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Well written, with the writer clearly having some understanding of the game and doing a good job of explaining the key elements of both presses. Trapping and pressing are all about forcing the dribbler to turn and having a second defender in the way of where he wants to go. If the dribbler isn't turned, the whole thing falls apart and results in a good scoring opportunity for the offense. Current Zips personnel don't seem like a good fit for Havoc.

No, you're correct. Cincy is not an A10 member.

I don't think Christian is a perfect fit for the players he inherited and vice versa. Judge him in a couple years. Groce's inherited a situation that wasn't as bad at is might have appeared at first glance. Illinois had good recruiting classes in 2010 and 2011, and the 2011-12 team was nice enough to lower expectations before he arrived. The Illini will be tough the next couple of years (and beyond if Groce recruits Chicago the way that's expected).

Addition of Nyles Evans makes the next two years all the more crowded, no?

Props to the writer for some good legwork. Throw out the high and low poll numbers, and one is left with rankings of 41, 44, 45, 50, 54, 56, 56 and 56. From what I've seen so far, that range seems about right to me.

The Elton Alexander article linked above includes the following: The perception is the selection process ... is a randomly moving target designed to get name brands in and keep off-brands out. In reality, it's more of a tightly orbiting target, still moving, yet easy to see and easy to hit if a team has enough arrows. Arrows would be defined as quality wins; a quality schedule, particularly in the non-conference; success on the road; success against Top 50 and Top 100 teams; winning streaks; average RPI of a team's wins; average RPI of a teams losses and much more. Apply the list of known "arrows" to Akron: Quality wins at home - MTSU, OU (perhaps NDSU in the BB) Quality wins on road - None yet (perhaps OU) Quality schedule - SoS is relatively weak, due in large part to the conference Road success - Marginal, other than in-conference Success against Top 50 - 1 win (if MTSU stays about where it is) Success against Top 100 - probably 2 to 4 wins, depending on how things shake out Win streaks - Yes! (15 and counting) Avg. RPI of wins and losses - TBD Using EA's terminology, the quiver doesn't have a multitude of arrows. That said, I still like the chances of this team to win a game or two in the tournament ... if they get in.

The Zips are making slight headway, while the rest of the league is sliding. Does that count as becoming dominant? The 2006-07 Zips had a final Sagarin ranking of 81.33, best in the MAC. (I like ratings like Sagarin because they take into account victory margin.) The final rankings slid for the following 2-3 seasons, then started a generally upward trend with Zeke's arrival. This year's team has ranking of 81.18, which hopefully will go up some after the team gets out of the early February doldrums. In other words, Akron is back to where it was when it had its best team in a very long time. Overall, however, the league has been on a generally downward trend. The last MAC team to have a final Sagarin rating of at least 82 (that I could find) was the 2003-04 WMU team. The last MAC team to have a final Sagarin rating of at least 85 was the 2001-02 Can't State squad, which finished just above 87. (An 85 rating this year, btw, would put you just inside the top 30, while an 87 would would put you in the top 20.)

+1, and the general weakness of the conference means that the end result for the 2012-13 Zips likely would be the same as it was for the 2011-12 Dragons.

Because a comparison of this year's Zips team with the 2011-12 Drexel Dragons took root on another board, let's look at the same portion of the Top 25 poll from Week 18 of the 2011-12 season: Others receiving votes: Saint Mary's 88, Louisville 84, Drexel 83, New Mexico 64, Virginia 34, Memphis 13, Virginia Commonwealth 6, Vanderbilt 6, Cincinnati 5, Long Beach State 3, Kansas State 2, Harvard 1, Saint Louis 1 If 2011-12 Drexel got that much media respect and no bid, does that predict anything meaningful about this year's Zips? Probably not -- to be true, media polls would have to be meaningful, which they aren't. (Didn't Louisville play in last year's Final Four?) I raise the point because stats and anecdotal facts can be made to say anything one wants them to say. (As a whole, they give some sense of the zeitgeist, but none individually means anything.) Getting votes in the AP Top 25 is great; I'd certainly rather get them than not. It's just that, at the end of the day, they won't mean much.

There is not much talk here because football drives this particular train; viz. the Big East split between the Catholic basketball only schools and the mish mash of what's left in that conference. As a hoops fan, I'd love to see A10 teams coming here to play, but the football "engine" won't let that happen. For any conference that plays FBS football, Akron is not, and will not be for some time, particularly attractive. If the improvement occurs, it will be after this most recent round of realignment.

