Zipsrifle

A quick search shows where the "University Apartments" are. Essentially, they are exactly where we thought, just South of the field house on Brown street. University Apartments So the location is concrete (as if it wasn't before?). Now, what timeframe are we looking at and how much money is needed?

Wow, with what has happened in the MAC over the past few weeks, I think a win in Tenn. for the Zips would be huge. I'm interested to see how the team comes out. They did a great job last week and I hope there isn't a letdown. If we come similar to last week, it'll be a close game. I hope we make a big jump between weeks 1 and 2. It will also be interesting to see how the new faster D plays against a team more on their level. If the O-line has another good game, wow, we're going to be tough. I put a lot on momentum and this would be a BIG win for the Zips.

Good point.

Found this Great write up about the JD Press Confrence from the ABJ......(just kidding! ) Obviously it is from GoZips.com, it'll be in the ABJ sometime around Sept. 25 I imagine. JD Press Confrence The amazing thing is that he took some of the heat for a bad call. I think he was refering to the first pass on the goal line late in the 3rd. He really emphasized winning the turnover battle. You know he saw that MTSU had a hard time holding onto the ball last week and will be very keen on winning that battle on Saturday. Last season at this point I was very skeptical of JD. He did a great job turning the team around last season and the Zips came out well prepared last week. I like his attitude and can't wait to see what happens this week. I don't know if I heard this on the radio or if someone said it here, but I heard that the biggest improvement a team typically makes is between week 1 and week 2. If that's the case for the Zips, it'll be exciting Saturday.

They are ranked top 25 no matter where you look. Lets hope the wins keep on coming. I have no idea which poll is typically the most respected. Akron's only top 25 team (That is until the Rifle Season starts;)

I did a little bit of research. I can't quite figure out MTSU. It appears that their D is very good, but I'm not too sure of their offense. Looking at their opponents this year, Alabama and North Texas, it seems to me that MTSU's Defense is very tough. They kept Alabama in check for the first half and also held an experienced North Texas ( 4 time defending SunBelt Champs) to 14 points. What I'm not too sure about is their Offense. Obviously, Alabama is pretty good so I'm not suprised they only scored 7 points. But it looks like North Texas took a pretty good hit on the defensive side of the ball this year, they lost 7 starters. Seems though that MTSU didn't have much trouble moving the ball, they just couldn't hold onto it. So, for the Akron/MTSU matchup, I don't see us putting up a lot of points. Hard to say how our D will react against their O....can't quite get a good read on that. Right now, I think it's going to be a low scoreing, battle. If their offense can hand onto the ball, we might be in trouble. Should be a great game though!

I won't make any boasts/predictions until I do a little more research on MTSU. What I can say though is that JD will have the Zips ready to BATTLE! Don't think we forgot about your upset in our house last year. I was VERY impressed with how prepared and well conditioned our guys were last week. The last 1/2 of last season the Zips were very well prepared for every opponent. We're the underdogs and we've got a chip on our shoulder from last year. Make no mistake, we'll be ready for you guys!

I've got a question for a MTSU fan, what site will be good for free streaming of the radio broadcast next week? I've been able to get every away game I didn't go to for the past 2 seasons this way and I'm hoping to get it again. I'm too cheap to subscribe to a service. Any help would be appreciated. Oh, by the way, I couldn't justify $8 to post on your board for one week.

I hope OU gets a serious, serious Beatdown this week. They play VT so they'll get a beatdown, but I'm hoping it's greater than 35. I don't want them to be too sure of themselves when the come to the RB. I put a lot on momentum and right now, they're on a serious high.

I have to back up what GP1 said, though the numbers didn't show it. For going against a Big 10 Defence with all the returning starters back, we managed to get +ve yardage almost every run. Though the numbers weren't huge, I was encouraged with the holes the line was opening up. Unfortunately, the Purdue LB's were always near the other end of those holes. I never once felt that we needed to forget about running and just start passing, the good balance of plays I think helped us in the end. If we play similarly the rest of the season, Biggs should be able to get 100 yds/game.

I saw Crouch was down in the 3rd, 4th? He walked off the field, is he OK? That's one guy we really need.

I have to disagree. If we played a perfect game and Purdue totally dropped the ball, we would have won. IMO, Purdue didn't bring all they had and we don't have any depth. MTSU will be a real challenge, but it is a winnable game for the Zips. Though I haven't read ANYTHING about MTSU yet, if we play like we did yesterday, MTSU will have to play a great game.

