MDZip

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.

20 points in 15 minutes, 6-6, with 4-4 from 3 and 4-5 FT's. Wow.

Lead back up to 16 (which is the number of points McAdams has and he just hit another three). Is he going to be our NIU killer the way McNees was to Miami? And WMU couldn't have done us a small favor?

Two amusing comments I saw on ESPN about the game 1. Idea for “Rudy 2”: A Notre Dame starter transfers to Alabama and manages to get on the field for one play. 2. It will be interesting to see how far Notre Dame drops in the final AP rankings. Going from No. 1 to FCS seems like it might be too drastic

Actually my suggestion was more tongue in cheek. since say they happened to finish 5th - that would give the 12 seed an automatic pass into the 8/9 winner, that wouldn't seem right. I suspect the five seed will simply get a first round bye and play the winner of 8/9 in the next round. That actually sort of seems fair since the four seed gets two byes. Or worse they finish 3rd and then the next level game down is the right to play #2 in the semi's. I do hope Western plays strong from this point forward. We are all big WMU fans here this Saturday. Go Broncos!

Saw something about Can't State having a 31 game win streak aganst the West teams and I thought that might mean just at home, but it's correct, the Flashes hadn't lost to a West team since Toledo beat them in Feb. 2008. Almost a five year winning streak. No wonder Can't was always near the top of the standings. I think this means Can't is a little worse then people think and Toledo a little better. That would be a little embarassing for Toledo to win the West and then be ineligible for the conference tournament. I think wherever they finish, that seed should be a bye.

The women put a beatdown on OU last night for their first conference opening win in 14 years. There are definitely some changes underway. The only team who looks to be clearly better is of course, BGSU, but I wouldn't even put that past the Zips right now (I would have had Toledo in that category but they lost to an average CMU team last night). They legitmately look to be a contender and should easily dispatch Can't State on Sunday. Jodi Kest has done a great job. They have an interesting team with a lot of parallels to the men's team (and both are 10-4 and 1-0 in conference). Can't win the biggest OOC games, but do a great job in steady play with the others now. Sina King is their Zeke Marshall (without all of the blocked shots), steady, not flashy and very dependable. Rachel Tecca is Tree, beast on the boards and a terrific scorer (might be giving Tree too much credit here ), Kacie Cassell is Alex Abreu, nice three point shooter and gives lots of assists (third in the country in assists per game, had nine last night and very hard nosed like Alex, drives to to the basket well). Hanna Luburgh is Nick Harney, kind of unassuming but capable of blowing up any night (21 last night) and you look at the box score and wonder how she had that many points and Taylor Ruper is Brian Walsh, good all round game in rebounding, assists and a three point specialist. Looks to be a fun year, would really be cool to have two MAC champions this year. They have a way to go but the MAC isn't that strong - it is possible we could have two NCAA tournament teams this year. Congrats, ladies!

Think this might be the one you are looking for. By the way, Deji's defense has been mentioned, but he doesn't rebound much for a guy who can jump out of the building. There was one play last night where he was behind Tree and leapt above him to try to get a rebound but he backed off seeing that Tree had it. Don't think we've had a leaper like him since Quade Milum. http://zipsnation.org/forums//index.php?showtopic=27696

So the Captain tries to quietly excise your extensive, banal post and you have a backup copy. Great. I wonder what happened to the Melo from the Penn State game in Puerto Rico? That Melo cut, dished, and scored almost at will. Maybe we need to fly some family members up for each game.

Can't just went down to Toledo, West went 3-1 against the East tonight.

He was hammering the ref named Ferrari pretty good. Not a great game but the Zips blew them out in the second half. Maybe some of that depth paying off. Hope Zeke is OK, he was limping pretty noticably.

Since wins are the only "measuring stick" most people seem to care about, when you are in a rebuilding mode would you rather have our schedule or Ohio's? Just would like a relatively even playing field in scheduling in our own conference. This is not a one year phenomenon that Akron has received one of the most if not the most difficult schedules in the MAC (of course it hurts that we can't play us).

Somehow the Zips have managed to draw the top three teams from the West again. Only two MAC East home games and once again don't play Buffalo. Outstanding. Ohio draws EMU, CMU and all six East teams. Yeah, this is fair. F this unbalanced scheduling. AKRON Home: Ball State, Toledo, Can't State, Ohio; Road: Northern Illinois, BGSU, Miami, UMass;

Had a feeling it was not going to be a good game, with ND eking out too many wins over mediocre competition this year. If Pitt had a reliable kicker, ND isn't even in this game. I can hear the SEC howls growing louder but the odds of them landing more than one team in the upcoming four team playoff seems a bit unlikely, so that will probably be the next impetus to grow that playoff number again. It's coming eventually, Monday night's game is another good argument for it. And Saban is at $5M a year at Alabama which is the equivalent of an NFL coach. He has a great setup, is treated like a demi-god, can't see that he would have any reason to bolt for the NFL.

And Michael Green was the "producer". Well done, nice to look back on a pretty fun time but also sad to see a few other things, Quincy's contributions to the team, all of the terrific guys and players who have moved on and most to think this is it for Zeke three months from now. Really seems a short time ago we were all excited about this highly ranked prospect choosing Akron. As the only four year member of the senior class, really hope he continues his high level of play (and maybe even cranks it up a notch) for the remainder of the season. Would love to see him play in the NCAA tournament one more time.