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No more than 12 seats per row. Sideline sections run from basket support-to-basket support, not farther into the corners. Maybe 30 rows per side. Seats end 3-6 feet above floor level. Relatively shallow bowl, with entrances from concourse about 2/3 the way up. Concourse should be street level. Angled corner sections, with tunnels under scoreboards and seats above. Level of seats in corners continues across ends; this will give 15-20 rows on everything but the sides. Only "seats" below concourse level on ends are bleachers for students, band, etc. Mezzanine with no more than 8 rows, overhanging the 1/3 of sides that are above concourse and both ends. Club/lounge along the back/top of one side. Minimal press row; move them upstairs, perhaps built into the bottom of the mezzanine on one side. Have fun.

Interior, exterior, or either?

That particular page/listing uses the AP rankings. That's also used by almost all others as well.

My earlier point is that "clear view" is not the same as a good perspective. Calling official (lead) is essentially even with play as it is happening. He's looking across the floor and up ... while running. (I watched twice but could not confirm that he was watching Zeke the entire way. He should have been focusing, in whole or part, on the defender until about the top of the key, when it became clear that no defensive play was going to be made. That point is not as important, however.) The video is from a fixed position at an elevated angle: clear view AND good perspective. Zeke acquired possession halfway between NDSU's 3-point arc and half-court line. I counted only 3 dribbles to get from there to a couple feet inside his own foul line, which is where he jumped. This is why, IMO, the amount of time his hands were on the rim was not excessive, which is how this rule is to be interpreted. (If anyone has access to a college size floor, see how far you can get with 3 dribbles, even with a running start.)

This is my only point of disagreement. The worst place to see the whole play is floor level, looking up. (Actually, coaches have the worst vantage point, but they never realize it .) I wish fans understood how different the game looks when you're on the floor, without the advantage of a downward angle perspective. If the lead did make the call, he had run with the play from the instant that the ball was stolen and, presumably, was officiating the defender (at least that's what's supposed to occur). When he saw that the defender was not going to make a play on the ball or on Zeke, his attention immediately had to switch to Zele. Rather than the 3-4 seconds that fans watched Zeke matriculate down the floor (hat tip Hank Stram), the lead official had a second to focus on part of the jump and the throw down. In that same second, he also had to determine whether the defender now was under Zeke. He didn't have the advantage of perspective that the fans or TV audience had, so it would be very difficult to gauge whether Zeke had hit "terminal velocity." It's a very tough position to be in. If he doesn't call it and an evaluator later deems it to have been excessive, he's going to get dinged.

Don't read too much into number of games with NDSU. Games are not assigned by schools. Probably a more relevant factor is that he works a lot in the Summit and MAC, where the kind of play in question happens once in a blue moon. You're not expecting it and, when it happens, it looks wrong.

This makes it even worse, then. Lead official should be looking essentially eye level downward. The mental picture we're given is that lead wears a baseball cap like Mike Fischlin, for you old Tribe fans, so that anything from the net upward is not in field of view. This is why basket interference, goaltending, ball over backboard, and shot clock violations are called by center or trail. Lead would not have as good of a sense of momentum, speed, height of jump, defender's position, etc. it's not that he's prohibited from making the call; it's just not in his area of primary responsibility.

@DiG - The material you cite appears to be an interpretation or expansion. I know for sure that it's not the rule itself. The "lift his ... body or legs" is the chinning up I referred to above. The "for emphasis" is hanging on longer than necessary under the particular circumstances of a given play. The key to interpreting/applying the rule is understanding that "excessive" is a matter of degree that depends on the particular situation. See my previous post where grasping the rim for the same amount of time is a technical foul in one situation but not another.

The Zeke dunk was not a technical foul ... not at the collegiate level, not even the high school level. He did not chin up, and he did not hang longer than it took his legs to get underneath him. It was a split second call that I guarantee the calling official wished he had back when he saw the replay (which he did because of the way that college games are assigned and reviewed). I didn't notice which official (trail, center or lead) made the call, but so much of officiating is position. The calling official didn't have the benefit of the angle available on the TV or UA video feeds. It looked weird at the time because so much of Zeke's body was at rim/backboard level. Extremely long legs swung out 4-5 feet and then back the same distance. That's so uncommon that it looked "wrong" at the time, particularly at floor level. (BTW, note that the same amount of time grasping the rim on a "regular" dunk would justify a technical foul call. That's a different set of circumstances from a runaway freight train who had launched himself toward the rim at full speed. Officials always need to take surrounding circumstances into consideration.)

Which is fine. I realized at the outset that I probably was in the minorty. His quirks wouldn't bother me so much if he were the color commentator but, as the play-by-play guy, they are front and center every game. (I'm not even going to start on the quality, or lack thereof, of Dunn's "analysis.")

Agreed about SLU, and SMC looks good tonight against Creighton. (Put Dellavedova in a Zips uniform, and you'd be looking at a top 25, if not top 20, team.) Colo. St. lost at home, albeit to a Top 20 team. Akron will stay about where they are, with the next two road games being the key to moving up.

Note that the idea is to think bigger/better, not laterally.

Unfortunately, the misses have gotten in his head at this point. He has no fear in taking the same shot in the flow of the offense, but he has the yips when everyone is lined up along the lane lines. A drastic adjustment (ball flip, anyone?) is needed.

I realize that I will be in the minority on this, at least initially, but I want to throw it out there for consideration and discussion. Other than being a local icon merely for having been around forever, why does Steve French keep the radio play-by-play slot? He's not particularly good at painting a picture of the action, and he spends far too much time (1) being a fan and (2) complaining about the officiating when, at least as often as not, he's wrong. A school with Akron's recent track record and ambitions shouldn't settle for what they have just because he's familiar.

