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Man those are deep and powerful words! This statement should be displayed in the national soccer hall of fame (if there is one).

No body ever thought that the bball team stinks. If i thought they stink, i wouldn't be disappointed when they loose. But seeing how good they are, people have higher expectations and thus get disappointed when they loose... to AP... at home... after a 16 points lead.Definitely, KD is greatly appreciated and loved at Akron.About the interest and the crowds, if KD follows soccer, he should understand how that's done. Caleb never complained about it, he just went to work. He created a fun and exciting environment for the rowdies, who started coming to games in bunches and made the games more fun and more interesting to Joe Akron, and yeah... the soccer team are always winning. It worked for Caleb so it should work for KD.

Not if he continues to do stupid things at 2:49am.Captain, please. This is Can't we're talking about. He won't have an impact unless he does stupid things at 2:49

So this game wasn't a pretty one. In no way did i walk out saying "wow! we have a great team" but we mannaged to pull the first "W" of the season, always a good thing. We're still strugling at the FT line and we still have a lot of players underperforming. The difference was: the underperformers sat on the bench and didn't get a lot of minutes. (that's just a personnal opinion, no hate against any body).Another difference: Humpty realized the lack of leadership and decided to take on that role himself... and man did it work.If i have to give performance awards in this game, it will go as follows:Best rebounder: Zeke (C-Mac comes second)Best ball handler: Humpty (Cventinovic comes second)Best Defender: HumptyBest playmaker: HumptyBest scorer: Humpty (Maclannahan is a close second)Best leadership: Humpty (Darryl is a close second)I thought the following two clips are worth uploading. The first is the players intro and the second is the last 45 seconds of the game.

Oh yeah. It feels a lot better with a W. Can't type a lot now as i need to hit the beach . Comments, pics, and maybe some videos to come in the evening.

I feel that everyone is erroneously blaming the loss on the lack of defense. The 61% FG may be a bit misleading. Look at it from this angle: NC state was limited to 66 points, 17 of which were on the FT line. Only 4-5 of the 26 free throws were fouls in the paint and the remaining ones are silly reaching fouls on players dribbling at the perimeters or diving for a 50-50 ball etc... you're in fould trouble, you send them to the line and give them 1 or 2 freebies.NC state was limited to 66-17 = 49 points from the field, and some of these were second chance points due to the fact that they got 50% more rebounds than we did 39-26. That's right 50%We can theoretically argue that we can always play a better deffense, but how about someone going for the basket? How about setting a screen for someone to take an uncotested 3? and most importantly, making our free throws.Captain, i don't understand your reference to McNeese confidence. Do you think that he is taking too many shots? if that's the case, i totally disagree, i think he was one of the only 3 players who were not intimidated yesterday.

NC state is the doormat of the ACC and they are not a very good team just like AP wasn't a very good team either.We have to admit that we have some serious problems and the team has to start working on them ASAP. For example, the way we shoot free throws have nothing to do with who we're playing and how good they are. Other than Humpty, we made 4-14 at the line. :wall:Some one said the other day that Zeke doesn't make big-freshmen mistakes. Unfortunately, he did some of those yesterday. He traveled once and had a few passes go through his hands ala Braylon Edwards. I hope he's getting those out of his system. Humpty and Cventinovich are imo the real stars and the heard of this team. When we're winning by 20 or loosing by 20, they always deliver and overachieve. Even afyer a bad loss, i still was very impressed with their performance. I do not think that the sky is falling. I know that we may loose all the ooc games and even have a poor MAC regular season and still win the MAC championship and go dancing in March, but is that a good plan? are we not better than this?

Is it me or is that UVA guy sitting on his "terrace" in Manhattan the most obnoxious freak you ever seen on TV?

This loss is absolutely to be blamed on leadership. The team was not prepared to play and the players seemed to think that since they are the Mac champs/8th midmajor/<insert any other accolades here> they didn't even have to worry about working hard to earn the win.We have two seniors on this team. Chris McKnight is acting as if he is a role player whose job is to grab 4-5 rebounds and score occasionally. Jimmy Conyers... let's not go there.Our deffense is usually the source of our pride, what happened? we didn't give 48 points in one half to Gonzaga, not even Pitt...How on earth did we give AP 48 points in the second half? And finally, when we desperately needed a couple of points, we miss 4 free throws and our "supposedly" best offensive player airlballs a layup Our seniors do not seem to provide the needed leadership and BMac is not our "go to" guy, someone else must step up and take that role.

How about the NIU player who gave the finger to the rowdies? I wish someone could ask his coach what he thinks about that after the game.

I totall agree. It is totally unheartening to see the # 1 team in the nation playing in a high school soccer stadium where 500-600 fans are sitting on the bleachers and twice than number standing on the grass. Yesterday, the game went on for around 2 hours and some 50-60 year olders in front of me were complaining that they paid $10 each and they had to stand for the whole two hours in a place where they didn't even have a good viewing angle of the field. How would a casual fan feel about a stadium with no restrooms and with horrible concession stands and no where to sit?On the other side, a $61.2 Million stadium, some $15 million practice facility, a payroll of around a $1 million/year for what? total embarrassmnet on the field. I couldn't stand being in the stadium after the first half. It was totally shameful. I know most of you won't like this but part of me feels that we would have been better without a D1-A football program.

I second the comments about Swiech and also i feel that the "well deserved" Zeke attention made us overlook another newcomer in Sullivan.Alex showed me a lot of great positive things. If it wasn't for Zeke's debut, i know he hould have received a lot more attention but oh well.

Assume you are in Wistrscill's shoes. If you have an extra $20Millions to spend over then next years, would you give a huge contract to a new football coach and his assistants? or would you upgrade the soccer field and increase its seating capacity? or would you build a new arena?How much money was invested in football over the last 5 years? isn't time to give some attention to other sports?

I hear you quick. My guess is that Dambrot will not be filing for a Darryl Robert 5th year. That's only a personnal guess though.

That's great news. With Zeke, Dambrot showed that he can land "a" great recruit. With Dakotah, he is proving that Zeke wasn't "a" fluke and that it is becoming the norm for Akron to recruit at this level.I am starting to feel bad for the rest of the mac though. Will we have any competition in 2 years from today?

My better half and myself are going to be in Daytonna Friday to saturday followed by a couple of days in Orlando. My question is this: shall we get tickets from the JAR or just walk in and ask for tickets behind the Akron bench?

What does Elton have against Zeke?Am i the only one who finds it odd to totally ignore the addition of the most touted recruit in the history of the conference?

The zips will play 3 games in 3 days between 19-21 November in Daytona Beach. Other than the Mac tournament, you never get to see the good guys play that frequently. Anybody planning to be there? I found non-stop flights from Detroit airport to Orlando (1 hour drive to daytonna) for around $200.

The what?Come on gpuno, get with the flow. It would behoove you to check them out at http://kenpom.com/rate.php and you will see they currently have Akron tied for the number 1 ranking.Man that season opening game between Akron and Austin Peay is the game of the year. Both teams are ranked #1 according to pomeroy

So what teams represent Akron in the NBA and the NFL?I totally agree with not associating cities and not rooting for another college in Columbus. But when it comes to pro sports, i think it is natural for people in NEO to root for cleveland teams.

With the Browns sucking soo bad, i was impatiently waiting the cavs who were supposed to tear things apart. The Cavs started 0-2 With the zips football sucking equally as bad as the Browns, i am scared to expect zips basketball to tear things apart anymore. It is not a theory or anything, but just saying.

Quoting Rachel Green from friends: "What a load of crap!"I remember after the Mac championship in 2005 JD was waiting for the first offer to move on but, unfortunately, no school was stupid enough to offer him.

Don't believe the hype. We did not crumble with adversity, we are bad, adversity or not.

I have the zips zone subscription and it says that live video will be provided for the game but i still am not getting anything. Any zips zoners having better luck?

Quote from Elton's article:"Say what you want about the talent of MAC centers he will face. But Miami's 6-8, 240-pound Adam Fletcher, Buffalo's 6-8, 245-pound Max Boudreau, Bowling Green's 6-10, 270-pound Otis Polk, Ohio U.'s 6-10, 265-pound Ken Van Kempen and Can't State's 6-10, 260-pound Brandon Parks will all be more than eager to give the rookie a proper physical initiation. Twice, each. And that's just the MAC's East Division. "You would think that those "centers" of the mac destroyed us last year! Were they not handled by another Freshman in Cventinovic? or did Can't win the mac last year?