UAZipster0305

At least we have not quit and are making it look respectable. The difference of late is that Freeman has been more actively involved on both ends. Love that kid!

Creighton is better at literally every position. The only way we could have won is if they were cold shooting or turned the ball over a lot. They are playing well, and we are making stupid fouls, which make it even more of an uphill climb.

Those two losses to end the season really hurt!

He still needs one more rebound.

No composure. That's the kind of thing that a verteran, senior laden team with NCAAT experience should not have to worry about and what should make them so dangerous. Not ours.

Super happy for KD getting an NCAAT win to close out his career. Akron now has at least one alum with an NCAAT men's basketball win as a coach too. If we can't be the Cinderella team this year, I hope Duquesne is.

Kent State still sucks! Hope their alumni enjoy seeing us in the spotlight!

In Pittsburgh in spirit here while having a virtual Primanti's sandwich. Any alums looking for places to eat outside of the immediate arena area but still inside the city, check out the Strip District, Southside, Walnut Street in Shadyside, or the Forbes-Murray Avenue area of Squirrel Hill. (UA, Pitt, and Carnegie Mellon alum here, so I lived in Pittsburgh for many years during graduate school.) Let's go! Z-I...

But if they do double, that leaves wing players open for 3's. If those shots are landing, we can definitely pull the upset!

There was a lot of good coverage for the Zips and Akron in general on the CBS show after the B1G Championship was over and before the selection show. It was just as much due to KD and the Dukes as it was Groce and the Zips. KD is an alum and took our program to the next level, and even if we plateaued under him, I want to see KD win a NCAAT game before he retires.

WaPo for the win!!! https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/03/17/kent-state-horrible-tough-mistake/

-P-S!!! Does it get better than beating Kent (or Kent beating themselves and the negative press and memes to boot), taking the series lead, and winning a MACC all in the same game?!?!?! I think not.

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Agreed. I was in the mood to see some throat stomping tonight.

Then why bother paying to maintain a nice on-campus stadium. NFL stadiums are a huge waste of money with only 9-11 home games per year. How can four games later in the season after establishing a losing record be justified?!

Kent State should be the first game of the season, every season, and it should be played on a late Saturday afternoon...presumably good weather and all day for tailgating. It's the only way for the rivalry to mean anything more than pride. This way, the season isn't yet sunk, and one team starts off with a winning record and some momentum while the other will likely not have their head above water the rest of the season. Given the current status and long abysmal histories of each program, I don't think there is a better way to feature the rivalry and garner alumni/fan interest and attendance.

No, I was making the point that Thorpe's "college" team did not play Buchtel/Akron, implying we were not considered a major football program then either, but that so many of the schools we are looking up to now were already established. We have been trying to play catch-up to the big boys since the early days of college football.

A bit is made about Akron's football history with regard to John Heisman as a former coach. However, I am still amazed by how relatively under-celebrated this relationship is and how there is virtually no awareness about the deeper and more distant history of Akron sports and the University in general. I am currently reading Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss, which goes through some early college and professional football history. One thing that really stands out is who the Carlisle Indians opponents around the turn of the last century were. Their opponents included Alabama, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Notre Dame, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Minnesota, Illinois, Northwestern, West Virginia, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Army, Navy, Lehigh, Lafayette, and all the Ivy League schools. There was not a single reference to Akron or another MAC-level team. So, Akron football has literally been trying to play catch up with the big boys for 125 years. We are not consistently at the level of the Big Ten, historically or now, and there is nothing wrong with that. Anyone expecting otherwise is ignoring history and not being realistic about the current or future. That is not to say we should accept mediocrity or worse in the MAC. Instead, we should be embracing the history we do have. Specifically, it is a mystery to me as to how I did not previously know that the owner of the first NFL Champion, the 1920 Akron Pros, was an Akron alum and former Akron football player, Art Ranney. He was also the first secretary and treasurer of the league and took notes of the league's founding meeting in Canton on Akron Pros stationary! A co-owner, Frank Nied was also an Akron alum and NFL co-founder. By my research, there are only four universities that can lay claim to having alums as founders of the NFL: Akron (Ranney and Nied), Dayton (Carl Storck), Notre Dame (Stan Cofall), and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (George Halas). Hence, Akron is the only university with multiple alums as founders of the NFL. Not Kent, Not Ohio State, not Pittsburgh, not Penn State, not West Virginia, not Michigan, AKRON! How is this not celebrated by the University, especially when the alumni and football program are starving for something to favorably change focus and momentum?! It makes me wonder, how many other alumni accomplishments are unknown or not publicized (and not just with regard to athletics)? How many Rhodes and Goldwater scholars have we had? https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/carlisle/head-to-head.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Ranney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Nied

I respect that approach. At least it is based on objective merit and not P5 bias, etc. I was hoping we would get in, but did not think we deserved to with the way the season ended...no wins in the last five games is highly underwhelming. For me, the whole point of the NCAAT is to crown a champion, so whether a team could win the championship should be the ultimate question in determining what bubble teams to invite. Early in the season I felt we were NCAA Championship worthy, but our offense became anemic and we stopped winning. Championship teams either find a way to adapt or run over such challenges with quality.

It's hard to say what's uglier, Kent's uniforms or their 1-8 record. Nice 4th quarter...where has that been all season?!

Respectfully, I disagree. Unlike most international leagues that allow ties, the NCAA permits re-entry on substitutions, so there's no requirement that the same players play all those additional minutes. AND the ability of a coach to manage minutes to prevent injury and the bench's exaggerated role in the game is a good indirect way to award wins and losses based on merit. The other thing I disagree with is that both the NCAAT and FIFA require a full 30 minutes of extra time rather than golden goal. Why continue playing after breaking the tie? The full 30 minutes diminishes urgency and potentially recreates, through both teams scoring, the exact circumstance that was intended to be broken. I always liked the idea of both teams being required to remove a player from the pitch every three minutes to open up more space and create more opportunities. I suspect that with this approach, penalties would rarely if ever be needed.

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And yet if we lose at Xavier in the Big East Tournament, with only two losses, we likely won't make the NCAAT. Bring back over time! In the sport as a whole, ties only make sense in a table format in which team plays every other team home and away and there are thirty-eight games to separate the quality of teams. Ties in NCAA soccer are unjust.

Another crappy tie in a game in which we totally dominated a respectable opponent. Blah! Wish the NCAA still did OT. In several of these games, it's doubtful the opponent would have been able to hold out for another thirty minutes.

Injury? I am only following the statcast.