That's a good sign. With our tournament success last year, I think the casual crowd already had one ear open. A win against Toledo should really awaken the masses.

We are 4.5 point favorites. I'm hopeful our defense will cause them a lot of fits and we'll do our usual forcing a lot of turnovers and use that to overcome them being a better shooting team.

Coming down from Newark with a UT/Shumate fan in tow.

Little background on Shumate: comes from a basketball family. One sister starts for Kent St. Another started at WVa this fall but transferred to o$u before the basketball season began. Dad, JR Shumate, ran the girls basketball program at Newark (one of the top big-school programs in Ohio) until stepping down after last season, which ended in an OT loss in the state championship game.

The boys basketball coach at Newark, Jeff Quackenbush, started a youth program over 20 years ago. Some alumni of the program include Jordan Dartis, JT Shumate and my son, Cameron, who played on the 6th-grade undefeated championship team 3 years ago. His contested 3-pointer at the buzzer sent the title game into overtime. Many long-time observers of this program still credit his team's coach for their perfect record.

Quackenbush has a clinic every Wednesday night for all of the players in the youth program with his varsity players manning stations for the younger players to rotate through. JT's station focused on shooting form. I always told my young players to really focus on his instructions and then spend time working on this routine. His shooting form, even back then, was as smooth and fundamentally sound as anyone's. His line this season isn't too shabby - 56% (FG), 52% (3 FG) and 85% (FT).

I've been told from good sources that he wanted to be offered by Ohio (Saul) out of high school and again when he left Walsh after 2 years (Boals) before landing in Toledo.

Best scenario for tonight would be seeing JT have a career night but not quite good enough to lead the Rockets to a win.

Unable to make it down and want my seats full. DM me if seeking a pair in the lower bowl.

Edit to say they're spoken for.

Unfortunately, Cameron soon quit the sport due to his coach/father's Marv Marinovich-esque pressure tactics. Word is the coach is now training the boy to become the next Pete Rose, hopefully excluding the former Reds player's values and everyday behavior.

Man, those names... it's glaring who was better suited for JC and who was better suited for Saul.

Couple of OUr freshmen were out due to covid protocol for the Miami game - IJ and Olumide. I'm hearing a third frosh is out for tonight's game for same reason.

As of this morning, it's a matchup of two of the top three teams with the best overall records among Ohio D1 teams:

Ohio 14-2
Xavier 14-3
Toledo 14-4
O$U 12-4
Cincy 14-5
Cleveland St 11-4
Akron 11-5
Dayton 12-6
Wright St 10-8
Youngstown St 10-8
Kent 9-8
BG 9-9
MOFO 8-8

So if AJ's out, that may signal a season-high in minutes for IJ. Let's see what you got, kid!

In the convo. Can confirm AJ is not warming up right now.

Confirmed by Boals on the pregame show. Let us home-dwellers know about the size the crowd.

Toledo’s making us look kinda bad right now.

Got punched in the mouth to start then started chucking. It was never going to be a surprise if this was a shootout, so we cannot have so many empty possessions.

0 field goal attempts for Roderick in the first half.