Akron is coming off a beat down of Buffalo by 20 points Saturday. Castaneda scored 30 points on 7-of-13 shooting, including 5-of-9 from deep and 11-of-12 from the stripe. He added six rebounds, three assists and a steal. Castaneda’s cohort, Enrique Freeman, recorded a double-double with 21 points and 10 boards. Freeman had two blocked shots, four assists and a steal. He shot 7-of-14 from the floor.

The game this Tuesday night could come down to who controls the glass. Akron out rebounded the Bulls 37-29. Behind Freeman's dominance on the glass the Zips outrebounded Buffalo 37-29, including 11 offensive rebounds to secure second-chance scoring looks. Shumate, Milner Edu and friends need to keep Freeman off the offensive boards. In their matchup 2 weeks ago in Akron the Rockets outrebounded the Zips 33-32 and won the game 84-74.

The Rockets advantages should be generating points from turnovers and getting to the free throw line by driving to the hoop.

GO ROCKETS

Akron looked great last night. Very good team. Very active offensively last night. Flying around.

Ohio beat them the game after we did. It was a Friday night game. I watched part of it. Akron didn't look very good. But that's one game, and this is the MAC. They are obviously on a roll, but Akron is a very good team.

How will they defend Castaneda and Freeman? Ray J or Moss on Castaneda, or both, with a little EJ mixed in? I think the last game Hankerson gave us fits. I don't know how they deal with Freeman other than deny him the ball.

UT really neutralized Freeman last game by forcing him to switch onto guards on ball screens and then isolating him 1 on 1. Akron may run double teams at us this time to avoid a repeat. Castenada is a streaky guy who has a step back jumper no one can stop-when he's on you hjave to play him extremely tight and he's good at drawing fouls. UT gave akron's guys the mid range all day last time. They clunked most of em or passed them up. Akron's weakness is limited shooters, so if you can keep freeman under control and castenada isn't on fire, they struggle. Hankerson had a great night against us and it still wasn't close. as others noted they make this up for the lack of shooting on the boards. so, hustle and rebounding are huge. being at home might help with the refs. make this a clean spread out fast game. we are better than them at that.