Quickzips

Wrong. If you add Tiffin in we had 27 wins this year. The selection committee would only look at 26.

I hate to sound overly grumpy right now (honestly who can blame me, we all are), but don't kid yourself. The selection committees might try to hide behind all these meaningless drivle about strength of schedule and RPI and wins vs. top 50 RPI and road records and blah blah blah yada yada yada. Bottom line is what they care about is getting the big boys who are making the NCAA the big money into the big tournaments and the big bowl games and so on and so on. All this talk about RPI and SOS and all that other stuff is just meaningless bullcrap. The NCAA knows who their cash cows are, the selection committees know it to.

As much as I'd hate to see him leave, if I were KD, I'd be on the first thing smoking to <insert any other college program not associated with this joke of a conference>. I wouldn't deal with this kind of crap for very long regardless of how much loyalty I feel to the program.

Most likely scenario in the whole turn it down thing if you ask me......The JAR is booked for OHSAA games. If that's the case, Mack Rhoades will have had one short stint as AD in Akron. OHSAA games should NEVER EVER EVER take precidence over the Universities own athletic teams.

NCAA Selection Committee---> <---AkronNIT Selection Committee---> <---AkronMAC Office---> <---AkronRick Chryst---> <---AkronI'm about ready to---> or---> or---> or---> or--->

I just sent an e-mail to info@mac-sports.com with Attention Rick Chryst in the Heading. He's too big a pussy to put even his e-mail on the website, so thats about the best I can do. I plan on calling tomorow.

Ok, its time for a letter writing campaign to Rick Chryst demanding his head. This conference is a huge joke. I can't believe we don't even get a shot at the NIT. Is Chryst off on vacation somewhere. We would be better off as an independent. This conference is doing nothing for us. Anyone know an address for Chryst?

Not this year.

Well congrats to Miami. 14 seed, worst record in their region and playing a tough Oregon team.

Well...I was pretty sure we lost because last night I parked at tower city instead of national city again...5 minutes to the selection show....we can still hope.... I'm not holding out that much hope, but I'm gonna watch anyways, just on the odd chance that some miracle happens.

Not saying that I really think we have that much of a chance at an at-large, but does anyone know when the brackets are officially announced? I've been looking all over and I can't find anything. Only that the NIT brackets are announced tonight at 9.Nevermind, just found it. Apparently its 6pm on CBS.

I really have to respectfully disagee. One championship is not going to break the culture of freeloading Akron tickets embedded in the people of Summit and Stark Counties and reinforced by decades of giving away free tickets by UofA. It will take years of championships and work on the part of the Athletic Department to break the culture.I guess if there was going to be any positive taken from the game last night, and I'm grasping for straws here, it would be the basketball team taking another step forward. It was their first appearance in the finals. My concern is that they did not win the championship in a year when the MAC is absolutely horrible. For all the talk about the great players is KD is bringing here, with the exception of Ced, there is an alarming lack of athletic talent coming off of the bench. At some point, a coach can't win without talent. It's like trying to coach a dwarf to win the Olympic high jump.Here is a good question for everyone. Is Miami a better team than Akron? The facts would spell out that they are. They won two of three against UofA. All of the games were close but they managed to win. They made plays when they needed to and UofA did not. The fun thing about sports is that you get a chance to play a game to see who is better than the other team. Miami proved they are better than us in head to head competition. They EARNED their trip to the big dance. I have to totally disagree with you on pretty much every point.First of all I think you completely underestimate what winning a championship would have done for attendance. Look at the Ball State game earlier this year where we nearly sold out. Bad opponent, bad weather, but fans still showed up because there was a growing opinion that the Zips were a good basketball team that was going to do some big things this year. Winning last night (and maybe a couple tournament games as well) would have reinforced that idea and it would have lead to more positive results down the road. As far as the recruiting thing goes and getting "great athletes" show me how many "great athletes" Miami had on the floor last night. In my honest opinion the idea that great athletes make great players (in any sport) is the biggest myth in all of sports. You can be blazing fast, leap tall buildings in a single bound, throw the ball a mile with a flick of the wrist and cut on a dime but if you don't understand the game you are playing you aren't going to translate that to success on the court (or field, or diamond, whatever). Give me a team of great players over a team of great athletes any day. As far as Miami being better than us. I just don't know. The records would say that yes, they are. I don't think the records show the whole picture though. The records don't show the absolute screw job that the clock operator and refs made last night. The records don't show that ridiculous overtime loss a couple weeks back. I will say this however. Miami is a lot better (than us and the rest of the conference) at making you play their game. You will never see them get trapped into playing a fast paced, up and down the court, high scoring game with anyone. They are always going to make you slow down and play a low scoring, close, defensive minded basketball game. If there is one thing that they are better at than us, this is it.

