kreed5120

Despite getting a win over Canada Tuesday, the Zips fell to a 14 seed in the latest Bracketology projections. The team that jumped us lost last night so I'd imagine we'd be back as a 13 seed if Lunardi created the bracket today. http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bracketology/_/iteration/233

I'd expect the Lebron James bobblehead to provide a great draw. I wonder how many people on campus know who Dru Joyce is and of those that do I wonder how many care enough to actually go to a game to get a bobblehead of him? In reality a free t-shirt might have been appealing to many students. The Zips sold me on the 3 game pack for $24. The bobbleheads were just a bonus.

I was referring to much more than just those housing projects. Spicer, Quaker, South hall alone represent nearly ~1500 students From Grant Street to Route 8 back to nearly Thornton is mostly all right off campus students. When you add in the people who live in dorms, the people who live in houses and apartments near campus, and people who live at home but can still get to campus in a ~15 drive, you still will end up with a very large number. Perhaps it's more like 33% which means ~8500 live on or near campus. The main point I was trying to get a crossed is this isn't your dads Akron. Despite still being coined as a commuter school, it's nothing like what it was 15-20+ years ago.

Then those same people go to a random game the next season and only see 150 students then say to themselves why did I bother to come. My system would provide some sort of boost to all home games instead of a select small number to create that atmosphere where all games could potentially be exciting. Wouldn't it be exciting to have 400 students at every games (excluding Christmas break) instead of 500 at only 3?

I'd certainly hope we have another big ready to enter the rotation next year otherwise we are an injury away from disaster. It also wouldn't bode well for us the year after since we would lose both Cheatham and Big Dog and have 0 bigs on our roster with playing experience.

Yeah, that's definitely the plan. Despite my previous comment, I don't mind the promotions. In fact, I think they are great ways of rewarding fans. I just don't like how it doesn't necessarily reward the true fans. I'd just prefer a system where they announce at the beginning of the season that they will be holding a lottery at the end of the season for 1 free semester of tuition. Every game you attend is an entry. If Jimmy attends 15 games then he gets 15 entries, if Sally couldn't make the Christmas break games and attended 10 she gets 10 entries, and if Tommy got drug to a single game by friends he gets 1.

I'm a recent grad that was there when they were building all the new dorms and 22 exchange and all those other right off campus housing projects. It isn't anywhere near the commuter school that it once was. I don't have figures, but I wouldn't be surprised if ~50% of the student body lives within 15 minutes of campus yet maybe 200 students showed up to Tuesday game on a day where there was no class. I'm a Alumnus of a fraternity on campus and they had an alumni outing for the homecoming game 2 football seasons ago that I went to. I'd say there were about 20 undergrads in attendance. They had a tailgating spot in Lot 9 and they were saying how they tailgate for every game. When it came to game time not a single 1 entered the game. They went to the bar or back home to watch other college games and OSU wasn't even playing at that time. I don't expect students to plan their lives around Akron sports, I surely didn't, but there surely are a good number of sports fans on campus. If you could get these guys to attend 2 football and 3 basketball games a year, you would see a huge surge in student attendance.

He got those minutes because Pat was out AND Kwam was only able to play 5 1st half minutes due to foul trouble. In those 34 minutes he finished with 14 points. Akron spreads out its offense too much for me to buy into 1 single player averaging 20 points. If Big Dog was on another MAC offense that had less firepower, I would buy into it.

It's sad they have to offer this to get students out to watch a 1st place team.

I keep going under thinking at some point the Zips will hit a dry spell and only hit 10 or so 3s instead of their recent usual 12-15. They keep proving me wrong and I'm OK with that.

I think it's time to put away the notion that teams are running away from playing Akron. The fact is it just doesn't make sense for them to come to the JAR. Great Akron could cut them a check for 100K, which Akron unlikely breaks even on. Minnesota counters saying they make 400k off a home game. They will pay Akron the 100k and keep 300k for themselves. The reason Minnesota would accept losing money to play a road game would be exposure. Akron really isn't going to give that to them. Now if Akron was able to go on a 3-4 year run where they made it past the 1st weekend in the NCAA tourney a few times, some teams might begin to listen.

At the same time don't we do the same thing to smaller schools? We pay them off to come here on a bus meanwhile we stay rested. Did we even have a single home game on our OOC schedule where we are returning a visit? It's hard to complain about the bigger fish wanting to eat you meanwhile you have no problem feasting on the fish smaller than you.

The reason we see the Coppin State and Bethune-Cookman of the world on our schedule is because those programs will agree to play us without a return visit. I'd be all for removing 2 guaranteed home games verse 2 cupcakes and replacing them with 2 decent mid-majors home-and-home games per year. It would net into 1 less home game per year which is no problem for me, but would season ticket holders accept paying the prices they are for 1 less game? I'd be all for a MAC vs. CAA or MVC challenge.

