Captain Kangaroo

Isn't it possible to be a dual threat QB who makes good decisions, understands the offense and is accurate?

It is unfortunate that the ignorant sports fans & writers grossly outnumber the intelligent, free-thinking ones. It would be interesting to see what David Haugh thought about Bruce Weber when his Illinois team reached the NCAA finals. Was he leaning towards a contract extension, or did he know Weber was destined for a mediocre career conclusion in Champaign? I'll guess he probably leaned towards an extension. Funny how hindsight makes some people experts. Now we see this writer rail on Groce...a guy whose career he's researched for roughly 38 seconds. Groce's Ohio University, not Ohio State teams have whipped Georgetown, beat Michigan and beat USF in the NCAA tourney during their last 2 appearances. Take a look at the post season results of all MAC basketball programs over the past several years and tell me how impressive that is to have on your resume. It's a hell of a lot more impressive than winning NCAA tourney games coming from the CAA, Horizon or MVC. Keith Dambrot is a great basketball coach. Won 20+ games per season for 7...8 consecutive seasons (I forget offhand)? And recently, Groce has owned him. The Zips last 2 trips to Athens bear witness to the most uncompetitive beatdowns of those respective Akron Basketball seasons. If Haugh wants to boil things down to a single shot, like Walsh's miss, than why not use the identical logic on Offutt's free throw? Groce could just as easily been in the Elite 8 as the NIT? Whether or not Groce is a Big10-level coach depends on how stupid you are, and what you want to believe. As previously stated, Mike Thomas made one bad hire - JD Brookhart (his first hire as an AD). And that guy won Akron's only MAC football championship. Mike Thomas knows how to evaluate coaching talent. He has a proven record of elevating and sustaining excellence in collegiate athletic programs. He will find Illinois a great Head Basketball Coach. And that guy is probably John Groce.

I believe "offense" was the other primary problem for the Zips last season. Special teams was next.

The worst coaching hire in Mike Thomas' career still won a MAC football championship. He's a great AD.

I would vote for Cventinovic squaring up for the 3-pointer, and the home crowd screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" as my #1.

Comparing the national notoriety of the Green Bay Packers to the Akron Zips is obviously not my point. At least I thought that was obvious. To be clear, my point is - Regular season titles are nice, but winning in the post-season, at any level of sports, in any sport, is what your team's success is ultimately judged by. What is the stereotype of Marty Schottenheimer - Never made a Super Bowl despite always having great regular seasons? He's a notch below Marv Levy, who whiffed in 4 consecutive Super Bowls. What's the stereotype of LeBron? Until he wins a playoff championship, he's just another great player who couldn't win the big one. Ditto Dan Marino. Keith Dambrot is correct in saying the MAC regular season title is Nice. Winning it on K.e.n.t.'s court was really nice. But would a Zips' fan trade it for a 1st round NCAA win against Michigan? In an f-ing heartbeat.

Who had the better season?: Green Bay Packers: 15-1, best record in the NFL NY Giants: 9-7 regular season, Super Bowl Championship Dambrot said it, Cventinovic, Abreu and other players said it too - "Winning the MAC Regular Season Championship is 'the little prize.' Winning the MAC Tournament and getting the NCAA bid is 'The Big Prize'."

If Groce won the NIT, and Dambrot made it to the Sweet 16, who would get the Illinois job? Seriously - Groce's resume, with 3 NCAA wins, dwarfs KD's. Groce is being considered for Big 10 jobs. MAC coaches with 20-win seasons, and zero noteworthy post-season wins get consideration for lower-level MVC jobs. Not Big10 jobs.

But the results haven't markedly changed. So did Nate Linhart I think the list of games where a Zips player played well and we lost is pretty long. If he was a 20-10 player this year...wow, would we have had a hell of a season. I appreciate your point of view. Next year should be awesome, with Zeke being a senior, and replacing Nitro and Nik's minutes with more Tree and Harney (& others). But I'm an old guy now. I've grown tired of potential...I've heard about it since Ball and Bosley graced the JAR floor. It is time for potential to be realized. Moderator Note: I screwed up. As a moderator I have the ability to edit any post. I accidentally edited G-Mann's post rather than "Reply." Once I hit "enter" the original was gone. My sincere apologies.

While this is a Zeke thread, my comments are more "team" comparison oriented. That said - This year was the Zips 1st outright regular season MAC Basketball Championship. Teams of the past 3 seasons have 1 NCAA appearance...same as the teams from 4-6 years ago. Yes, the schedule was more difficult this season. But we lost the bulk of those more-difficult games. "Potential simply means you haven't done it." This Zips era/team has potential, but they haven't done much to separate themselves from their predecessors.

I will play devil's advocate. And please, I would appreciate it if no one freaks out and twists my words here (a plea that I am certain will fall on deaf ears): Compare what we won in the three seasons prior to Zeke, with the three seasons w/Zeke. BCS wins. Tourney wins. Overall record. Throw in team graduation rates if you so choose. Where's the difference? "A lot of what he does can't be measured?" - Yes it can: wins. We're winning at the same level today as we were 3 seasons ago. Differently style, but the end result is essentially identical. We did win "The Little Prize" for the first time this year (as described by KD and Nik after we beat K.e..n.t.). But the group from 4-6 years ago won post-season games. Points for discussion. Feel free to discuss.

