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Great team win last night. Joel Sangwa is my mid season pick for team MVP. He brings such stability and skill and confidence to the center back position.

You hire a coach for the long run. You want a guy who will build a legacy. Coach Jo will do just that. He gets it and he gets Akron. Just watch his presser and you realize he wants to deliver a win as bad as we want one. Our mistakes will be corrected and we will cease to beat ourselves. That will happen because we have good coaching and we are growing our talent base. Neither of those two happened under Arth or Bowden. The process may be painful at times, ala BUGS and Liberty, but the foundation is emerging. We haven't seen this engagement from the coaches or the team in a long time. From that base Jo will turn it around.

Nice article by the ABJ's Michael Beaven.

Dominant win! Great effort by the team. Best effort I have seen in a while. Shout out to #7, #8 and #19 for their effort in this game. Well deserved victory.

Zips win!!! 4-1

My memory matches this timeline as well, but it's still somewhat hard to explain.

No mercy! 4-0 Zips shortly before half.

Guywon Chong and Sam Tojaga are very different players playing different positions. The similarity is that they each bring stability to the Midfield. It is heartwarming to have Sammy back. I eagerly anticipate Guywon’s return next year.

Games through Oct 2 (Gaucho Dan RPI, http://rpiupdatemenssoccer.blogspot.com/search/label/RPI Rank) 18 Akron 20 FIU 97 VCU 128 Wright State 60 Michigan St 26 Indiana 16 blOSU 29 Pitt 58 Penn St 35 Duquesne 149 NIU 113 BUGS 195 Chicago St 47 WMU 55 Cleveland State

Huge shout out to #6 Sammy Tojaga who, in this game, looked like he hasn't missed a beat! As @TennZipalready stated, so happy to have Sammy back in the starting lineup and getting significant, well-played minutes. Shout out to #23 Joel Sangwa who is a stalwart on defense. Making good decisions and rarely going back to the Keeper...keeping the defense out of trouble. Shout outs to #11 Will Jackson who has stepped in beautifully at CB and #27 Ashton Kamdem for his play at LB. Shout out to #5 Malik Henry whose speed and agility opened up play. Shout out to #4 to Jonas Buechte and his many great decisions and steady play. Agree with malonepioneer on shout outs to #7 Josh Hallenberger, #8 Ryan Kingsford, and #19 Dyson Clapier. Shout outs to #1 GK Mitch Budler, #13 Joey Paulus, #9 Jason Shokalook, #15 Johnny Fitzgerald, and #16 Wan Kuzri Wan Kamal. Shout outs to all of our players who came in and played well giving the starters needed rest. Commanding victory thanks to GREAT TEAM EFFORT!!! Let's keep this going!!! GO ZIPS!!!

Sam Tojaga in the starting lineup. so happy to have Captain Sam in the starting lineup

Figured this deserved it's own thread. Will bring a lot of artistic entertainment options to the heart of downtown.

What we can't see is the Block O in the top corner of his notepad that he "prepared" these questions on.

Ohio Week Presser

Hankerson shoots the 3 at about the same percentage as X so that will help to make up for some of the loss, though at 6'2" he's a very different type of player. The Zips will need shooters on the floor as this will also force more floor time for Tribble. I am afraid they are really going to miss the 6'5' to 6'7" wing presence on defense and offense.

Ohio, more so Rourke seems a little better than I thought. With that said, they're still a middling MAC team at best and I expect us to compete and have a chance to win vs all MAC opponents until proven otherwise. Clean up the inexcusable mistakes and we got a chance.

I think that's more of an Aluminum lining.

*I will say that w/ the blue jerseys & blue pants I think the gold helmets would have looked better. With this team we have little margin for error, so our equipment crew simply must do better.

All the uniforms look slick a hell IMO.

I appreciate all of the thoughtful post-game thoughts made so far, but one of the most important aspects of the game, a topic several ZipsNation members (you know who you are) could talk about all day long, has not been mentioned yet. In general, how were the Zips uniforms? What color were their jerseys? Were the jerseys the right shade of whatever color they were? What color combination of jersey and pants would have improved their overall look? Do you think the Zips helmets were the best color to go with the rest of the uniform? Do you think a different font for the players numbers would improve the look of the jerseys? What did you like most about their uniforms? What did you like least about their uniforms?

We haven't been clicking like that offensively since Guywon Chong was leg swept -v- Michigan State. Did Sam Tojaga fill Guywon Chong's vacated position? Maybe Sammy was the piece we were lacking? Last night's game was so completely one-sided I couldn't tell if we were that good or if NIU was that bad. Complete, utter domination. When our starters were in we were making NIU look like a high school team. A true no-doubter. Shout out to local product #13 Joseph Paulus who had, IMO, the most impressive of the 4 goals - a true rocket shot off his left foot from 8-yards out.

