GP1

It was a good season. A lot of wins is always a good thing. They provided a nice distraction between the end of football season and the beginning of football season.Now get to work on winning the MAC Tournament next year.

I'm so helpless with withdraw that I've taken to watching Arena Football. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Passing will be better. I'm more interested to see if any of the running backs can play with the toughness that Biggs played with. The offensive line will be better, but I don't know if if there is anyone willing to run into the line as fearlessly as Biggs did. Akron uses a power running game similar to an NFL team and the back must be willing to run into the line instead of to the outside.

My first year out of graduate school I lived in Connecticut and absolutely fell in love with Big East basketball. It was Donyell Marshall's last season at UCONN and I was able to go to a bunch of games. Later, I was able to go to the Friday session of the Big East tournament that year and stayed the night in Manhattan and did it up right. Cincinnati, Louisville, Norte Dame, Marquette, et al have no business in that league and they will never be able to compete in that league because the best high school basketball is played on the east coast and those kids to to the old school Big East schools. Night in and night out, the competition is brutal.Boston College almost won the ACC their first year in the league and they probably would have not made it past the semi-final game of the Big East tournament.Any Big East team that made it to the semi-finals would win the Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC tournaments. Iowa is good? Ohio State is good? Florida is good? Kansas is good? These teams would be average Big East teams.

I agree. The game tomorrow is not as big as the game Friday against Toledo for a lot of reasons, but it is a big game. They need to get in the swing of winning big games.

Thanks for not making me the first to have to say it out loud. The lack of athletic talent will be on full display in Philadelphia this week. Get ready for an ugly one the way this team has played since the Nevada game.How about some more harsh reality. The reason we did not get a home game is that our stadium is so small compared to Temple. We've never even sold more than 4,000 tickets for an early MAC Championship game. Temple could have 4,000 walk ups buy tickets. The NIT needs to fund the tournament so they give games to teams with bigger stadiums and play the percentages.

You write this like Toledo was some kind of defensive machine or something. Akron choked the game away against an average team. Akron went all defense the last five minutes of the game and didn't put the best offensive players in to match the scoring of Toledo. I think the word choke is way over used in sports, but it does fit what Akron did last Friday. Defense means nothing if you can't score when you get the ball. The phrase "defense wins championships" should be "defense is the side show that gets the ball to the offense so they can win the game". Defense means nothing if your leading players miss foul shots late in the game. Defense means nothing of players half ass it around the floor late in the game. Defense means nothing if your shooters are taking bad shots. Defense means nothing if there is a lack of concentration that leads to your point guard making wild passes. Defense means nothing if you have a coach who refuses to put guys in the game who can score when you need to break a scoring drought. Toledo didn't play great defense Friday, we saw the biggest choke job in the history of the school.

In football, a good coach figures out which plays/players are woking and which plays/players aren't working throughout the game and in the fourth quarter they run those plays/players to win the game. The same is typically true in every sport.The best question about what KD did Friday is, Did he have the best players on the court at the end of the game Friday? I don't think so. It's more important for him to know that against Toledo in the MAC semi-final game than against Dennison in a meaningless game in December.It was a sickening choke job by the players too......just sickening all around.

Let's get to the real point, JD has a MAC East title, a MAC Championship and a bowl appearance. That should be case enough but if you want more I have fingers and can type.As a percentage of overall games, the non-conference football schedule is much more difficult than the basketball non-conference schedule. Let's kick in a Dennison in football once a year and we can reduce our difficult non-conferece games by about 33%. Akron's nonconference schedule consisted of (just off the top of my head) Dennison, Wright State, Cleveland State, some bad team in PR, a bad Mississippi State team, loses to California, Clemson and Nevada, I think they played Duquesne (sp?). And does anyone actually think the MAC was a good conference this year? I don't think so. JD has a good conference record which is what they are playing to win.I would also say that JD had much more work to do with his program than KD did. When he took over, the program was littered with nonathletic "suburban" kids and he is taking the program away from that loserly direction. KD is taking the program in that direction with guys like Linhart and Dials.I dont' want to sound too hard on KD, you just asked about the difference and I provided it.

bullshit OK, if Zips Win! is wrong, who would Linhart start in front of or get playing time over at Can't? Linhart has zero athletic talent. He throws up that lolly pop lay up shot when he drives and looks nothing like a D-1 basketball player. A good D-1 player would dunk over guys when they drive the baseline the way Linhart does. Instead, we get that little shit shot that he throws up hoping that launching it 20 feet in the air will bring it down in the basket. Sorry, Linhart has a lot of proving to do. Put 50 pounds on him and he is another Faulkner.Besides, just getting to start in the MAC as a freshman gets you on the All MAC Freshman team. I'm not impressed by that award.

