MDZip

Zips held on to sole possession of first in the MAC East by beating a very good Ball State team. They have a very big game at BGSU Wednesday night, BGSU has dominated the MAC over the last number of years and the Zips could almost eliiminate them from East title contention with a win. Zips have put themselves in good position for a top four seed (which would give them a bye instead of having to win two games to get that point). Their biggest issue is they have two teams in the West (Toledo, CMU) who are the equivalent of Akron and Ohio on the Men's side. Going to be very tough to beat. Terrific season so far by the ladies, only one victory off their best total in history with at least 6 more games to go. Go Zips!

Funny thing is by the time we get to Ohio U, we could have the second longest streak without even losing. We play one game bewteen now and the 27th (OU Game Day) and Memphis who has the second longest streak one game behind us, has three. If they win all theirs we'd need to beat OU just to tie them again. Please beat NDSU and have Ohio knock off Belmont. I want the game in Athens to be HUGE.

Pretty nice job on that one. Good thing we sold out Infocision the very first game it was open, otherwise no one would be able to use the "Full Infocision Stadium" footage.

Probably should have read this one a little closer. The story is almost five years old. The Sergeant (I want to know how in the world he remembered this particular story) posted an update on what has happened to the kid since then. He committed to Toledo but is forgoing his senior season to take care of his sick fiancee.

The Plain Dealer has a poll about the Akron - Ohio St matchup that is currently a part of Joe Lunardi's bracket in a 4/13 matchup in Kansas City. Would love to see this matchup on a neutral court. Zips are currently ahead. Also a little disappointed that the Zips are not showing up in the bubble watch yet. Lots of teams with much higher RPI's are being mentioned but of course almost all of those are in the power conferences.

Nope, Bruce had it wrong, it's Dam-brought, and I'm sure Keith would appreciate the latest tweet from @ZipsMBB: The 1,500 nearly life-sized @CoachDambrot bobbleheads have arrived for tomorrow's @ZipsMBB giveaway! #ThinkBigger

Our own RG III. Let's hope for similar athletic success.

We need to get a little buzz going for the BGSU game. This isn't just a continuation of the streak, but a game that the Zips could lose if they do not put a great effort into it (just ask potential 3 seed WMU if BGSU can beat you). Good thing for the Zips is that BGSU is not good on the road, their only conference road win is at NIU. But Crawford and Calhoun can certainly play and Orr can get hot as we saw in the last game. If those three guys are all on and they get any contribution from Cameron Black, the Zips could be in for a fight. I say our guys come out with fire and win this one by 14.

There are a total of 7 undefeated teams in conference left (including the bizarre MEAC situation where those two teams will not play each other) but Montana getting beat is a little too eerily close to what the Zips wil be facing on Feb 27th. Weber State is a good team, was right behind Montana in the standings (and is the only team that could catch them, the rest of the conference is mired in mediocrity) and they were playing the game at Weber State less than a month after beating them at home. Even a weeknight game. Don't like the parallels.

Well we could have switched and gotten Belmont, and would be in sort of the same situation. Guess its good we stayed with what we have, but it's looking like the NDSU game can only have a negative impact at this point. Dang it. Belmont is now one slot - 52 - ahead of the Zips in the latest Kenpom rankings. NDSU has slipped to #67. Ohio is 63rd so a road victory there would have some significant impact. I think the Zips at-large chances largely rest in the balance there. If they can pull off a win at Ohio, the at large is possible (with the other wins of course). A loss there and the at large chance is gone, no matter what happens in any other games.

Two good things for the Zips would come out of an OU win against Belmont. Go Bobcats! I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Absolutely. There is no way the quality of Bleacher Report is anywhere close to SI.com. Plus it annoys the hell out of me to click through their "lists". That had to be a money driven decision. If I see a sports story on CNN I don't even bother selecting it anymore.

I'm no D.I.G. but you have it right.

That's true and kind of odd. The league plays a 16 game schedule and there are 13 teams in the league. There are no divisions but each team has one team they don't play at all and they play four others twice. Strange.

You not only can spell Ampaipitakwong, you know how to pronounce it too.

He was only talking about the East. But with WMU and Toledo dropping to 7-4, that's what the case is with the West. If either would finish tied with the Zips, the Zips would win the head to head tiebreaker. The worst the Zips could be is 11-5. WMU would have to finish 12-4 to take a seed from them.

Frenchy just said that by Akron winning this game every team but Ohio has been eliminated from winning the East, which also means the only team that could knock the Zips out of a top two seed is WMU and we would have to lose all of our remaining games and they would have to win all of theirs. Toledo is in the same spot but are ineligible for the tournament. Think we can count on a top two seed.

Every starter shot at least 50%. All of the turnovers is what made this game even close.

Didn't know Zeke wore contacts.

Coach Thomas advances to the second round. And David Kool was knocked out in the first round.

I would also think it would be mildly difficult (and probably unfair) to allow Ohio to field a team in both divisions.

Since the Zips joined the MAC in the early 90's, there wasn't a great deal of success early on. I was just on the MAC home page and of the five main stories on the home page, one was the softball player of the week (Akron's Erin Seiler) female track athlete of the week (Brittany Cheese) and the fact that STO added two basketball games to the schedule, both an Akron mens and womens game (the other two stories were on the predicted baseball order of finish and soccer refereeing). Plus, the East female basketball player of the week is Rachel Tecca, last week the men's was Zeke. There is a ton of athletic success at Akron over the last number of years that absolutely did not exist when Akron first joined the MAC (OK, men's soccer was still good). Even in woebegotten football, since the MAC went to divisions 16 years ago, Akron does at least have one championship. Do you know how many Ohio, Can't State and Bowling Green have in that time? None. As good as Ohio and Can't (this year) have been neither has won the MAC football title in over 40 years. Its just pretty remarkable seeing Akron success all over the place like that. Go Zips!

The lowest at large seeds are typically around 11/12. The lowest seeds are the conference champs of the lowest ranked conferences, which means that there are around 18 conferences whose champion would not have had a good enough season to have been selected as an at-large. This is what the MAC has had the last several years with the MAC champ being seeded somewhere between 13 and 15. When you see two teams battling in a 16 play-in game, each of those teams won their conference. There are no at-large bids down that far. The way they have it set now is that 4 16 seeds play for the right to advance as well as the four lowest selected at large teams. If the Zips happen to get in as an at-large this year, they could well be looking at one of those play in matchups.

That would be the gloriously optimistic akzipper. http://zipsnation.org/forums//index.php?s=...st&p=114715 I had no idea - I cheated and used the search function.

Uh-oh, we have some trouble right here in River City. An ESPN article on Chris Obekpa, a shot blocking center for St. John's has the following passage: Obekpa has several nicknames, including "The GameChanger." The moniker is so popular that St. John's is printing T-shirts to sell in bookstores and online with the word "#GameChanger" and an image of a hand -- presumably Obekpa's. Someone get the trademark attorneys on this right now - we had the GameChanger before them.