MDZip

And it made the top "headline" section on ESPN's men's basketball. For a guy that never even played one minute for us. Great.

A suggestion - don't read it, don't post it - who cares. Zeke made a decision that he thinks is right for him and good for him. Even had he chosen to go elsewhere, I would wish him the best. He seems like a fine young man, bright, level-headed, and the definition of a student athlete. He picked a school for academic reasons without getting stars in his eyes. What more could you want from a 17 year old? As a basketball recruit, terrific - picking Akron for the right academic reasons - priceless. You don't get a lot better publicity for a school than that (see the article on the artifical pancreas again). Not once have I seen anything about picking Akron as a nice steppingstone to the NBA, think Micheal Beasley or OJ Mayo picked their schools that way? That's what's really great about this verbal. Congratulations Zeke, I hope your college experience turns out to be just what you evidently are envisioning.

And Kentucky has an 8th grader. This is nuts.http://sports.aol.com/fanhouse/2008/05/02/...at-high-school/

While I love when our football and basketball teams are doing well, this is the kind of stuff that really makes me proud.

"The University of Toledo is expected to name Notre Dame assistant Gene Cross its new men's basketball coach today.Former Providence coach Tim Welsh also interviewed but took his name out of the running for the job after he visted the campus."I guess you could understand Welsh's reasoning. Seriously, I still don't understand why they got rid of Joplin. He was dedicated to the school and had done a pretty good job. Guess they just felt as though they had some ground to make up to catch up to the Zips success.

Since I had heard a lot about him, I got to see Zeke play down at the Hoop Magic tournament in Chantilly, VA this weekend. I was nothing but a fan interested in watching him play, but it was fun to watch him knowing that he had some interest in UA. Since he is only a junior if he continues to develop his game and especially continues to get stronger, he will be a force to be reckoned with. And as the saying goes, you can't teach height and he has plenty of that. He is already a pretty intimidating force in the paint, I only had the time to see one game, but he must have blocked a half dozen shots in it. He had several nice offensive rebounds and a few putbacks. His team didn't seem to work real hard getting the ball into him, though it seemed that he had established position plenty of times. His free throw mechanics look smooth, a nice easy high arc to it. I am afraid I was bad luck, though, as the only game I saw was the one they lost. They played a tough team and could have beaten them, but if he looked good against a good team, I wish I could have seen him play against one of the lesser teams. Good luck in your senior year Zeke.

I love KD and I certainly hope you are right, but when you look at the cash they're offering (probably in the $800K range) he's got to at least talk to them if they are interested. I hope not, but remember, we do have a very smart head coach. After all, he is a UA grad.

Darn it, I was hoping the big news would be that he still had some eligibility left and regretted missing the college experience.

I absolutely second that opinion. It is especially helpful for those of us who live outside of the area. I only discovered the site by accident a couple of years ago and just lurked for a while thinking I wouldn't have anything to contribute. Then I signed up and never posted anything for quite a while but then once I got past that I've been throwing my opinions out there just like everyone else. I especially like some of the newer improvements like the chat room, I used that a lot while the post season was going, nice to root with like minded people, even if only virtually. So thanks for all you've done and the effort you've put into it. No chance something like this would have existed when I was in school (despite the fact the Internet didn't exist ), there just wasn't this kind of passion nor energy nor enthusiasm. Hell, we were an also-ran OVC program then. So again thanks, we also recognize that this isn't done for free either.

It seems a bit rude not to at least acknowledge a friendly sportsmanship gesture such as this. Thanks for your input on the game, could you at least try to make sure at least a couple of the guys you mentioned have off games? Good Luck to you as well (just not TOO much )

per GoZips.com from the past two seasons:2006-712/16/06 @ UIC (Comcast Chicago) L12/22/06 @ Nevada (KAME-TV [NV]) L12/11/07 vs. Miami OH (Time Warner) W1/17/07 vs. Can't State (Time Warner) W1/27/07 vs. Western Michigan (ESPN2) W2/3/07 vs. Ball State (FSN Ohio) W2/7/07 vs. Central Michigan (Time Warner) W2/13/07 vs. Ohio (Time Warner) W2/17/07 vs. Austin Peay (ESPNU) W3/1/07 @ Buffalo (Time Warner Buffalo [Tape Delay]) W3/4/07 @ Can't State (FSN Ohio) W3/8/07 vs. Central Michigan (FSN Ohio) (MAC) W3/9/07 vs. Can't State (FSN Ohio) (MAC) W3/10/07 vs. Miami OH (ESPN2) (MAC) L2007-812/21/07 vs. Youngstown State (Time Warner) W1/2/08 @ Dayton (WHIO-TV [Dayton]) L1/17/08 vs. Ohio (ESPNU) W1/23/08 @ Can't State (Time Warner) L1/26/08 @ Central Michigan (FSN Ohio) L2/6/08 @ Western Michigan (Comcast Local) L2/12/08 vs. Northern Illinois (FSN Ohio) L2/19/08 @ Miami OH (ONN) W2/23/08 vs. Virginia Commonwealth (ESPN2) L3/4/08 @ Ohio (ESPN Full Court) W3/9/08 vs. Can't State (FSN Ohio) L3/13/08 vs. Central Michigan (FSN Ohio) (MAC) W3/14/08 vs. Western Michigan (FSN Ohio) (MAC) W3/15/08 vs. Can't State (ESPN2) (MAC) L3/18/08 @ Florida State (ESPN Classic) (NIT) W2006-7: 11-32007-8: 7-8Overall: 18-11So in truly "national coverage" (counting all of the ESPN networks except ESPN Full Court - and I know ESPNU is fairly limited), the Zips are 4-3. That is at least respectable.

