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And I don’t believe that “The Basketball Classic” is being played this year. I guess we’re done? That blows

Kent is a 13-seed heading to Albany to play Indiana on Friday. Zips had the joy of playing in Portland on Thursday against a team from the previous year’s final four. Not sure how we got shafted so badly by the committee last year.

I said earlier this year the impact Christian has on that bench is fairly substantial. I will continue to call him Pink Fraud until I’m convinced otherwise. But they actually operated like a successful college basketball program this year. They still have a bunch of psychos on the roster, but Christian being there to help babysit guys like Jacobs, Payton, and Thomas was huge. And Carry actually showed up in big games down the stretch. That was a well-deserved title. With that, the only non Akron, Kent, Ohio, and Buffalo titles since 2005 are WMU in 2014 and Miami in 2007.

I remember Corcoran doing a similar thing that the player from Miami did. I remember she announced her transfer to Akron in the middle of the season. She was great until everyone got her film here. This player that was allegedly coming here from a bad Miami program hasn’t played in 2 years and never really did much there.

Greg is fine. He runs the offense really well, and in late game crunch time situations this year he saved us quite a few times. Listening to Groce on the post game is always interesting but he talks about Greg offensively a lot as a point guard. The thing that bothered me about his game this year was he settled for too many of those ugly looking floater hook shot things. He shot way fewer free throws this year even after developing aggressive driving as probably his most valuable skill. That was really strange to see. His defense speaks for itself. I would say at most times, he lives up to the NBA All-Star in his role caliber player. Clarke has a lot of the same attributes. And you can see the offensive potential there. There’s just something keeping him from being a threat offensively. He handles it well, makes pretty good decisions, has a nice looking jump shot, has good moves inside. He just puts himself in bad situations a lot. Clarke or Tavari could have been the starting point guard on plenty of MAC teams this year. The were not up to the standard for Akron a lot of the year unfortunately. But I see a whole lot of great in Tavari’s game and his potential is enormous.

I said the same thing reading that. “Who the hell is this?” Like Major League

Sitting here through this whole ceremony. My tummy is grumbling. I hope Groce’s is too.

Carry MVP, Castaneda all-tournament

Zips beat these guys so bad they ran it back and beat Tod’s best team. Northeast Ohio runs this league

Great stuff as always @clarkwgriswold Hankerson has caught a lot of strays and I have been fighting back on that all year. Should he have taken more initiative to be a scoring threat all over the floor? Perhaps. But I think Sammy was the guy the staff was banking on being that 3rd go-to guy. Talk to anyone who saw practices in the summer and throughout the season, and that’s the consensus. Hankerson was a stud as a 3&D guy. Put up similar numbers to Banks. Sammy was billed as sort of an X Williams. He showed flashes this year, and it’s big that we get him back. I think there’s a chance Tavari transfers. I also would caution him in that I see him getting the keys to the Cadillac very soon. Groce has turned 3 guards from Chicago into phenomenal MAC players that have made a lot of money playing professionally and have won a lot of titles at Akron and Ohio. In the transfer age, it was good to get him on the floor this year, even in a limited role with a lot of struggles along the way.

Each of the last 4 season’s we’ve seen a fairly significant amount of turnover to the roster. At no point have we gone into the next season in “run it back” mode. To me, I see it as a sign of hope that the program is strong and can re-load and re-tool at a pretty high level. Each team has looked different in many spots and I think the staff has done a nice job of 1. Reloading with adequate talent and 2. Finding a style that is successful. In 2020, we were loaded with a great scoring guard. Not much post scoring and didn’t rely on the 3 very much. 21 was guard heavy with a decent post option. But that was HEAVY usage by LCJ to give us a good shot. 22 was a hot mess until Trimble was axed. Then, it was half court throw it into the post and work from there. 23 more of the same, but with ball-dominant guard mixed in, and an inside-out 3 point shooting team. I’m very curious to see what direction 24 takes us. I really like that about this staff, they are a great mix of stubborn and flexible.

