zipboy

Nice overviews, just a few other thoughts.1. The announcers made 1 smart comment - JD mentioned that Jacq's game falls off in the 2nd half due to focus or whatever. That has been consistent this year, a good 1st half with a mediocre 2nd half. In the 4th quarter, this was the 1st time all year I did not want to throw the ball and was worried about a mistake. 2. If Torrence is healthy, he should be the 3rd back. We need 3 solid backs. I would rather Torrence get 5 carries a game than Tuzze. If there is 1 position to not redshirt it is RB. Those guys only have so many carries in them. It seems like some RB goes down every year with a season ending injury and I would rather have the redshirt available for that. If Torrence on special teams and 5 carries a game, helps win 1 game, it is worth it.3. Does Cincy kick deep or pooch it? If they pooch it, can we do a better job than getting back to the 25 yard line?4. Watching Army on offense reminded me of watching a Dan Hipsher run offense. 5. I never sneeze at a win especially a road win against a 1A team, but of the 4 games this year, the most unimpressive so far. I look for a good showing this week. This week is the difference between 8-4 and bowl for sure or 7-5 and maybe staying at home.

All great points, but hopefully we are putting ourselves into position to be that 4th or 5th option. In the next 3 or 4 years, the number of students projected to enter Ohio universities is supposedly going down. Even if a move like this generates an extra 1,000 kids to come to Akron, it is worth it. Football and solid football attendance is the key. Everything else is falling into place.

I should review my posts before clicking ok.3 mistakes by Jacq - the INT on the 3rd and 7 where he underthrew Bruce. Still not a horrible play, he underthrew the ball but we would have only gotten another 15 yards with a punt anyway. 2nd point, I meant to say there is a drop off when Allen is not in the game.

Seemed like multiple post game threads so I thought that I would add one more.1. Jacq made 2 big mistakes. One was the fumble and 2 was the crazy pitchout that our RB covered. Someone made a good point after the Syracuse game, quick reads, release the ball. He is pretty good looking for the primary or secondary guy. After that it if is not there, he should live for the next play. On the fumble, he was trying to make something happen. Frye and Getsy were the masters at improv, Jacq is not. With this offense, a defense may guess right one or two plays in a row but probably not 3 times. What was encouraging about yesterday is that the only was the Zips offense was stopped was to stop themselves. If everyone just plays within themself, they will score 30+ the rest of the season.2. Good to see Alex Allen back on the field on crutches. When I saw the stretcher, my 1st thought was is he not moving. He became one of my favorite Zips 2 years ago hobbling on crutches cheering Andre Walker on a TD run. Also, Kennedy is running as well as he did 2 years ago. There is a drop off with Allen in the game, but DK has played well. If Alex is out for an extended time period, we need Torrence We need 3 good backs for the season.3. Defense was better than I thought. I was hoping for 2 punts going into the game. Pendleton made a difference against the run. His pass rush is weak and conditioning wise he is only good for about 20 plays but he can plug the middle. I also liked Aaron Williams a lot, he flies to the ball.4. Ray Siler and Kevin Grant splitting reps fairly evenly (pass vs rush downs). 5. Secondary did better than I expected. B Williams was all over the field. BSU did not get many yards after the catch, the coverage for the most part was solid. I only remember 2 guys getting behind our secondary. 6. Special teams looked good. 7. I had a good vibe watching the sideline, no pouting, people looked like they knew what they were doing.7. We win next week, we lose to Cincy and Akron is 2-3 heading into Can't and the heart of MAC play. At that point we get a couple of guys back on the line, and I like our chances over the final 7 games. 7-5 still looks very reasonable to me.

55-49 Akron in OT.

Wonder what he would have said last year if we had slipped by UMass in the NIT and then dumped them at home like UMass did. Look at the rest of the Big East. Does Rutgers, UConn, Pitt, and UC (especially with their QB out) strike fear into anyone? If we had any of those 4 at home this week, I wonder if the Ball State spread would be greater than those teams.

