Captain Kangaroo

I'm guessing the person who posted that is probably the same retard that started the rumor that the Zips hoops staff declined an NIT bid.There is Z-E-R-O chance the Zips would turn down a game against OSU on a neutral field (or as neutral a field as you're going to find in Ohio).

K.e.n.t will get Waters back and we'll be screwed.

I want to dot the "i" in NIT!!

What would that say to the kids? "When things get tough, quit"?How hypocritical could you be to complain about the selection system, then take a coaching job at a school that promotes excluding teams like the Zips from post season tourneys? The NIT thing needs to be fixed. There's no debate.Other than that, win the damn MAC tourney. K.e.n.t. did it 4 out of 8 seasons. Why can't we? Miami beat us 2-out-of-3 this year. Toledo's beaten us in consecutive games. We cosistently blow big, late leads at The Q. The time keeper can't be blamed for everything. We have improvement of our own to do in the MAC.If Dambrot wants us to be "the next Gonzaga" then he also needs to schedule better and start knocking off some marquee teams. You don't get to be the next Gonzaga by playing Tiffin, Winston-Salem-Marlboro, St. Francis, etc. Anymore, you don't even get mentioned as a "Bubble Team."

The topic discussion was about the Zips schedule and the Austin Peay Bracketbuster, not the NCAA's. Our soft non-conf schedule coupled with our record at the time of the Bracketbuster selection is why we got Austin Peay, and not a upper-tier MVC school (or similar).20+ win A-P wasn't bad either. Just because we thumped them hard at the JAR doesn't mean they suck. We thumped most teams there.The #1 goal of the MAC this offseason should be to get the NIT issue addressed.

We will likely have 6 in the NFL next season. Maybe more?Dwight Smith, Jason Taylor, Chase Blackburn, Charlie Frye, Dominik Hixson and soon to be Andy Alleman. Ryan Myers has hung around the Jets lately and Matt Cherry was on the Raven's IR this year. Luke is a long shot.

I don't believe that is true at all. There is no way anyone at The University of Akron thinks that way. KD is no dummy either. That's why he's saying he "might need to look elsewhere" (paraphrased) in his Rasor interview the other day. He's letting Mack know he doesn't want to be taken for granted. I do the same thing with my boss every so often to keep him on his toes. Everyone does.Last year KD got a raise that put him in the top 4 in MAC coaches salaries. Joplin has beaten him twice in a row. Coles has taken 2 of the last three. Christianson has several championships under his belt. OU was stupid to pay O'Shea what they did, and no MAC school should adjust his salary structure based upon OU's stupidity. In my opinion, KD's salary is where it should be at this time.KD needs to continue the program's progress to get more money. He needs to win at The Q to get more money. Then he can garner top dollar at UA.If I'm Mack Roades, the one thing I do monitarily is get KD whatever bonus he had that was tied to a 2007 NIT berth. I think that would be a good, no-brainer gesture to let KD know his 26-win season was valued.

The Austin Peay game was fine. It showed the separation between the OVC and the MAC.Furthermore, the Zips did themselves no favors by scheduling such a cake walk non-conf schedule, and losing @ home to Nevada.While there are a lot of scape goats to be found in discussing why the Zips aren't in the post-season, there are also a few things the Zips need to look in the mirror and reflect on as well. Scheduling is first and foremost. Closing out tight games is another. Everything isn't Rick Boyages' fault, or the time keeper's fault. The NIT snub is the only thing that is 100% unjust and 100% out of our control.

Shocker. He's usually one of the most critical members of the media?

I think that pretty much sums things up.You know that game we just lost vs. Miami? K.e.n.t. had won that game something like four of the last 8 years. Winning the MAC championship in basketball is not physically impossible. In fact, K.e.n.t. pretty much showed that if you field a solid team year in/year out, an NCAA bid is there for the taking. If you look at the status of the rest of the programs in the MAC, the Zips are in a great position to win 4 of the next 8 MAC championships. We need to stop going stone-cold offensively in the last 5 minutes of games at The Q. The Zips need to learn from this loss and move on. There's no reason we should be in the same, or better position to win a championship and get an NCAA berth next season.