Also of note, Kevin Miller and Reggie Bass of CMU have entered the portal. Miller was on the All-Freshman team last year and was sidelined for pretty much this entire year with an injury. Bass was this season’s freshman of the year. He had 16 in their big win at Michigan.

The roster is of course a much more fluid situation than it was in past years. If you go back and read last year’s tournament thread (from the Zips’ 75-55 victory over Kent State in the MAC Championship), a lot of folks were fawning over the fact that the team had no seniors and everyone would be back. I think at this point now people should understand that it means nothing. Nobody is safe. Ever. I have stated theories as to why the roster shaped out the way it did. I am fine with how everything shaped out. In MAC play, Akron is 2nd in offensive efficiency and 2nd in defensive efficiency. Yes, X and Freeman were much better than the rest of the roster, but they are far better than average. With that said, I don’t think Groce wanted to have to rely on guys like Tavari and Nate as much as he had to for a lot of the season. My theory all along has been that Tavari was going to get an RS until a couple guys left, then he scrambled to get Mosengo and he wasn’t ready so Tavari got the roster spot. Clarke was okay this year considering the injury, but he has not lived up to expectations. Now, this team’s deficiencies aren’t to be aimed at one guy, but other than a nice big rim protector for some depth, a better scoring option at guard would have been big. Something that Groce will take into account this off-season. I was very impressed with what the program accomplished this year. I think they left quite a bit on the table with games like last night and I always circle back to the Nevada game too. The coaching staff got a ton out of this group. It was great to see Sammy come in later in the year, as he seemed to come to Akron on a bus from “Bust City” for most of the season. Perhaps if he finds his game earlier this year, we would be having a different discussion. Repeating is hard. I was at many times expecting to be let down in the middle of the season. But these guys had a damn good season. After 5 weeks, they were alone in first place. Then they took some blows and never quite answered the way we had hoped. Buffalo is the only team to repeat in the last 20 years, with 4 wins in 5 seasons from 2015-2019. I felt all year long that we were a lot like that 2016 Buffalo team. At no point were they ever the favorite to win it all after they were an afterthought for turning over most of their 2015 title roster. But they hung around long enough and we found out the hard way. The Zips had a similar situation, but couldn’t seal the deal. Damn.

That is absolutely true, but I think it is a decent amount of both. He was colder last week, and I think forced the issue a bit tonight. He missed a couple last week that were wide, wide, wide open that he has hit at an incredible rate in league play. Tonight, those looks weren't there as often. He got inside a couple times and looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable inside. Kent out-executed Akron all night. And the more I think about it, the more I'm going to have nightmares of seeing his 3 following the block not go in. Would've been a 1-point game under a minute. Ugh.

