the City. My Guess? I still believe that the U of A will eventually just build their own new Arena. But I'll stick with my projection that something like this is certainly at least a decade away. And if we do significant renovations to the JAR, that will probably be much, much longer.

If you remember that era in MAC basketball, there were a ton of really bad teams. Some years, the entire West sucked, which eventually prompted a rule change so that the West leader did not automatically get the #2 seed in the tournament. That has to explain why you're pointing out all of the Top level teams that Kent played that year, but they still had a really high overall SOS. Those horrible MAC teams at the time really weighed everyone down at that time. In fact, that seemed like a very wise strategy for Kent to go out and schedule those tough OOC that year to try to counterbalance that. I don't want to begin another discussion here about scheduling. I already support MUCH better scheduling for us. I'm only looking at our #36 RPI and 21-4 record, and comparing that to 2008 Kent. We're ahead of their pace that year in wins, right now. And we're behind their pace that year in losses, right now. I don't know how their RPI that year in mid-February compares to ours right now, but I can see that we certainly still need to win a lot more games to equal their end-of-season RPI.

I think we all pay attention to these things for a couple of reasons. 1) We all know that Selection Committees look at them when determining who gets in or out of tournaments, and where people are seeded. 2) Because other basketball fans look at them, you know you are getting a little bit more attention when your ranking starts to get closer to the top.

I'd certainly be one person who'd like to know what they are building with that money.

It's worth looking at... St. Mary's was a quality win because they were in the Top 50. But St. Louis? They had a #138 RPI. I'd be happy if we can get to that 28 win total, which would match them. Then we'd also have to get down about 10 more spots in the RPI to get near where they were in that category as well. They definitely set a lofty standard with that #9 seed. But I also find it interesting that the committee was actually fair, or maybe even overly generous to a MAC team, for a change.

That's a tough one. One thing is true: Offering a scholarship to his brother potentially has tons of benefits that go far beyond whether he ends up working out for them as a player. I'm sure they waste plenty of other scholarships on a yearly basis that don't produce nearly the benefits that this one could produce.

Sad, but true. Unfortunately, like most every year, with the schedule and quality of wins we have this year, we have no other option but to post a win total that's impossible to ignore.

Or, is it possibly just now being talked about a lot in hopes that Pro Scouts will put less emphasis on his lackluster performance last year?

More than anything else, I think Tavian is just in a tough situation right now. We have two very experienced Juniors who can play the point. I'm guessing that it will take until those "cupcake" OOC games next year before he can record enough playing time to show if he can really contribute at this level.

I agree. It takes me back to the Soccer promotion a few years ago, where they asked us to bring in an old OSWho shirt, and exchange it for an Akron shirt. And there was a very creative video at that time that mocked a student wearing Suckeye gear as well. I'm happy to see the return to that type of mentality, and understanding who we compete against for fan interest.

You got it, Kreed. Just keep posting wins, and our situation is just going to keep getting better. And there's still a lot more potential wins to be had in the next several weeks. The fact that we've climbed so much in the week following the OU loss is still pretty surprising. For me, I'd still love to target that #9 seed that Kent got when they were 28-7

It's been challenging. I now have to be somewhere early Saturday morning, after a late 8pm Friday game. And I can't fall asleep for hours after a game. My mistake for planning my schedule, and my wife's schedule around watching this on Saturday evening.

Buffalo's big guys can dribble drive to the hoop. Period. It's the biggest advantage they've had on us lately. And we can't stop them very well playing man defense. And if Big Dog stays in the paint all night, he's still not a rim protector against those long guys who can who can extend and elevate to the basket. You can try to go Zone on them. I'm not sure how that would affect some of the other matchups that might be favorable/unfavorable for us. But I can tell you that I'd bet money that we can't beat them again if they score 90 points. But, that's why we have our own coaching staff to try to figure out how to get that done.

I'll make this easy. Keith is going to play Utomi, Aaron, Poke, Tavian and Josh depending on the opponent, the game situation, the player match-ups, foul situations, his "own gut feeling", etc. They all have different skills that can help us at different times. They are also still all prone to being completely ineffective at times. It's a fluid situation from game to game, and week to week, and that won't change. For me, the Hughes situation right now is the most puzzling to me.

I had posted in another thread that they had us moving rapidly upward in the RPI. We had already moved up 10 spots in a week (after the drop after the OU loss), and now it looks like we've moved up a few more. I get rather exhausted at times the criteria used in some of these rankings, and what they mean. But "Luck"? Is that possibly the idea that we've won several close games?

I wasn't an Economic major, but I see something strange here. We're still a week away from the Kent game, there's only a few hundred tickets remaining (according to the info shared above). Yet, they are discounting them dramatically to sell the rest of the tickets? The supply/demand/price logic that I know doesn't make sense here.

This was a one point game with a couple of minutes to go in Athens, which only looked worse with all of the technical free throws and intentionally fouling near the end, in a place where we historically have played poorly, and Big Dog only was permitted to play 21 minutes. And we had just blown them out in Akron a couple of weeks before. There's plenty of teams in this league that have played us better than that this year. Buffalo, Ball State, NIU, Central, BG, just to name a few. You have to go by what you see, and I don't see OU posing a threat to us in Cleveland based on the 80 minutes we played them this year.