MAC refs , YOu gotta love em.

Did I really hear the announcer say Kent/Akron was the best Mid-Major rivalry in College Hoops?

Dambrot left without shaking hands. What a jerk!!

hahah Laurie said the same thing. Ran it back to make sure. Sendy looked confused walking that way.

From the Zippy Board:

Same old Dambrot, Same old offense, Same old result. Now go to bed.
RooYahoo

Posted 25 minutes ago · Report post
He's not a big game coach.
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Sure is nice to see how the other half lives. #GoodnightZippy

I hear ya....I'm happy for Jimmy Hall. He deserves to play in an NCAA Tourney game and it might be more than one if Walker continues his Basset like performance.

Was a tough choice as to who to root for between these two but I agree It's nice that Jimmy Hall gets to go to a dance. He's definitely been a real competitor over his Kent career. Got to put my MAC hat on now, hope Kent gets a good draw and a victory. Walker had a hell of a last two nites.

It wasn't difficult to root for Kent State for many reasons, not the least of which was to view the Akron Zip Message board. Yesterday, one poster lamented that the "hill people from Athens County" had descended upon the Q. Another poster mocked our O-H-I-O chant and our, even as another poster admitted that it was better than anything they could chant. One person even slammed us by saying we can take our much heralded fan base back to the Convo and have a MAC victory watch party.

The coup de grace was to see Coach Dambrot lead some members of the Zips off the floor without being man enough to shake Coach Senderoff's hand. Keith Dambrot has to lead the conference in most #1 or #2 seeds without one NCAA victory. Good Luck Golden Flashes, here's hoping you make a tournament run a la 2002!

Read the transcript of Dambrot's post game response to a Jason Arkley question tonight and you might hate him a little less.

Great read:

Q. Hey, Coach, your luck in championship games hasn't been great, the number of close ones. How does this one feel? How do you ramp it up year after year when you lead the league all year and you still have this one-game playoff and the disappointment that sometimes comes with that?
COACH DAMBROT: Are you going to nice to me, Jason? This is a first.
Just so we're clear, in the future, I love Jaaron Simmons as a person, and I think he's a great player. I'm sorry I'm diverging, but I want to make this clear. I was asked a statistical question and I answered it statistically honestly, so if there's any misinterpretation, I love that kid, I love what he stands for, I believe he's one of the best players in the league, I voted him that way two years in a row, and I apologized to him as well.
So if it was misconstrued, but I just wish sometimes that people would just understand that I am a good person and that I care about kids. I really don't care what anybody else thinks, but I care about kids.
Now I'll answer the question now that I got that off my chest because it's important to me that the young people know that I'm behind them.
So I had to get that off my chest, I'm sorry, but I feel like sometimes people take shots at me because we have a good program, and it bothers me. So I have to tell you that. And I respect you as a writer, so you know that as well, but I just wish sometimes people would be a little more fair with me because I felt like people aren't very fair sometimes.
Now what was the question? Sorry about that.
Q. Basically the question is you guys are in the tournament final nine out of 11 years, and that's a good thing, but one-game playoffs in a one-bid league, there's all that disappointment when it doesn't go your way. How do you ramp up year after year when this is the result sometimes?
COACH DAMBROT: That's a really good question. All I can say is, look, we've been good enough to get in the championship game year after year, and sometimes the ball hasn't bounced very well for us. I know the first time they banked in a 40-footer on us with a clock malfunction, I think we lost one overtime game to Ohio, we lose at the buzzer last year to Buffalo. The league is so close that -- like the year we pounded Ohio, right? I don't think we were that much better than Ohio, it was just a weird game, right? They got really good
SportScripts.com
4

players and we just played well and they didn't.
So I mean it's disappointing. You get there, that's the hard part about sports, right? When you're good, then you set yourself up for disappointments. If you're no good, there are no disappointments because you're never in the championship game, right?
I think the hard part about athletics is unless you're careful, the lows, the lows last a lot longer than the highs. Even for me, like I have to fight that constantly. Think about the young people. We just lost two tough championship games in a row, and ultimately when we don't win the championship game, that's on me. Like my job's to win championship games, period. It's not on our players, it's on me. So luck, not luck, make your own luck. Obviously we just didn't play well enough tonight. But it's disappointing, yeah, and I probably won't talk to my wife for about three days, which is unfair to her, but I just won't feel like talking to anybody. Maybe I'll talk to my dog, because I don't know. Like I'm sick for my guys, I just feel bad for them, and that's the disappointing thing because of our league. I love our league. It's a great league, but it's so hard because it comes down to one game every year. Unfortunately, we've been in that one game a lot. It's the way it goes.

a recap of Akron's results in the MACC since 2007-

L -1pt vs Miami ('07)
L -19pts vs Kent St ('08)
W +12pts vs Buffalo ('09)
L -6pts(OT) vs Ohio ('10)
W +1pt(OT) vs Kent St ('11)
L -1pt vs Ohio ('12)
W +19pts vs Ohio ('13)
L -3pts vs Buffalo ('14)
L -5pts vs Kent St ('17)

3-6 overall, 1-5 in MACC games decided by 6pts or less. painful.

I think you're right. The "local" teams in the final likely meant a lot of cancelled hotel nights for Saturday, especially by traveling Ohio fans. I thought Kent's crowd was not great in the semis, but over 10,000 for the final is a solid number. I just don't think many of those Kent and Akron fans spend the night, which also impacts pre-gaming and post-game celebrating/sorrow drowning.

The nightmare attendance scenario is something like EMU, NIU, Miami and Central as the final four. I could easily see sub-3,000 for both the final and semis with a lineup like that.