MDZip

Zeke 17 points and 11 rebounds (8 offensive) and 4 blocks (all time leader in the MAC now), Treadwell 15 points and 17! rebounds (7 offensive) and welcome back Chauncey Gilliam (I know he had about 1 minuteagainst Ball State) with a nice 11 point game.

Not thre greatest game I've ever seen the Zips play but have to give them credit for gutting out a tough comeback win. 9 straight wins.

That ought to be a flagrant foul on Holt dragging Zeke down! Edit: Oh, and it was.

I bet the St Joes- Penn fans are bitching that this game is going long.

Why the hell was Kretzer in and shooting threes? I think his three percentage is at about 10% over the last month.

How many of us were going NOOOOO when Kretzer took the three? Whew! Back in the lead!

Abreu just having a miserable game but Treadwell is playing out of his mind. Two straight great offensive plays finishing with a nice dunk. Zips back to within 4.

Abreu 0-6, team 1-7 on FT and 1-10 on threes and giving up a ton of offensive rebounds. Not too hard to see being down 10 at the half. Can't went on a 16-2 run to end the half.

I think some of you may have missed my point, I only brought up basketball because we were discussing it (football is even more of a money drain), my original point was that university sports seem to be cited as a draw and as quality of life factor for students. It's completely subjective to how those things affect student life but what is not is how much is taken out of student fees to support those activities when again it might serve 5% of the student population for millions of dollars, whereas club activities serve a much smaller segment of the population for a miniscule amount. All sports drain the budget, some much more than others. My comment was aimed at all collegiate athletic activities, wondering what the real ROI is for the students who are all "investors" in those activities. That was what I meant about re-evaluation.

One of the little discussed by-products of all of the conference movement is the demise of the WAC in football. This was their last season and here was a pretty good article on their final season. Lots of references to the MAC.

Absolutely true - now compare their budgets.

And the other way to look at this is that the cost of college sports is often cited to be worth it for the "quality of life" for the students. If the size of the student population being served is only 5% or so even at some of the biggest basketball schools in the country, maybe that should be re-examined too.

Well I think Charlie was playing on those teams.

First I want to commend you on the correct way to pick a nickname for an out of state Zip. And VCU does have a bit more talent, I think partially fueled by the final four run that makes potential recruits think "VCU?" Oh, yeah. Plus they have a coach with a great pedigree.

A team that goes 17-1-2 and loses on penalty kicks in the round 16 is an unmitigated disaster? Disappointing that they didn't advance further certainly, but a disaster?

San Diego State backs out of their commitment to join the Big East and returns to the Mountain West. Somebody returned to sanity (I'll bet it was related to not enough Big East guaranteed money ). So now Boise and SDSU are staying where they should have in the first place.

I wonder if they have investigated the possibility of having a privately run arena like George Mason has? Ever since the Coliseum was leveled there isn't any particular large indoor venue in the area, George Mason was built and run by a private firm (the same one that built the Verizon Center in DC) for $16 million in 1985 (alleged to be around $34.6 million in 2013 dollars). It seats 10,000 and is used for a large number of events. Maybe something like that should be looked into. HOK Sports (a pretty reputable firm) designed it and I have been in it and it seems like a perfectly reasonable place for someone like the Zips. The University would rent it but that's a lot cheaper than owning one. If making it seem like a cavern is a problem, the upper deck could probably be curtained off but if a private firm was to build and run it, I'm sure they wouldn't want to go any less than 10,000 seats. Here is a picture I took after the women's game with GMU in December:

Except that it was you that died.

If this is true, it is really bizarre. Here is the Sports Illustrated article commenting on it when it was believed to be authentic.

Top Ten Reasons Akron will defeat Ball State tonight. 1. Majok Majok will be late not knowing which way his uniform goes. 2. Ball State will discover they are still a West Division team. 3. Zips won't get caught looking ahead to Can't State, because they are planning on pounding them this year. 4. Over their last 7 games Ball State has gone WWLLWWL and won't want to mess up the pattern. 5. They haven't won a game in the state of Ohio in over a year (this is actually true). 6. Zeke will block more shots accidentally than the Cardinals will on purpose (Zeke 51 for the year, Cardinals 35). 7. Jonas Stalyga and Luke Avsec will enter the game at the end of the first half. 8. Ball State will not have worked on devising a strategy to defeat a Tree. 9. Double doubles have become the new standard by which "good" games are judged. 10. Zips are better - Zips by 14 - in deference to the Zipmeister.

Looking back over last season and this one, I looked at Zeke's numbers in what most might consider "big games". Even though I know he had a huge game in the MAC final as a sophomore, I only looked back two seasons (this doesn't take into account all of the ways he impacts a game, just looking strictly at the numbers): Junior Year (points, rebounds, blocked shots) MISS ST 10 6 5 WVU 10 3 2 VCU 10 3 6 OU 17 6 3 Can't State 7 7 4 OU 4 2 0 Can't State 8 3 3 Can't State 12 7 4 (MAC semi) OU 8 4 3 (MAC final) Senior Year OK ST 12 10 2 CRE 12 2 2 MTSU 14 5 5 Seems pretty apparent to me that he shows up pretty well in bigger games.

A twelve seed? Awesome, that is THE sweet spot. I'd go see them play in Alaska in March if we got a twelve seed.

Beating NIU only dropped us one slot in the Pomeroy Rankings. Thought it might be a bigger drop beating a much lower ranked team. NIU has jumped up a little after beating Miami, EMU is now the lowest ranked team at 298

You'd think the John S. Knight foundation would be all over that one.

Not quite but amazingly BGSU is not co-leader, Buffalo is. The Bulls destroyed OU today.