Huggins stressed defense? Nightly his teams scored over 80 points per game. A lot of good defense did us Friday. All we needed to do was match scoring when we had the lead and we could have won.

Go and get Gary Waters. It will never happen, but it would be nice. GW built a great program at Can't with kids from Detroit and other parts of Michigan where they play great basketball. I don't see Akron, Columbus and Cincinnati as hot beds of high school basketball.To carry on another point about overachievers that someone else made, overachievers always let you down in big games. Ultimately, big time players must play well in big time situations to win sporting events. The overachiever doesn't give you the ability to reach a championship level.

Please don't compare high school basketball games to D-1 college basketball games. The differences are legion.

w00t says that we are all having a knee-jerk reaction to the loss. I don't think that is the case. Look at the posts. They are all well reasoned and use evidence to support their opinion. If anything, this team has been given too much slack for losing so much late in the season and we were all ignoring a huge problem right in front of our faces.You all can say what you want about fairweather fans, but the truth of the matter is that they are the best type of fans out there. Many of us have spent hundreds of hour watching bad basketball and football since the school moved to D-1. In addition, we have spent even more money buying tickets and merchadising. Maybe putting up with abuse is the sign of a good fan. I go to every event I can. After writing this, I have come to the conclusion that I and others like me are easy to describe...........we are all a bunch of idiots. How else can you describe putting up with the abuse? A fairweather fan won't settle for watching and supporting crap and that is the most logical approach to being a fan.Everything KingZip said is correct and he should stand by it. Today is just a change in opinion based upon further evidence. KD makes a lot of money and the players are on full scholarship. His salary and the scholarships are basically paid for by the taxpayers of Ohio because they don't sell enough tickets to pay for them through sales. If we want to bitch, we have every right to bitch and we should bitch.

We all did talk about momentum the past couple of weeks. Losing so much late in the season provided Akron with no momentum going into the MAC tournament. The old saying that teams that play late in the season do well in post season has come true for Akron. Look at Syracuse now......

While the football team backed into the championship game, they still won the game when they got there.

Good point. The reason is that Akron is too slow to compete consistently against athletic teams. I don't know the difference between a 2-3 zone or a 1-3-1 zone or whatever, but I do know slow when I see it and we are slow.

We should all hope it is over.

He has plenty of time to answer cell phone calls during games though. He hides next to the stands behind the bench and talks to whoever is on the other end of the line. Nice teamwork!

I'm interested Dials is taking such a well deserved beating on this board today. Anger must bring with it clarity because he is just the type of whi............."suburban" player people love when things are going well and love to make excuses for when things go poorly. I'm glad none of them are getting a break today.

If those of you on this board want harsh reality as to why people don't go to Akron basketball games, this is the reason.

KingZip is on fire today. Your posts today are some of the best we have read on this board in some time. Cutting through the crap in an edgy manner is always good.

I'm disappointed at KD today, but I'm not ready to throw him under the bus. 22 wins is a good season regardless of what happened last night. Guys who can win a lot and stick around eventually win championships....just ask Bill Cowher.

You beat me to the punch. I was going to post something like this.

Excellent post CK. Once again you cut through the crap and get right to the point. You just missed one major point. There is an alarming lack of athletic talent on that team. Dru is slow. Linhart is slow. Dials is slow. Do I really need to go on? Toledo had a more athletic team than Akron and won with athletic talent. Dru wasn't lazy getting to the ball, it just looks like that when a guy with more athletic talent than you beats you to the ball.If Akron could get more consistent scoring out of Middleton, he should play more. He has the speed and quickness to compete against top level players. I think KD is going to live or die with Dru, Romeo, Linhart and Dials. Would you want to risk your career with those guys?Finally, I like to talk about guys who are winners and guys who don't win. Right now, Romeo, Dru and others have completed three years at Akron and really now have nothing to show for it. If you guys remember a few years ago, Bosley and others were going to be the guys who won championships for Akron. What happened? Nothing! These guys have received a pass because they were Lebron's teammates in high school and they were kind of the local glory boys. Enough of that already. These guys need to start performing and living up to the hype. Thank you Captain Kangaroo for opening up the door for public criticism of these guys. Thank you for taking me out of the position of being the jackass again by not making me the first to point out these guys shortcomings in an angry manner.I say to Dru and Romeo, you have one more year to become winners like the soccer and football teams were this year, or you can be just another group of might have beens. Let's get to work.