Dave in Green

We're worse than we ever imagined.

Current weather radar doesn't look promising.

Thanks for adding Valpo to the discussion, Ada Zip. Interesting that they along with Detroit have short OOC schedules that leave them several games under the total the NCAA allows. I still think Detroit has an advantage in attracting quality teams to play in Detroit, which is a hot HS recruiting area. But Valpo certainly doesn't have that edge over Akron and they appear to have a little stronger home OOC schedule almost every season (one season doesn't tell the whole story so it's important to look at several). Also interesting that Valpo has in other seasons also scheduled home-and-away series with the same opponent in the same season which is a little unusual but worth considering. Looking a little closer at Valpo's home OOC opponents, I don't think they'd draw noticeably bigger crowds to the JAR than already attend. But they would be more attractive to basketball junkies like you and me and they would help with RPI. From what I can find Valpo's basketball budget is similar to UA's, so money shouldn't be a barrier to building a similar OOC schedule. Most importantly, Valpo's scheduling has not helped them achieve any greater success in the NCAA tournament than the Zips except way back in the 1997-1998 season when former coach Homer Drew took them to the Sweet Sixteen. Otherwise they've been first round losers like the Zips, including twice under current coach Bryce Drew.

Remember that 4 H & A contracts produce only 2 home games and 2 away games each season. You need 8 H & A contracts with decent mid-majors to get 4 home games and 4 away games every season. That's certainly more realistic than 12 contracts, but as far as I can find still not easy. I've been looking at a lot of mid-major schedules and am having a hard time finding mid-majors at the Zips' level that consistently have 4 road games and 4 home games against quality mid-majors year after year. If anyone wants to join me in researching this, I've started using the college basketball section of Sports-Reference.com to quickly check through various team schedules over the years. It's actually easier to use for that purpose than was the now-defunct StatSheet.com. Check the past few season schedules of mid-majors you consider to be about equivalent in stature with the Zips and see who their OOC home and away opponents are.

Since OU has the best NCAA tournament performance of any MAC team in recent years, I thought it would be interesting to look at the Kitties' home and away OOC schedules for the two recent seasons in which they won NCAA tournament games to see if there's anything special that helped prepare them for the tournament. Anyone see anything significantly different from typical Zips schedules over the past few seasons? 2009-2010 season record 22-15, beat Georgetown in 1st round of NCAA tournament, lost to Tennessee in 2nd round. OOC Home Ohio Valley Middle Tennessee North Carolina A&T Lamar Austin Peay Illinois State Eastern Kentucky Elon OOC Away Marshall (neutral court) Tulsa Delaware Pittsburgh Robert Morris IUPUI 2011-2012 season record 29-8, beat Michigan in 1st round of NCAA tournament, beat South Florida in 2nd round, lost in OT to North Carolina in sweet 16. OOC Home Tennessee-Martin Lamar Arkansas State Morgan State Marietta North Carolina A&T Kennesaw State Robert Morris OOC Away Louisville Marshall Oakland Portland Wright State Northern Iowa

Let's do some basic math. If each season's home OOC schedule were totally filled with mid-majors of roughly the same strength as the Zips, i.e. top MAC-equivalent teams, each away OOC schedule would also be filled with return games with those mid-majors. That would leave the Zips with no flexibility to schedule any tournaments or high-majors on the road as they've done with Villanova and Arkansas this season. Does anyone really want to give up those premier games? The Zips have 13 OOC games this season, so if 6 home games were scheduled with quality mid-majors, the return games with those mid-majors would account for 6 away games, leaving just 1 game to schedule against a high major. That means the Zips would have to schedule 12 different mid-majors to have those 6 home and 6 away games each season. Does anyone think it would be easy to find 12 quality mid-majors who'd be willing to sign up with the Zips season after season? That's why most mid-majors at UA's level schedule a mix of tournaments and away games with high majors, home-and-away series with comparable mid-majors and home-only games with cupcakes. Realistically, what's the right balance for the Zips that would make them a better team?

