LoyalZIP

Good observation. I'm no expert, but I think Groce likes what he has seen with Wynn. While he does some boneheaded stuff, he plays a good small 4-5. Against Ohio whose bigs (Carter and BVP) can play the perimeter well, he probably didn't want Aziz running around out there getting beat on drives or caught sagging off a shooter. Come Tuesday @ Ball State, I would expect more minutes for Aziz against their true big Sparks.

Hell yeah!!!! Eat that, kitty kats! Who’s the kook that said the offense has been opening up the last few games? What a moron! Anyway, that felt amazing. The end was excruciating, but the Zips forced OU to take shots the didn’t want to for a lot of the game, they just made prayers at the end. Of course, OU was off tonight but the Zips took advantage. They didn’t settle for shots all that often and Ali used his length to make it look easy. I wish Freeman would’ve gotten the double-double, but he was damn good as well. Unsung hero? Greg bleeping Tribble! All over the place and cool as a cucumber running the offense and making plays. Not the best game from X but good enough. And Wynn was awful to begin but pulled his head out of you-know-where. Clarke? Huge minutes. Dawson? My favorite play of the game was his steal and layup, must be a Dawson thing! That felt so good, this weekend just got a whole lot better. Zips women have a big one in that gym tomorrow as well. Go Zips!!!!!

Offense opening up doesn't necessarily mean higher scoring. The Zips still play a very slow paced game. However, in their last two, there have been far fewer hair-pulling-out possessions that end in an Ali back down shot clock violation and obviously no Trimble clunkers. We've seen more plays in transition by the guards and we've seen Dawson hustling to get himself open. It's been a very noticeable difference while still playing with the same pace as they have all year.

Defense, Defense, Defense. That is how you beat Ohio. They're not an exceedingly great defensive team, and Akron's offense seems to have been opening up as of late. I hope Dawson and Clarke continue to make big contributions on that end. Freeman will once again have his hands full with the likes of Carter and Vander Plas. The Zips didn't play a great game back in January against them, but had every chance to take it. Being on the road in a very hard arena to win in, a slow start would kill the Zips pretty much instantly. While this one won't change anything about the season from a standings point, it would be a huge momentum and confidence builder going into March. With that said, I unfortunately am not expecting the Zips to win, but I do expect them to give themselves a chance. Go Zips!

Zips open +7

The ticket department is being outsourced after this season ends. However, strategies in regards to getting students to work and be engaged in athletics at the University are definitely not what they should be. Dropping some more in the bucket of student work and internship opportunities could benefit everybody, and give UA students something great to put on their resume—meaningful and impactful student work. It will be interesting to see what this administration does after this first transition year. They’ve done a lot of good, but have only scratched the surface so far.

It feels like she’s been there since the Curt Miller days. Dawson won out that battle, and capped it with the dagger.

A thriller of a game! Really back and forth, and I don’t like complaining about officiating but BG got away with a lot of physicality. Unfortunately for them, Akron is TOUGH. That’s a huge win toward locking up the 3-seed. Congrats, ladies! Go Zips!

College sports in general, this year especially coming back from COVID have been dropping off. Even those a-holes in Columbus had 20k+ empty seats for a couple of home football games, which is nuts. At UA, culture change and I think the TV deal have a ton to do with it. Once all UA home games started to be televised starting in 2016-2017 and the MAC TV deal led to more televised games the years before that, the lower bowl has progressively empty as the years roll by, including the 2020 team which was arguably the best Akron team ever (not here to argue for or against). I don’t know how familiar you are with how Larry Williams operated, but the fan experience was the last thing he cared about. He built the marketing department that has been in place for 5 years and it hasn’t resulted in anything. As soon as Guthrie comes in, the student attendance is as high as it’s been in close to a decade, and the department and AK-Rowdies are directly in sync. Baby steps. But this is not a proper discussion for the topic of an arena. I am well aware of the college athletic attendance problems as a whole, myself and many others on this board have noticed it in the basketball program even as it continues to be one of the top 4 programs in the league.

