Akron

[Fire Biancardi]

Fire Biancardi. Please!

[bballraider]

Turnovers are the problem here, that falls more on the players than the coaches, Turnovers are an execution problem more than anything else. We have 10 more tunrovers (6-16) than Akron and they have 20 pts off those turnovers, and surprise they are winning by 20 pts., 40-20. I do know is this team is capable of making up 20 pts against a good Akron team, but let's hope for a better 2nd half.

[Big D]

I got back from Akron a little while ago. Here are some random thoughts from the game:

1. God I wish I was an Akron fan. Offensively and defensively they are fun to watch and make the most out of their talent. I love teams that shoot the 3 and run & gun every chance they can get. I also love teams that press. I hated UWM under Pearl, but at the same time I was jealous as hell that they played that type of ball and we didn't.

2. We never had a chance in this game. They had better athletes. Better shooters and they were better coached.

3. It is sad that Akron doesn't have any fans. They had 2700 fans today and they are a very good team. If WSU put that type of team on the court we could get 6000 fans to come see us play.

4. I am not ready to to start calling for a coaching change just yet. I think Coach B deserves until the end of the season before Cusack makes any decisions. The OSU investigation might make this an easy decision for him.

5. If we do fire Coach B, I sure hope we hire a coach that can put together a team like Akron.

[wsu97]

Little goes right as Zips zap Raiders
By Marc Katz

Dayton Daily News

AKRON | DaShaun Wood had his hands on his hips, a couple of bandages covering a slash under his right eye and a somber cast on the rest of his face.

The Wright State point guard didn't look like a guy who wanted to party on New Year's Eve.

"I just want to play ball," Wood said at the Rhodes Arena where Akron mauled the Raiders 72-44 Saturday afternoon. "We didn't do anything right tonight. I can't wait to get to the next practice, or the next game."

There was no practice scheduled for Saturday night, WSU coach Paul Biancardi said, and there will be none today.

The next game will be in the Horizon League, Thursday at Cleveland State.

Two bright moments stood out for the Raiders, whose three-game winning streak came to an end as they fell to 4-6 and 0-5 against Mid-American Conference schools.

Jordan Pleiman gave Wright State a 2-0 lead with a basket in the lane. Then, after the Raiders fell behind 23-11, three straight baskets — two of them 3-pointers by Jaron Taylor and Drew Burleson — drew the score to 23-19 with 8:32 to go in the first half.

Wright State scored only one point the rest of the half. The Zips had them zapped.

Biancardi zeroed in on the 21 WSU turnovers — 16 in the first half, five in the first three minutes — leading to 30 Akron points.

"I think it was pretty clear the turnovers did us in tonight," Biancardi said. "Akron capitalized on turnovers. It started with that and ended with that.

"There wasn't much else to the game."

After Pleiman's initial basket, Walter Chancellor (twice), Drew Burleson (twice) and Wood all turned the ball over in various ways — either throwing it away or traveling.

Chancellor, in the lineup for flu-ridden Scottie Wilson, who was left at home, played six minutes, finishing with a pair of threes — three fouls, three turnovers.

He certainly wasn't to blame for the loss. Seven different Raiders ended up with turnovers.

"What you see is the turnovers," Biancardi said as he glanced at the final box. "You're just handing the game to the other team. Those are points they don't have to work for. Those are just given. Some teams, you turn it over and they let you back in the game."

Akron didn't. Akron kept bringing players off the bench to add to the score. Three of Akron's four double-figure scorers — Rob Preston, Cedrick Middleton and Darryl Peterson — came off the bench to score 12, 11 and 10 points.

Wright State managed 15 points off the bench, total.

Despite his seven-point, five-turnover performance, Wood received praise from Akron coach Keith Dambrot.

"He's one of the best mid-level guards in the country," Dambrot said. "You just didn't see it tonight."

Wood planned no celebration over that praise.

"We've played a lot of good teams," Wood said. "It will help us out. It makes me want to work harder."

Contact Marc Katz at [phone].
www.daytondailynews.com/sports/content/sports/wsu/daily/0101wsubb.html

[Raider fan]

Thanks for the first hand acount of the game Big D! You pretty much describe what I listen to on the radio. Simply put, Akron just has much better talent then we do.