OK, again, I'll start off by saying that I will not have picked up on nearly as many things as some of the others on this board. I'm a fan, but not an expert, so I'll do my best. To start off, I'm a little Miffed at UA. Why do they split up the Akron fans? I believe the family of the players get to sit in one section (which are pretty good seats) and the other fans get to sit somewhere else. It was this way at OU last year and at Purdue yesterday. Though I totally feel that the family should get good seats, at least put the rest of the fans behind them or something. We were totally split up (about 40 yards apart) so our fan presence was essentially nothing. The next point is that I thought the officiating was pretty good. Though Purdue got a few calls, we got a few too (Dom caught one on a bounce in the 4th and they gave it to us). The radio broadcast sucked, the Purdue announcers were VERY bias. They added a yard to every Purdue play and subtraced one from every Akron play. Lots of other little things. As for game strategies, I have to think that Purdue kept some of it's cards close to it's chest and did not come out against us with everything they had. If the game was closer, they might have, but they really didn't have a need to put all their cards down. They got a lot of penalties that hurt them, where we were much more disciplined. I think JD had an EXCELLENT game plan, though we had hardly anything on the ground, we never abandoned the run. I am a bit suprised that we had 3 passing plays after a 1st and goal on the 5 late in the 3rd. In the end, I think the score was about right. Overall I was Impressed, but that about where it ends. In a nutshell, we played 3 quarters with them and then ran out of Gas. Depth really kept us from having a chance yesterday. The Zips played their hearts out, but were just overmatched. The Defence was on the field a LOT and in the 4th it showed. Their backups were able to score on us pretty easily in the end and that wasn't the case at the beginning of the game. Offense: Good showing. The line was actually pretty good. There was good pass protection for the first 2-3 quarters, but it broke down late. They weren't getting much of a push, but opened up some good holes, unfortunatley, there was always a linebacker at the other end. They were diciplined and didn't make too many mistakes. They are much better than I thought they would be and if they play that way for the rest of the year, we'll be fine. Overall, a slight drop off from last year, but IMO, they could pass last years line by midseason. I would give them an A for yesterdays performance. Getsy was about what I expected. What most impressed me how aware he was. He was definately the Field General. Read the Defence and switched things up quite a bit. Never lost sight of the snap clock, but wasn't afraid to take it down under 3 seconds. Seeemed calm when he was under center. He had good pocket presence, and never got blindsided even though there were many times he would have if he just stood there. He is, though, no Charlie. In the 2nd, he got a little flustered and started making bad throws. Jabari was WIDE OPEN down the right side and Luke overthrew him by what looked like about 5 yards. Sure TD last year. Then, he had about 2 series where he was way overthrowing the receivers (a lot) or throwing the ball into the ground. He did recover from this period which is a good thing IMO. Unfortuately, if he was under pressure, he would start throwing sidearm or not step into the throw. I don't know how he didn't get an INT. He isn't as slippery as Charlie was either, if they got an arm on him, he went down. At Running Back, let me say that Kennedy is no Biggs. Kennedy did a great job, especially for a freshman, but Biggs is, IMO, a solid #1. Kennedy would hit his assignment, but didn't quite have the juke that 34 has in getting an extra yard or two. Good experience for him though. Biggs is a BEAST! He caught a pass over the right side got hit HARD then plowed through the guy! He delivered some punishment. I didn't really get a chance to check out 3's speed, but it would be nice if he was faster than Biggs, who just couldn't get around the corner yesterday. At WR, all I can say is Hixon has got a lot of ice on him today. MAN, did he take a beating. He had to go up and get the ball a few times and paid for it. Despite this, he was fearless. The next time the ball went his way, he went up for it. Mongomery had a STELLAR day. 3 TD's and a blistering run on the pass from Biggs. I wasn't really big on Jason last year, but he's strong this year. Hixon and Mongomery are going to be DANGEROUS in MAC play! Jabari was better than last year, and has great hands. Wasn't in the game as much as I expected and is probably still picking up a few things. Kasparek is HUGE and made a couple catches. I can see us getting him the ball a few time in MAC play and having him mow over some CB's and safeties. Defence was impressive in the fact that they stopped Purdue enough to keep us in the game. They were on the field a LOT and just got rundown in the end. The two most frustrating thigs were the arm tackling and not wrapping up! WAY, WAY, WAY too much arm tackling. We may be faster, but we aren't getting good hits! Rarely did Void get a good square shot, and he got one 17 yard run because about 10 Zips tried to grab on to him and pull him down. We had about 5 plays that would have been losses if we could would have squarely hit him, wrapped him up, and brought him down. If we did get a square shot, we didn't wrap up. This was very frustrating in the backfield! They were getting 2-3 yards until, thankfully, another Zip would show up. I would say that we did an EXCELLENT job of swarming the ball. It would have been a lot uglier if we did't have everyone getting to the ball. This did bite us a few times, we committed to the run too early a few times and it went for big gains. Not much penetration from the line, in fact, Purdue got about 3 yards every time they ran the ball. No pass pressure either. Kirsch could just stand back there all day. The linebackers were the strong point yesterday. Jay Rohr looks to be the general and is on almost every play. I was also VERY impressed with Kevin Grant. Wow, can that boy hit someone. I still remember a Purdue run where he filled the gap and just Wham!, stood Void up and then the rest of the D finished them off. He's going to be a star! I was a little frustrated with what was supposed to be a strong point. The backfield seemed to get burned a lot. Played off the ball too much, Purdue could get 5 yards on every pass play. We're too short too. Kirsch threw up a few jump balls, including one in the endzone, and we just couldn't get up there. They didn't shed their blocks either. Purude ran a few end arounds and our guys couldn't get off their blocks. Reggie Corner didn't show me a lot yesterday, but Dion Elie had a good game. I would classify us as a typical MAC Defence right now. For supposedly dominating the Offense in preseason, they weren't up to the task against a Big 10 Offense. We'll do OK in the MAC, but it didn't look like they would dominate the game in MAC play. Finally, special teams. I'm hoping a lot of the problems were just first game jitters. The blocked kick really hurt us. The first few punts had a lot of pressure, but that seemed to subside later in the game. Whoever was snapping also had a few high snaps. I thought Sullivan actually did a great job of recovering from these and getting the kick away. He had some boomers also. The only problem with this was that he outkicked the coverage. We didn't do a good job early on of bringing down the returner, but seemed to get the knack later in the game. Swiger was almost automatic on FG and PAT. Outside of the bobbles early on, Hixon is awesome returing kicks. One on one return, he took 1 step and sent 4 Purdue players right into each other and he went right around them The blocking could use some work, as we didn't seem to get much of a wedge when sidelines were covered. Overall, I have to say that the game went better than I expected. We had Purdue nervous for 3 quarters. From what I saw, and after 2 weeks of play, I don't see any reason why we don't have a shot at contending in the MAC. If this team keeps making progress, it should be a good season. The First teams look solid, I think the big ? will be our depth. That's my 2 Cents!