Worked late tonight, so I listened to 1350 (more on that later) until I got home, where my wife was nice enough to have left the satellite box on ESPN2 and I was able to backtrack an hour and see much of what I had heard on the radio. Zeke wasn't protecting himself from landing on anyone because the defender wasn't under him. That said, it still was an unnecessary call. Those of us who have officiated guys like Koufas, Frease, Mills, etc., in the Federal League learned quickly to swallow the whistle when really big guys are on a beeline for the hoop. When they're heading straight at the basket, they will hit their heads on the bottom of the backboard if they don't use the rim to stop themselves. The only time it becomes a T is if they hang there for longer than it takes their legs to swing back under them or if they "chin up."

It was a cancellation proceeding, not a lawsuit. tOSU wanted to be able to continue sell goods marked "OHIO" even though OU had a federal registration for that mark. It ended up being decided in OU's favor, and tOSU ceased offering those types of goods.

St. Louis had only 8 turnovers against Havoc and made life miserable for VCU all night. Eight straight wins, including two over top 25 teams. Now, they're on top of the A10. SLU could be a Sweet 16 team this year. Biggest difference between being on top of the A10 and on top of the MAC, from a quote by SLU's Dwayne Evans: "You play a big game and you [have] two days to get ready for another huge game." How many MAC games would you describe as huge? Four or five each year?

My last post ended with a wink because I know how close to the fence we both are. Falling on one side or the other might depend on which way the wind is blowing at the time. If Akron takes care of business Friday and if they can overcome history and win at OU, I still think an at large bid is a possibility ... Maybe a play-in 14 seed like Iona last year. I just think that would take a lot of dominoes to line up just perfectly. That tends to happen about every 4-5 years, so odds are against us. Win the tournament and get a 12 seed (where upsets are more common)!

Welcome to my side of the fence.

You read correctly B&G. I'm also not saying the team isn't worthy of a bid. It is. I never can remember the exact number, but there are ~350 schools playing D-1 hoops, of which maybe 75-100 are worthy of consideration (setting aside the conference champs of the very lowly ranked conferences). Of those worthy of considertion, in any given year, half to two thirds are worthy of a bid. This year appears to be one where 55-60 have a legitimate argument for getting a bid. Look at Massey's collection of rankings and see how many teams have one ranking in the 20s or 30s and another in the 50s or 60s. Heck, the Zips fall in that category, with rankings from 26-63. While we like to discount the ones with the Zips in the 56-63 range, other schools point to those rankings as indicative of their worthiness. In years like this one, there will be a handful of worthy teams left on the outside looking in. Vitale will spend 5 minutes after the selection show, saying that the little guy got robbed again. That will occur either immediately before or after some spokesman for the committee talking about things like "body of work" and "quality wins." The committee has reasons to give this team a bid, and it has reasons to withhold a bid. Lack of quality road wins is a big negative ... huge, in fact. League play gives Akron only one opportunity for a decent road win, and that's at a venue that has been a house of horrors for most of the past decade. Compare that to an ACC or Big Ten middle of the pack team, which gets half a dozen or more such opportunities in league play alone.

The 2012-13 edition of the OU hoops squad hardly can be said to be the same as the 2011-12 Version. Same faces, same jerseys, different team. Maybe they'll catch fire in the last month (like last year, btw) but, right now, they are not the same team. Indiana also returned essentially its whole team from 2011-12, but I'd rather play that version than the present one. Teams change.

I'm compiling and filtering some data that exemplifies how far the league has slipped in the past 15 years. Can't say it's conclusive, but it's persuasive (to my eye, at least). Of course, every so often, a league outside the top 10 gets a second bid. Iona out of the MAAC received a 14 seed (play in game) last year after going 26-7, including a 2-1 record in Puerto Rico and wins over Richmond, St. Joe's, and Nevada. They lost in the MAAC semis. Iona was the first such school since 2008, however. That year, South Alabama of the Sun Belt received an at large bid (10 seed) with a 26-6 record, including 16-2 in conference and a 13 game winning streak that included wins over Southern Mississippi and Mississippi State. If those two teams were able to get in, there's hope. However, for every 2012 Gael or 2008 Jaguar, there are many more disappointed teams out there. There's hope for an at large bid, but that's all it is.

Apples, oranges, and all that. I'm hoping that Forsythe makes up in rebounding what he can't match in shot blocking. I hoping that this is the type of stat line we see in a couple years: 12 points, 9 rebounds, 2 blocks, 2 assists. If so, we'll all be continuing the debate about whether 45 is too low of a ranking for the Zips.

Doesn't all the variance noted in these polls say something to the inquisitive reader? Specifically, one can make statistics say whatever one wants them to say. I think a decent case can be made for Akron at anywhere between 20 and 60. I continue to believe that 45-50 is the right landing spot, at least presently. Akron has only one realistic shot at the tournament, and that is to win the MAC tournament. The MAC has not received two invitations in over a decade, and this will not be the year to break the streak. Critics have a perfect retort to any complaint about being slighted: if the team is bid-worthy, there's no excuse for not being able to win the conference tournament. Of the teams in Akron's general ratings vicinity, could Oklahoma, Illinois, or UCLA run the table against MAC schools? Conversely, could Akron beat the teams those teams have beaten?

In the past 15 years, the only MAC team to be seeded higher than #11 was the 2001-02 Can't team, and they were a #10. That team was more highly regarded by the polls that take into account victory margin than this year's Zips. Call me a pessimist, but I still see #13 being more likely than a #12. I do NOT see a #11 in the cards.