Captain Kangaroo

I heard JD Brookhart is a leading candidate.

It was interesting to hear "Duke" Vitale call the coaching job by Mike Krezewski "probably the best coaching job of his career." Gotta love Packer and Vitale. Note to everyone: Please take the discussion of the OSU Xavier game to another board. If you want to draw a game tangent to something Zips-related, that's fine. If you want to discuss OSU basketball, there are plenty of other forums to do so. Thanks.

I think you shoudn't quit your day job.

I'm sure Frye's presence made it a topic of discussion in the weight room.

Amen. I will be forever baffled that ANYONE complains about the Zips playing in a professional stadium.

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.