I was looking for something else and came across this shot. Reminded me of this thread. IIRC that's Pinky Tuscadero, a female musician the Fonz was chasing. How I remember that and I can't remember where my dang keys are...

You can see it on the sidelines. How many times last year did we see kids on the sideline that were disinterested or dejected? You don't see that this year as the kids are fired up and focused on the game.

Agree Clark. Hubby and I at the game and when the punt debacle occurred, we both said, "Last two seasons this game would be over." And we were proud the way the Zips came back and made a game of it. Like you said, they kept fighting, kept trying to find a way to win. Small victories, indeed.

IMHO they seemed to go downhill when The Chest retired

By my count, 11 MAC teams in the bottom 32. Wowzers.

Wow. Spot on post by @catdaddyp. Thank you for making this board even greater than it was, we're so happy to have you here! I don't think I disagree with anything said above. I am bummed that we haven't seen Golden-Nelson the last couple of weeks, and I hope that whatever injury he has sustained isn't too serious. Joe hasn't been hiding that info and has been pretty open about it, I just don't think he's been asked. Perhaps someone will submit that as a question during the live video of Zips Live this week. There's an advanced metric box score I always like to check out on CollegeFootballData.com https://collegefootballdata.com/boxscore/401416609 A lot of it is over my head, but there are a few things I like to look at. Postgame Win Expectancy yesterday was BG 69%. That metric is essentially who would win the game if it were played again with the same stats, etc. Sure enough, if a couple bounces go a different way, this would have been a big homecoming win. For example, we all know Golden's muffed punt cost the game, a few of us said as much the second it happened. It flipped momentum, and instead of being down 3 and getting the ball to open the half, they were down 10. Well, BG did the SAME THING at the SAME EXACT SPOT ON THE FIELD! That was shocking to me, and kind of hilarious. But he was able to pick it up and evade a couple of tacklers to get out of bounds at the 12. That ended up as an 88-yard TD drive to make it 31-21 early in the 4th. That is football being football, and man did it pee me off. Grimes did play early, but was not dressed for most of the game. I have a feeling this wouldn't have happened with Tony in there. Damn damn damn. Another thing I like to look at on the advanced box score analysis is called Scoring Opportunities. It measures the points a team scores per scoring chance, which is defined as moving the ball inside the 40-yard line. BG made 9 trips inside the 40 on offense, netting 24 points, and 2.67 points per opportunity. The Zips, on the other hand, made 4 trips inside the 40, scoring a TD every single time (Adams TD catch was 41 yards, close enough). It's nice to see the offense turning these sustained drives into touchdowns more often, that's 5 quarters in a row finding the end zone! Just need to do it more than once a quarter. I also emphasize 3rd down efficiency on offense and defense a lot. Akron was one of the worst 3rd down teams coming in, but put up a very impressive 11-17 number yesterday. The threat of running the ball is the difference there. Later in the game, I felt a rare confidence in the Zips' ability to do either, and that's credit to Joe for once again being a mastermind in playcalling. I loved the QB draw calls and thought DJ was a smart runner, sans the fumble. Still holds on to the ball too long at times, and it's going to be hard to win games where you take 6 sacks. The defense struggled on 3rd down, giving up 7-13. They got decent pressure, but could not finish plays with hurries and sacks. McDonald had his best game against Akron and made some big time clutch throws. He did just enough to eek out the win that was served up to them on a platter. I still say that Akron should have won that game. I'm definitely bummed, but far from discouraged as to the progress of the program. I predicted this result pretty spot on, and I expect more games like this as we move through the season. The Zips are bad and at the bottom of the MAC, that is no surprise. Going from distant worst to middle of the pack/above average is what I was hoping for, but definitely not expecting. I've been thinking a lot about who I would compare this team to, whether in football or a different sport. In football, it reminds me of Kent in 2018, Lewis' first year. While he had Woody Barrett as a brand new QB, we've got a guy who played occasionally last year, and might as well be new with this new system. Some old guys who lost a ton sprinkled in with some new guys who show promise. But the same results in the win/loss column despite a new style of football and much more competitive games. On the basketball side, it feels like the 2018-2019 Zips. A team that did much better than the year before with an overhauled roster, that shows great flashes of potential but still can't seem to rack up the wins. That team also set itself up to win games and then shoot themselves in the foot constantly. I'm becoming a broken record, but I see a lot of these issues as growing pains, whether it be the players or the staff. This is one of the youngest staffs in the sport, with a big group of guys that have lost a butt-load of games and don't know how to win. I recommend listening to last week's edition of Zips Live to hear more about the staff construction, interesting stuff there. But words cannot describe how much better I feel about the program now than I did 365 days ago, that is for sure. Yesterday was nothing short of a heartbreaker, and these last 7 games could be a struggle, but I believe in the man on that sideline and I can see his vision playing out already in its early stages. Go Zips!

That’s precisely what happened to us. JD said it was because good DL were too difficult to recruit.

Dawson is out for the season.