This is correct, as far as it goes, and nothing on the remaining schedule wii do much to move that #53 much higher. Coach KD was smart to push for a road BB game but, alas, it didn't happen. The "as far as it goes" qualifier was added because the committee explains in excruciating detail each year that RPI is not the sole factor. They also look at factors such as who you beat, who beat you, when you won, and where you won/lost. Zero wins against top 50 teams and a 190-200 SoS (thank you MAC) are nigh unto automatic disqualifiers. I don't like it, but it is what it is.

Listen to Cap'n, because he's right on this one. Winning out in the manner as occurred with CMU and Miami but losing in the tournament (finals or otherwise) will do no more than bump the ratings from around #50 to around #40. Given the middling SoS and lack of quality OOC road wins, that won't be enough to sway the committee off some 4th or 5th place team from a power conference or even a 3rd or 4th place team from a better conference. The streak is nice but irrelevant in the big picture. Who you beat and where you beat them is more important than how many bad teams you've beaten. The fault doesn't lie with Akron or the committee. The league just doesn't have enough good teams in it to provide quality wins.

The MAC is too weak this year to merit two teams, even if one other than the conference champ has an 80%+ winning percentage. The conference has dropped 4-6 spots in comparative rankings since 2002 and, unfortunately, is now about on par with the OVC. I'm not happy about it, but I also don't want to be unrealistic. Focus on being ready for the Q. BTW, is anyone else wishing that the MAC would go back to a pure tournament format where Akron's deeper bench was a real advantage by the time Saturday night came around?

Anthony might end up being an old school PG type, scoring only occasionally and otherwise dishing. My concern is his frame, which just doesn't appear to be D1 ready. If he doesn't fill out over the summer, his chance to play more than 10-15 min per game don't look great. Deji can guard an opposing PG, as long as someone else is able to dish and distribute. Evans is not a classic PG. He's a scorer who happens to be PG size. He might be able to defend an opposing PG better than Rico, however. I disagree about ability to defend on ball. It's more attitude and desire than ability. All the talking heads marvel about Aaron Craft's ability to defend. In large part, they're right, and he's not the most athletically gifted player in the world. If a player starts to get juiced as much by frustrating his opponent as he does by scoring, his defensive ability will miraculously improve. Zips need better guard play down the stretch, and they will need even better guard play next year when the fuzzy blanket wearing 44 is taken away from them.

+1

Agreed. Even if Diggs wasn't a pure point guard, wouldn't you feel better if he were playing those 5-10 min/game versus Betancourt (who really could've benefited from a red shirt season)?

I'm with you on the TCU-KU upset. That was monumental and proves the point that a cellar dweller can occasionally jump up to bite a league leader. Not so much on Illinois-Indiana. If the 12-team Big 10 gets 8 bids this year, the last one likely will go to Illinois. Illinois and Akron have essentially equal Sagarin rankings, so their victory over Indiana definitely is an upset. Nevertheless, it's not as monumental as KU's absolute collapse against a team that's somewhere between Miami and Buffalo (even after beating KU).

I think "just have to love" translates roughly to "take with a grain of salt." It has MTSU and Stephen F. Austin too high and NC State and Marquette too low. Based on 2+ months worth of games, I'd put the Zips in the 45-55 range, albeit trending upward. That's not a bad neighborhood -- in with the likes of UCLA, Stanford, Virginia, Maryland, Illinois and Alabama. Taking another step up puts them in some rarified air.

Abreu is the most difficult player on the roster to figure out, at least for me. In the OU game, he clearly was a step (or more) behind on defense, yet he had no problem getting past his defender on offense. Some games, he shoots lights out; other games, he can't throw it in the ocean. Yet he's never afraid to be the one to take the shot when the time comes. His play definitely will determine whether this team is able to take the step up it wants to make.

Hill to Oakland -- http://www.freep.com/article/20120618/SPOR...7CFRONTPAGE%7Cs

Having seen Egner for several years at Jackson, I never thought of him as a D1 back-to-the-basket post player. I definitely do not see him filling the same role as Mike Bardo did in 2010-11. Even to get the point where he could fill a Nik-like role, he would need to add ~20 pounds and change (or adapt) his mindset. On the flip side, his outside shot isn't consistent enough to permit him to play a true wing. He's a bit of a tweener, much like Harney. Both can slash and pick up some garbage points off rebounds, although Harney's offensive game is more polished than Egner's. In HS, Egner was best when he could freelance on D and run the floor on O. Neither of those sound like a Coach KD team, do they? Mark Henniger appears to be in a similar situation at that school to the east: not a good fit for the system. The only time he left the bench from February onward was during a timeout. I have no basis for this, but I wouldn't be surprised to see one or both depart prior to next year (perhaps joining their HS coach who now is at Mount Union or their HS PG at Walsh?). I'm not rooting for it, but it wouldn't surprise me.