I just hope to god that we can use this disappointment for something good. I hope we can come back even hungrier than ever next year (god I hate always talking about next year). I hope this ends up being the true turning point for this program in a good way. I hope we can use this bitter taste in our mouths to come out and steamroll the MAC for the next 15 years (or at least until we can get out of this bushleague confrence). I hope this doesn't send us into a funk where we doubt ourselves next year and start regressing.

Jesus, get off of Goddards balls. The kid is a freak show and thats why he's in. Those half court shots which we would have needed there are ALL that he can do. He plays absolutely no defense, doesn't know how to pass the ball and has no speed to go to the rack. Thats why he doesn't play. If it weren't for the fact that he seems to have a knack for the halfcourt shot he wouldn't even be on this team. Im sure you can assume that when hes in for 2 minutes a game. No, I KNOW that because he is in 2 minutes a game. Have you ever seen him try to penetrate the lane? No. Have you ever seen him dish out to another player? No. Have you ever seen him do anything but catch the ball and just throw up a shot, regardless of where he is on the floor? No. Watch him in warmups, he doesn't even practice layups or anything, he just stands 5 feet behind the 3 point line and hoists up 3's, sometimes he'll even go out of bounds and start hoisting them up. If the kid worked half as hard on the rest of his game as he does those 30+ footers maybe he'd see some more playing time.

Jesus, get off of Goddards balls. The kid is a freak show and thats why he's in. Those half court shots which we would have needed there are ALL that he can do. He plays absolutely no defense, doesn't know how to pass the ball and has no speed to go to the rack. Thats why he doesn't play. If it weren't for the fact that he seems to have a knack for the halfcourt shot he wouldn't even be on this team.

What a sickening turn of events. I don't even know what to say about all that. Obviously the MAC screwed that whole thing up at the end. But we didn't take care of our business when we needed to. We were hitting FT's so well Thur. and Fri. night and we resort back to our old self tonight. And how many times are we going to let our opponent dictate the pace of the game? If we push the ball on the offensive end and make Miami get into a race with us instead of a leizurely walk through the park there is no way they can match whits with us. KD says on the postgame show, "well if that wasn't game 3 in 3 days maybe we wouldn't be so tired" BULL. Miami played 3 games in 3 days the same as we did and they didn't fold up like a bunch of pussies at the end of the game. I don't even know what to say about this. God I wish we were out of the MAC. I'd rather be a bottomfeeder in the Big East than sitting around in this crappy one bid conference.

This bushleague confrence of ours continues to amaze me. They just can't help themselves but to suck over and over and over again. You can't tell me that 1 ref with a stopwatch is adequate to figure that mess out. Your trying to correct human error by a process that is even more subject to human error. How in the world does that make sense??? Rick Chryst is the biggest joke of a commisioner in college sports. If he had half a ball in his sack he would have been down there and taken care of this situation. Congrats Rick. Have fun watching your 15 seed get demolished in the first round.

Ok, my thoughts on the game:-Don't overlook Miami. After a hard fought battle last night with Can't it would be real easy to figure we've wrapped this thing up and all we have to do is show up. I doubt KD, Romeo, Dru and the rest will let this happen, but this team has to make sure it shows up to play.-Keep Politz in check. You aren't going to shut him down completely, but you've got to contain him. Wood and Romeo are gonna have to step up big on the defensive end. Politz is the top offensive threat on this team and he's been having a huge tournament. That has to stop tonight.-Push the pace of the game and jump out to an early lead. Miami is at their best in a slow, close, low scoring, defensive game. If we can get out to a sizeable early lead I don't think Miami has the fire power or the scheme to push the pace and make a run. Don't play their game. Make them play ours.-Get more than 5 players to contribute. Last night the only guys who scored were Dru, Dials, Ced, Romeo and Wood. We can't keep that up. We don't need guys like Conyers, Linhart, Milum and Rybak to hang 15 a piece on them, but they need to contribute something offensively. -Pressure Mooseman. The freshman PG gave up a lot of turnovers to Toledo last night. Having never played on this kind of a stage you have to believe he's a bit nervous. Keep the pressure on him and force some turnovers.-Feed Wood and Romeo inside. We all saw last night and for a good deal of the last half of this season that when we make a concerted effort to get Romeo and Wood the ball inside teams have a problem answering it. Feeding these two also offers the opportunity to get Politz and some of Miami's other bigs in foul trouble which would be a huge leg up.-Finally, play Zips ball. If we play at the level we are capable to there isn't a team in this conference that can beat us. Play like we did in the first half last night and we are a plenty beatable team.Prediction: Zips-64Miami-58

Not only does it suck that we are seated so high, but we all pretty much had to move over into one section because if we went by our tickets we would have been spread around the whole dang arena. I brought 2 other rowdies to the game last night. My ticket was in section 118. One other ticket was section 116 and another was like section 101. You would think that if they are selling student tickets that they would at least make an attempt to put them all in one section.

