Akron Zips v Kent State Golden Flashes: The MAC Championship

[Z.I.P.]

Congratulations to the MAC champs from Kent State.  They played their game today, and Akron just couldn't get their offense rolling.  This was the final I expected, but not the outcome.  If Kent plays like that next Th/Fri they have a fine chance to take out a 2/3 seed opponent.  I felt all season that Kent had the pure talent to challenge for the title, they just were too inconsistent to get a top-4 seed in the tourney.  On paper Kent can be the #2 team in the MAC --but on the floor they're #1.

[dre22era]

Same thing the past few years. Come out the gate strong 

By February we are feeling ourselves and become Hollywood.

Fall on our face and never fully recover.   

[The Hip Zip]

5 minutes ago, RooYahoo said:

Flat-footed D by Johnson. Can't defend. Time for Dambrot to move on. 

 

Still waiting for an intelligent, insightful post from you.  Still hung up on Forsythe eh?

[The Hip Zip]

Can't stand the dicks that point fingers when things go wrong.

 

[dre22era]

Henry Palattella‏ @HellaPalattella  3 minutes ago

Akron head coach Keith Dambrot just apologized to Ohio's Jaaron Simmons in regards to a comment he made about him earlier in the year

[Blue & Gold]

Well, K.ent played a very good game.  Big Dog was great.  Hall's almost as good as Dog.  Jaylin Walker had a great game, big props to him.

 

I wish them well; they're representing the conference. 

 

The Q was packed; looked great on tv.  Zips played like crap... again.  We should have lost way more often than we did this year, but we won by the skin of our teeth on a number of occasions.  Won't beat good teams that way, though, and K.e.nt is a good team.

 

Again, I'm disappointed, yeah.  To be sure.  But K.e.nt deserved to win and we did't.

[Sportsjunkie330]

This is like a family reunion tonight. Good to see some ZNO family members that I haven't seen in a while. 

 

I hope that I don't see you again until the next one.

 

ps, no, you aren't getting invited to the wedding

Edited March 12, 2017 by Sportsjunkie330

[clarkwgriswold]

Anybody who thinks the MAC deserves more than one spot in the NCAA tournament should have to watch that sh!t show game on an endless loop.

 

What a disappointing finish to the season.  What a disappointing last month.

 

Congrats to Kent.  They outplayed the Zips.  Most importantly, they played defense with significantly more intensity than thE Zips.  When they doubled Big Dog, they quickly recovered to defend the perimeter.  They gave Kwan nothing all night and no one fIgured out how to counter it, despite having seen the very same thing twice before this year.

 

I'll be less angry/more cogent in the morning.  GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

[zipfan84]

30 minutes ago, Blue & Gold said:

Well, K.ent played a vitry good game.  Big Dog was great.  Hall's almost as good as Dog.  Jaylin Walker had a great game, big props to him.

 

I wish them well; they're representing the conference. 

 

The Q was packed; looked great on tv.  Zips played like crap... again.  We should have lost way more often than we did this year, but we won by the skin of our teeth on a number of occasions.  Won't beat good teams that way, though, and K.e.nt is a good team.

 

Again, I'm disappointed, yeah.  To be sure.  But K.e.nt deserved to win and we did't.

One team was hungry. The other lethargic. I hate to say It but KD was outcoached. Not with Xs & Os, but motivation.

[kreed5120]

1 hour ago, akzipper said:

175 days until the first football game.

 

If the Zips didn't care about the MAC championship I don't think they'll care about the NIT.

Please don't remind me. I don't want to think about what I figure to be another 5-7 team.

[bUAkronG]

Tough way to close the season, but I feel like that game was more won by Kent than lost by us, if that makes sense. Credit goes to Kent in that they played motivated and quick and kept us off our game the entire game. We just couldn't seem to get over the hump, and when we did, they went on a big run that we couldn't recover from.

 

If they play like that next weekend they could bust some brackets, as much as I hate to say that.

