Dave in Green

Figure of speech.

If the Browns' offensive line is better than the Steelers', then all the Bowns would need to have a better offense than the Steelers would be a comparable QB, receivers, running game and offensive game plan. Piece of cake. Of course, there's that little matter of defense that would also be required to make the Browns a better overall team than the Steelers. Hilltopper has a point that the Browns' offensive line looked pretty good with Hoyer at QB. If the Browns have a shot at one of the top 3 QBs in the draft without giving away too much, they should go for it. I think Bortles has the biggest upside.

Jake being named MAC 6th Man of the Year makes it all the more concerning that Coach Dambrot has said he's likely done for the season and won't be available at the Q. First and foremost I'm most concerned about Jake's longterm health and don't want to see him rushed back into action unless he's 100% recovered from his concussion. I'm just hoping he beats the odds and all symptoms disappear this week. The Zips' odds of winning the MAC tournament would obviously be better with the MAC 6th Man of the Year playing.

Great to see that Jake's value to the Zips is widely recognized and appreciated. Tree, Q and Jake are the pillars of this team.

Hilltopper brings back lots of memories for me. Casa Mimi was the perfect Italian family restaurant for a relaxed meal almost as if you were in your own home. The waitresses used to come to our table, sit down and tell jokes. Mimi always came out to see how we were doing. Mimi moved to Akron to start his own restaurant after having served as head chef at the legendary Mamma Leone's in New York City, also sadly now permanently closed (be sure to read that whole story in the link for an amazing history). I had some incredible times there when in NYC. The closing of Casa Mimi was a big loss to Akron.

EMU beats CMU and NIU leads BGSU in OT. EDIT: And, in a scintillating OT, NIU outscores BGSU 5-2 to complete the first round.

Rob Senderoff was on the Channel 3 late sports report last night discussing the MAC tournament, and said his team was capable of winning 5 games in 6 days. The first thought that hit me was, yeah, and they are even more capable of losing the first at Miami. To paraphrase his name, it's time to sendthemoff for the rest of the season.

@GJGood, the Zips' schedule may have seemed tougher this season. But last season the Zips finished with the #135 SOS, and this season SOS stands at #166. Depending on who they play in the tournament(s), their SOS could still improve. But it would be really difficult to climb all the way up to #135 without an NCAA tournament run against some high-ranked teams.

I highly recommend Akron's newest downtown restaurant, Nuevo Modern Mexican & Tequila Bar. My wife and I were fortunate enough to get invited to a pre-opening evening, and were impressed with the food and drink. It's definitely upscale Mexican cuisine, nothing like what you may have had at your typical Tex-Mex joint. If you look at the menu in the link, you can see that even the familiar-sounding dishes are prepared in unusual ways. I had the Carnitas (slow braised and roasted pork shoulder), which was the best I'd ever eaten. My wife had the Pimento (smoked bean and rice stuffed poblano, fresh polenta, romesco), and she said it's the best stuffed poblano she's ever had. The appetizers are great, too. The ceviche and guacamole are wonderful. As for drinks, If you like tequila, this is the place to go. They have about 70 different types starting at $4.75 per shot and running up to some pricey vintage types that top off at $65 per shot. In addition to shots, they also have a variety of tequila-based mixed drinks that aren't listed on the online menu. I tried something similar to a bloody mary while my wife had a fruit-based drink. Both were good. We finished the evening off with some fine sipping tequila. The highlight for me was the Herradura Port Cask, tequila aged in old port wine casks. It cost $12.00 a shot, but was as smooth as a fine cognac. After just one visit, this is already one of our favorite restaurants. I think it's going to be wildly successful, so early reservations may be needed.

Henniger played only 14 minutes before fouling out, so he wasn't as sneaky as some of his teammates.

@Dr Z, I'm sure you'd never guess this about me, but I primarily use my cell phone during Zips games to check live stats to see if they correlate with what I think I'm seeing on the court. The only other thing I check during timeouts and halftime are other MAC scores that may affect the Zips. So at Zips games my cell phone doesn't take away from my 100% focus on the Zips.

I like the BJ's 3rd photo, which captures the technique used by the Flushes to out-rebound the Zips. I guess if this isn't clear enough for the refs to call, maybe the Zips could go to tear-away jerseys to make it a little more obvious.

The live traffic map for Cleveland confirms that 90 and both 9th Street ramps are open and flowing smoothly (green).

Double weird. I just went back and reworded my post and this time there was no error. It's as if certain combinations of words and numbers produce a server error.

@gozips19, are you sure about that? Check out the map and info here, which shows that 90 is open as are the 9th Street on and off ramps. Has anyone actually been up in that area recently?

I just tried to make another post in that thread and got the same error again.

I got exactly the same thing earlier today. Even copied what I'd written, started a new post and pasted the old text. Still no go. Ended up composing a new post from scratch and everything worked fine. Really weird.

Looking at a Cleveland map, the detour isn't so bad as it's all freeway. A shorter option to the posted detour would be to use 90 instead of 490 and avoid 77 north of 480 completely. Anyone have a better route?

OU win clinches the #5 seed, so the EMU-Toledo game is pretty irrelevant now.

The people who were hyping Big Dog so much pre-season were nothing more than the first ones to see him in early practices and recognize as others have now come to see that he is gonna be really good. @GoZips correctly predicted that Big Dog would become the starting center as a true freshman before the season was over. No one predicted that he'd be a dominant center as a true freshman, so I'm not sure where any unrealistic expectations came from.

No Zips player in last night's game had more rebounds per minute played than Pat. He snagged 5 boards in only 12 minutes of play, including 4 during the critical final 10 minutes of the game. While Tree had an uncharacteristically low 6 rebounds in 32 minutes, Big Dog led the team with 7 boards in his 22 minutes. It's funny, some have commented that Big Dog can't jump, yet he also led the Zips in blocked shots with 3. Big Dog has also been described as slow, yet several times he was out near the circle guarding backcourt players, and was quick enough on his feet to keep those players from driving around him to the bucket. He's fun to watch.

Skip, thanks for pointing out the I-77 construction. Here's the bad news: Interstate 77 section closing during second weekend in March

If all the higher-ranked teams win in the first 2 rounds of the MAC tournament, the Zips will face the #5 seed Thursday night. Right now that's OU. But if the Kitties loses at Miami today (noon game) and EMU wins at Toledo (2 p.m. start), EMU would get the #5 seed on a tiebreaker. Hustle Belt has all the updated seeding scenarios here.

You can build a nice house on a weak foundation, but the house is likely to develop lots of problems if the foundation fails to properly support it. The offensive line is the foundation of the offense.

Nothing is going to make Zips fans feel any better about the team's miserable free throw shooting percentage that currently ranks them #345 out of 351 D1 teams. But just out of curiosity I wanted to see if there are any respectable teams also living on the free throw poor side of town. Starting with the next worse MAC team (Bowling Green at #337) and going down to the bottom, the only quality team I see is North Carolina just below the Zips at #347. I haven't checked any NC fan forums, but suspect they're as concerned as Zips fans that free throw shooting will eventually catch up with their team in a close game come tournament time. 337. 63.7 Bowling Green 339. 63.5 Northeastern 339. 63.5 Navy 339. 63.5 Texas A&M 342. 63.4 UC Irvine 343. 63.0 Louisiana-Monroe 344. 62.7 Southern University 345. 62.5 Akron 346. 62.4 Marshall 347. 62.1 North Carolina 348. 61.5 UCF 349. 60.6 Morgan State 350. 60.5 Old Dominion 351. 60.0 Central Arkansas