Kent had a few guys really answer the bell. Good for them. Pains me to say it, but I'm going to keep it real as always. Carry got hot from the perimeter early, as did Jacobs--both those guys shoot under 30% on the year from distance. The Zips chose to let guys like VC Davis shoot, let Sullinger shoot. In all honesty, that "gamble" nearly worked. Miryne Thomas has not been a guy for them that takes it to the rack. Akron forced him to, and he made the Zips look silly. They really cooled off and went 5 minutes without a point in the late parts of the first half. I've already said it a couple of times, but not getting that game to be tied or taking the lead in that stretch was huge. They committed a lot of dumb turnovers to dig themselves into that hole, and were right on the edge of climbing out before their hands slipped. Hankerson, who I adore, once again made crazy mental errors against Kent. That sequence to begin the second half was a killer. X was okay, but you could see him pressing like crazy at the end. I can live with it. Like @zippy5 said, its a make or miss league. He buries that 3 after the block, we may be singing a different tune right now. Looking at the box score, it is so clear what the difference was. Akron got sweet nothing from the bench. Just empty minutes all around. I thought Clarke was fine, but blew a layup he should have made and got stuffed a couple of times, as per usual. Nate was realllllly bad in these last two Kent games. He was like a deer in headlights again tonight, panicking when he caught the ball. For the second straight year, Akron finishes 1-2 against Kent while outscoring them in total points. Ain't that some s***. Groce quotes Guthrie from time to time. When they meet, Guthrie always points out how hard it is to win a division 1 basketball game. Hell, look at what the Pink Fraud has pulled off these last 2 Fridays. He's been blessed with a cold X and huge games from Carry, Payton last week, Thomas this week, absolutely dominated the stat sheets, and they've still just been a couple of bounces ahead at the end. If I think about it too much, I'll pull my hair out. The biggest difference from these last 2 and the game in Akron--the start. Now, Akron got on the board first today, but they had tons of empty possessions early and throughout the game. When Kent came to the JAR, Enrique popped the roof off with that alley-oop and Hank, X, and Sammy hit early triples. Lastly for now, it's fun to think about how different situations play out and what they could have changed had they been different. What if Toledo beats Akron in the semis and wins it all last year? What if Kent had won last year and carried momentum into the NCAAs? Trigger warning, I will again be giving Kent credit. They got punked in the title game last year and kept their entire core intact and ran it back with reinforcements. I will never credit Pink Fraud for his coaching, as he has never earned it, but he has always been a stellar recruiter. They came into this year hungry, and they have responded well, picking up a huge win tonight. BUT, if they lose to Toledo, it will all be for nothing. It's NCAA or bust for those guys. Ditto Toledo. Had Akron lost that game last year, would Ali want to come back hungry? Would Bandaogo become an all-league caliber player here instead of in Orem, Utah, a town I'm not even sure is real? Would this year's team be better? Worse? Same? All these thoughts in my brain tell me one thing--be thankful for what we've had, what we have, and what the future will bring. 13 months ago, many folks here would have never wanted to see Xavier Castaneda wear an Akron uniform for another day. Not much longer before that, we were losing to bad A10 teams by 20 with KJ Walton and Bryan Trimble in the starting lineup. I'm crushed by how this year's tournament ended. But damn it I am proud of this team and program. Unfortunately, this kind of result will only push Joe Akron further from the plastic blue seats. In Groce we Trust.

Winning championships, especially repeating, takes a little bit of everything. Great preparation in the summer, re-loading and re-tooling, great scouting and preparation for games, playing like you practice, weathering spurts of not playing well, and a good amount of luck. After the first month of the year, many of us, including myself, felt this team was missing just a bit here and there. And in pretty much every one of those losses, save for the game at Toledo, another bounce or two and the games could go the other way. This group was a lot like the 19-20 team if it was missing a piece or 2. That is absolutely on Groce and the staff. They should have and could have done better in the portal. I got really worried when I saw Mikal Dawson in a boot at Infocision stadium. That was the first sign of worry and bad luck. But this team responded well and finished 3rd in a top heavy league. Many more thoughts to be had. But this was a fine year. I’m disappointed because I know we were plenty good enough to win this thing. If we’re gonna go down, go down fighting. Not pouting and complaining like the “ole” days.

Groce singing the praises of the resiliency on the post game. Can’t disagree. You execute the way we did and get down 18 in the second half and it’s real easy to fold. But the turnovers were far too often. The turnover by Hankerson to open the 2nd half was absolutely massive. Just like that, Kent took a 10-point lead. Damn damn damn. Tough night for Nate after a nice stretch of games.

Really sucks. I truly can’t believe it was that close. The moment looked too big at times. But despite that 15-point deficit in the first half, Akron really should have led or been tied at the break at the least. So many blown chances. I feel for the guys because they really fought their tails off, they just did not execute. And credit to kent. They drew the fouls in the second half and iced the game. It be that way sometimes. 75-55 forever.

The math just doesn’t add up. I don’t know how Akron is even in this game. Had another chance and blew it again. Gonna run out of time soon.

Empty possessions with momentum are the name of this game. Missed rushed 3 by X, missed good look at a layup from Garvin, and then the sequences to end the first half. The Zips have not played well enough or executed enough to win.

Senderoff on the verge of getting to 0.333 winning % vs. Akron in the tournament

Shots not falling. Doing dumb stuff on offense. Fouling inside. Not making stuff inside. Oh whale.

Stupid s*** keeping the Zips from the lead

We look like a completely different team against them. They’re executing, we are not. And we’re lucky they’ve cooled off.