Okay…but Kent is one of the hottest teams in college basketball and had significantly fewer people in their gym for the Akron game, and last night there were less than 1,000 fans at the MACC. This is not a “Groce’s 2022 team is boring people away from the JAR” situation. For the better part of 5 years now, any national TV game at the JAR is littered with empty blue chairbacks in the lower bowl, and that includes two seasons where Akron went 14-4 in the MAC and won the reg. season. As many others have said over the years, the marketing department is nonexistent. There’s no incentive to become a season ticket holder, there’s no incentive as a student to still come to games after graduation, there’s just no excitement generated outside of the team’s success. Even the team’s success isn’t really broadcasted anywhere beyond GoZips.com, which Joe Akron doesn’t even know exists. There’s no media coverage, nothing mentioned on local news. Akron is essentially invisible with the current marketing strategy. The U is guilty of it, athletics is guilty of it, the city is guilty of it, the league is guilty of it, hell the state is guilty of it. I don’t have the answers, I am a die hard trying to put myself in the shoes of Joe Akron. The program is vastly under appreciated by the Akron community, and it’s very disappointing.

I'm really hoping the Zips can stay on the 3-seed line going into Cleveland. That game would tip around 7pm and give any Zips fans that may not have the chance to go to a mid-day game up there to make the trip. By my non-scientific mathematical analysis, I think the Zips need to win 2 more games to lock up that spot, at least for me to feel good about their chances to lock up that spot. It is indeed a tough stretch, and I can't stop thinking about that awful timeout that killed momentum of what would have been a huge win toward locking up that spot. Anyway, it's time to move on. The Zips match up well with BG, so tonight is a big opportunity. Assuming the Zips will beat Miami in the regular season finale, they need to win just one game of @BG, @OU, or home vs. UB to pretty much lock it up. Certainly doable, but this team has had some brutal close and unexpected losses. Also, it's time to build some momentum and confidence heading into tournament play too, something that not a single player in the program has any experience with.

Another thing I've been thinking about: the importance of locking down the perimeter. While the defense against the drive was pretty awful, the Zips forced BG to take a lot of tightly contested threes while only allowing a couple of open ones. While you can both lock down the perimeter and step in front of a driver, I think that made a huge difference tonight. It's the kind of thing I would do against Kent. Force them to score in the interior instead of allowing them to shoot 24' threes that they have proven they can make.

That’s more like it! I liked what I saw from just about everyone, it was a great team effort. Shouts to Garvin Clarke and Mikal Dawson for putting the team on their back in the second half with their best games arguably of their careers. While the drive defense was bad and they didn’t play very good D as a whole, Clarke was all over their guards. If he can continue to play that kind of D off the bench against these guards coming up, we’ll have a chance. It looked to be same old same old with the 7-8 point leads that would be wiped out by terrible defensive possessions, until my man Garv stepped up and buried a transition 3! When was the last time we had one of those? That wasn’t quite the dagger, but it’s something that has been lacked in a big way this year. On to Athens, I’m proud of this team tonight but there’s much more work to do. Go Zips!

GUARD. THE. DRIVE.

The first game against BG had me really excited because I thought the team may finally start to play to its potential a bit more often, and it was then followed up with a 46-44 win against EMU without their best player. It's been a grind of a season, but we're very lucky to not be in the same position BG is in. I really like Huger and always have, if you ever get the chance to talk to him, he's the nicest guy. But I find him to be a mediocre coach at best. Without Trimble, this game will likely look much different. Even with him, the odds of Akron topping the 90-point mark and winning by 25 are slim to none against any MAC team at this moment, and that's okay. In the first game against BG, the Zips played pretty poor defense the first ten minutes or so, and then played some of their best of the entire season the rest of the way. As much as I want to see a more explosive and efficient offense, this team plays at its best when they play great defense for 40 minutes. I really liked Trimble up until he was out with COVID at the end of December. Since coming back, he has been a huge liability, and in Akron's three games without him, they've beaten Buffalo, lost close to Ohio on a bad shooting night, and dominated EMU on the road. A small sample, but it's definitely telling of how this team plays when he's not there. I would love a wire-to-wire controlled win tonight, and frankly that's what it should be at this time. But I have given up on expecting anything with this group to be easy. GO ZIPS!

Just watched the replay. It was indeed Akron that called it, Reghi said Ohio but the official pointed to Akron’s bench. Just a brutal decision.

