kreed5120

I've tried calling twice today and both times I got a recording that said something along the lines of I'm contacting them outside business hours and I need to call back during business hours of Monday-Friday 9am-5pm. Unless I'm missing something it's Friday 10:08 AM. Oh well, I made an effort. I suppose they don't want my money.

Akron's RPI climbed to 40. http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/rpi/_/sort/RPI Kenpom has them at 63 http://kenpom.com Lunardi has them as a 13th seed. https://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bracketology

I was going to see about getting a 3 game pack for the Ken+, Buffalo, and OU game, but I went to gozips.com/tickets like it states and that package was no where to be found.

Nice seeing the Zips get some love. Getting a game on ESPN2 is pretty big news.

The same weekend that Akron played Iona and UCSB in Vegas, Ken+ played in a Vegas tournament that featured SMU, Colorado, and Penn St. IDK if Akron had an opportunity to compete in this instead of Ken+, I'm guessing no, but getting into more of these type of tournaments is what Akron should aim for in the future. These are opportunities to make statement wins on neutral courts. Your aren't going to see teams like SMU or Colorado come to the JAR so playing some place where the stakes are about even is the next best thing.

The Zips are having their best year from the 3-pt line and makes and attempts across the NCAAM have been trending upwards. All I'm saying is NCAAM teams relying heavily on 3-pt shots for offense isn't some new phenomena.

3-pt shooting has been a huge part of college basketball as far back as I can remember. Granted I'm only 26. It definitely beat the NBA to the party in that regard. The shorter distance and the fact a lot of smaller schools rely on it as an equalizer when facing larger schools has a lot to do with that. I'm still surprised to see that a player has taken 195 shots on the season and all 195 were 3-pointers.

"Does the MAC as an entire conference even have a win over an RPI top 50 team in OOC play this year?" I specified in OOC play.

I don't see the double standard. Those P5 conference schools played and beat really good teams in other conferences. Does the MAC as an entire conference even have a win over an RPI top 50 team in OOC play this year? Schools like Butler and Gonzaga made a name for themselves despite playing in small conferences by proving that they could hang with and beat other power schools. Every few years the MAC will have a team put together a decent postseason run, but most years they are 1 and done in both March Madness and the NIT. If the MAC starts winning marque OOC games and they perform better in post season play, the selection committee will take notice. Edit: Looking back I see Ball State has a win over Valparaiso whose RPI is at exactly #50. That is 1 marque win for a conference that has 12 teams. That isn't good.

Oklahoma shooting that volume of 3s and still hitting 45.8% of them for the season. That's impressive.

Akron put on a shooting clinic tonight. 16 made 3s and 49% shooting from the field, 50% from behind the arc.

The athletic arm race just in general is out of control. The P5 schools for the most part can afford what they are spending. Everyone else is going broke trying to keep up with the joneses. http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

BGSU took advantage of an easy early MAC schedule to start 3-1 and have gone 1-5 since. They perhaps have the most brutal MAC schedule remaining as their final 8 games Akron 2x, UB 2X, NIU, Can't, OU, and their only MAC bottom feeder left WMU. I see them finishing MAC play going 6-12 and being 1 of the bottom 3-4 teams.

I don't see a 5th year transfer QB going to a school that has an established starter. I'm expecting Kato to be redshirted. If Woodson goes down and none of the other QBs on the roster can perform, it's not like they can't burn his redshirt.

I'm going Zips by 15.

Don't forget Marshall is sitting at #3 in C-USA with a 8-3 conference record. We just need to keep winning to boost our potential March Madness seed. Right now Lunardi has us slotted as a 14th seed and facing MSU in round one. With a strong finish I feel a 10th or 11th seed is attainable, which would put us in a much better position to get our 1st March Madness win. It's fun to speculate about an at-large bid, but I don't want to put our tournaments hope in the hands of the selection committee. Odds are even if we did manage to pull off an at-large bid, we would get placed in one of those play-in games. Our goal should be to win the MAC tournament.

Zips 77-73

Because controversial headlines sell better than feel good stories. Sports news has turned into TMZ.

Every program loses assistants to higher paying jobs. It's a small price to pay for on the field success.

I feel recruiting rankings carry more weight at the top and become more meaningless the further down you go. It's kind of easy to pick out those blue chip studs that everyone is salivating over. It's much harder separating the 150th corner from the 200th corner. Half of Akron's recruits weren't even scouted enough to be given grades. Whose to say some of those guys aren't 2* or 3* players that just happened to be overlooked? Edit: Let's hold off judging this class until we actually see some of these guys take the field.

It very well could be. I'm not ready to mark down any of these games as a guaranteed "W" besides Miami, who I admit I'm already looking past. Ken+ looks a little lost since they lost Pollard. The game @Ken+ is still 2+ weeks away so they have a chance at righting the ship beforehand. Getting Jaylin Walker back healthy would be a good start for them.

I'm looking at the Zips 2015 roster and I'm counting 9-11 linebackers listed (2 are listed at multiple positions and I subtracted Lane who is still listed as a LB). 3 of those were seniors and 2 of them will be seniors this year. For depth alone it would make sense to add a couple. I don't want to go into next offseason with potentially only 4 LBs on the entire roster.

We could use some LBs as well to replace some of the ones we lost this year.

I don't want to count the chickens before they hatch, but the Zips final stretch run doesn't look as challenging as it did 1-2 weeks ago. 4 of the Zips final games are against BG, who isn't good, and Ken+, who just lost their 3rd leading scorer, best 3 point shooter, and team leader in assists. A big blow for a team that has struggled from long distance even with Pollard. From there we have CMU, NIU, UB, and OU, and MIA. I'm ready to mark MIA down as a win and NIU has looked very exposed after a hot start. Our 3 most challenging games remaining are CMU, UB, and OU. All of which are at home. I don't expect Akron to run the table, but I feel we are set up nicely for a strong finish.

With how bad OU started, the Zips had an opportunity to put them in a much bigger hole heading into half, but I can't complain about a 7 point lead on the road vs. a solid MAC opponent.