I am cautiously optimistic after this weekend. The Zips will be much better than last year, but it also looks like this is the strongest the MAC will be top to bottom in the past 5 years.The good1. If Jacq plays this well, we win at least 7 games. I only counted a couple poor decisions, he continually let the game come to him, took advantage of what was given to him, and was consistent the whole game. It is only 1 game, but if he plays as well next week, I think we win.2. Bowser looks like the real deal. Miller and Bruce looked good as well. I am not ready to give up on Andre Jones on offense, but instead of 80/20 offense /defense, I think he ends up playing 80/20 defense / offense.3. 3rd and short early in the game, power I, we get the 1st down. My guess is we were successful running the ball on 3rd and short almost half the time the past 2 years. I also only rememeber one carry for negative yardage. The line always seemed to have a push and move forward.4. No sophmore jinx for Igor.The bad1. We need Bain back and need him to be really good. Getting him and Lively back will help, not playing a power team like Wisconsin will help, but by how much? 2. The 1st time that I can remember all 5 OL getting a false start penalty in the same game. Again, I like the line but that was frustrating more than anything.3. What's up with the high snaps from center? We had that problem last year.The questions.1. Who knows if the secondary will be any good. I worry about the Ball State game. With Williams and Jones back there, I would think that we will at least be ok.2. No Williams on kick off returns?3. The rest of the MAC. A solid 1st week for the league and it looks like the MAC will be better than expected.

Bring home a winner CK!

Elton picks a winning season for the Zips. He must be feeling optimistic after catching a practice.

I am feeling much better than last year right now. The schedule is not bad, there is a lot of depth, the QBs may pleasantly surprise. 6-6 or better is realistic.

I agree with GoZips, that does not excite me much either. Tournaments are much better where you get neutral games.

Clev South QB Devontae Payne. From the PDWe will get together that night at Boys & Girls Club on Broadway," said South coach Jarvis Gibson. "We'll have the kids and their parents in the gym for some talks. Then we'll take the field for our own Midnight Madness." Gibson says he wants to make this a tradition, just like South making the playoffs - which it did in 2007, first in school history. The coach expects about 35 to 40 players. Quarterback Devontae Payne already has been offered scholarships to Akron and Toledo after attending summer football camps at those universities.

Nice post ZW. A few thoughts.1. The biggest leap this year will be having a true PG and an athletic one. The last time that we had a truly athletic PG was Johnny Hollignsworth for about 1 and a quarter seasons until he tanked. Before that Rashon Brown who was more a scorer. The new guys will make mistakes but there were some games that we were 30 feet out and still could not get into the offense.2. KD has a history of struggling to get comfortable with new guys. It will be interesting to see how he adapts this year.3. I look for McNees to flourish at the 2.4. The win at Miami was one of my all time favorite wins. I gave us almost a zero chance of winning that one.5. I look for C McKnight to step up this year. He struggled to fit in offensively with J Wood on the floor. With some tweaks to the offense he should get better touches in better spots for him.6. B McKnight leading scorer next year? Sounds like the guys are in shape and working hard. They should be fun to watch.

I was able to hear most of the KD interview on WZIP a few weeks ago. A few highlights1. All 5 seniors will graduate after summer semester. I remember seeing all but JWood listed in June so he must be finishing up now. Darryl Peterson finished his degree and Matt Futch is back in school. Good to see that!2. KD downplayed the new arena, he wants to get the JAR fixed up. He even said a new arena may not be necessary if they do some serious remodeling to the JAR.3. Team will be young but he expects them to be good. They need a few key guys to take giant steps this summer. They are capable of this but still need to do it.4. When asked on if he would leave for a better job, KD said as long as the program keeps growing and trying to elevate themselves, he would go nowhere. If they become complacent no promises. For now, Akron has made good strides in developing the program over the last 4 years. and he said they would have to continue doing that. He complimented Mack for buying a few home games. (Side note, to me the Wyoming buy game was big, we put a lot of money up to buy a game vs a solid conference. Second side note, I received the Friends of Men's basketball flyer in the mail. This will allow KD to get funds that he would not have been able to get in the past). He also said, he hopes if he has a bad year, he hopes people don't start calling for his head.5. When asked about the MAC, he said 3 or 4 teams have grown their programs, the others have not. Unless you get 10 or 11 doing that, the league will always be a 1 bid league. Akron is trying to grow it (and I think is in that 3 or 4) but needs to keep pushing the envelope.6. Attendance needs to go up, he mentioned Nevada and Temple as examples. I agree we aren't going to get 4K for NC A&T, but we should be drawing more than 2200 for Temple. He talked about having grade school kids in the locker room which I think is a great idea. Overall, a good interview. I always like listening to him, good personality, honest and open says what he thinks.

