Quickzips

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/men...ll/mac/home.htmBetter than a lot of the national media usually does.

I'm not sure if the coaching restrictions help us or hurt us. On one hand, we can't be there in the ear of a kid like Weatherspoon or Payne encouraging them to come to Akron. On the other hand, neither can other coaches. And these kids will still primarily be on our campus so we still have an advantage there.

Welcome to Can't State recruiting. Kids that want to go to other bigger schools, but the bigger schools won't touch them because they are toxic assets. Honestly, if I were Can't I wouldn't even want this kid on my team. Kid doesn't have his head on straight at all. If he does play there I wouldn't be surprised if he transfers out at some point.

I don't think we would be at all risking the program and getting greedy if we gave a scholarship to Weatherspoon and Payne and didn't hold one back for Roberts. Like I said before, Roberts had his opportunity at a scholarship, and he blew it. The program can't be expected to completely change their recruiting strategy twice for Daryl (once when he quit and again by giving him a scholarship back). I love what the kid has done for us, and if the opportunity presents itself where he can get a scholarship I hope he gets it. But we have had a pretty good recruiting strategy the last couple of years with KD and I don't think we can continuously change that just for one player. Especially when that player will only have one year of eligibility left. You can't guarantee that talents like Weatherspoon and Payne would be available to us in 2011. If those two want to commit to the Zips for 2010, then the scholarships should go to them.

I haven't heard anything connecting Payne or Weatherspoon to the BG program. Doesn't mean that Lou Orr isn't or wouldn't go after them, but to this point I haven't heard anything.

With all due respect to Daryl, he had his chance as far as the scholarship things went. Now I know he's gotten things turned around, and he's a valuable player for us right now, but if he doesn't end up going on scholarship at some point in his collegiate career he really only has himself to blame.All of this also assumes that we will only have 2 scholarships available in 2010. With the depth and talent that we have right now it wouldn't entirely surprise me to see someone transfer out to try and find more playing time. I would hate to see it happen, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Weatherspoon was on the Zips radar long ago. I'm not sure how much we stayed in touch with him after he commited to Xavier. I'm not a premium member of Rivals so I don't know what the article says, but it certainly implies that he's at least thinking about de-commiting. As far as talent goes. He would be a great add for the Zips. Maybe not on a Zeke/Payne level, but close. He would certainly give us the athletic wing player that we will be looking for over the next couple years.No offense to Daryl Roberts, but I would absolutely love to add both Weatherspoon and Payne. It would suck that Daryl wouldn't be able to get a scholarship for his senior year, but Weatherspoon and Payne along with Zeke, Humpty, Nikola and company would make a REALLY formidable team.

I wouldn't say that our chances our 1 in 5. I think that puts all 6 teams on his supposed short list (us, Dayton, Xavier, OSU, Cincinnati and WVU) on equal footing. I don't think that is the case. All the reports on the kid have Dayton as the frontrunner for his services. If I had to rate our chances I would say more along the lines of 1 in 15-20. I think we are well behind Dayton and probably trailing a couple others right now. His visits here at the end of the month will probably make or break us.

Xavier may have just taken another step back in the Payne sweepstakes. Their coach is reportedly jumping ship to take over the head coaching vacancy at Arizona. Coaching changes have a tendency to scare off some recruits.

The Can't State era is circling the drain. They are having more and more trouble recruting these transfer students, JUCO's and bad apples. Geno Ford is going to have to blow that thing up and swallow a few bad seasons in order to get that program turned back around.

I don't think we are quite attractive enough to the bigger confrences yet to warrant an invitation. Any invitation we might get would be strictly based on potential, but I think we need to realize more of that potential before we can seriously discuss getting out of the MAC.As far as CUSA, if Memphis, UCF, ECU (specifically Memphis) stick around, it is probably worth it to jump over if the chance ever came. If a couple of those teams start jumping to the Big East, then the conference isn't really any better than the MAC and the additional travel issues don't make a lot of sense for us.

Just as another point. Rasor claims that he sees Akron's odds as 1 in 5 on getting Payne. I don't know if Mike has any of his famous "inside information" on this one or not, but that seems to correspond to what I am seeing on some of the A-10 message boards from Xavier and Dayton fans that say his short list is down to five. Xavier, Dayton, Cincy, Akron and West Virginia. <-Quickzips dreaming about Zeke and Adreian tearing it up in the JAR.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/bask.../vcu/index.htmlMight we see a few more games against VCU in the future? They would be a really nice team to fill out the schedule with the next few seasons.

This has to be a good sign for the Zips that he's making us his first official visit. This would be an absolutely major coup for the coaching staff if they could talk this kid into coming here to play alongside Zeke. Those two up front would allow us to not only destroy the MAC, but make some serious noise on the national scene.