Ok, we all know but now they are done in the tournament (possibly for the season as they are nowhere near a lock for the NIT like some of their fans think). Now what do we do about Miami. I sure as heck hope this team isn't thinking that all they have to do is show up and accept the trophy because Miami is playing some very good ball right now. They always play great defense and they strive to keep you in close games and hope you fold under the pressure late. That said, if this team comes out and plays the way they did in the second half last night for 40 minutes tonight there isn't a team in this conference that can beat them.GO ZIPS!!!

I LOVE WINNING CAUSE IT'S SO DELICIOUS. GOTTA LOVE WINNING!

As bad as that first half was. The second half was 100X better. What else can you say. This team showed some grit. I, along with probably a lot of others thought we were done at halftime. We were shooting so cold it wasn't funny and we just couldn't do anything on defense. Then all of a sudden BAM! Here comes the Zips in full force. Dunno how many of you noticed but at the 4 minute mark in the second half Can't had scored a grand total of 9 points for the half. 9 points in 16 minutes. Doesn't get much better than that. Jeremiah Wood may be the best player in the MAC that noone really knows about. Well, except for Can't fans. They know all to well the human bulldozer that is JWood. He was huge tonight. He's been huge almost the whole second half of the year.Big props to Romeo for stepping up in the locker room at halftime and taking these guys by the balls and getting them to play. Thats the kind of leadership you expect from a senior and a MAC POY. Free throw shooting seems to have gotten a lot better. At least for Wood and Romeo. I still for the life of me can't figure out why our guards seem to be struggling at the line though. Cedrick boinked a few, Dru was only about 50% late in the game when it mattered and even the normally clutch Dials missed a couple. These are the guys who are supposed to be high percentage FT shooters. Romeo and Wood combined missed 1 FT tonight while those 3 missed at least half a dozen. I just don't get it. Ohh well. We still won.Ohh yeah, and Can't STATE STILL SUCKS!!!Bring on the Sweaters.

Key's for tonights game:-Keep Can't off the offensive glass. Western Michigan did an absolutely horrid job of this last night and it cost them dearly. Romeo, Wood and Milum are gonna have to go in there and make sure they get those boards. Can't is too good of a team to be giving them second and third chances like Western was last night.-We need another big performance from Cedrick Middleton tonight. I know Dials is going to give it a go, but he might not be able to play at the same level for extended minutes. -Same thing goes for Conyers and Rybak. Those two did a very nice job last night in filing in for an injured Linhart. I'd expect to see more of the same. Conyers in praticular is looking a lot more comfortable with the extended minutes. Rybak still looks like a deer in the headlights sometimes, but he's getting better and if he plays smart he can be plenty effective.-Feed the ball inside. Can't is quick and has a lot of good perimeter shooters, but they lack the size inside to matchup with Wood and Romeo. Wood in praticular killed them last weekend. -Obviously we need to stay out of foul trouble. I don't want to have to finish another game against Can't with Dru on the bench and Dials, Middleton and Romeo in foul trouble. On the flip side if we can get a couple Can't players in foul trouble that would be really nice. Go strong to the hole. Especially with Wood. Can't really didn't have an answer for him Sunday.-No more Chokeron. JWood said it last week, this team doesn't care about what happened last year or the year before that. This is a new team with a new attitude. That said, we've got to stick with that mentality. If things get down at some point in time we can't just resort to firing up 3's early in the shot clock. Everyone has to keep their composure and play a full 40 minutes of basketball. -Leadership. We've heard all about how Romeo and Dru are the leaders of this team. The seniors. The face of Akron Basketball. If there's ever been a time when we need them to step up and show it tonight is the night.

Unfortunatley when we tried to sit down closer to the floor they moved us WAY up top before finding a not so happy medium where we were last night. I'm just hoping they at least give us the same seats tonight.

So its 12:49pm right now and I just don't know why, but I have the urge to shout.Can't STATE STILL SUCKS!