Here is what absolutely puzzles me. How can a school like Akron completely dominate us in terms of recruiting a much higher caliber player? Someone please explain to me why we can't out recruit a school like Akron ( or other MAC schools). The way I see it we have the following that should put us over the top.

1) Much better arena.
2) A PRACTICE FACILITY THAT NO OTHER MIDMAJOR PROGRAM CAN TOUCH.
3) Better fan support than most midmajor schools.
4) Located in a metropolitian area ( bigger media outlets).
5) In a very comparable conference. The MAC has consistantly been ranked higher then the HL put we are usually within 2 or 3 places in the RPI and sags as a conference.

It just puzzle the heck out of me!

[Big D]

Raider said:

1) Much better arena.
2) A PRACTICE FACILITY THAT NO OTHER MIDMAJOR PROGRAM CAN TOUCH.
3) Better fan support than most midmajor schools.
4) Located in a metropolitian area ( bigger media outlets).
5) In a very comparable conference. The MAC has consistantly been ranked higher then the HL put we are usually within 2 or 3 places in the RPI and sags as a conference.

1. The Nutter Center is a nice arena, but it is getting run down and needs some work. It is usually 50-60% empty. It is more impressive to a recruit to go into a smaller arena that is full (and loud) compared to a large empty arena.
2. The practice facility didn't open until a few months ago. It wasn't available as a recruiting tool in past years.
3. I think we have decent fan support for a mid-major school, at least in numbers. I have been to several of the local MAC schools to see games. A very big difference between them and us is the type of fan support they get. Their crowds might be smaller, but they are louder and there is no comparison in the number of students that support their programs. Back to point 1. Even though they have smaller crowds, they fill up a larger percent of their arena, which makes their crowds seem larger and louder. I love WSU, but our games our quiet for the most part.
4. WSU is located in Dayton, which is a larger city than most of the schools in the MAC. All of those MAC schools are the center of their small communities, whereas WSU is always going to be a second class citizen to UD in Dayton. The MAC also has a great TV contract. They have several games on ESPN, FOXsports, ONN, etc. The HL is wasting it's money on internet broadcasting. Kids want to play on TV, not the internet.
5. The MAC has consistently been a higher ranked conference than us. More importantly, they get more teams into the NCAA and NIT on a regular basis than us. The exposure those schools get from post season play and from playing on TV gives them a huge recruiting advantage over us.

Additional reasons we have been outrecruited by the MAC:
1. We haven't been to the post season in over a decade.
2. We only have a handfull of winning seasons in the last decade.
3. Coach B's OSU mess is just the most recent scandal for WSU. Lets face it, we haven't had a good decade off the court either. In the last 10 years we have had a Coach fired for shoplifting. We gave a convicted sex offender a scholarship (and got killed for it in the media). We had well over 20 players quit the program under our last coach and our new coach has had his own problems keeping players. We had 2 players (Boyd & Shine) accused of raping a girl. Even though she later admitted to having consentual sex with both players, it was still a black eye for the program.

[Halo]

Great ANAL-ysis Big D!!!!!

are you a philoshophy major?......you re gifted in creating bullcrap!!!!

[wsu97]

Brett Favre was on TV today. I think we all know what Halo was up too.

[keithfromxenia]

well, a season that started out so promising and looking to be a turnaround, breakthrough year for the raiders is plummeting into just another season of despair. as i look at the first third of the season it is certainly colored by the loss of two players (really only one significant loss, since robert still has not made an impact). without them we were 0-4 and we are 4-2 since then. however we have not beaten a decent team, northeastern being the only w against a winning record, and their rpi was 100+, so it is hard to give ourselves much credit for that one. and at least three of our losses have been absolute pastings given to us by teams that play the same level of hoops that we are supposed to play. it is one thing to suffer a 30 point loss at michigan state or duke. it is quite another to get blasted by akron, northern illinois and ball state. in looking at the future games, it is hard to be optimistic given how badly we have played. i do not know what we have to do to turn it around, but i do know that if it does not turn around, then a coaching change needs to be made no matter what the ncaa says. we have everything in place to raise this program from the dead but we do not seem to be doing it. really depressing. GO RAIDERS!!!