Just picked up this tidbit from one of the Beacon Journal blogs.http://www.ohiomm.com/blogs/varsity_letters/Apparently top-25 recruit Adreian Payne will be visiting campus in the next few weeks. Definitley a good sign from where I am sitting. If nothing else the interest isn't just a one way thing. If anyone gets any kind of word on when the big man is going to be on campus, we may need to organize a completely random Zipsnation get together outside the JAR one day.

I will echo Timber Top. The rent is very affordable (I pay $465 a month for a one bedroom). It's pretty well kept. Air conditioning units in every building. Always plenty of spaces available. They do have one unit car garages for rent if you wanted one. I haven't had any real problems with security or anyone in the neighborhood. Short of a few noise issues that you are going to get almost anywhere you live in an apartment complex it is a nice place. It is a little further from campus than Highland Square or Fir Hill or something like that, but it isn't too bad of a drive up Merriman.

I think someone needs to look into this a little further. Maybe it is just the law student in me, but the literal language of the rule COULD be read to mean you lose your first year of eligibility if you compete in two all-star basketball events. There are really two provisions there. If you compete in more than two all start football events is the first. The second is if you compete in two all-star basketball events.

The more I look at this schedule, the more I kind of like it. I only see one game on there that I can honestly say I expect to lose and that is the opener to Penn State (although I hope we can be more competitive there than we have been in prior visits). Other than that every other game looks winnable with the team we have. I would be kind of disappointed with anything less than 7-8 wins off of this schedule.

Compared to the overall suckitude of the last few schedules I will take this one. We play an equal number of home and road games, we don't play any mid-week games (I don't consider Friday nights to be mid-week games as fans won't have to get up the next morning for work the way you do a Wed. or Thur. game) and our bye comes at a pretty nice point in the year. I'm not thrilled with Morgan State being on there, particularly to open the Info., but I guess it will have to do. Really, in terms of fan support is there that much difference between Morgan State and North Texas??? We should be able to win at least 8 games with this schedule. I also love that we have three of our first five at home, although that Buffalo, Syracuse, NIU back to back to back road trip looks a little daunting.

Why? I sure would like our returning players to be as experienced as possible at playing quality teams. What's the advantage of Akron playing a weaker opponent early in the year. Confidence?It wouldn't have changed anything even if they got their brains beat in (which I don't think they would have).We made it to the dance the longest way possible anyway. I hate playing cupcakes. B-O-R-I-N-G.Doesn't make me want to get in my car and drive down to the JAR.First of all, any upgrades to our schedule are almost certainly going to be road games. The real big dawgs are not coming to play in the JAR. If you don't like cupcakes, I suggest you start saving some frequent flyer miles.Second of all, this team during the OOC season probably would have gotten their behinds handed to them playing teams like Syracuse, Washington or West Virginia. Remember Pitt? Would the guys have come out of it none the worse for wear or would they have crumbled? I don't know. But I don't think you can risk it with as young a team as we had. Now this year is a totally different story. I want to see this team go out and play a Kansas or a North Carolina or a Florida. I want to see some road games against the Penn State's, Providence's and Vanderbilt's of college basketball. I want to see as many decent home games against mid-majors like Xavier, Crieghton and Butler as we can get. This team has had a year together to gel and they've developed the attitude that they aren't intimidated by the big stage. You couldn't say that at the beginning of this year.

I will premise this by saying that I do think next year is a good time to look into upgrading our schedule. This year wasn't the year to do it because of how young we were. Going out on the road against a ton of top level opponents would have killed this years team. But.....Let's not glamorize Cleveland State too much. They were not going to get an at large bid. Weren't even in the conversation. They're tournament hopes were the same as ours. Win your conference tournament and you are in. On top of that, even with all of their great scheduling and RPI and everything else. They were still a 13 seed. Just like us.

I think we should take up a collection to buy it and then smash the thing.

so whats greater freakish wingspan or moster hands?C. Both

He's taught to do that. His job on the screen is to get in front of the guy with the ball and stop his progress so that his defender can catch back up. When his man rolls, it is the rest of the team's responsibility to help him until; he gets back. Mike's a little slower on his feet so he has a more difficult time cutting the guy off, but that's his job in this defense on that screen. If you watch, you'll see others do it all the time on that screen near the top of the key.The problem with Mike is that when he goes out there he never comes back. NEVER. He just floats. Once he gets to the 3 point line it's like. Ok, I like it out here, I'm going to stay. You can say all you want about help defense, it is still Mike's job to roll off of that screen and get back into the post. He doesn't do it. Doesn't even look like he tries to do it.

I absolutely drool at the prospect of putting this kid on the floor next to Zeke. There certainly wouldn't be a better frontcourt in the confrence and it would match us up well against anyone in the country.Check out the freakish wingspan on this kid.That said, everything I've read has him leaning towards Dayton. Apparently his grandma wants him to stay close to home. Never know though. Maybe a phone call from a certain NBA All-Star connected to the program might sway his mind????