In all fairness, Doug Williams and Brandon Williams are both Tampa kids recruited in JDs 1st recruiting class. I think Doug is a team captain this year and while Brandon has never been more than a role player, he will still be on the 2 deep this year. And isn't John Stec from FL? I may be wrong on that one. Player retention was horrible until last years class. A lot of those players were from FL. I feel pretty good about the last 2 classes and assume that any kid JD is after be it from FL or OH would have a good chance to retain and be a contributor. I would hate to ignore any part of the country. Good kids are everywhere, you just need to find them.

Agreed if he gets a better deal, he may take off. Lolla surprised me after how long he had stayed. Mitchell has been recognized as one of the top pole vaulting coaches in the country for several years. I just figured if he was looking, he probably could have move on 2 or 3 years ago.

Congratulations to both the men and women! Why would he leave now? He has been recongized as a premier coach for several years now. If he stays in the MW. the training facilities are better than most schools.

Some great discussions, a few thoughts.1. I became convinced the MAC was not the right long term solution 2 years ago after bball was snubbed from the NIT. The quality of play especially in football has gone down. Let's say 2 members get invited to CUSA and they end up being Toledo and Ohio or Miami. At that point half of the remaining league can't even draw 1500 per game for bball. 2. After the Fingerhut scare came out this year, I also became convinced that Akron needs to somehow elevate itself from the rest of the state schools or in 5 years, we may be looking at some merger with CSU again. Does bigger conference affiliation lead to more students, more money, more prestige? I would have to think so. 3. If CUSA calls, do you go? 2 years ago I would have said no now I am not so sure. As someone said above, the Big East is where I hope that we end up someday. From a geographical, size of city/school, research instituion perspective, it would be good for Northeast Ohio and good for us. Whatever makes that happen is the route I would go and I trust Mack to make the right choices.4. One scenario abovve which would be ideal is the Big East only wants 4 additional members for football. In an ideal world at this point, moving to the A10 in everything else and the Big East in football would be perfect. Men's bball is about to do something special and I hope that we end up following the UC blueprint, have bball get good and bring the other programs along. You need both football and bball for the Big East, but bball is closer now. The Big East in bball would slow this down. The A10 is a just a level below but a 2-3 bid league. We played 3 of their top teams, winning at home and losing 2 on the road at the end. 22-8 in the A10 vs 25-5 in the MAC gets us an at large bid vs sweating out the NIT. We can win now in the A10 and fit geographically5. GP1 had a great comment in the past - MAC schools are always building for the future. Evidence of that and how to change it is the stadium. Football was built of out of necessity. Bball would be built out of an expectation to grow. The JAR is perfectly fine for the MAC but not for a better conference. A 10K seat arena downtown or on campus or wherever, you are a winning program in a better conference, and you are drawing 5-6K per night. I read the average school allocated 5% of their budget to athletics and Akron is just under 4.5%. Move it to 5% and fund this area better. That would be a 10% increase in the athletic budget.6. Nonreveune sports - men's soocer and track and CC would all be solid now in the Big East. That is 7 sports, half of the non revenue sports.7. I don't think we need to dominate the MAC move up. We need to draw 20-25K in football for 3 years, do something about bball arena and you put your self in shape to be looked at.8. 5 years ago, we had just gotten off disappointing seasons in football and bball, Lee and Dan were fired, endless talk of the new stadium was going on but nothing was concrete. Since then, the fieldhouse finalized, football stadium will be done next year, Fear the Roo campaign was a big success, thank goodness for KD, we went to a bowl game, Mitchell and Engle continue to dominate in their sports, student growth is happening, and there is talk of a new bball arena. In the last 5 years we have put ourselves in an immeasurably better place to talk about this stuff. We need to continue to do the same.

