Captain Kangaroo

I just got home and poured the biggest glass of Bushmills I physically could.Screw the grousing over the clock. Make our FT and we're in the NCAA's. We didn't take care of business.Congrats to Miami. Another MAC tourney dagger, like Jose' Davis, Brandon Hunter, Anthony Stacey, Keith McCloud...Thank God Hixson made that catch, otherwise I'd kill myself tonight.If I type much more I'll probably say something I'll regret. Later.

* Wood - Stellar! It's amazing how his game has kicked into high gear over the past couple weeks. He's always looking to push the ball after a rebound. His passing has been a thing of beauty. He's rebounding like Chaimberlain, but shooting free throws like Stockton. Teams triple-team him and he finds the open man. He never takes a shot outside his abilities (no 3's). He's flat out doing-it-all at this time. And if you listen to his post-game interviews, you can't help but like him. * Dials - Clutch performance. Again. He and Wood seem to have synchronized their game elevation? Both are absolutely pouring it on down the home stretch. Dials is hitiing the big shots that give the Zips the 6th man advantage...he's setting the crowd on fire!* Travis was solid. How clutch was his FT shooting in the 1st half? 6-6? From a guy that routinely drops a 3-6? He wanted to win this K.e.n.t. game in the worst way. I don't think any K.e.n.t player wanted it as bad as Travis.* Joyce is in a rough stretch. His FT shooting was terrible for most of the game. But he seemed to get on-track at game's end. The FT's that were drawing hard iron began snapping the bottom of the twine. He also seemed to hone-in on the 3-line late in the game. I hope the Dru Joyce of the last 8 minutes of last night's game shows up for 35 minutes tonight.* SLOW DOWN, CED!! Ced was flying around like the tazmainian devil for the better part of the first half and rushing everything. Keep Ced away from the Red Bull before game time! Clutch plays in the 2nd hald by Ced.* The game drew over 13k, besting the old semi attendance record by 3,000+ fans. The more frequently the Zips reach these kind of games, the more times that record will fall in the future. The bandwagon is rolling and may not stop for several years.*3-0 vs a 20-win K.e.n.t team. That's awesome.Hey, no use dwelling on this one much longer. Great game by the Zips. Biggest win in 20 years for the men's basketball team. They have the opportunity to one-up themselves again tonight. Miami is playing the best basketball in the MAC along with Akron right now. It's going to be a war.

I was checking out the Rasor Blog this morning and saw what I thought was an excellent, concise overview of the Zips players and what they need to do for the Zips to bring home a championship this weekend. Even down to Steve McNees and Bardo. The only comments I thought were suspect were:Regarding Dru Joyce: “Stay out of foul trouble and make your free throws. Outside of those two flaws, you are the perfect point guard.”I like Dru, but I think I’d add a few more attributes to him if I were designing “The Perfect Point Guard.”Regarding Nick Dials: “Although nobody is saying it, you were the reason Akron beat Can't State on Sunday.”I think someone said he won us a MAC title Sunday night? Man…I just can’t figure out who is was? :DNice column by Mike.

I don't see why they moved these games to Cleveland. Unless they don't care about attendance. Other than some real hard core MAC people, no one is going to forfeit their entire Wednesday to watch the bottom of the MAC duke it out.

I agree too. I'm not going...I like the between game atmosphere of the all the bars arounf the Q between games to miss it Thursday...and Friday and Saturday just don't work out...but I'm glad the University is doing something like this regardless. I'm sure it will be well attended. I hope they have juice boxes for GP1.

The first AK-Rowdy to spot me at the Lizard or Boneyard gets a free beer! I'll also buy the first Rowdy I see a beer (that might be easier) I urge the remainder of the ZipsNation to do likewise tomorrow!!

Jesus Christ, if we had every wannabe student and fan architect chiming in with their two cents it would be the biggest cluster f*&k ever.Per the newscast, the people chosen to design and build the thing have excellent, proven track records in this field. The thing will be awesome.

I didn't think Livingston's column was all that bad, but you make some good points.The PD printed an excellent 8-page special on the MAC tourney today. If your local news stand still had a copy, it is well worth the 50 cents.

The MAC isn't exactly the ACC. Get past the top 5 teams and there's a huge drop off. If K.e.n.t can win the MAC with regularity, there's no reason we can't. If I had to watch Binghamton-level basketball for a full season I'd kill myself. And that says a lot coming from someone who sat through Coleman Crawford and Hipsher.

