kreed5120

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.

12 seeds have gone 47-97 (32.6%) vs. 5 seeds. 11 seeds have gone 49-95 (34%) vs. 6 seeds 10 seeds have gone 58-90 (39.2%) vs. 7 seeds 9 seeds have gone 69-79 (46.6%) vs. 8 seeds Moral of the story is there is little difference between an 11 and 12 seed odds of winning, but a sizeable boost in a 9 & 10 seed winning. http://mcubed.net/ncaab/seeds.shtml Edit: To expand on my above post 13 seeds win 19.5% vs. 4 seeds and 14 seeds win only 16.1% vs. 3 seeds.

+1 Savage

With all the hybrid defense packages in the NFL these days, I wouldn't be surprised if that position already exists. I could see some team that feels he could fit their scheme reaching for him a round or 2 earlier than what many experts expect. I wish him the best of luck.

The Zips are still in an excellent position to win the regular season MAC title and #1 overall seed in the MACC. They are up 2 games with 6 remaining. Of those 6, 4 are at the JAR a place the Zips have yet to lose at this season. A strong regular season finish plus a MACC win should still give them a decent seed come tourney time. I'm confident they will hang onto the 2 game lead. Best case scenario is the Zips win out and enter the tourney as a 10 seed, if lucky maybe a 9. A loss in MAC tourney puts them in the NIT. An at-large seems like a huge stretch at this point and honestly shouldn't be our focus anyways. The MAC has been a 1 bid conference for the past 16 years and any team banking on that changing this year was likely going to end up disappointed.

This game was lost by the fact NIU managed to get an 15 extra shot attempts and 5 extra free throw attempts. NIU managed to both dominate the glass (+7 boards) and did a much better job of not turning the ball over (6 fewer turnovers). Akron shot well and held NIU to a meager 42% fg%. Akron just can't afford to concede 15 offensive rebounds.

Let's not knock the guy for sitting behind Zeke and Hyde. In Warren Ball's 3 non redshirt years those 2 guys amassed nearly 5500 combined rushing yards and both will regularly be seeing the field next NFL season. I'm not predicting him getting 1,500+ yards, but I feel he has the opportunity to do really well here.

So it has been a few years since I made it out to the JAR. How early would you guys estimate that I would need to get to the game in order to guarantee myself a bobble head?

Well hopefully Akron massacres them so people will see how bad Ken+ sucks.