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I was kind of waiting to hear more of the details as well, and also couldn't believe that someone would just shoot. Maybe there's more we don't know yet. But, I am also wondering how the coach and his boss will feel about a player having a loaded gun in his apartment.

I've already hit on this on here, many times. And the selection committee chair also mentioned that quite a few times. Now, there's the Zips spirit that is really lacking in the Akron area.

Since I believe I've seen this statement from you twice now in this thread, I'm waiting for your solution. Please, tell us the formula for getting selected, if you know. Then, like I said, there are 300 teams in D-1 college basketball that would pay you big money to tell them exactly how to get into the tournament.

You conveniently omitted the rest of his quote in the same article, which went like this.... “We’re using more and more metrics than we were in the past. It isn’t just the R.P.I.” I think the fact that he said that's its not "JUST" the RPI proves it's continued relevance. They even mentioned it several times throughout the selection show. But again, nobody here is claiming that it's the only criteria that they use. I think you are just personally discrediting it, which is fine. That's your opinion. I think Akron should be trying to get as high as possible in every metric. But if there is one in which we are particularly high, we should tout that to sell ourselves to the selection committee. And that's exactly what Keith did.

Kreed, At least I find what you say here to be far more reasonable than what you said earlier, when you emphatically stated that the committee now uses "other" measurement tools, and that there is no bias in their selections just because a couple of teams were selected that were outside the P5. And I don't recall anyone ever saying that they believed that RPI was the only factor used by the selection committee.

That's exactly my point. Even during the selection show, you heard about RPI, bad losses, and big wins used randomly to explain why certain teams got in, and certain ones did not. But apparently that's not stopping a few from believing that they have the selection committee figured out.

So, here's what I am seeing since I posted: 1) Don't bother trying to get a higher RPI. It didn't help us this year, and it's not going to help us. 2) The selection committee doesn't care about RPI 3) Someone who's sure they found a correlation between another ranking system and which teams were selected/seeded. I suggest that maybe a few of you who think you have it figured out can write a note to Mr. Dambrot and tell him exactly what we need to do. And I'm sure the other 300 D-1 teams who did not make the tournament would probably pay you big money to give them the formula for getting selected.

But they were the higher seed in almost every game they played, and still lost 3 of their teams the first DAY, and needed a squeaker to get Iowa through, or it would have been 4 teams out the first day. Then that 4th team got obliterated in the next round. So, it all depends on how you want to look at it. When you have a few teams that are playing well, your overall conference record in the tournament can oftentimes look pretty good as those teams advance, and the total wins far exceed the total losses (because the teams eliminated can only lose ONCE). But a closer look tells you that over half of their participants failed pretty badly, and most of them were placed in favorable circumstances at the beginning of the tourney.

Since we're all on the same page here, in terms of wanting the Zips to get more At-Large consideration and higher seeds, I think I can assume that we do ourselves no good by invalidating criteria that's used in the selection process. RPI is certainly well recognized, therefore getting a high RPI score makes an argument for your school. Just do what we have to do to make that number higher. Anyone who thinks they can change what the selection committee sees by continually questioning the accuracy of the measures that they use is crazy.

Not only do they have seats, they have PADDED individual seats. But I agree....there isn't too much else to say that's good about the arena. It's an old, dingy, concrete relic. And it's gone through some recent multi-million dollar improvements. There just isn't much they can do with a place like that.

There might be a good argument for the ACC to get more participants, but other power conferences took a beating. But I still think that the biggest issue if you are a school like Akron, or any other non-power-conference program is certainly that only ONE team from our category got through two rounds. I've been to Dayton also. It doesn't seem that they have any trouble selling tickets to the First Four. I'm actually surprised that the NCAA hasn't moved that First Four to a larger arena by now.

And just to follow up again. When the selection committee lets in teams with poor RPIs from "power conferences", like they did with Syracuse and Michigan this year, and they actually WIN GAMES, I'm sure in some way they believe that it justifies their tendency to select those teams. That sucks. That's why I like to see those teams get knocked out in the first round.

