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Should Zips Play in CBI?


1981 grad

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9 hours ago, 1981 grad said:

If the players did not want to play.  I am fine with it.  I am sure that is what we will hear but I wonder if it is because the school did not want to pay the entry fee and the travel.

If Cleveland State and Duquesne are willing to spend money on their basketball programs that were not, that would make me sad. Awaiting Guthrie’s comments on why his 22 win team isn’t playing in the postseason.

 

I know Travis, Joyce, Middleton, etc would have given anything to have a crack at the postseason. Ditto Banks/Cheese/Williams and LCJ.

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Really bad way to end a season:

 

Losing to Kent two times in the last week of the season.

 

Not getting to the MAC championship game.

 

Not going to a tourney when we certainly had the season to qualify for the CBI.

 

Not knowing if any of your players are going into the transfer pool.

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Or maybe the coaching staff have more important things to do than travel to Florida to play in the Discount Tire tournament.  But hey, if the god like former coach does it, it must be the right thing to do.

 

I appreciated when Bobby Hurley said or maybe it was Oats, after losing in the MAC tournament, that his team's goal was to play in the NCAA and if not that the NIT.  Therefore, he wasn't accepting any invite to a lesser tournament.

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Shaka Smart, who is now the coach of a top seed with with Marquette, had a different view when he took over VCU.

 

Shaka Smart has done many things since he took over at Virginia Commonwealth University. It didn’t take him very long to get far as a head coach either. In his first year at VCU, the Rams won the CBI Tournament, a lesser tournament than the NCAA and NIT tournaments, directed at mid-majors who should be rewarded for having solid seasons but not getting into the bigger tournaments through selection.

In his second year at VCU, Smart took the Rams all the way to the 2011 Final Four before falling to Butler in a tough contest. 

 

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42 minutes ago, NWAkron said:

Or maybe the coaching staff have more important things to do than travel to Florida to play in the Discount Tire tournament.  But hey, if the god like former coach does it, it must be the right thing to do.

 

I appreciated when Bobby Hurley said or maybe it was Oats, after losing in the MAC tournament, that his team's goal was to play in the NCAA and if not that the NIT.  Therefore, he wasn't accepting any invite to a lesser tournament.

This is what I'm thinking. If the staff thought the same starting 5 were coming back maybe we play in the CBI & get even more games under our belt in looking toward next year. But I think the team is going to look drastically different next season & the staff likely wants to get ahead of the curve on the work which needs to be done.  Today they're likely starting their exit interviews & going to have heart-to-hearts with a few guys about their futures with the program. We may know who is going to transfer out by tomorrow, and how many available scholarships that will open up.  Better that than waste time at the CBI with a squad that's going to look significantly different next year. Just my $0.02.

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31 minutes ago, 1981 grad said:

Shaka Smart, who is now the coach of a top seed with with Marquette, had a different view when he took over VCU.

 

Shaka Smart has done many things since he took over at Virginia Commonwealth University. It didn’t take him very long to get far as a head coach either. In his first year at VCU, the Rams won the CBI Tournament, a lesser tournament than the NCAA and NIT tournaments, directed at mid-majors who should be rewarded for having solid seasons but not getting into the bigger tournaments through selection.

In his second year at VCU, Smart took the Rams all the way to the 2011 Final Four before falling to Butler in a tough contest. 

 

 

For completely different reasons, eff Shaka Smart.  My blood boils just hearing that azzwipe's name.  Not that I have any strong feelings about him.

 

I'm just glad Detroit Mercy isn't in there to allow Davis to fraudulently steal the scoring record. 

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Just now, Blue & Gold said:

 Better that than waste time at the CBI with a squad that's going to look significantly different next year. Just my $0.02.

In the transfer portal era, I think teams are going to look completely different every year. Tomorrow's team is promised to no one.

 

Is passing on the CBI an affront to teams of the past that would have killed for the opportunity to compete, but were robbed of it for whatever reason? A little bit.

 

The CBI is definitely an unsexy tournament. But it is a decent-sized assemblage of like-ability teams, and it would have been fun if the Zips participated and happened to string together a couple wins...even if only against North Alabama and Tarleton.

 

Moot point now...we now forge on to the Portal Season, and prep for 2023-24.

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Two ways to look at it - pay to play and get some more development for the young guys. However, there is no guarantee you get more than 1 game which makes it a giant waste in my opinion, though I'd love to see us play for my own personal benefit. The other option is to end the season now and focus solely on recruiting, which getting a good transfer or two is probably much vital to the future than getting guys an extra game or two of development.

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I do want to see them keep playing. I highly doubt the money has anything to do with it. If Groce and the team had the opportunity but needed the money, they would be scouting for the opponent now. 
 