[skip-zip]

12 minutes ago, clarkwgriswold said:

They gave Kwan nothing all night and no one fIgured out how to counter it

 

I give Kent props for that.  All year, we knew that when someone just picked up Kwan on the perimeter that he'd have no choice but to pass the ball back to a Guard because he can't put the ball on the floor out there.  And knowing that his skills are limited in the post, he's then essentially negated to a few step back jumpers for an entire game.  But that's not what lost this game.  

 

And yes, Kent is also skilled enough to get from the paint to the perimeter better than many teams that we play.  but that's not what lost this game either.  

 

1) A turnover-prone team like Kent was forced into only 6 turnovers.  Same as the game at the JAR.

 

2) We allowed a Freshman guard who averages 7 p/gm. to score 30 points.  Sound like a repeat of what happened in the Home Miami game?  

 

3) Kent got an unbelievable blessing when their workhorse Hall who had been playing max minutes all week got a long unexpected rest in the first half when they had a lead and he got his 2nd foul.  That kept him fresh for the rest of the game.  

 

4) We're not going to probably win any game when Josh, Antino and Kwan shoot 1 for 9 from 3-point range, and we can only make half of our FTs.   

 

5) Every (brief) momentum run that we got going offensively was stopped by a Kent basket in the 2nd half.  It just wasn't our night.  

[Let'sGoZips94]

13 minutes ago, zipfan84 said:

One team was hungry. The other lethargic. I hate to say It but KD was outcoached. Not with Xs & Os, but motivation.

Seems to be a common theme throughout Dambrot's tenure. 

 

I wonder if his pregame speech involved reminding the team that they have an NIT ticket in their back pocket to fall back on. They played like it. 

 

Tonight really kicked a supportive fan base in the crotch. That was a HOME game at The Q. It's not too often we out man the Can't fan base, especially by that much. And the team did not show any semblance of caring. Pitiful. 

[ZippyRulz]

It's 11:17 and........we still need a new arena.

 

[K92]

Just got back home and I was really a boiling pot all the way home.

 

It was pretty evident from the get go that Kent showed up to play and Akron didn't.  They deserved to win.  We identified that this team did not have any Senior leadership earlier in the season and it was on display tonight.

 

Keith made the decision to play Kwan 30 minutes.  Jesus, it seemed like more than that.  We all said at the Corner Alley that we needed Kwan to come up big and he came up snake eyes.  I'm sure KD knew this was true as well that's why he left him in as long as he did but at some point he needed to see if Utomi could heat up.  20/20 hindsight.

 

At the end of the tourney I have to summarize my weekend as follows:

 

Days of vacation burned: 2

Hotel on Thursday night: $130

3 day bar/food tab: $500

High hopes for the Zips: Dashed again

Edited March 12, 2017 by K92

[clarkwgriswold]

Kent is going to get a 14 or 15 seed and get throttled.

[skip-zip]

2 minutes ago, ZippyRulz said:

we still need a new arena.

 

We also still need to understand that you can't wait for NCAA tournament appearances to grow your program.  Come next March, it will be 5 years since our last title.  

 

We probably can't change our schedule overnight.  But unless we start challenging ourselves early in the season, we'll continue to have nights like this where everything we did for 4 months disappears in an instant.   

[LZIp]

I give serious props to Kent. Hall got his and Walker came to play. Some irony on this board for crapping on Senderoff for not meeting expectations. I would take their regular season any year if it meant a trip to the dance. Have my share of gripes with the coaching staff and certain players, but I just don;t have the energy to dwell on it. I'll miss Big Dog, even though I wish he could shoot his FT's better. Surely I'm not the only one who remembers all of the person attacks on him regarding effort/commitment/weight earlier in his career.

 

Looking forward to another 1st round postseason loss to a shitty P5 team.

 

At least "Joe Akron" showed up. Seemed to be close to a 3-1 advantage for Akron. I brought a few of his relatives. Its too bad the Zips didn't though. And people wonder why attendance is what it is.

Edited March 12, 2017 by LZIp

[GoZips88]

3 minutes ago, LZIp said:

I give serious props to Kent. Hall got his and Walker came to play. Some irony on this board for crapping on Senderoff for not meeting expectations. I would take their regular season any year if it meant a trip to the dance. Have my share of gripes with the coaching staff and certain players, but I just don;t have the energy to dwell on it. I'll miss Big Dog, even though I wish he could shoot his FT's better. Looking forward to another 1st round postseason loss to a shitty P5 team.