As would I. I could have easily misconstrued what he was saying. Maybe the point he was trying to get a crossed is if we do begin seeing them on the schedule, don't expect them to be at the JAR.

It could be, but the way he said it made me think he was scoffing at the notion of playing a cash grab game. He emphasized those guys won't come here which makes me believe he wants a home and home which at some point we have to accept just isn't going to happen against programs of that caliber.

So on the 1350 am postgame show they had Dambrot on and they were talking about the elite 21+ win company the Zips are in. One of the broadcasters jokingly asked when we are going to see one of those other 21+ win club teams on their schedule. Dambrot said those other teams would happily schedule Akron and would pay them a lot of money to do so. This debunks a few peoples myths that these teams are too scared to schedule Akron. My question is why not schedule one of these cash grab games a year? I'd give Akron a fighting chance vs. OSU in Columbus this year. A loss and they would need to likely rely on a MAC tourney win to get in just like every other year. A win and their resume actually might get a 2nd look come selection time.

I think that 50-29 rebound is a misprint. According to the box score it was 40-29, which is still a concern. The Zips managed to offset much of the -11 rebound differential by being +7 in the turnover department. What sunk them vs. NIU is that they got dominated on the boards and they lost the turnover battle. I wouldn't look at the rebounding numbers too hard for this game. Pat was out and Cheatham got into early foul trouble which forced Akron to play small much of the 1st half. UB countered by playing big and forced mismatches. Protecting the paint and preventing dribble drive penetration, especially in transition before the defense is set, has been a problem with the Zips all season. Odds are the Zips will lose the points in the paint battle mostly every game as they rely on other means for points. They scored 54 points alone last night from 3s and free throws. They still need to work on limiting the points in the paint they allow. That's their Achilles heel.

Listed attendance was 3,069. Being at the game I would have guessed there were more. I suppose the bleachers behind both hoops were pretty bare

He did. Kept running his mouth. We need to quick forcing things on offense. Just move the ball around and the shots will come. Defensively we need to quit giving away easy transition points. Idk what the points off turnover figures are, whatever it is it's not in akron's favor

Those are all fair points. I suppose my judgment was clouded by me skimming thru the parts that sounded like a broken record and just reading the parts that I cared about. Have you looked into submitting a letter to the editor in hopes that it would get published? I'd be interested in reading that piece.

I've seen some questionable ABJ articles in my time, but I actually didn't mind this one. It presented hard numbers so that we could see what attendance really was. I could have used without the long rant on how the stadium is a huge money pit. I feel we all get that at this point. No need to print a new article about it every 2-3 months. At some point you just have to accept it is here and there is little to nothing that can be done about it. The money has already been spent.

London Fletcher was a 4X Pro Bowler out of John Carroll and measured in at 5'10. Not saying Brown will be the next Fletcher as those would be some big shoes to fill, but if some team feels he can ball, they will find a spot for him. At worst a dude that can run a 4.47 40 with the tackling skills of a linebacker would have to seem like a valuable special teams player.

Nothing is guaranteed, but it would take an incredible collapse for the Zips to not win the regular season title. They have a full 2 game lead with 6 games left and perhaps the easiest remaining schedule in the MAC. Of those 6, 4 are at home where they have yet to lose this season. 3 of them are against perhaps the 2 worst teams in the entire MAC in MIA and BG, Another 2 are against Ken+ who the injury bug has gotten the best of and have lost 4 out of their last 5. Even if the Zips were to lose 2-3 games, have any of those 7-5 MAC teams shown the ability to win 6 straight to steal the regular season title? The Zips currently sit #2 in 3PM per game and 14th in 3P%. That being said anything short of a NCAA tournament berth would have to feel like a disappointment because you would hate to see all that shooting go to waste. I don't think they are guaranteed to win the berth as MAC teams have shown the ability to beat them this season, but I'm confident they will be in a position to finish no worse than the NIT.

If a #1 seed actually played the 68th best team, we would have seen a 16 seed beat a 1 by this point. Those 16 seeds come from awful conferences and are more like the 200th best team and that might be me being generous. A 12 seed typically features some of the best mid-major teams plus the final 1-2 at-large teams. 11 seeds are typically bubble teams that squeezed themselves in. After you get past the top dozen or so serious contenders, teams 20-30 aren't that far apart. If you don't believe me, just look at how often teams juggle in the AP poll. Edit: 6 seeds are 4-3 vs 7 seeds. Small sample size, but it just goes to show how even those teams are.

As a fan though it makes little difference if you're an 11th or 12th seed, however, you should be hoping for a 10 seed or better. In general I feel there isn't much of a talent gap between an 11th & 12th seed just like there isn't much of a talent gap between a 6th and 7th seed. Once you start getting into the 13th and 14th seeds, you begin seeing teams that aren't really 1 of the best 68 teams in the country but got in by winning a mediocre to bad conference.