There’s a really solid group of teams that got “left out” of all of the top 3 tournaments. Akron has had much worse teams continue playing. I’m curious as to how the CBI accepted teams, like if they extended the first invite, or it was a first come first serve. A nice statement from Guthrie and Groce would be nice. I would watch this team play in BF Egypt on a fuzzy phone quality video 100x before I would ever watch the 13-14 team lose to IPFW. 

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Just now, LoyalZIP said:

I do want to see them keep playing. I highly doubt the money has anything to do with it. If Groce and the team had the opportunity but needed the money, they would be scouting for the opponent now. 
 

There’s a really solid group of teams that got “left out” of all of the top 3 tournaments. Akron has had much worse teams continue playing. I’m curious as to how the CBI accepted teams, like if they extended the first invite, or it was a first come first serve. A nice statement from Guthrie and Groce would be nice. I would watch this team play in BF Egypt on a fuzzy phone quality video 100x before I would ever watch the 13-14 team lose to IPFW. 

 

I wish I was this confident regarding UA Athletics' financial picture.

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1 hour ago, zippy5 said:

This thing is garbage, and we'd complain that we should do better if we played these teams in the Diamond Head Classic or something in-season

 

 

Amen. This tournament is absolute trash. If you associate with trash, you are trash. Imagine making the worst college football bowl game....imagine of they played a bowl game in the Bahamas and called it the Bahamas Bowl.  This tournament is 10 times worse. How does this tournament help the players?... It doesn't, the extra practices are punishment for mediocrity and they aren't going to become better players by playing in it. Going deep in to the NIT could make a player better because the competition gets really good.  How does it help the students?....It doesn't. It's not like they were going to go to the games. How does it help the alumni or fans?...I can't think of how it does in a meaningful way.  How does it help the general Akron community?....I can't think of a single way.

 

There is a good case to be made (I don't agree, but it is a good case) that there are too many bowl games. This trash tournament should be eliminated. The illusion it is some kind of program builder is just rubbish.  If you aren't good enough to make the NIT, it's time to pack it up for the year. Not making this tournament is like complaining that your 6-6 football team didn't make a bowl. You probably didn't deserve it in the first place and the coaches would be better off on the recruiting trail.  

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1 hour ago, LoyalZIP said:

I do want to see them keep playing. I highly doubt the money has anything to do with it.

When people say it isn't about the money, it's usually about the money. Let's say the cost is $25K. What do the Zips get out of this investment? Spend the money on recruiting and get more of of the dollars.

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Just now, GP1 said:

When people say it isn't about the money, it's usually about the money. Let's say the cost is $25K. What do the Zips get out of this investment? Spend the money on recruiting and get more of of the dollars.


I think the recruiting advantage is the big one here. I ran into OU’s women’s coach Bob Bolden in Cleveland this weekend. Great guy, former Zip. He had a bad year. He said the advantage to not making the postseason was that the entire staff had the ability to go out and recruit all over the place last week. With that said, you can’t really go out and recruit the portal like that, but there could still be some Diamond-in-the-rough 2023 HS guys out there in addition to advancing 2024 and 2025 relationships. 

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1 hour ago, zippy5 said:

This thing is garbage, and we'd complain that we should do better if we played these teams in the Diamond Head Classic or something in-season

 

 

 

Having followed these teams from a betting standpoint since January, this is a solid non-P5 field. San Jose State has the MW Player of the Year. Southern Utah and Southern Indiana can score with the best of them. Indiana State, Cleveland State, and Tarleton would be excellent competition. And let's be honest, we'd all love a shot at Duquesne. 

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14 minutes ago, GP1 said:

When people say it isn't about the money, it's usually about the money. Let's say the cost is $25K. What do the Zips get out of this investment? Spend the money on recruiting and get more of of the dollars.

 

The cost is $27,500, to be exact, and I don't know what additional expenses there are.

 

I agree recruiting is where the money would be better spent, assuming we find shooters. Still disappointing we aren't getting the younger core more experience. 

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It would be great to get guys like Nate, Tavari and Lyles some time extra time on the floor to help prep them for next year.  The problem is that if you get them extended time on the floor it likely results in a loss.  At that point, you have to make the value assessment of whether an extra 30 minutes of playing time for those guys is worth $27.5K.

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11 minutes ago, Hilltopper said:

A bunch of my fellow posters have short memories. Other than the NIT, most of the Zips participation in these other tournaments have left us with a bad taste in our mouths.

If bad tastes in our mouths bothered us we wouldn’t be Zips fans. 
 

BTW- Saw YSU is hosting Oklahoma State in the NIT. 

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