Districtballer

I just saw this and wanted to pay my respects. I'm a VCU fan who used to be on here more often when VCU and Akron were paired in Bracketbusters several years ago. I and GoZips butted heads quite a bit to start, but it was always evident he was highly passionate about the Zips. To hear of his passing is very saddening. I pray for peace that passes understanding to rest with his loved ones. He was clearly a great fan of this program and fiercely rooted for it. My condolences to his family and to all of Zips Nation.

Condolences to the Peters family and all of ZipsNation who mourn his passing. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

FWIW, VCU has a home-and-home with UVA (who was a 1-seed last year) and they will be coming to our place this year. We also start a home-and-home with Cincinnati this year, they'll be coming to our place next year. Toledo will be coming to the Siegel Center as part of a preseason tourney, and Northern Iowa is being bought to come to our place this year as well. It takes success on a national scale over a number of years to build that, but it can definitely come. It's usually the last thing to come around though. The perception that you aren't a bad loss but rather a great opportunity is a tough mountain to climb.

http://espn.go.com/blog/espnevents/post/_/...oach-to-success

Sorry folks, no revenge for the Zips tonight. 1-0 VCU. Giffard is a great credit to Akron though, what he's doing at VCU is nothing short of extraordinary. Hopefully the Rams can build a program similar to what Caleb Porter did at Akron. You guys are a model for a lot of programs in the soccer world and VCU is no exception.

That's not Tree's group. There is another trip going on with a different group to Brussels and Amsterdam. Our guys went to Munich and Prague.

Unfortunately, it's not that kind of operation. No box scores.

Here's Tree, VCU's Rob Brandenberg, and St. Francis forward Earl Brown at the Prague Castle. They're currently 2-0 and beat the last team by a 113-56 score.

It looks like the guys are having fun in Munich!

Hudson is from Richmond, VA, he's not an Akron local.

https://twitter.com/Corey_Rivals513 Congratulations.

Indeed. It should be a great opportunity.

I'm betting Coach Dambrot got the referral from Shaka. Bill Brown coached Shaka in college and we've had players go with him to Europe with this organization before and saw tangible benefits from it. Since Shaka and Dambrot are close friends, I have no doubt he shared this opportunity with him. FWIW, Darius Theus averaged 3.0 ppg and 2.1 apg his sophomore season and after taking this trip averaged 8.5 ppg and 4.7 apg his junior season. Our other player Troy Daniels averaged 2.0 ppg and and 0.8 rpg as a soph and jumped to 10.0 ppg and 3.3 rpg after this trip in 2011. Tree and Reggie are already well-established players, but this trip should still help them a lot. If anything it's a great opportunity to use what they've learned/picked up this off season in real live game situations.

Hey Zips fans, 2 of our players are participating on this team and I couldn't help but notice Tree and Reggie are also going to be on the squad. If this has already been mentioned on your boards I apologize for the redundancy. Upon cursory glance, I see no mention of it. Tree, Reggie, and eight other student-athletes from Division I and II programs are taking part in a nine-day exhibition tour of Germany and the Czech Republic with a team from Global Sports Academy. The tour is set for Aug. 11-19. The squad will be coached by California (Pa.) University Head Coach Bill Brown. Some of you may know him as Steve Sweich transferred to Cal U. Bill Brown was also Shaka Smart's college coach and one of his first mentors. He'll lead the team in 5 games against European competition. Joining Tree and Reggie will be Joseph Lococo (Shippensburg), Earl Brown (St. Francis), Carson Desrosiers (Providence), William Morgan (Fairmount State), Chris Williams (California (Pa.) University), Fortune Tynell (California (Pa.) University), Rob Brandenberg (VCU), and Jarred Guest (VCU). 2 of our guys took part in this in the summer of 2011 and it resulted in big jumps for both of them in their junior seasons. You can follow updates provided by Global Sports Academy on Twitter (@GlobalSports_US) and Facebook (Global Sports Academy).

That would do it too. The A-10 is tough to climb the ranks in. They'll be decent soon enough though. Ferry's already pulling in some pretty good recruits with impressive offers. I'm glad Coach D stayed with Akron. It's great to see loyalty from guys like him.

The A-10 keeps all the units earned by those schools in the A-10 so in fact all the schools stand to earn quite a bit more now, especially from Temple and X's shares which are sizeable to the tune of over 40 million dollars over the next 6 years. Schools earn NCAA shares for the conferences, and when they leave those units stay with the conference. Duquesne has a pretty good coach in Ferry, they have a massive rebuild job to do, but they'll be respectable in the next couple of years.

I'm fairly certain if Coach Dambrot had the same choice he'd make the same decision. We're both very lucky to have the guys we have.

Actually no, I just got a PM from one of your moderators saying to ignore some of 'your more obnoxious fans who have no idea what class is'. GoZips, I remember you well from your earliest days of beating your chest about Akron on our boards, your shtick is played out. Sorry.

I guess you didn't see how awful we are when have to play half court offense and get points in those sets when we can't get in transition. Michigan forced us to do that all game long because we couldn't turn them over. If we packed it in and shut it down that is exactly what would have happened. It happened to us all of last year in the conference tournament and the NCAAs. There's a reason we go all out when we can, because we're no good when we're not aggressive. We recruit to play a certain way. If we can't play that way, we're very ineffective. Today underlines that reality even more.

Sorry your angered. I hope it will fade with time and you get to appreciate the great season you had. I agree on the margin, I posted the same thing. It was a very bad matchup for you guys without Abreu much like Michigan was a very bad matchup with VCU. They average the least turnovers in Division I. VCU's whole system is predicated on forcing them. Sometimes it's not about who's better. It's about my strengths and weaknesses versus your strengths and weaknesses. It's one thing to be mad at a result, it's another to make broad generalizations based on them.

They're still best friends. I totally understand. I just think it's amusing that we just got blown out and I'm taking it much better than some folks here a couple of days after their team received a similar beatdown. Different strokes for different folks. I'll still be wishing Akron the best, and those that hate VCU and Shaka can get in line. You're never going to please everyone.

Good luck Zips. Those of you who are so scarred and angered by this weekend, I hope you can talk to Coach D and have him talk you off the ledge. Some of you are taking this much, much harder and more bitterly than he is. You'd think you guys were the ones who just got blown out an hour ago.

I'm sure Shaka and Dambrot are just torn up about that. Great season Zips. Good luck to you guys going forward.

Since some of you guys are so bitter about it... I have no problem with what happened. Great teams exploit matchups. Michigan is #1 in the country at keeping the ball. This was the worst matchup in the field for VCU. Did they feel sorry for us? Nope. I don't want them to. They killed us and played like the great team they are. This is how you get better. I assure you Coach Dambrot is not as butthurt as some of the posters on here.

We were in foul trouble. You can't press when you're trying to protect your players. I have no problem with what happened today. Michigan beat us and exploited matchups just like we did to Akron. That's what great teams do. Tough to watch, but they played great and deserved to kill us. We didn't match them. This is big boy basketball folks. That's how it goes.