I'll defiitely give a plug for the CS program as well. It was a few years ago for me too, but I also got my Masters degree shortly after from a very high profile East Coast School (I did like the school so I won't denigrate them by saying the name) but Akrons program blew them away by far. I learned a ton more at Akron than I ever got out of the Masters program. I give them high marks.

OK, tell the truth. As much as we all wanted to tell the NIT to pound sand from the snub last year, don't you feel a little better about landing an NIT bid as opposed to the CBI this year? (Though the CBI may well have helped us)

Also remember Can't got really lucky this year when they signed Al Fisher sight unseen and got the MAC player of the year. Want to use that as a recruting strategy every year? I'll bet even Can't doesn't want to rely on it. This was very disappointing tonight, but yet, making two straight MACC games is a heck of a lot better than back when we were a middle of the pack OVC school. Dambrot & co. have done an outstanding job. And we may very well pick up a NIT/CBI bid. What I wanted? Nope. Am I still happy the Zips had a good year? Yep.

LosAngelesZipFan - One of these days I'd LOVE to say goodbye forever to Ohio winters BUT I can't stand the thought of not being able to drive 15 minutes to the JAR to watch our Zips. Same with football season as disappointing as those have been for the most part. Can't wait to make the drive north in a little while and feel for ya. Great to know there are Zips fans all around the country and as far away as LA and HI cheering Akron on. Have fun this afternoon watching the game. GO ZIPS!!!...and at least one in PittsburghAnd a few in San Diego. Good luck to the team tonight. Go Zips!Got some here in Maryland as well. We're all over. 10 minutes to go!

You make a good point - here is the high on number of tunrovers in a game this year and it belongs to Al Fisher. Now all we have to do is win enough games to get back to him. :)TURNOVERS................ 10 FISHER, Al (Can't State) vs MIAMI (03/04/08)

Change started last year - all of the teams come to Cleveland now. Either team is fine, throw Nate on Watson if we get CMU and there is no way NIU shoots the lights out like they did last time (that was the highest percentage by any team in a MAC game this year) if we get them. We'll be fine. What I want is a WMU upset, I'd really rather not see them.

Even more surprising - a member of the Zips women's team did make the list (sorry Cap'n - easy to overlook) - Kara Murphy for hustle, so at least we got that going for us which is nice.

There are only four teams in the MAC we did not beat - and we can only play three of them since we only have three games, but we are lined up perfectly for the revenge tour. The first round we will get one of the teams that beat us (CMU/NIU). If WMU escapes their first round, we get another and if Can't Statecks makes the final with us, we get the last one. The odds are greatest that this is the path that will be followed, if anything happens to either WMU or Can't Statecks, we will face a team we already defeated. I'll agree, that is pretty odd for a number 3 seed.

Gutty, gutty comeback to lose it on a heartbreaker. Heck of a job by Middleton and Wood right at the end. Completely annoying, but not the worst thing in the wold. The best thing that could happen is to knock them out in the MAC final.

Portland State is also the #1 seed in the Big Sky conference.

MU, OU and CMU all have the same record. If Miami beats BGSU and OU knocks off Buffalo, OU is the four, Miami is the five and CMU is the six (MU and OU both beat CMU this year). If I had my prefernce, I'd rather see it shake out that way and have all of tough East foes on one side away from us. While CMU did beat us it was at their place and I think we'd like another shot at them. I'd rather not play a team three times unless its the championship. Plus Western is no pushover. Since we're guaranteed the three seed, any way it works out is fine. At least we have the bye and are away from Can't so we can just have fun beating them with no tournament implications on the line. Here's to being the MAC East Co-champs!

NIU and VCU were my fault, I made the JAR too small. There is plenty of room for one more though ...

I'm not sure what all the angst is about. We played a pretty good game with some lock down defense against another pretty darn good mid-major team. Those are the kind of games we want to play, look at the effort at Dayton as another example. Sure, I'd have loved to have won them both, but the effort is there, its not like a few years ago when we'd get blown out by teams like those. Its great that the expectations have been raised so much but how many of you remember the Bracket Buster games we had as "also rans" just a few short years ago? ESPN thought enough of us to put us on against a very good team on ESPN2. Why all the gnashing of teeth? In the final analysis, this game didn't mean much, but it did give Wood an opportunity to get back in the game and start to get his legs back again. Of course he looked tired, he hasn't been able to do much conditioning for two weeks (but he also sort of had two weeks of rest). I think it was the right move to get him back in, he certainly appeared ready and he did a great job. His absence gave the McKnight brothers some valuable time and experience and the team has got to be better for that. I love the thought of having Wood back for the stretch run when we all thought he might be gone for the rest of the year. There are three big games coming up and hopefully three more after that (and hoping for at least one more following that). We have some gritty players, we have some athetes and I still have hope that we can pull this off - we almost upset Can't in their gym, now we have them in ours and I want to see them on a neutral floor in Cleveland (hopefully in the final). Go Zips!

Nervous, very nervous. Despite their dismal record, Ball St. is no pushover. With the amount of injuries we have plus the fact that even with a poor record they continue to play even the good MAC teams tough and they are at home makes me worried. This has the makings of a big upset. However, if the Zips have the heart I think they do, they gut out a tough effort and come away with the W, 72-68.