That's great! Thanks for posting it!

The MAC tourney was held at the Seagate Center in Toledo prior to moving to Cleveland...and it didn't do much good for the Rockets. I don't think they've won the MAC in hoops in about 26 years.F Wright State in the Skull.

We got food and some great, cheap beers at the Boneyard last year. It's right next to the Lizard. Not a long walk if the Lizard is too packed. I like at least checking out the Lizard because it is typically packed with MAC fans. It is a great atmosphere...and the beer selection is awesome too.

What a great guy. That's a shame.

Annadale? Looks like I may be keeping that tradition alive, of course now it's cheap beer from the drive through......close enough. I lived on 132 Annadale. I can remember that...but not my wife's birthday. What's up with that?

I remember walking home from class and stopping at some on-campus convenient store and buying an dusty old 6-pack of Hudephol Gold to drink on my Annadale Avenue house while watching the game. I think that store is now an Alpha Phi Alpha frat house? We gave Tarpley, Gary Grant, Antoine Joubert and Co all they could handle.

High school.Ok...I can throw one more bit of info out...he's from Canada

My student years at Akron U (ok, just wanted to piss some of you off )...The University of Akron...were 1984-1989. I swear to God is doesn't seem that long aso...but it obviously was. Thus for me, Zips "history" began in 1984. I really have no connection to the apparently great teams of the 60's and 70's. I was raised in the Youngstown area, so I didn't know squat about the Akron area until I began looking at colleges. Most will contend that I still know little about Akron...but that's another topic for another day.I envy the exuberance of the Rowdies is supporting the Zips. Fortunately for most, they were too young to fully experience the pain of Akron's past MAC tourney failures. For those of us who've had tickets the past 15 of so seasons, well...it's still tough to forget the past.Elton Alexander wrote a short column detailing some of Akron and Toledo's past MAC tourney disappointments. It is a good read if only for a quick historical perspective on what a lot of us long-time fans have experienced. It doesn't do justice the the pain of the losses...it doesn't even mention the Keith McCloud shot...or Brandon Hunter shot...or Anthony Stacey...or all the other shots that have killed us in the past. But it does give a little perspective.In many respects, it isn't fair to this Zips team to bring up past failures. J Wood made it a point in a recent interview to say "We don't care what happened in the past. This is a new team and a new attitude." But people should care about the past because it gives you a good understanding of why fans feel and react the way they do. With one win on Saturday this Zips team can erase almost two decades of pain endured by many "older" Zips fans. They can also give the younger fans an unbelievable experience. I vividly recall being in the JAR with 6,000+ other fans chanting "LOSE SOME WEIGHT" to Middle Tennesee's portly Kerry Hammonds while he shot his FT's at the end of the OVC championship that gave the Zips their first and only NCAA appearance. I was a Rowdy-esque 19 years old at the time. It's one of the best memories of my college years. For the Rowdies of today, I hope you get to experience it too. When you're an AK-Oldie, you can write a post and tell all the young whippersnappers how awesome things were "back in the day." Here's hoping Thursday/Friday/Saturday is what we've all been waitng for...regardless of whether it's been 1 year or 20!

Congrats to Romeo! That's quite an honor. Hopefully he can put that trophy next to his MAC tourney MVP trophy. We'll need that type of performance out of him if we're to win it all.

The only thing I can say is he's a giant DL. And, that he is not listed on any of the recruiting sites.

One more:

Hope it isn't too big:Boo hooo hoooo!!

...and thus why the refs in-question do not merit refereeing the MAC finals. I want non-choking refs in that game.

No. He'll be walking on. He seems to really want to be a Zip, and the staff likes him. He's a good kid and he'll have a good opportunity to win a scholarship if he works hard.FYI - Look for another big, big dude to give the Zips a commitment soon. A DL.

