MDZip

Here's some reading material for youI'm sorry, but this does nothing to suggest anything of a concerted effort by the NCAA to keep mid-majors out. At best, it's tautology. Mid-majors aren't there because the NCAA doesn't want them; the NCAA doesn't want them, so they're not there. Because the number of bids has been going down is proof of nothing. What about when the numbers were going up? Doesn't this decline match the NBA's age rule? Think that might be a reason?Fact of the matter is, the at-large pool was weak last year. The teams cited in that article all had huge holes in their resume.People want to blame The Man instead of looking in the mirror.Here's a good piece about the at-large process. You tell me if there's room for collusion.One of the most interesting parts of that article:One thing that really struck me was up in the top left corner, the first thing a committee member sees when scanning one of these. There's average RPI win and average RPI loss. That's not something that you can find on any website, is it? (Don't worry, we're on it this weekend.) SJU's average win of 170 makes its profile look a whole lot less impressive.That's where I think the Zips get into the most trouble. Quite frankly, their best RPI wins are likely to come in conference. That's not going to do much to impress the committee. Their RPI losses would look pretty good, but that doesn't help you much, I wouldn't think.And another one for the Zips to consider:One thing that the NCAA staffers and Slive built immediate consensus on was that the "20-win season" has become completely meaningless.

Who was defending Kool last night?I think the idea was "let Kool shoot, don't let anyone else shoot, see what happens".Does it scare anyone that both Pierce and Kool torched the Zips for 30+? That was almost unthinkable two weeks ago?Not as much as if they were on the same team. I believe Pierce had a teammate with 18+.this is what worries me about the zips, we have no one that will put up 20+ points a game, let alone 30+. We need big scorer, to put points on the board and draw double teams that will open up the game for other players. I mean its not very good when your highest scorer is only averaging 1 pts a game.That's true that we don't have a "go-to" scorer but its also nice that other teams can't key on one guy. For the WMU game, we had guys at 11,11,10,10,9,9. Awfully tough to figure out who to guard when scoring is balanced and comes frm all over. The problem with the "big scorer" is that when he has an off-night, the rest of the team has trouble picking it up. Of course a team like ours, if we have a few guys with an off-night, it prodcues the same effect. Still, I'm happy with the offensive production in general.

If you want to see what people thought on the subject of Coach Kest dismissing players a few years ago, here are a few good threads. Most people seemed to have been supportive of her moves:http://zipsnation.org/forums//index.php?sh...t=0&start=0http://zipsnation.org/forums//index.php?sh...473&hl=Kesthttp://zipsnation.org/forums//index.php?sh...=9273&st=0

Taylor made the winning 3 Pt shot in OT to beat Ball State on Wednesday.

Zips win! They were down 19-5 in the first half. Nice job.

Ladies up by two with 1:06 left in OT. This would be a big win against the defending MAC champs on the road. Coach Kest must be doing something right.

Zips up 31-22 with about 3 minutes left.

Zips up 7-4 early. Cvetinovic a bundle of energy as usual. Wonder if he is an overseas relative of Anderson Varajeo?

I think this game will tell a lot about the Zips this year. WMU is not the class of the West but they still could end up winning it. If the Zips can pull off a win at Kalamazoo, they probably can finish ahead of the pack. If they can't, it will be a dog-eat-dog fight to the finish again. And with Toldeo at home coming up and the Bracketbusters selection on Monday, if they can beat WMU (and Toledo), they have a chance at one of the 11 televised games. Go Zips!

Bring him here, we'll take him, especially since he's a forward and our stock of those seems to keep running low.

Recruiting updates from me will be sparse. There's a whole new group of coaches...and I have no way to meet them until signing day. Or maybe the summer golf outing.Sucks. This used to be my favorite time of year.A 3 star running back that is committed to NIU visited Akron this weekend and could very well switch his commitment to the Zips. His last name is Bowers.Does it bother any one else that a Toledo fan keeps up better with our potential recruits than we can now?

Does your tongue ever hurt from keeping it in your cheek for so long?

