Men’s basketball

Keith Dambrot explained to the Buchtelite’s Adam Ferrise what Nate Linhart meant to team defense.

Maybe I’m not as aware as I should be, but I think Akron will miss Linhart most on the glass. He is a great hustle rebounder.

Who cares what I think, but I believe Linhart will see the floor sometime in the MAC Tournament. Breaking the thumb on your shooting finger is pretty serious, but he should still be a solid rebounder and defender once the swelling and pain subsides.

• Romeo Travis earned a spot on the NABC District 10 Second Team. He shares the honor with Ohio State’s Mike Conley Jr., Butler’s Mike Green, Wright State’s Dashawn Wood and Notre Dame’s Colin Falls. The only other player from the MAC is Buffalo’s Yassin Idbihi, who is on the second team in District 2.
• I’m battling from a nasty flu, but I hope to find time tomorrow to break down what Buffalo has been up to (mostly losing) since Akron beat the Bulls 66-59 on Jan. 21 at Rhodes Arena.

Men’s basketball

Terry Pluto, who is enjoying the sun in Winter Haven (lucky bastard), began a three-part feature on how Dru Joyce, Romeo Travis and Keith Dambrot resurrected Akron basketball — high school and college.

Today’s installment about Joyce thoroughly entertained me.

• MACReportOnline.com outlined the scenarios that will play out over the next three days of conference competition.

Rifle

One-sixteenth of an inch was the difference in Akron’s win at the Western Intercollegiate Rifle Conference championship in Columbus last weekend.

The Zips held off Morehead State and Grand Valley State for the 33-point victory.

Akron represented seven of the 10 all-conference spots.

Newt Engle is an excellent coach and seems to attract players from across the country. He and his team should be commended.

(Whether rifle is a sport is another question altogether.)

Men’s basketball

Keith Dambrot told the ABJ’s Tom Gaffney that this win will toughen up his Zips heading to Buffalo Thursday night.

That’s fine, but I bet he much rather would have rested his players.

Romeo Travis, Nick Dials and Dru Joyce played 32, 39 and 34 minutes, respectively.

It’s just bad scheduling. Period.

• Akron fell from seventh to ninth in the Mid-Major Top 25.
• The Zips crawled to 73rd in RPI, not nearly high enough to merit at-large consideration.
• Akron is 36th in the Coaches Poll and 41st in the AP Poll.

Men’s basketball

Nate Linhart’s future is less certain than what I reported earlier today.

Keith Dambrot said it’s unlikely his starting small forward will return this season from a fractured thumb.

Either John Rybak or Jimmy Conyers will have to step up. Conyers started tonight, but Rybak played better, scoring seven.

The link above will take you to the Buchtelite’s game story for Akron/Duquesne.

• The Buchtelite’s Vincent Dorsey documented all the great quotes Romeo Travis, Dru Joyce and Keith Dambrot said after Saturday’s game in a story about what the two have meant to the program.
• I wrote an angry, yet tongue-in-cheek, column about Akron’s foul shooting…

A free throw is 15 feet.

No one contests them. At home, the building will become silent to minimize distractions.

St. Vincent-St. Mary’s High School should provide a mandatory course in how to make them.

LeBron James, Romeo Travis and Dru Joyce each shoot below 70 percent at the stripe. These are all good shooters, mind you.

Keith Dambrot, St. V’s former coach, now instructs the Mid-American Conference East-leading Zips on their work at the line. Akron is second-to-bleeping-last among MAC teams in free throw percentage.

"It’s ‘Bron’s fault," Joyce said after Saturday’s nail-biting win over Bowling Green. "He’s rubbing off on us."

Funny guy, that Dru Joyce.

What’s not funny is going 2-for-6 at the line as a point guard, like Joyce did Saturday. Running the point, a player is supposed to make at least 80 percent of his foul shots. (Remember the good old days when the Cavs had Mark Price and Terrell Brandon?)

Also drop this in the unfunny category: Missing a go-ahead foul shot with 15 seconds left. That was Joyce’s crime in Wednesday’s loss at Miami.

This is an even larger problem for Joyce because he’s the Zips go-to guy when the game is on the line.

Picture this hypothetical situation. Akron’s down two and has one possession to tie the game. Joyce is a 66 percent foul shooter. Statistically, the odds of Joyce making a field goal (43 percent this season) are exactly the same as him tying the game by drilling both foul shots (43 percent).

