The unofficial online home for fans of the Kent State University Golden Flashes. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

(01-18-2015 12:39 AM)FlashintheFan Wrote:  ]Coach Senderoff needs to yank Spicer's ass out of there for his attempted "exclamation point slams".

Couldn't disagree more. Spicer looks much more fluid this season. He seems to understand his responsibilities on both ends and he isn't afraid to go the hoop. The missed dunks are comical, but not reason to get pulled. Last year it seemed like if Spicer breathed the wrong way, he would get yanked. The rotations are much better this sesaon.

"We will beat the bad teams in the MAC but that's about it." Let me ask you, who are the good teams? EMU was supposed to contend for the Western division. OU was picked ahead of us in several publications. We lost at the end of the game to BG. Big deal. We are 3-1 in conference and tied for 1st place. I can't wait for the upcoming game @ Buffalo (where we always struggle) because if we lose, there will be a million, "I told you so's."

Our offense executed poorly? With our defense, 69 points is going to win a lot of games. We had 4 guys in double figures and Jimmy Hall is going to get his on most nights. Dev is going to get his on most nights. Ortiz is bringing it a lot more consistently than he ever has.

I am stunned at the negativity around a team that is 12-5 and 3-1 in conference. I am not sure what would please you guys at this point. Isn't it all about winning? To quote the great Billy Hoyle from White Men Can't Jump, some of you would rather look pretty and lose, than look average and win. Or something to that affect. SMH.

I have never seen such a disparity of opinions on this team from regular posters as there is this year. There is no doubt the inside play is 10 times better than last year with no drop off in the guard play. It would be nice to get Thomas back for depth but other than that we are better. We are not going 30-6 but 20+ wins looks very attainable. I wonder why the disparity.

We can argue on how good or bad the boys are offensively but IMO, we are good at 3 of the 4 keys to winning ball games:

1. Play defense - this team gets it and is close to the type of gritty d that we used to see regularly.
2. Rebound - pretty solid. I believe we have out-rebounded most of our opponents
3. Free Throws - not good and this may cost us a title or a shot at one
4. Chemistry - these guys seem to like playing together. Hall has fit in very well.

Overall, I like this team. They seem to be getting better each week!

(01-18-2015 09:56 AM)burden Wrote:  I have never seen such a disparity of opinions on this team from regular posters as there is this year. There is no doubt the inside play is 10 times better than last year with no drop off in the guard play. It would be nice to get Thomas back for depth but other than that we are better. We are not going 30-6 but 20+ wins looks very attainable. I wonder why the disparity.

I think that's because Kent has either lost to good teams (Top 100 RPI, where they are 0-5) or beaten bad teams (>250 RPI, 8-0). The MAC is full of teams in the middle (between 100-200 in the RPI) and that's where the majority of Kent's games will be. Well, they're now 3-0 against those teams including two MAC teams and one on the road. The next three games will probably be the best indicator as they play Toledo, at Ball State and Central Michigan, all teams with RPI is the 130-160 range.

Personally, I think we're looking at 12-6 in the MAC and a #4 seed. That might be hopeful, but they do play together well and play hard. The BG game was a bummer though.

It is a matter of expectations. This team is capable of winning the MAC. I would like to see continued improvement. There is a difference between negativity and constructive criticism. Fallsdog, I like Spicer too, but he has limitations that need improvement. I didn't mean reduce his playing time but pull him out to emphasize that you can't keep trying to gorilla dunk it every time. Dannyb just said it, "do you want to look good" missing a dunk or put it above the rim and just push it through. Ndour had three nice dunks on us, not spectacular but impressive with a high percentage. Not being negative but just don't want to keep seeing the same mistakes.

(01-18-2015 11:47 AM)bopol Wrote:  

(01-18-2015 09:56 AM)burden Wrote:  I have never seen such a disparity of opinions on this team from regular posters as there is this year. There is no doubt the inside play is 10 times better than last year with no drop off in the guard play. It would be nice to get Thomas back for depth but other than that we are better. We are not going 30-6 but 20+ wins looks very attainable. I wonder why the disparity.