There's no better feeling than beating K.e.n.t…and no worse feeling than losing to them. Thank God the refs couldn't steal this one from us. Wood was an absolute beast. His play in the paint was outstanding all evening. Any rebound he got his hands on, he pulled in. 17 of them? Some nice outlet passes too. I love how he's always looking to push the ball. Middleton's energy carried us in crunch time. Yeah he took some ill-advised shots, but he wasn't alone in that department. His late game breakaway lay-ups were desperately needed. I would bet the kid is dead-tired today…hell of an effort.The small forward position was enigmatic last night. Conyers got quite a few first half minutes, but really didn't distinguish himself. You'd hope that logging the PT he did in such a hostile environment will help at "The Q." You'd hope…. Linhart played tough, but the fact that he's NO offensive threat whatsoever with the bad thumb hurt us a bit. Playing 4 on 5 on the offensive end can only work for a limited time. Milum never found a rhythm. Since he's such an athlete and a leaper, you'd think he'd be pretty effective against K.e.n.t, who has a lot of similar players (K.e.n.t isn't a "bruiser" team like OU by any stretch). Dials was as frustrating as Chinese algebra. Great plays…crazy forced plays…but when it came down to crunch time, his last second drive that drew two defenders gave him just enough space to thread the needle to Wood and win us a MAC East championship. Gritty game by Nick.Dru had a relatively bad game. As usual, a pesky, quick opposing guard gave him trouble. To his defense, the piece-of-crap referees seemed obsessed with fouling him out of the game. K.e.n.t's #11 is the worst "flopper" I've seen in some time. If Dru sneezed, the kid flew into the stands like he was hit by a cannon. And the refs typically took the bait.Speaking of refs, the traveling call on Linhart needs to be reviewed by the league office. For that referee to make such a blatant false-call in such a critical situation of a championship game should bar him from participating in any Zips games in Cleveland this week. He should also not be allowed to ref the championship game regardless of the teams participating. If he wasn't cheating on that call, he "choked" in making it. If he's choking in a 6,500 person crowd, I can't imagine what he'd whistle in a 14,000 person championship game.The other horrific call that almost cost us the game was the late-game shove on Wood that put him at the line. Wood is ridden out of bounds…no whistle…he saves it to Travis…no whistle…Travis goes up to dunk, gets his tomahawk to about the 12 o-clock position…and the whistle blows…on the foul that happened 4 seconds earlier. Nice job by the ref to take away 2 points and put our worst FT shooter on the line. Great focus by Wood to step up and drain those FT's. You can tell he's worked on that part of his game very hard.I don't understand why, when we're up by 8 points, we started playing like we were losing by eight. Some really terrible shot decisions almost cost us the game and much as the referees. If we work the shot clock down and feed the ball inside, instead of hoisting quick 3's, the game's not even close. Kudos to K.e.n.t for taking advantage of the mistakes we made at critical times. And taking advantage of the refs. They hit some clutch shots when the chips were down.'Rome and Dru got their place in Zips immortality secured last night. If there's any sanity in the Athletic Department, the K.e.n.t basketball game at the JAR next year will be featuring the raising of the MAC East championship banner to the rafters. It'll be good to see 'Rome and Dru again.On a related note: How stupid is the K.e.n.t marketing and promotions clowns to get Z-E-R-O mileage out of their football victory over the Zips this past fall? Two absolutely beautiful monitors at the corners of the arena, and no videos of the Wagon Wheel to pump any of their fans up? No "Just Like Foot-Ball" chants from the student section after K.e.n.t took the lead? Nice job.Anyone else notice the Can't State dance team uniforms used the Zips Blue and Gold (not yellow) colors? Thanks to the team for a great win. Beating K.e.n.t, at K.e.n.t, on their senior night to win a MAC East title is about as good as it gets. I hope we can parlay the experience gained into a strong MAC tourney showing. Wood stated in the post-game interview that "This team doesn't care about what's happened to Zips teams of the past. This is a new team and a new attitude." We'll see on Friday night, because that's when we'll meet K.e.n.t again. BTW - I verified Jose' Davis has no more eligibility remaining, so I expect to win.See everyone at the games Thursday, and at the Winking Lizard in-between!

This is the biggest game in recent Zips men's basketball history. We have a chance to win a title on the home court of our rival. And to reach the 24-win mark...a D-1 record. Travis and Dru need something up in the JAR rafters. The championship banner is in their hands. Does it go up in the JAR...and the Zips men's team comes back into town next November for the big ceremony....or does it happen next November in K.e.n.t?The Zips are the better team. The more-veteran team. We should win. I'm really looking forward to tonight. It will be an outright war. Zips 72K.e.n.t. 68See you at Ray's @ 5pm