 

At least "Joe Akron" showed up. Seemed to be close to a 3-1 advantage for Akron. I brought a few of his relatives. Its too bad the Zips didn't though. And people wonder why attendance is what it is.

 

No question - big kudos to all of the Joe Akron's who came out to The Q tonight. The table was perfectly set, but ... 

[zippy5]

Kent wanted it more. Thank God Dog and Ivey showed up or we would have gotten run out of the building. Did we have any points in transition or off of turnovers? Unfortunately just another game we thought we could win without braking a sweat. Need to discover some heart and leadership over the offseason.

[1981 grad]

It feels like I in the movie Groundhog Day.  I keep waking up and there is a repeat of the MAC championship game.  Great Akron crowd, poor Akron performance.  I feel bad for Kd and the players.  Nobody on the team wanted this ending.  I thought Kent played a great second half in the Ohio game and they did the same thing tonight.  Their execution in the second half was nearly flawless.  Walker had a great game.  I thought our team did well penetrating to the basket and getting some easy shots.  However, we could not shoot the 3 ball when it counted.  We could not get stops when we needed them.  We could not shoot foul shots.  Kd indicated that this was one of his best offensive teams.  Not sure what happened to that great offensive team.  Sure did not look great offensively tonight.  We needed somebody to get hot from the 3 line and it did not happen when the game was on the line.  I would still like a home NIT game but doubt it will happen.  Maybe the team can make a run in the NIT and give our younger players some experience playing top competition.

[zippy5]

9 minutes ago, GoZips88 said:

 

No question - big kudos to all of the Joe Akron's who came out to The Q tonight. The table was perfectly set, but ... 

Akron fans showed up. Probably our best showing yet. If we were OU we could sticky a post at the top of the board and talk about it. Thing is here we understand what's important and that's on the floor.. unfortunately for us tonight

[skip-zip]

 

9 minutes ago, zippy5 said:

Akron fans showed up. Probably our best showing yet. If we were OU we could sticky a post at the top of the board and talk about it. Thing is here we understand what's important and that's on the floor.. unfortunately for us tonight

 

They gave that good showing of fans very few instances to get excited about what was happening on the floor.  Nothing good happened consistently enough at any time during that game to really ever get the fans into it.  

Edited March 12, 2017 by skip-zip

[ewbrooman1]

51 minutes ago, skip-zip said:

 

I give Kent props for that.  All year, we knew that when someone just picked up Kwan on the perimeter that he'd have no choice but to pass the ball back to a Guard because he can't put the ball on the floor out there.  And knowing that his skills are limited in the post, he's then essentially negated to a few step back jumpers for an entire game.  But that's not what lost this game.  

 

And yes, Kent is also skilled enough to get from the paint to the perimeter better than many teams that we play.  but that's not what lost this game either.  

 

1) A turnover-prone team like Kent was forced into only 6 turnovers.  Same as the game at the JAR.

 

2) We allowed a Freshman guard who averages 7 p/gm. to score 30 points.  Sound like a repeat of what happened in the Home Miami game?  

 

3) Kent got an unbelievable blessing when their workhorse Hall who had been playing max minutes all week got a long unexpected rest in the first half when they had a lead and he got his 2nd foul.  That kept him fresh for the rest of the game.  

 

4) We're not going to probably win any game when Josh, Antino and Kwan shoot 1 for 9 from 3-point range, and we can only make half of our FTs.   

 

5) Every (brief) momentum run that we got going offensively was stopped by a Kent basket in the 2nd half.  It just wasn't our night.  

In terms of #2, you have the wrong Walker. Jaylin Walker is their second leading scorer and had a number of 20+ pt games, including 24 against Texas and 29 a couple of times. He's a dangerous player and the Zips let him get hot and did a poor job defending him on the 3s or driving.

[dirtyolcrowe]

Funny I saw some comments about Kent being a 14-15 and Will get throttled.   Guess they are missing the point that we aren't in the dance and they are as a #6 seed.   You think Akron could do that???   No way in h...........!!!