UAZippers

Ok, I understand that Parrish/Cotton are in Groce's doghouse or whatever, but I really want them in this game right now.

I would expect the last scholarship to go to a freshman. Currently, we will have 0 freshman next season. LePear is coming in as a Sophmore I alao agree that Hester seems to be more of a typical 2 guard, but we already have a pretty good one in Ivey. If he is the best option for point, I could see him starting there even if it is not his best fit. I would love to see Utomi move to the 3 spot, but I fear he is doomed to play a majority of his minutes at the 4 for at least one more season.

I haven't seen anyone post this yet. I apologize if I just missed it. The NCAA has released the attendance data for every team last season. Akron had the second largest increase in attendance for all of FBS from 10,337 in 2016 to 19,569 last year. Obviously winning must solve all problems! Or, maybe last year was the number fudging year to keep our multi-year average up. Another interesting note is that the MAC was dead last in attendance league-wide at 15,394 per game. The Sun Belt came in 9th with over 2,000 more people per game. You can also really see the divide between the P5 and G5. The lowest average attendance in P5 (ACC) was 48,442. The highest G5 average (American) was 28,669.

Yep. I don't blame the Zips, they are playing hard. BSU had a great gameplan to take advantage of the size discrepancy and things have been falling their way.

Smith is giving a heroic effort on Moses, but I'm not sure how long he can keep it up. BSU definitely wants to get him more involved than last game. Kostelac is soo close to being a good player, he makes great initial moves but he goes to far with it. It seems like everything from setting screens to post ups he just wants to push it a little more than he is allowed. When he learns the boundaries, it will be a night and day difference.

Torrey Patton chose UA over Duquesne. Jack Ballantyne and David Collins both had UA and Duquesne in their final schools before signing elsewhere.

You are the one who said that he never had true success at OU. If he could still recruit there, then he shouldn't have a problem now.

Also interesting is that ESPN has Alce listed as a fullback and the top fullback overall for the class of 2018. They only ranked two players, but is this the first time ever that the Zips have gotten the top nationally ranked prospect for his position? http://www.espn.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/playerrankings/_/position/fullback/class/2018/view/position

Interesting tweet. Alce says that he is not signing until 1PM. The university is not allowed to advertise signings before they happen are they? Maybe just doing the picture ceremony at his school at 2?

My old high school football coach used to have a favorite saying when asked about officials: "Referees aren't biased, they just all suck. If they were any good they would be giving up their Sundays instead of Fridays." Obviously this is another level up, but it still applies. The "good" officials are in the NBA and there is a whole lot of complaining about them even at that level. Referees at this level get minimal training, terrible pay, and bad travel schedules. I have always respected officials because there is no way that I would put myself through what they do. If it really was an issue to the NCAA, there are many solutions but they would all require more money to be spent, so they won't happen.

I honestly don't see what you saw from their freshmen that showed that they were so far ahead of ours? Delonte Brown: Had a nice game, scored about 10 points right away and then trailed off and finished with 17. Nick Sebande: Scored 12 points by shooting 33% from the field. Jalen Adaway: 6 points Isaih Colemen-Lands: 6 points Michael Ritchie: didn't play. I didn't plan on only posting points scored, but when I looked at the box score nothing else jumped out at me either. The only player who truly killed us was Ringo and he is not a freshman. Am I missing something? Miami is a team that is carried by their one very good, Junior guard. Their big, Sophomore center also gave us problems because we had one guy eligible over 6'7". One freshman had a pretty good, not even great, game against us and it proves that our new guys suck? We have had our freshman have multiple just as good if not better games than Brown had. Is it just because they beat us in this one game on their home court? This is an honest question.

16 steals in a quadruple double! This tweet was 'liked' by Rob Fulford, I hope he can bring it home. I really want this kid on the Zips.

Lucas Smith is getting the start today! JG putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to playing the hardest workers.

In terms of actually scheduling the classes, this should actually make things simpler and easier to look at. The 50 minute classes with 15 minutes between caused weird start times due to classes starting every 1 hour and 5 minutes (7:45, 8:50, 9:55, ...). 75 minute classes allow classes to start every 90 minutes at only the top and bottom of the hour (7:30, 9, 10:30, ...). 3 hour lab sessions also will now fit into the usual time slots instead of just being scheduled seemingly randomly. As other people have said in the thread, it was only intro level courses and specific majors that have ever really scheduled classes on Fridays even before this change. This change is probably negative for science majors, but I can't imagine that they would make the change with no foresight into how they plan on making labs work in the new structure.

This week is a national cancer awareness event for all of college basketball. Its called Suits and Sneakers, or something similar.

I have no idea where to best put this, but it is looking more and more likely that the NCAA is going to get rid of the rule, for both football and basketball, requiring transfers to sit out for a year before becoming eligible for their new team. I remember a lot of people on this board talking about how much they disliked that grad transfers can play immediately when we were discussing Antino and Noah this past off season and this a another step further from that.

This is a tough game, but winnable. EMU seems to be the exact same type of team that they have been for a few seasons now: incredibly athletic and skilled, with no team chemistry and a lackluster coach. There is no excuse for a team as talented as EMU to be 1-3 in conference play. James Thompson might be the best player in the MAC and he seems to have matured a bit; I only see one technical on the season after averaging about 300 the past couple of seasons. They have a really good transfer from Robert Morris in Elijah Minnie, he is another big man that the Zips will have to find a way to contain. Outside of those two, Tim Bond, a MAC all-defense team member last season, is a great player as well. Looking at their roster, somehow they are actually younger than the Zips. They have 8 freshman this season and only one senior (Bond).

Whole bunch of whistles already again this game.

I'm not a huge fan of how it looks either. I do love how we are trying to innovate and not just jump on a trend though.

You think we will get a home game?

Ok, how much would you have bet someone if they said that Kostelac would make the first shot for the Zips tonight? I would have lost a lot of money.

That is as easy of a MAC schedule as I could have possibly hoped for. No Toledo or Western Michigan and NIU/Central Michigan at home. This is a schedule that if Akron wants to be considered a top MAC team, they go no worse than 6-2. There are only three games that should be toss ups: OU and EMU on the road and NIU at home.

The key for tonight is how well the Zips contain Willie Jackson, a guy who, if I'm remembering correctly, barely chose Missouri over the Zips out of high school and was rumored to be transferring to Akron before ultimately ending up at Toledo. The rockets were not a very good team before he became eligible a few weeks ago, but have been on a tear since he joined the starting lineup.

Height means nothing when the guy looks completely lost every time he steps on the court. I don't know why you feel that just having a tall person would drastically change the team's outlook. I had as high of hopes for him before the season as anyone else on this board, but he has done NOTHING to show that he deserves to play any meaningful time whatsoever. He is slow, awkward, and cannot seem to find the flow of the offense, let alone guard his man on defense. Its ok, there are very few freshman centers that are able to compete at the D1 level and most of those are playing for top 25 teams.

Even if we do suck as you say, why should Kostelac be the one to get the minutes? It's not like he is behind a bunch of seniors who are leaving after this season. He lost all of his minutes to a sophomore and one of his fellow freshmen. Next year, I expect him to be even further back on the depth chart with the addition of Riak. If the goal is to give time to future contributors, then I believe that the minutes are being divided perfectly.