I will disagree with this until proven otherwise. We've won nothing for over 20 years, so there's no relative history to base such an opinion on. Fluctuate between mediocrity and doormat for 20 years and you lose a generation of fans.The year we won the MAC championship we finished 7-6. That one-hit-wonder kept us on the charts as long as Wang Chung's. But, it did show that there were 15,000 fans willing to watch a 7-5 Zips football team play a game in Detroit.We need to win...win again...and win again. That's when the bandwagon goes full steam ahead. For 20+ years the University had done nothing to foster a successful program, or large-scale attendance. "You get out of the garden what you put into the garden." 20 years of ignoring the garden isn't overcome in one season.Facilities are in place.Staff is in place.Recruits are in place.Stadium is coming...Some in Akron think you can plant a tree on Sunday and begin picking fruit on Monday. It doesn't work that way. It takes a little time. Zips football will be a hot, hot ticket within 3 years. And the previous 20 will be a distant memory.Enough with the horticultural analogies.

Line of the day.

I disagree. People care. At this time most are indifferent. That because of the lack of commitment on the University's behalf to build and sustain a winning program. With the facilities upgrade, and soon the new stadium, I think the bandwagon will begin rolling.Basketball drew flies for years. Why, because Coleman Crawford and Dan Hipsher sucked. Now that Dambrot's winning 20 games, the JAR crowds are hitting 85+% capacity.Akron is no different than anywhere else. Win and you get 8,000 Zips fans at The Q. Lose and you get me, ZipWatcher and Zipboy...and maybe a few other gluttons for punishment.

ya think so?What a loose cannon that guy is. Shocking we couldn't get a tourney bid with him pleading our case. Wonder how many people on the committee he offended?

His grades we bad. He was never part of the class. He verballed...but it was pretty worthless.

That is scary stuff... God please don't let this happen. That is scary stuff... God please don't let this happen for a second time.-Ken LollaI was harsh on Lolla when he left. I honestly felt he was only a year away from proving the Zips worth in the NCAA committee's eyes, much like Gonzaga or Butler has in hoops. I still feel that way, but not with the certainty I had before.Some will need to change institutionally for Dambrot to stay long term. Either the NCAA changes their post season policies, or the Zips move to another conference. If things stay status quo, I couldn't blame him for leaving one day. To me, the next 9 months will be very interesting. Does the NCAA do anything? Does the MAC do anything? Does Akron do anything. One of the three needs to act.

That' the first positive thing I've seen or felt since Saturday. Thanks for dropping the note. I'll speak for everyone on ZipsNation when I say you couldn't have picked a better time to introduce yourself and maybe get us off the snide, and to start thinking about the future. Your enthusiam for the Zips program really is heartening. We all look forward to watching you play.

Sucks to be him.

I thought this was a nice interview. No sour grapes aired by Owens or Stacy.Massilon Paper Link

It's 12:21pm and I'm still waiting for comment on the NIT situation from Chryst or Mack Roades....It's starting to bug me that people are getting three issues confused. The Miami loss and how it transpired is one thing. I can live with the fact that we lost to Miami. Forget the clock screw up, the Miami guy pulled a miracle shot and we lost.The NCAA snub is another. Looking at Drexel, West Virginia and Syracuse, we're in good company not getting in. I could live with it.The NIT snub is crippling for all the reasons I mentioned above. Unless there are some assurances that it never happens again, it is a crushing blow to MAC basketball.How do you schedule if you're a non-BCS, not-politically-connected school? You can be as good as Drexel and still get the shaft?!In my opinion, our only hope is to leave the MAC for the Big East once the conferences "basketball" and "non-basketball" schools ultimately separate. Our new football stadium will make us an attractive option. I never thought that way until last night. I was 100% an MAC guy. I don't think I can afford to be any longer.Maybe Dambrot and make us a juggernaut, like Butler or Gonzaga? A few years ago I though so...and a few years ago it could have been done. But the landscape of college basketball has changed in 2006. I think the NCAA has decided there are enough Butlers and Southern Illinois out there, and enough is enough. They put the hammer down.

Ummm...I'll skip it.