I think that's because Kent has either lost to good teams (Top 100 RPI, where they are 0-5) or beaten bad teams (>250 RPI, 8-0). The MAC is full of teams in the middle (between 100-200 in the RPI) and that's where the majority of Kent's games will be. Well, they're now 3-0 against those teams including two MAC teams and one on the road. The next three games will probably be the best indicator as they play Toledo, at Ball State and Central Michigan, all teams with RPI is the 130-160 range.

Personally, I think we're looking at 12-6 in the MAC and a #4 seed. That might be hopeful, but they do play together well and play hard. The BG game was a bummer though.

The way things are going 12 wins might get the #1 seed. There are no teams head and shoulders above the rest. It will be a grind to win games this year as the bottom of the league us better and no great teams at the top. Yes the BG games was disappointing but we could have very well lost to both NIU and EMU. 3-1 at this point is what I expected and yes the next 3 games will go a long way in determining where we end up. I like the inside game (something most of the posters on this board have been saying for 3 years) and the D is tremendous. N'Dour scored most of those 19 pts in garbage time when the game had been decided. As DannyB says we are fine and a much better team then the lat couple of years.

Here's to a FLASH victory on Wed.

GO FLASHES!!!!

I have to say that I was truly impressed with the defense we played for at least through the first 35 mins of the game! Spicer was a force in the middle blocking and changing shots and his new found strength and aggressiveness are very evident. Hall uses his body well and is very strong---even though he was just 5/12 shooting with just one shot coming from beyond 10-12 feet. Ortiz and Akbar did a nice job of defending as well. We had 6 steals and 6 blocks.

On offense, DJ made OU's Willis look like Gary Coleman, who didn't have a clue where DJ was and chased him all night long. DJ also held Willis---the MAC's 4th leading scorer to just 1/7 shooting. And, although we "struggled" to a 7-0 lead, we got some really nice looks at the basket. It was only a matter of time that our offensive production matched the level of our defensive game. We moved the ball well and only ended the game with 7 turnovers...and a couple of those came at the end when we subbed and the backups couldn't mop up.

Overall, I would say we looked like a MAC Championship team for 35 minutes. We out-hustled and out-muscled OU and played as a team!

Went to the game last night and finally got a chance to read through this thread. Gotta say, I'm surprised people came away with negatives from this one. Did we miss some dunks? Sure. Could we have won by 25 but only ended up winning by 10? Yeah. But the fact is we pretty much dominated from the opening tip until the walk-ons came in. This team is gritty and out hustles the opponent almost nightly. Sometimes the offense is rough and the ball tends to stick when they're swinging it around the perimeter but in general, I feel, this team is a lot of fun to watch.

As an earlier poster mentioned, we're 0-5 against top 100 RPI teams. It's important to note that we're 12-5 overall meaning we're 12-0 against teams outside the top 100 RPI. Last year we lost 8 games to teams outside of the top 100 RPI, two of which were outside of the top 200. Last year we were really bad, for the first time in over a decade. With the West finally matching the East in competitiveness it was completely reasonable to believe that we had slipped into the bottom half of the MAC. On top of that, we only have 1 player (Hall) averaging more than 12.1 MPG that wasn't in the rotation last year. What I'm trying to say is we weren't close last year. We weren't a team where you said, "Man, give these guys one more year to mature and this team could be busting brackets." So far what we've seen I believe we'll be able to be a factor in the MAC race until the end and the MAC looks much more competitive than it has for awhile. Based on last year, I'll take it.

One more note. A lot has been made about the missed dunks. It should be noted that two of them were not high percentage attempts. The one by Ortiz was on a fast break where he caught it on a dead sprint at a distance from the rim where he was in between whether to take a dribble or not. So he ended up taking off from farther out than he should have to avoid traveling (which might of anyways). I thought of that as more of a botched fast break than a missed dunk. Spicer was fouled on one of his misses and had he actually made the dunk, it probably would've been a top play on SportsCenter. I'm not making excuses for them, just pointing out that neither was a routine dunk attempt. Spicer needs to start making the routine ones for sure. I'm ok with how aggressively he goes up for dunks though. I'd rather have a guy that misses dunks from going too hard than gets blocked from going too soft.

Last comment. I like how Ortiz has been playing lately. I've been skeptical of him in the past but he's starting to show some consistency.