If I’m Kent State’s Jim Christian, I order my team to send Joyce to the line.

I don’t mean to pick on Dru. He recently overtook Eric McLaughlin as the school’s all-time assists leader. Just make your bleeping foul shots.

In fact, there are much worse foul shooters. Take Travis for example. He missed seven freebies on Saturday.

I don’t even want to think about Jeremiah Wood. His stroke looks like a karate chop from someone petrified of fighting Chuck Norris. Wood fills the net on 54 percent of his free throws. (In his defense, Wood’s facial expressions show that each clank off the back iron affects him like seeing an ex-girlfriend slobber on some trashy dude’s face.)

"I don’t think we’re a bad free throw team," Dambrot said after Saturday’s game.

Come again?

If the Zips aren’t bad, I want to know what kind of standards the Zips coach holds.

All right. Enough whining. I have a solution.

Dust off your awesome-sports-movies memory banks to recall Rube Baker. The catcher in Major League II had a howitzer for an arm, but failed in every attempt to toss the ball back to the pitcher.

To cure this ailment, the coach suggested Baker think about his favorite models in Playboy magazine.

Problem solved.

I’m not suggesting the Zips become pornography connoisseurs. Just find something - anything - to make the bleeping foul shots.

Foul shots are a mental test, for sure. You’re standing there all alone with plenty of time to realize the entire arena is focusing on you.

Ask Bruce Bowen. The San Antonio Spurs guard shoots 39 percent on 3-pointers. Put him at the stripe, and it’s 50 percent. Once again, you’re better off hacking him, even if it means he’s going to the line for three foul shots.

"It’s just a matter of relaxing and not being upset about missing," Bowen told a basketball Web site a few years ago.

Really, Bruce? How’s that working out for you?

This year, Akron teams have zeroed in on my two biggest pet peeves in sports: missing foul shots and extra points in football.

Both are gimmies. Missing a lot of either is absolutely unacceptable. If the St. V’s crew doesn’t solve the problem, I might go insane.

OK. In the interest of full disclosure, I air-balled a foul shot in a rec league game last week.

Bleep!

Football

I wrote a Buchtelite story about Andy Alleman and Luke Getsy’s experience at the Combine.

I wasn’t able to speak with either player, so you probably won’t read anything you don’t already know.

Track

I also chatted with coach Dennis Mitchell about this weekend’s MAC Championship.

Men’s basketball

With one of the best shooting nights of the year, Akron held off multiple runs by Duquesne to win 87-74.

Romeo Travis again dominated offensively with 26 points on 11-of-17 shooting and 11 rebounds. Nick Dials made three 3-pointers on his way to 23 points, a career high.

Akron shot 53 percent from the field, 40 percent from 3-point territory and — gasp — 83 percent from the line. I will have much more Zips coverage later tonight.

Men’s basketball

If you visit Duquesne’s Web site, you can watch tonight’s game.

Look in the panel on the right and click the "watch" button under Akron/Duquesne - Men’s basketball.

They’ll ask you to register. Do it with a phony e-mail address if you want to avoid potential spam.

Men’s basketball

Duquesne relies on a lot of traps and presses to win.

Unfortunately, that strategy falters when 1) your players become weary and 2) the other team has decent ball handlers and decision makers.

Both of those will be true tonight at 7.

The Dukes give up a high shooting percentage, mostly because once you break a press or trap, you’ll find easy buckets. The Zips will probably score 90. I don’t see Duquesne breaking 80 against a regrouping Akron defense.

Even though Keith Dambrot will probably give extended minutes to John Rybak, Jimmy Conyers and Nick Goddard, Akron wins comfortably.

Prediction: Akron 90, Duquesne 77

Men’s basketball

Nate Linhart fractured his thumb and won’t play tonight at Duquesne.

He might try to play Sunday against Kent State, however, assistant coach Jeff Boals said.

Men’s basketball

The ABJ’s Tom Gaffney chronicled Duquesne’s tragedy and how the team has worked through it.

I failed to mention the Dukes’ biggest victory, a 98-93 win at Boston College.

¥ Akron is a 9.5-point favorite tonight. The over-under is 183.5.
¥ Danny Sheridan agrees.