Those announcers were crap. They were VERY biased one way. I was listening to the game at the stadium and essentially for every Purdue play they added at LEAST 1 yard to the result and for every Akron play they subtracted a yard. If Purdue got a penalty (That was blatanly obvious), the announcers would say "Boy, I don't know, that's kinda questionable". We listened to the pregame show and they were making VERY bold prediction like "49-0 in the first half and then we put in the 2nd team" and "We would have to try to lose this one". I'm sorry for everyone that listened on the radio.

The bags are packed, we've got our Zips gear and the little lady and I are ready to go! We're leaving tomorrow right after work so this is pretty much it till after the game. Even though this year will have some challenges, I am totally PUMPED right now. The next 3 months are the best months of the year! This got me fired up last season, time to roll folks! IT'S ZIPS TIME! The Akron Gold and Blue GO ZIPS! ]

OK, I'm curious about something. Do the players do something to stick their jersey's to their pads? It seems like the runningbacks and receivers have this done. I'm guessing it's so that someone can't grab them by their jersey as easily.

AMEN!

I hope the Zips play to win the game, but I'm also trying to be realistic. I'm all for fighting to the end, but the odds are heavily against us in this one.

You're kidding, right?

I don't think you can try to run all day. In the end, I don't think we'll burn a lot of clock if we go 3 and punt vs. getting a first down here and there. Though Biggs and Kennedy are great, will they have holes? We're pretty strong on the receiving corps, will Getsy have time to throw? It all starts with the O-Line. Mix it up, focus on first downs. Try to get the ball in Biggs and Hixon's hands in the open field and lets ride those guys! I would run any trick plays right at the beginning of the game. Throw the first punch and then get beat up.

I'm skipping MTSU, too far of a drive. BG is essentially a home game for me. A short 1.5 hour trip!

The Purdue players aren't giving the Zips any motivation, but Joe Tiller might give us a boost. Joe Tiller on Concerns about Akron: "Not that we shouldn't be concerned about our opponents, but I think we're more concerned about ourselves." Though I understand his confidence, I sure hope this pisses someone off! Purdue Press Confrence

Who's going to West Lafayette? The little lady and I, along with some buddies are making the trip. Any advice/thoughts for first timers to a Purdue Football Game? We're heading down from Michigan so we won't be on the Zip Express. Anyone else going?

Didn't listen to it live, but read it on Gozips.com JD Interview In a nutshell, this is my take on what JD said. 1) We're going to make a lot of mistakes on Offense Saturday. 2) Our Defensive Backfield should keep the pass reasonably in check. 3) We're going to need the Freshman to play if we are going to have a decent season. 4) The OL has flushed of greatness, but that's about it. 5) The players will have to step up their game at Purdue. 6) Thank God the Freshman class is as good as we expected! 7) Jabari took good notes behind Frye. He's unselfish and does what's necessary for the team to win. 8) Purdue is "Scary"! 9) Purdue's D is going to be all over us. Finally, I don't know if I like Hixon returning punts. Though there is no doubt he's the best guy for the job, kind of a suicide run isn't it? I'm sure he'll break a few this year, but do we want him out for half the season if he's 1/2 of the star draw this year? Either way, doesn't matter what I think, I'm not the coach. Isn't there a game in a couple of days?

We look good at WR and RB. Guess I'm suprised to see that Rnger is backup FB. What's the Scoop on the Fr. Joe McDaniel!? I'm sure there has been pleanty of talk around here about him, but I'm drawing a blank. We sure do have a lot of underclassman starting. Not that that's an indication of ability, but I was thinking more in terms of size and strength. We'll need all the help we can get on Saturday. We're going to see a lot of mistakes early on this season.