Captain Kangaroo

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.

Scanning through the latest issue of TV Guide, I noticed a new show. Seems like it'll be a big hit? In this weeks episode of "Leave it to Zipper, " Ward (played by The Oratorious DiG) lectures Wally (played by Lumberjack) and Beaver (played by UAZips0510) on the hurtful nature of name-calling. Uproarious laughter ensues when Eddie Haskell (played by BigZip) defies Ward's advice, saying "Shut up, you idiot."

My Dambrot Question of the Day would be: Have you spoken to Jeff Boals regarding Northwestern, and how good was the scouting report?

Akron does. But only for the lower area. I just find it interesting that Minnesota, in the midst of a really bad stretch, is jacking up the ticket prices so substantially. If the Zips added $400 per ticket for me, I'd be in GA's in a heartbeat. And like the Minnesota fans quoted in the column, I love my team and have been a season ticket holder for well over 10 years. But everyone has a breaking point. When the bandwagon's rolling...when you get a new arena...you can somewhat stomach ticket cost increases. But when things are bad, like 3 years ago when Wistercil tried to soak the handful of Lot 9'ers...the diehards of all diehards... for $5k each for a parking space (an increase from $50 the previous year), it just comes off as stupid. I will be interested to see how this plays out in Minnesota. 8,000 seat licenses at $250 each (average) would be $2,000,000. On paper that's great. And if it works, some budding young AD will be able to boast on his resume of raising basketball revenues by $2 million, and get a sweet gig at some mid-major program where such a practice doesn't remotely apply. In reality, it may end up doing nothing more than pissing off a lot of really good Minnesota fans who are already paying top dollar to watch losing basketball.

Click on the link

Diggs is a capable back up to Abreu too. But both OU and UA are mediocre at best without those guys.

I'd place "OU Sans Cooper" in a tie for 4th, alongside "The Zips Without Abreu."

If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.

Interesting that they are asking fans to for over some big additional bucks, even as the team flounders. Reminds me of Wistercill asking me for $5,000 to park in Lot 9 a couple years ago. Wasn't Wistercill Associate AD at Minnesota? Hmmmm....now it's all starting to make sense.... Gopher a few extra bucks...

Certainly doesn't help their cause to be competing with The Q, that's less than 1 mile away.