Xerox wishes they could copy so good.

In anticipation of his arrival in Akron, I'm working on a song. It goes somethig like this -- "Jose Jose, oh, oooh, you can block. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah" "Jose Jose, oh, oooh, K.e.n.t. State sucks ______" Rats. I'm stuck there...what rhymes with block? Stupid writers block.

Ah, but there is so much time remaining to re-hash!

Jose and O’Leary apparently exchanged words a few days prior to spring break and the conversation escalated into an argument, although Jose would not say what the two argued about. I'll guess they argued about whether or not Jose is over 4 bills.

"March" In like a lion (Mississippi State), out like a lamb (lost 5 of our last 8).

I see the tears streaming down my son's face after the OU game. Then he collapses in the living room last night when Abreu's shot falls short. And people wonder why kids cheer for Ohio State instead of the Zips? People wonder "Why are our fans are so terrible?" Being a Zips fan ain't easy.

But you give yourself a chance to dictate the situation if you take it out of bounds. If you let Diggs hold the ball until he gets foul with <4 seconds remaining, you didn't give yourself a chance. AND- we had PLENTY of additional time. Diggs held the ball in excess of 10 seconds before he was fouled! Horrible clock management in consecutive tight games. Unless you want to go back to the K.e.n.t. game, where we nearly blew an insurmountable lead with <1 minute on the clock. Then ithe consecutive streak is 3. First and foremost, this team needs poise if it is to win anything in 2012-13. We can beat crappy MAC teams at the buzzer, like WMU and BG. But we can't beat the likes of VCU, CSU, ORU, OU, NW, etc if we aren't capable of closing out tight games. Or being strategically creative when the chips are stacked against us.

I remain astounded that people debate the final play. How did it come to the last play? LUCK! Diggs was at the FT line shooting two because we didn't call a time out once he crossed center court. We got lucky that we had a chance at the end. But we blew the game when we decided to let Diggs get a 2-shot foul when we were down 3-points. I can't believe we botched that identical situation in consecutive games. And NW is a team that choked-away close games all season. We gave it to them.

After reading that article, there's other information worth sharing? Seems pretty clear to me - Big schools want him, we don't get him. I hear he was scared off by the 9 QB's we'll have in camp this summer. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

The Zips need to figure out how to use their TO's when there's less then 10 seconds remaining in a game, and they are down 3 points. Against OU, and now Northwestern, the Zips had a very very very easy chance to set up for late-game three, and both times we allowed the opponent to foul us, sending us to the line for 2 shots. Against OU, we should NEVER have called the TO after Keeley's 2nd foul shot. A play should have been drawn up during the TO we called after Keeley's 1st shot went in. We needed to get it to half court and quickly then call our final TO. Then we have 5 seconds to get someone to break free off an inbound play. There was no way Abreu was going to make it coast-to-coast without getting fouled. Tonight we had possession, down 3, with 16 seconds remaining and time outs in our pocket. Diggs inexplicably holds the ball and NW fouls him with 3.7 seconds remaining, eliminating our chance for a 3-pointer. How does that happen twice in a row??!! Why didn't a TO come from the bench?

The same could be said for Kyle Peterson. Except he has 2 NCAA + 4 straight championship appearances. Kyle "The Dominator" Peterson

The simple answer to the "Why are Akron fans so quiet and unorganized?" is - lack of tradition. Until about 2004, UA never even tried to organize its students to attend games. Other MAC programs had been doing it for decades. Until about 2005, we'd hardly won a MAC Tourney basketball game. Other teams had been winning them for decades. We get a new AD with a completely new agenda roughly every 5 years. Some AD's have cared about building tradition and fan base while others haven't. Regardless, the fans constantly get an ever-changing message. Football is a driving force in college athletics. The trickle-over to the other sports can be HUGE. When your football program blows, your fans aren't all that zealous. Our football has blown. Since the Mike Thomas era, strides have been made. Our showing at The Q on Saturday was pretty good. When OU fans did their drumbeat O-H-I-O cheer, you saw about 1/3rd of the arena participating. Being generous, maybe the fans were split 50% Zips, 10% unaffiliated and 40% OU. Easily 5,000+ Zips fans in Cleveland that night. Probably 1,000 in K.e.n.t. the week before too. Not too shabby. If Bowden can turn around the football program, UA pride will appreciably swell. Until then, unless KD can pull off a magical NCAA run, we're probably maxed out.

Guys - Please take the whole topic of Chauncey's grade off the public board. PM each other all day long, but cease and desist with the public mudslinging. That's not why I pay the money to run this forum. And I don't have the time to keep deleting these embarrassing posts. We play a Big 10 team tonight. Focus on that. Thanks, CK

It was a good show this week. In stark contrast to last week's information-packed session where we learned of all Chauncey Gilliam's bathroom contents. And saw the funeral guy commercial about 13 times.