Isn't a 4-2-5 similar to a nickel package, a 4-3 where you replace a LB with a DB?

I pulled in attendance numbers for this past season. Overall attendance was very similar to the last 2 years - 3,454 vs 3,593 last year and 3,469 2 years ago. This is more than 20% over the last several years of the Hipsher regime. Given that we were picked for 4th in the East and had our 2 of our most popular players graduate last year, it is good to see the fan base solid. Comparing these numbers to all Div 1 schools, avg attendance of 3500 would put us around 140th out of 341 Div 1 schools - around top 40%. Some notable schools who averaged less than 3500 last year include Colorado, Duquense, George Washington, South Alabama, UCF, and UW Milwaukee. As KD continues to grow the program, on the bright side, talk about the Zips around town is as high as I can remember, we get some fan travel to road games and big games routinely draw 4-5K. But there is a lot of talk about outgrowing the JAR and realistically I don't see attendance changing that much from the mid to high 3K range by playing in the JAR. To get that extra 1,000 people in you are talking abou the casual fan who might go to a couple of games a year. Sightlines are bad, bleacher seats are uncomfortable, half the concessions are closed down, etc. Building a new arena will not guarantee increased attendance, see EMU and NIU below, but having a better place to see games with a better game day experience with winning will see a marked increase in attendance. One last point, I pulled average attendance for all MAC schools for MAC games only. I feel that looking at conference games only gives a better feel of the program since one big OOC game can skew numbers and many students are on break for the holidays. The Zips drew what I believe the be an all time high for MAC games, 4233 on average. One thing I scratch my head with every year is how we draw about 1500 more a game for conference games than OOC games. I expect to draw more due to rivalries and people tend to jump on the bandwagon at the end. But regardless of who we play in OOC, we draw about the same amount. Whether it is Nevada or Temple or Binghamton or NC A&T, we still draw about 2500 fans. I just wonder if NE Ohio will never draw well until January due to football or whatever.Anyway, here are attendance figures for MAC games by school. Overall attendance was 3,007 another decrease similar to the last 2 years. Akron was a strong 4th similar to last year. Clearly there are the haves and have nots.1. OU 6,0442. Toledo 4,9873. Can't 4,3384. Akron 4,2335, WMU 36006. Ball 3,0247. Miami 2,3298. NIU 1,8619. Buffalo 1,78910. CMU 1,68811. BG 1,55812. EMU 881Half the league under 2500 fans is not good. Even when Akron was horrible under the Coleman years and some of Hipsher's years, we only came in under 2200 once. There is always talk about looking at other leagues. The trend for the MAC is not good. I hope that we continue to think bigger and have a long term plan to get out of the league. I just don't know how much the program can grow long term where it is at now. I don't have any answers other than win, win, and win some more. Go Zips!

That is a pretty broad brushstroke. The hungriest player that I ever saw was Michael Jordan and that guy grew up pretty middle class. John Mackey was the toughest Zips football player that I have seen and he went to Walsh. I agree whole heartedly that Wood was a tough guy and that will be missed tremendously.

Quade was already signed while Hipsher was the head coach. Cedric was KDs first recruit. After Alan Hanson pulled out, KD signed Cedric late spring. For Dials, I don't remember if he signed before or after Hipsher left. I seem to remember after, so he would have been the other KD recruit from that class.

My guess - Temple must decide to be in all sports for the MAC by 2010 or leave football. They announce that they are joining the MAC as a full member. And to round out to 14, West KY gets added. This strengthens bball and allows the top tier football programs to at least become bowl eligible.

McFadden was on Zips Live a few weeks ago and said that Jimmy had some serious dental trouble and needed surgery. He was missing or not able to practice well because of the pain.He was a regular 10 minute guy until the flu knocked him out. I agree with ZW, he fell behind and it is a numbers game. B McKnight really stepped up and there are only so many minutes to go around. Going into next year, I see Jimmy getting some minutes but not much more than this year. Linhart and McKnight should both be 25+ minute guys,

They change each year depending on who is seeded where. My guess is they will want a big draw for the night so Can't will get the 7 PM slot. We would then get the noon or 2:30 slot. Since Akron would draw better than WMU, we get the 2:30 slot so more fans can make it down?