While I don't care much about who Joe has penciled in as the MAC rep at this point (he has CMU), he has them listed as a 16 seed. I don't expect that to hold but man, that would be ugly.

As much I want simply want the team to do well as a team this year, I always like to keep an eye on the record books to see what milestones could be approached. There is no chance of any 1000 point scorers or, quite frankly, anybody doing anything like getting into the all-time rebounds, assists etc. at least partly because the playing time is so divided up. I did notice one possibility, though - if Zeke continues at his current blocked shots pace, he will add his name into the top career shot blockers in UA history in just his freshman season. Number 10 on the all-time list is Marcel Boyce with 50. Zeke currently stands at 33 (1.7 per game - even though some of us think that number is low) with at least 13 games to go. That pace would put him at 54 which would be good for 7th all-time already as just a freshman. I think Zeke has contributed what a lot of us expected, some very good defense (and an intimidation factor) with at least some offense to go with it. I am looking forward to his continued development but I think it's pretty cool he could put himself in the top ten all time already as a freshman.

Hmmm, I think this has gotten off-track. No one is arguing that we wouldn't love for all of these things to happen, certainly any Zips fan would. The question as posed, however, stemmed from a discussion in another post about what Zips fans really cared about. I follow all three sports more closely than any other sport and I'd love to see a wnner in all of them, however, when I see someone say they'd happily trade a National Championship in a relevant but not one of the "big two" sports for something good simply to happen in one the big two, that confuses me. That was the intent of the original question which I think has brought out some fairly interesting perspectives. To simply dismiss it by saying I want it all, well who wouldn't?

But he did make a nice play on Pierre Garcon on a potential TD throw in the first half. Must be his familiarity with Garcon playing just down the road at Mt. Union. Either that or he has experience waiting tables at French restaurants.

Since this topic has been brought up on another forum, i thought it might be interesting to see what Zips fans really thought. I tried to make them realistic choices. I think anyone would take a national top ten for football or basketball but those aren't too likely to happen in the near future. As for me, I'd take the national championship in soccer. It may not be the most high profile sport, but it would give UA it's first team title. I'd be a little less excited if it was in something like say swimming, but I'd still be happy about it just like I was happy about our two NCAA champions last year. So what so you ZNO?Evidently I don't have the poll setup right, but the three questions were:1) National Championship in soccer2) Men win a first round NCAA tournament basketball game3) Football wins a low level bowl gameMods. feel free to delete the other one.

Chris McKnight - 18 points and 13 rebounds in 20 minutes? Maybe he decided Jimmy isn't the only senior who can lead by example? Holy Crap - welcome back Chris!

By 3 - at Miami that is a blowout.Zips 57 - RedSomethings 48

Sportscracklepop did an article comparing late night talk show hosts to NFL quarterbacks. I thought they did a pretty good job. Charlie Frye got a mention, unfortunately they compared him to Carson Daly. D'Oh.

Elton has an article where he thinks it would be a good idea for UA/Can't State/CSU/YSU to all play each other. The Zips and Flushes already do, but he wants to add CSU and YSU to Akron and Can't's schedules. We've discussed adding CSU before (no matter whose "fault" it is that we don't play), so maybe adding YSU could get the whole thing off the ground. I appreciate Elton giving it a little visibility, maybe at some point we actually get some traction moving this thing toward reality. Seems pretty dumb this group doesn't play every year.

27-27 tie then the Bulls run off 13 unanswered, including a couple of uncontested threes. Pretty hard to blame all of the on the refs. Lets see if they have enough compusure to come back in te second half.

Just to answer this question, the wrestling program was dropped after the '80-'81 season.

Yep, that was Ray Mernagh's column in the MACReportonline. Nice read if you haven't seen it. Dambrot brings confidence, and victory, to the Zips. Here's a quote from the article "Nate Linhart, a kid one Zip fan said on a public message board back in his freshman year "wasn't a D-1 player" is winning MAC Tournament MVP honors." OK, own up, who was it?

According to BobCatAttack.com we're now the most hated team in the MAC. That's when you know you've made it. Akron=No traditions, stupid mascot, ego-maniac coach, most hated MAC Team.