A great game. Never count OU out, they’re tough, experienced, and have weapons all over the floor. I though the Zips were very tough once again, they just made a lot of bad mistakes late. The biggest of which was the timeout called right after a 3-pointer by Martindale with a little over three minutes left that gave the Zips a 64-59 lead. I’m no coaching expert, but that one needs some explanation. Ohio had just taken their biggest lead of the game and UA was on fire with still a lot of time to play. I’m pretty upset about that one. But at least the Zips have a little cushion on the 3 seed. Still need to win a couple more though.

Zips are back in action already! They face the always dangerous Ohio Bobcats, coached by Bob Bolden, a gem of a guy and a great coach. The Zips are in prime position for the 3 seed, but must keep winning. Go Zips!

The team is flawed and is certainly missing a few key pieces to make it a truly great team. Right now, it's a good team playing okay. They played a pretty good game against Kent, two of their worst performances of the year, and then one of their most impressive defensive performances in a TCB win. Akron's roster right now is made up of some of the best role players in the league plus the best big in the league. But there's no floor general to bring it all together, so a good team is all this really is. It's been frustrating to watch, but I still feel just as good about the program moving forward as I have for years now. You don't need to be a top 2-3 seed in the tournament every year to do something, and clinging on every win or loss for at-large talk or the NIT bid is tiring to me as an Akron fan. I haven't been thrilled with how this season has played out, but if any other team in the league loses their most talented and experienced player after three games and then gets a no-show from their lone sharpshooter for nearly the whole season, I don't know that they would be so fortunate to be in this same position. To make a long story short, this team is a ball-dominant playmaking slasher PG guy away from being really really good, and if you throw in a 3-and-D guy like Banks, they would probably be the favorite in Cleveland. Assuming players continue to progress as they do in this program and the dead weight leaves and the new crop of guys is as good as it should be, UA will be in the championship race once again in 2023. But for now? Just beat BG.

My Portal Predictions are now Wynn and Trimble. If Wynn keeps up what he did yesterday and continues to contribute a lot, perhaps that will change. But even if he does add 8-10 points per game down the stretch, I think he will likely be gone anyway. This hasn’t gone as either side has planned. As for Trimble, I’d say he’s a guarantee to be gone, even though it doesn’t sounds like the door is closed on him returning this year. As others have said, if he does, I think a bench role would be a more beneficial to both him and the team. However, an ego can make that a disaster and that is what Groce seems to be concerned about.

Just watched the replay. Far from a perfect performance, but I’d call it a good and efficient performance. Freeman was all her the place early on and he’s a big reason they built the early lead. The turnovers are still way out of hand, but they pushed the pace and played a bit more aggressively instead of the turtle pace they usually do. I get they aren’t built to run, but it was nice to see X and Tribble attempt to go coast to coast on the defense when they weren’t set. A nice game for Ali, and he made his best plays when he made his decisions quickly and didn’t take more than a handful of dribbles or handful of seconds before doing whatever he did. When he catches the ball on the perimeter, I’d like to see him develop more of a rhythm catch-and-shoot instead of trying to do his Trimble-esque jab step that doesn’t really do anything for him. Also, when Clarke has been coming into these games, I no longer expect him to be just filler to give X or Greg rest. He didn’t light up the stat sheet today, but going back a couple of weeks, especially to Kent, he’s been a very solid contributor. And Wynn fit in the lineup like a beauty. He’s got to be one of the best players in the MAC for being at the end of the bench. A solid win indeed, Go Zips! Side note: #3 for EMU may be the worst player in the MAC. My goodness is he awful. I don’t think he would play for Point Park.

If you thought the Zips were struggling badly, BG has been an unmitigated disaster. The Zips beat them by 25 in their own gym, and they’ve only gotten worse since. Of course, very few games are easy for this Akron team and I don’t expect this one to be either. But they should win, and it shouldn’t be close at the end. Let’s hope.

Kent Stat Sucks!!! The Zips are tough, really tough. Great win, and another big one coming up Monday. Go Zips!!!

Great to check into this game during the women’s HUGE win! Gotta play til the final buzzer. Go Zips!