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Agreed. Why haven't the Zips responded to Illinois State's request for a quality home-home opponent? We aren't P5, but we certainly are no worse a loss than Ole Miss on a resume.And a better "win" than most on their MVC schedule. We want a quality home game? Something to replace a Bracket Buster game? Here it is. And it would be some great press too. Even if the Red Birds turned us down, they'd look bad and not the Zips.

Well it appears to have worked Mr. Snark. I'm assuming they used rotary phones to communicate back in your day.

Agreed. The Houston Chronicle article describing the crying players in the Cougar locker room after the loss lends credence to your view of the game as well.

Believe it or not, the cameras did not show everything that happened in the stands. The Zips fans were very much into the game. I would guess that we stood for the entire last 4 minutes of the game. All the parents and friends of the kids from the Houston area were very vocal and supportive.

That's because we're also the most successful MAC team ever in tournament play as well, thanks to the enormous success in the Dambrot era. It's only the few championship games that we didn't play well and didn't win, and could have easily gone the other way, that's even prompted any of these discussions. Dominant regular season play. League-best tournament play, but a few falters in tournament finals. It just seems like only 3 NCAA tournament bids for all of that success is a pretty small reward.

Happy birthday, Z.I.P.!!

Zips Senior Moment, I guess....

Middle Tennessee was a great series and we should do everything to bring them back. They also brought some fans with them.

I agree - for the normal "lunch pail" basketball fan like most of us here, the JAR isn't that bad. But if you want to get Austin Wentworth III Akron, and Buffy Akron to come to the games, and get into their, and their corporation's pockets, it really doesn't cut it. It ain't the place to take a weekend date, and the lack of any Corporate suites costs the Zips a good chunk of change that other nicer facilities rake-in. I would pay double...maybe triple what I pay for season tix now, and move down low, if I had a comfy seat and a good view of the game. The JAR sightlines down low are really bad. And the blue plastic chairs...not so nice. Should I be careful what I wish for? Maybe. But it would be nice to see Zips hoops action in the classy facility they merit for more than the three games we annually play at The Q.

I strongly believe in the winner of a conference tournament getting the bid to the big dance. If the favorite can't even beat the teams that they have been facing all year, how can you expect them to perform well in a tournament with much better teams. Give the hot team the bid. Us Zips fans are obviously biased, as Akron has had some incredible success in the regular season, but it is good that a team that had a rough year still has something to play for throughout. How boring would this season have been if Akron had already locked up the bid in mid-January when they had a 4 game lead about 7 games into the conference season? I actually really like that Miami always seems to make a little run at a better seed in the last few weeks and that everyone hates playing Buffalo in the tournament because of what they did in the 2 seasons prior to this one. It is these kinds of story lines that make college sports exciting.

And Diego Restrepo is listed as #59 and also unemployed. I hope he never finds another job.

Even with that OOC schedule it was pretty evident given their 12 seed that they wouldn't have made the tournament had they not won their conference tournament. Kind of shows the uphill battle facing the Zips and other mid-majors.

Maybe we could have Terry Bowden yodel out a request and see if that works.

And look at what they did to Minnesota yesterday. They are at where we'd like to be. Even if some of the above named opponents wouldn't get Joe Akron excited (sorry to impugn you Joe :-)) they would definitely help in the eyes of the committee. Although after reading how the mid-majors get screwed over regardless I think you'd have to have a schedule like that and still win 80% of them to even be considered.

I mean think about it: Illinois State Valpo Monmouth Belmont Northern Iowa MTSU UT Arlington Oakland UNCW Charleston FGCU You can't tell me we couldn't line up a home and home or two from that list

East there L, it was a joke!

He was right behind the annoying lady that kept standing up on my tv screen every trip down the floor. jk

So, is there any D1 team that DOES NOT have a nicer arena than the JAR? Kent state doesn't count.

Yep, she was into it. You couldn't help but to notice her in every camera shot when we came down to that end of the floor. Credit for the effort to get the capacity 1,000 crowd into the game. That's a tough job.

I would not send my HC to any conventions if his networking ability failed to produce any quality relationships that translated into games

By the way, Kudos to the old gray-haired lady in the first row at Houston who was on her feet the entire 2nd half waving to everyone to stand up. We could use a few of those at our home games.

Good article in Slate from Ken Pomeroy about why the deck is stacked so heavily against mid-majors. Regardless of what system is used, humans need to be smarter about how to think about that system. It’s a mistake to ignore game location, and it’s a mistake to use arbitrary thresholds to bundle together quality wins and bad losses. Under the current process, when comparing teams of similar quality, you can throw out all the analysis of wins and losses and simply use the size of a school’s basketball budget as the tiebreaker. It works just as well.

Just to be the contrarian, a run by any MAC team would be good for the MAC. That's the kind of visibility a conference needs to be on the radar for at large berths.

Damn. I wish we would know the result of that game before we played. I thought that was probably unlikely with that game being played out West. Now I wonder if that's possible to start flying, and change our flight plan mid-flight? I'd think we might just stay in Texas until Tuesday morning and fly one direction or the other.