kreed5120

Closer than I'd like, but I'll take it.

We are -12 in rebounding differential. If that was closer to even, we'd be up by at least 15

Zips up 2 at the half. Williams has 12 at the half.

Turnovers have been a problem for us all year.

I don't feel he was overlooked. It was widely acknowledged he was a stud playing on a very terrible defense. The Jamie Collins of the Zips if you will.

I obviously don't want to rush true freshman on the field if they don't have the size to play, but not buying this so called talent we got coming back. We were statistically one of the worst defenses in FBS and this was likely the worst Akron defense I've ever witnessed. Add in the fact we lost 2 of our better defenders Scott and Marcus. We need new contributors to become impact players on defense if we have any hope of contending in the MAC East. It doesn't matter to me if they are transfers, RS freshmen, or true freshmen. We have a few quality starters, but we could use more and we need depth at pretty much every position.

What I'm interested to know is which of these guys, if any, can make an impact day 1 as an incoming freshman? Particularly on the defensive side of the ball.

Akron's 1 point loss to Gardner-Webb was probably my most humiliating experience as an Akron Zips football fan. FCS opponents are designed to be a guaranteed win to get you that 1 step closer to bowl eligibility and for G5 they are designed to offset that butt kicking you are expected to take from Bama, Michigan, or Ohio State. Playing an FCS opponent that could actually beat you does you no good, only harm. Ask Iowa how that worked out for them. I will just overlook the fact for a second that dropping down would lower our public perception and that our peers would now be YSU and CSU instead of Kent, Miami, and OU. We weren't some FCS powerhouse school the 1st go at it, why are you so sure we would be now?

I'm wanting to know the spread on that UCLA-WMU game. It has to be at least 25, right? Playing a bunch of OOC games that you have little to no chance of winning is a quick way of running your program into the ground. Look at Miami. Playing Gonzaga and Creighton was enough when you talk about us taking a paycheck for most likely a double figure loss with slim chance of getting an upset. What we need are some quality home and home series. Marshall was the only home and home this year and I'm not aware of any other future ones set up besides Marshall (not to say they don't exist). Georgia Southern will probably end up being one of the better buy games we've had at the JAR. Not that they are anything special, but they are certainly a step up from the Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Coppin State, or Savannah State that I'm accustomed to seeing. I just wish our athletic department would get creative to bring in better competition. Instead of auctioning off our football team to the highest bidder and lose by 40 we take a little less and agree to play at a place like Pitt or Northwestern. A team we might actually be able to beat in football. We then build a home and home basketball series into said contract. Perhaps Pitt wouldn't do it, but there has to be a team out there somewhere that wants that lucrative 6th or 7th home game in football that would. Another possibility is agreeing to 2 road games in basketball for 1 home game.

We had a Marshall fan on here wanting to buy 7 lower bowl seats. The market would be small and sporadic, but the fact you can't buy single game lower bowl tickets makes me think an OU fan, a UA alum from out of town, or someone that couldn't justify spending $500+ for a season package might be willing to pay $25 for a quality seat for the 1-2 games they go to per year. Edit: GA tickets will always pretty much be worthless.

Have you been to a Browns or Indians (excluding playoffs) game lately? It's clearly not just an "Akron thing". Browns are kind of understandable as who wants to sit in the frigid cold to watch an 0-however many team, but the fact Indians couldn't come close to selling out August and September games when the team was a near playoff lock was pretty pathetic.

Seems like something they should do at least for the Radford and Adrian's of the world.

UC Irvine @ 10-2 New Mexico State going to OT Edit: Irvine lost 85-79. They were having a really good shooting night until OT despite getting owned on the glass and committing quite a few turnovers. Hopefully that shooting got out of their system.

A Facebook page would probably be the best for something like that, however, like you said I doubt people would go through that type of hassle to give their tickets to somebody they don't know. I have to imagine any of the 1,000 or so spectators sitting on the bleachers would appreciate the seat upgrade, assuming there are enough seats to accommodate the number of people they are with.

What I find surprising is how someone pays up to $800+ with the intent of only attending a handful or so of games. If they were corporate tickets, I'd offer unclaimed tickets to rank and file employees (I've personally gotten amazing Indians tickets like that from my employer).

Yeah, I never entirely understood the reasoning behind letting Tressel walk. Sure the day to day operations of running a University might not have been his strength, but we could have easily hired a right hand man to advise him on that stuff. Just having him at fundraising events would generate more dinner plates purchased or whatever else sold. It would have also gotten more local businesses invested in the University as being associated with a cult figure like Tressel is would be good PR for them. Hell it might have even gotten some of those "OSU honks" as you guys love to refer to them, to take a mild interest in the football team and adopt them as a 2nd team.

21+ win season probably not, but an 18-20 win season for them would have been a very realistic forecast coming into this season. Last year, coincidence enough, UTEP finished 6th in C-USA and went 19-14. Dambrot most definitely didn't expect a 2-7 team that is playing like one of the worst teams in C-USA. Had we gotten that 18-20 win team, this would have been the perfect final OOC game to prep ourselves for the level of competition we'd expect to see out of teams like EMU, Toledo, and CMU come MAC play. Edit: I'm counting 4 Texas players on the roster (Antino, Dalton, Poke, and Utomi) plus Robotham whose from Vegas. I'm counting 12 days between the end of the Sun Bowl Invitational and the Zips next game. Playing this game in El Paso certainly makes it easier for those 5 players to make it home for Christmas if that's the intention. Also, we recruit Texas pretty hard. Perhaps we have a recruit or 2 coming to these games.

UTEP has averaged 21+ wins over the last 7 seasons and only had 1 losing season in that time. Preseason polls had them finishing 6th in C-USA (for what it's worth Marshall was 4th). WKU was projected to finish 3rd and is currently 4-7 with a loss to Detroit Mercy. It's so hard to project how mid-majors teams will finish year to year. They for the most part don't have the depth of top conference schools so an injury or in the case of UTEP a starter quitting the team 3 games into the season because of a dispute with the coach can quickly derail a season.

Those attendance numbers are reported by the University and any STH counts towards that number regardless whether they show up or not. I have a buddy that bought season tickets and hasn't even gone to a game yet.

Just glancing down there it seems the same seats are empty game after game. I wonder how many of those empty seats are corporate bought?

My only complaint was the 16 TO. We can get away with that when we are shooting as well as we did last night, but on nights where we shoot at or below our average those can come back to haunt us.

Have to imagine Dambrot expected something better than a 2-7 UTEP team when he agreed to play in this. Irvine, despite not being good actually has some size. Their starting C is 7'2 255 and they have a 6'10 320 pounder on their bench. Akron might actually need to run some offensive plays to get open looks instead of relying solely on Big Dog drawing the constant double team.

So I heard that Marshall/Akron just signed another 4 year home and home contract so expect to see them on the schedule for the coming years.

Well it's game day folks. Akron appears to enter this game as 8 point favorites. http://www.oddsshark.com/ncaab/odds

Can I buy a vowel?