No, I don't consider it "bad publicity" either. My point was really that a school like Akron can make National Headlines for something like this, but often can not even get local headlines for all of the great accomplishments of our athletes.

I think in their minds, they ARE already letting in plenty of mid-majors, and lower-than-mid-majors, just by giving the auto-bid to all conferences. And those schools are always going to produce some upsets. So, although I wish you were on to something here, I'm sure this will never persuade them to give at-large bids to any teams other than the ones who they "think" are the best and/or can contribute to the financial success of the tournament.

Wow. This has now become a big national story. I have a picture and link coming up on my MSN homepage now, and had a friend down in Texas just tell me that he's read the story. Too bad we need to fight for headlines, even locally, for all of the great things that happen with UofA athletics.

Seems like a good idea, and I'd enjoy the win, but you know that everyone who doesn't know any better would see it as "little ole Akron" knocking off a "higher division" team. Other than the people who are really locked in to college athletics, people are pretty stupid when it comes to understanding divisions.

I've been scratching my head on this one for decades. That's why I've often said that maybe the first mission in educating the local "college basketball fans" is to tell them that OSWho is not the only D-1 basketball program in Ohio. They'd probably be the ones who'd be shocked to find that there are actually about 12 of us. For replacing a couple of the cupcakes as a home game only? Sure. But I don't see how we benefit from this in any other way.

I liked the recent games we played with MTSU. They were good games, and they were recently even an At-Large selection out of C-USA, which gives them another quality that we want to match. But I don't want to stop emphasizing that we need Top-50 win opportunities, and preferably more than 1 or 2 if we want to put "big wins" on our resume. At least this year, a team with a #76 RPI who gets a 15 Seed in The Dance wasn't going to fill that void. We get plenty of chances to notch those kinds of wins in our own conference schedule.

And you would be correct. In fact, I recently listened to an interview with KD from the ESPN reporter who covers the Cleveland market. During the interview, he tried to ask him something like...."do you even bother to try to call Ohio State anymore?". Everyone knows the situation. Ask the folks in Dayton why they celebrated so much, and put "THE University of Dayton" as the headline in their newspaper after knocking them out of the NCAA tournament 2 years ago. And why they put a rebuilding-year OU team on their schedule a few years ago. They are not going to choose to put themselves in a position to jeopardize their perceived superiority over "lower level" basketball programs in Ohio. Central Connecticut State, Florida A&M and Bryant College do not pose that threat.

Regardless of how someone feels about Keith, I find it so unfair when someone implies that we're winning a lot of games because of cupcakes. Or, that he might have a motive to play those teams to artificially "inflate" how good we are. I'll be the first one on here to say that our schedule needs to get better to raise our national profile. But we have beat plenty of good teams to amass the record that he has, and we do it consistently, year in and year out.

I think this is right on the money. Excellent. We're getting better in terms of our ability to compete nationally, but now we need to get WINS, not moral victories.

Here's how I see it: If we won, you can bet everything you own that OSWho would have scheduled us again as quickly as possible. They would have never allowed this loss to hang over their heads forever. But with the win, they will surely avoid playing us for another 27 years again, and keep their perception among many Ohio sports fans that they are better than Akron and shouldn't "waste their time" playing such a weak program. The HONKS won't care about the score. In their minds, Akron "probably just got lucky" to make the game so close.

From an attention/publicity standpoint, yes. But, this would certainly be far from the highest ranked team we've ever beaten. Exactly. It's typical coach speak. He's setting himself up so he doesn't look bad if they lose, and looks as good as possible if they win. And in the postgame presser, if they lose, he'll repeat again how GREAT the Akron Zips are.

So we can add #25 Western Kentucky to the list, from 2001. Interesting that Monmouth was on our schedule that year also, since they just got some talk as a possible NCAA participant this year.

Interesting Observation: Ohio State is playing, so the local news in Cleveland seems to be giving us an incredible amount of attention. It does have me wondering if, from a local publicity standpoint, this game may have just as much value to us as an NCAA game.