That argument has been ended here for some time now. No one is asking for that. The current discussion is about trading at least one cupcake home game for at least one more away game against a high major with the idea that this will help better prepare the Zips for winning a first round NCAA tournament game. That's not an unreasonable request and is worthy of fair and open discussion.

Take this with a huge grain of salt, but the game starts at noon and the current hourly forecast is predicting rain starting at 3 p.m. As always, this is subject to multiple changes, no promises, bring your rain gear, etc.

There may be more differences to be seen throughout each game this season than some are expecting: The top 10 potential benefits of the NCAA rule changes

Moved to men's rule changes thread.

Nothing means anything.

Skip, the story had a balance of negatives and positives. You said without noting what was clearly stated in the story that a larger than usual class graduated last school year. I understand and accept that the news is not all good or all bad. As long as others on this forum are doing such a great job of calling out the bad, I'll continue to focus more on the good to try to create a little balance here. If the balance on this forum shifts from bad to good, I'll spend more time calling out the bad. Focusing on what Dr Z just posted, it seems clear from UA's current official position that while changing the U's name was one of many considerations, they are now committed to retaining The University of Akron name with the tagline of Ohio's Polytechnic University.

Thanks for sharing the negative part of the story. Here's the other part:

The curse may continue. Rain through the whole Pitt game, sunny and clear all week, thunderstorms currently predicted to return Saturday just in time for the Savannah State game. Weather forecasts are constantly changing, so we can hope this one does. But if it doesn't, get ready for even fewer butts in seats.

Wake loses and Zips tie going into this match. Now it looms large in a different way. Instead of battling for a top 5 spot in the polls, it's going to be a survival match to avoid taking a big tumble down the top 25. Oops on missing the tOSU exhibition games. I looked too quickly at their season results.

I think zippy5 nailed it that polytechnic is a molehill that some perceive as a mountain. But the flip side of that is that the more some try to build it into a mountain by grumbling about it on forums and in the media, the more others become familiar with it and see that it's not a major problem. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."

It's like an allergy. Some are sensitive to pollen and sneeze like crazy while some are unaffected. Some are sensitive to the word polytechnic in connection with UA and some aren't. Fortunately allergies are not like viruses where sneezing spreads the disease. As for Skip's mention of communicating at a 3rd grade level, does anyone really believe this applies to an institution of higher learning trying to attract the most qualified students who've completed 12th grade? Does anyone think it's smart for a university to dumb it down to a 3rd grade level when it's trying to achieve a higher academic standing and image? Look, any kid considering UA as an option who doesn't understand what polytechnic means can find the definition in 10 seconds or less on their smart phone, which is permanently attached to their right hand. We're not living in the Dark Ages.

Zips D will get more than their fair share of sacks and tackles as long as the O spends so little time on the field.

Paranoia about all aspects of UA is not uncommon.

We should expect any student qualified to attend UA to understand the meaning of poly (polymer, polyester, polygon, polygamy, etc.). Following are the only references to poly and polytechnic in the entire 2-minute video:

And a whole lot more.

We're both right if we agree that it's too early to know. And, Skip, directly asking the polytechnic question to 18-year-old kids is probably not going to produce accurate results. The polytechnic thing is a single word, and there's way more to the changes being made than a single word. If UA continues to attract more qualified students as they did this semester, it's likely that some will continue to believe that it's at least partially due to the polytechnic thing and some will continue to believe that it's in spite of the polytechnic thing. People just tend to get locked into opinions and positions that no amount of data seems able to move.

So according to your theory, the smartest students will start staying away in droves next semester? The semester after that? How long do we have to wait to see if the rebranding has a negative effect on enrollment? In the meantime:

Instead of wild speculation, we could always check the box score to see how UA is faring with the first class to register in the midst of rebranding:

Q was the man on offense and Zeke was the man on defense. Zeke totally shut down the immensely talented 6-10 Moultrie, who was good enough to be drafted in the first round (#27 overall) by the Miami Heat after his junior season. The local newspaper described it as follows: