ZachTheZip

The first hearing is over. Unfortunately, the punishment will not be decided until long after we play them. Also of note is the fact that OSU's previous self-imposed punishment wasn't enough, by the admission of OSU's own AD. Sounds like a last-minute act of desperation in hopes of avoiding a proper punishment:

Here's an incoming post from 2000: Cincinnati is Ohio State's market. I don't think any BE representative could be duped into thinking people in Cincinnati care about the Cats, or would suddenly go gaga for Cats football just because Rutgers or West Virginia came to town. Of course, now we know that OSU's base has significantly weakened by adding a new BCS presence to SW Ohio. You stick a BCS tag on Akron and the people of Cleveland will start following us at first as they have a habit of only caring about the "big boys" of college football. You'll see an instant attendance boost. Get to a few bowl games and they'll even start wearing Zips gear. It took a while for it to happen in Cinci, but it seems to have paid off pretty well for the BE to take the worst football program in college football at the time.

It would be so much fun to hire another coach and start all over again after two years, so that coach can bring in his new players and new system and struggle through his first two years. A good coach wouldn't struggle in his first two years because he would find a way to maximize success with the players that he has on the current roster. A coach that relies on having a very specific type of player (one that never seems to be on the roster he inherits) in order to be successful isn't a good coach, he's just an administrator of a system. We hired the second kind of coach. Next time let's hire someone who is comfortable devising schemes that fit the players he has to work with at least until he can recruit players who fit his style better, and we won't have to sit through years of learning on the job like we are doing now.

Here we go again. Texas A&M has reportedly just been accepted to the SEC. The SEC will be looking for wither one or three more teams to balance things out. Things will filter down to the MAC level. I hope that president Proenza is on the phone with the presidents of C-USA.

ESPN article on how a coach must succed by his second year. If the turnaround doesn't happen NOW, we simply can't afford to keep Ianello beyond his third year.

Moved the line up to 930 to be eligible for post-season in any sport. Up from 900. 12 of the 68 teams in the men's basketball NCAA tournament would have been ineligible, including some very big names. In football for bowls it's probably even worse. Edit: We are now ineligible for a bowl game, even if Ianello managed to turn things around. Our APR is the only one in the MAC below the new cutoff, thanks to the coach running dozens of players off the team.

GoZips.com write-up

This guy was in attendance. A timeline of the game: UAkron up 13-5 on Sheridan College. 12:30 to go in the 1st half. #akronmbb @ktg_knowthegame: @elitehoops_qc the Zips are in town? Wow? NCAA invading the north. I'm loving the fact Cdn schools are taking on the challenge. @ktg_knowthegame yessir! They're fun to watch. Chauncey Gilliam throws his 2nd -alley down HARD. Zips up 32-13 over Sheridan. #akronmbb 55-24 Akron up on Sheridan at the half. #akronmbb @eminister: @elitehoops_qc Thanks for the Akron updates. Do you have a second half score, updates? How's the Akron 7-foot center playing? @eminister 75-37. Zeke is playing well. Blocking shots and finishing. They have no answer for him. 112-54 Zips up with 55sec left. #akronmbb Akron wins game 1 of their CAN tour. 112-59 @voodoo612: @elitehoops_qc Can we get some sort of numbers? Top 4 scorers? @voodoo612 Gilliam, Harney, Justice were top scorers. Don't have exact #s guys sorry! But I'm sure they'll be on the site soon.

New offer: DE Neal Page

Just FYI, the tallest player on Sheridan's squad is 6'5 and they do not offer athletic scholarships in the CIS. I wouldn't take too much from the score, the Zips should roll in all of these games. Carleton is one of the premier Canadian programs however and should put up a good fight. They are about D2 level in talent as they get a number of D1 transfers who don't pan out in the States. Not a bad test at all, but a lot of these programs are scrubs compared to Division 1 players. Sheridan has forwards in the 6'2-6'4 range which is more along the lines of bad high schools in the states, but is quite the norm north of the border. I'd like to hear more about how the players picked up the coaches schemes, team chemistry, and fluidity on the court. Things like how the bench played, which groups of players played well together, and who started are good things to take from these games. As any D1 coach will tell you, these trips are much more about the practices than the games, which have little benefit in and of themselves. http://www.scgenerals.com/mbball/roster.asp It's actually 6'8, with numerous 6'7 players. No it's not. You're not playing that Sheridan. That's a JUCO in Wyoming. You're playing this Sheridan: http://www.sheridanbruins.com/pages/pop.php?name=mb Thanks. I was just about to point that out. Today was more of a chemistry-building session. Our expected starters started, but I bet they didn't stay in too long. I want to see stats: who shots threes, who was pulling down offensive rebounds, things like that.

I don't know who we will be playing, but I hope we schedule Carleton, Saskatchewan, and Dalhousie or teams of their caliber. I fear we will instead schedule teams like Chabot, Ohlone, and Siskiyous. Regardless, the extra practice time should be beneficial. Well, the schedule turns out to have a little of both with a tendency towards the weak side. The last game against Carleton could be interesting. The first 4 against Sheridan, Quebec, McGill and the Champlain hasbeens should be name the score outings for the Zips. I'm interested in the game against Carleton. They have won seven of the last nine CIS (the Canadian NCAA) national championships. They had an 87-game winning streak going from 2003-2006. How we do against them will tell us a lot about our team. The four games preceding this one are pretty much just to figure out a basic depth chart. It would appear the Carleton Ravens lost to LaSalle but beat Illinois State recently. I don't know if I'm impressed with 7 of the last 9 CIS. My son's T-ball team was pretty strong, too, but we couldn't have held a candle against the little leaguers. Quoth the Ravens: "Never Scored"... Watch how they do against UCF later today. That will provide us with a good way to compare how we stack up against a good mid-major (finished with an RPI of 69 last season).

Starters were McClanahan, Marshall, Abreu, Diggs, Harney.

I don't know who we will be playing, but I hope we schedule Carleton, Saskatchewan, and Dalhousie or teams of their caliber. I fear we will instead schedule teams like Chabot, Ohlone, and Siskiyous. Regardless, the extra practice time should be beneficial. Well, the schedule turns out to have a little of both with a tendency towards the weak side. The last game against Carleton could be interesting. The first 4 against Sheridan, Quebec, McGill and the Champlain hasbeens should be name the score outings for the Zips. I'm interested in the game against Carleton. They have won seven of the last nine CIS (the Canadian NCAA) national championships. They had an 87-game winning streak going from 2003-2006. How we do against them will tell us a lot about our team. The four games preceding this one are pretty much just to figure out a basic depth chart.

Opponent preview: Akron This guy is actually much more optimistic about the Zips' future than any of the national publications.

From all of Zach's reports I assumed Icoach was disliked and not respected by the players. It looks as if there is at least one player who likes and/or respects ICoach. A ray of hope?? This will be an interesting year for sure. Where did you read in the article something that said that a player likes or respects the coach?

If you look at Pomeroy's stat page for the Zips, You'll immediately see that our two biggest weaknesses were offensive rebounding and Free Throw Rate (the amount of FTs attempted compared to regular FG attempts), both of which indicate that we were weak taking it to the basket. Our biggest strengths were turnover percentage and three-point defense. How does all that play into who we return, who we lost, and the strengths/weaknesses of the newcomers?

ABJ Article on Dambrot's expectations for the Canada trip. Zeke, McClanahan, Abreu, and Q will be the nucleus of the starters, although lineups might change to be able to evaluate certain players.

It's a practice. If you go in expecting a scrimmage you'll be disappointed. They will have some of the Zipfest stuff up in the stadium for the kids. It's the closest we'll get to a public scrimmage event.

It's great that he has a plan and that he believes in it. The players have bought in after rebelling through the beginning two thirds of last season. He should be happy about that. I just think that his plan won't amount to anything more than years of misery for Zips fans. Players can buy in, assistants can run their units exactly how he tells them to, everything can go exactly how he wants off the field, but his inability to effectively call plays and manage gameday personnel will prevent him from winning more than three games in any given season. Trying to get us to believe in his flawed plan is the same trick he pulled to get hired by TW and to brainwash the players that didn't see through it, but it won't work on the smart fans.

If you'd rather be realistic, why don't you start by forming some realistic opinions about the basketball team.

Exactly. Top-100 is a pretty low goal. "Let's shoot to be barely as good as our worst season in the past seven years" is a terrible mindset. Skip, you're really selling the team short if you think that while we get a top-100 and 20 wins every single year under KD, now we would be lucky to reach those milestones. Have you been watching Buffalo and mistaking them for the Zips?

If Steiner is indeed gone, I'm curious who will do the long-snapping. I enjoyed watching him snap the ball and hustle downfield to make a play. I made a mistake there. Steiner is still on the roster. Still, I don't know how much I trust the online roster anyway. It's probably best to wait until the open practice next saturday and see for ourselves who is there and who isn't.

New offers: OG Willie Henry ATH Kentrell Richard C John Tuuta DE Kyle Ready DE Stephon Hall OG Drake Miller commits to Ball State. LB Lester Liston Jr commits to Cincinnati. WR Roger Lewis commits to Ohio State.

Gaffney's Day 5 recap. Some info from the Info, including a few quotes from Wagner.

I'll bet you that McAdams plays a different position for the Zips next season. Just a hunch.