Kid's asleep, and I can't sleep...so I'll add this:A few years ago you saw a big change in college athletics with the advent of the BCS. Because of the media, and the power of the big conferences, no one really raised a big stink that there was a division going on at the D1-A level. In hindsight, as of today, you can see the BCS was only Phase 1 of a 2-part plan.I can live with the Zips not getting in the NCAA's. Syracuse had 10 wins in the Big East and didn't make it. Drexel had a monster schedule and beat Villanova, Creighton and Syracuse on the road on the way to a 23-win season, and didn't make it. Someone always gets screwed in the NCAA's. But the NIT?!When the NIT field was reduced to 32 teams this season, no one raised a stink. Hey, 40 teams was a bit much, right? But no one looked at the new commitee in-charge of selecting those 32 teams. Did anyone see CM Newton talk about how he and his old, retired buddy Dean Smith had a ball selecting the teams? Teams from the MAC have no chance when the old money "BCS" (you can now officially use this term for basketball) execs are running the show. The NIT was all about money from the start. But usually the better mid-majors (you can now officially use this term too) only got screwed by having to play their games on the road. Mid-majors that had a great season, yet got passed over by the NCAA's, still had some opportunity to prove their worth. How could this happen? While I've been critical of the Zips scheduling this season, the schedule had nothing to do with this snub. If you look at the NIT brackets, it is very clear: If you are a "BCS" school, and you are over .500, you're in the post-season. Fill your arenas and generate some money for the NCAA. Do you think that CM Newton gives a crap about Akron? That's it's kids, real flesh-and-blood college kids, tirelessly practiced from October through March chasing a dream of post-season play? And who met evey known criteria to do so? Do you think he knows where Akron is? Can he pronounce Akron? The answer to all of the above is "no."What can we do about this? This season, probably nothing. If Charlie Coles was honest in his assessment that "It is a crime if Akron isn't in the NCAA's" then I want to see Miami players with a black armband during their game vs. Oregon. I want Coles to wear one too. Ditto the Toledo players and Stan Joplin. I don't want them to do this for Akron. I want them to do this for the MAC. It will happen to one of them one day if a big, big stink isn't raised. And Miami and Toledo are the only teams with a stage to do so.Say this holds as-is...same story next season. How does a MAC school recruit against ANYONE? Forget about stealing a recruit from the Big East here and there...I'm talking about beating the Duquesne's and Wright States of the world. It is obvious to the NCAA's that the MAC is no better than the MAAC, or SWAC, or any of the other bottom-feeder conferences that the Zips would smoke their champs by 20 points in their own building.The decision by the NCAA/NIT committee has serious ramifications for the MAC conference. Rick Chryst needs to do something, and do it quick. No stammering, no spinning, no BS. If he wants to keep his job, he'd better earn his money over the next several days. Mack Roades needs to do the same. Unlike Chryst, this isn't Mack's fault. But it is the supreme bitch slap to a 25,000 student University that's paying him good money, and the future of our basketball program is at stake. Who'd have thunk 0.6 seconds could affect the future of Akron athletics this much? If the Zips had won, Miami and K.e.n.t. could have raised a minor stink about their exclusion, but there would have been some plausible rationale to explain it. The Zips exclusion brings things front and center. Hello "BCS" basketball. Hello "Mid-major." Good bye to my blind love for collegiate athletics.

My son wants a bedtime story, so I'll probaly post something tomorrow. I'm really at a loss. Here is what I posted in another thread. I really don't know how to react...it's unprecedented....I love college athletics. It is probably my single-most non-family related thing in the world. For me, the college athletics that I've loved for about 35 years took a horrible and unexpected for the worse today. I'm appalled. How anyone can take a post season opportunity away from this Akron Zips team is unfathomable. Rick Chryst should be fired tomorrow. How can this happen...how...

I love college athletics. It is probably my single-most non-family related thing in the world. For me, the college athletics that I've loved for about 35 years took a horrible and unexpected for the worse today. I'm appalled. How anyone can take a post season opportunity away from this Akron Zips team is unfathomable. Rick Chryst should be fired tomorrow. How can this happen...how...

I disagree. But, I will say one thing we can agree on - If we continue to lose these games, the JAR will never, ever fill up.