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That's a great story. Truth be told, I have not gone to the away Ken+ game in person since the early 90s. Something would always happen there, every year. When I was young I could laugh it off, but I even outgrew that. When you have a place full of douchebags (thanks for the appropriate term, Keener) and you add alcohol, you just never know what to expect. I decided to never spend a dime of my money in that place ever again, and also save the aggravation.

Well, they printed it as 1985, not 1885. But still, 1985 wasn't a bowl year either. The 2005 Motor City Bowl would be the last one, and the only one during the D-1A era, dating back to our start in that division in 1987. I believe the only previous "Bowls" were in 1968 and 1976 (I don't have a press guide in front of me), but I wasn't living in this area at the time. And those were as a D-III or D-II member. By the way, I'm shocked that leading up to the most important Zips/Flushes game in years, there hasn't been a single post since yesterday at 3pm.

It can be stated that he is a pass first, shoot second PG. But, all I care about is what I actually see. I was merely pointing out that I love the dribble penetration, but many of the shots in the paint had little chance of going in the basket. And it's also the best opportunity a PG has to make a scoring pass. You can say that others didn't hit enough shots, but taking ill-advised shots yourself is never the answer. I'm not thinking at this point that this team is best served with an Iverson clone at PG. It's something I observed that bothered me, and wanted to point it out to everyone. It's not a matter of optimism or pessimism. Having 6 assists in any 40 min. stretch of basketball is a very alarming number, no matter what twist anyone decides to put on it. And 42% FG shooting certainly wouldn't warrant losing trust in your teammates to hit shots. It's something to keep an eye on. Yes, the rebounding is an entirely separate issue. But if you watched the game closely, we got beat to death when we tried to battle and out-jump them for balls. It wasn't going to happen. But you may have noticed that when we picked up people when shots were in the air, and got bodies on people, we rebounded much better. We'll have to stay disciplined in that respect to hold our ground in that dept. without Tree. And as I've said previously, it wouldn't hurt to have some people inherit his tenacity on the glass. It's just hard to duplicate his motor level.

GP1....I'll agree with you on #1. It's obvious since we are defending well for an entire game. Just watch Big Dog compared to the other players, and you can see it. However, it's hard to see some of what you claim that you are seeing on the other points, which point particularly to the offense, when I just witnessed a sloppy offensive performance where a team had 6 assists and 15 turnovers, and were outrebounded by double digits.

Some friends of mine used to call him "Frankenstein"

I have to say a couple of things... 1) Please, lets not lull ourselves that we are fine without Tree. At the very least, we could have desperately used his rebounding yesterday. We would absolutely be a better team WITH him. 2) I'll keep saying this, because it becomes more evident every game. Kwan and Nyles are the keys to this season. They are the unexpected contributors. If these guys continue to contribute the way hey have, we will still be a hard team to beat for most of our opponents. 3) Did anyone notice that we only had 6 total assists yesterday? See below. 4) I'm loving watching Noah too. It's obvious that he has the ability to help us right now. I'd just like to see him take a few less shots and make a few more passes, especially when he gets in the paint. Yesterday in particular, he really stretched for, and floated several close-range shots that really had little chance of going in. Taking 11 shot attempts and having only 2 assists is not the best way that we can get into the 70s and 80s, rather than the 50s and 60s, which is where we will need to be to win many of the future games.

Of course. I understand that they don't have the same social activities. I was merely pointing out that the "they don't have the time" excuse is stupid. We worked and went to school back them too.

More importantly, this forum is about Akron sports. And my post was about Akron sports, specifically pointing out how Akron has to take a different route to obtain national ranking. It's clear that your last two posts are in defense of the Suckeyes. There's plenty of place for you to take that where forum members will welcome those comments. This is an Akron Zips forum. Ohio State is our competitor. You're shocked to see posters saying negative things about a competitor? You wasted very little time jumping on Balsy's post in defense of your Suckeyes.

Right on the money. It's ridiculous to think that students these days are all "too busy" to go to sporting events. People have worked and gone to school for decades, including me. And I went to every Zips sporting event I could make it to. I actually think there is LESS of an excuse to be missing the student support today, since thousands more students are in more convenient access distance to our sporting venues than ever before.

The media always puts them in a position to compete nationally, by placing them there at the start of the season. Even after they couldn't make it out of the first round of the tournament last year Wait until their fans start bragging about being 10-0 with that schedule. That's how they preserve the rankings that they get early on, until their conference games send them plummeting back to earth. It happens like this every year. Unfortunately, we'll never get that luxury. So, we'll have to fight our way up from the bottom to get national recognition. Wins over USC, S. Carolina and Penn State will really help.

I'll take the 2005 version. I just wish it was for the same prize. But I will take a blowout as a great way to end the season and provide some momentum for next year, if we don't go to a bowl.

Yep, that's the best we could have hoped for. Unfortunately, they weren't all as vulnerable as USC.

I said this on Thursday in regards to Pat. He lacks some things, but he has some tools and has size. All he's ever needed was a little more effort and a little more focus. The big question is, why has this been missing for the first several dozen games of his career here?

This one was easy to analyze. They had a lot of people who could drive to the basket, we collapsed and helped, and they were disciplined enough to have guys spread out for open shots. We don't have the horses to chase people like that for 40 min.

I don't know much about the situation that happened yesterday. But, most avid sports fans I know, even the older ones like me, tend to act out in ways that wouldn't be described as mature adults behavior when their team is playing. And the quality of officiating is certainly one of those situations that makes fans of any age act out. As far as I am concerned, I think we need hundreds more Zips fans who are passionate and vocal at our games, rather than those who sit on their hands the entire game and "behave like adults". Even if they may go over the line a bit.

This surprises me. Of course, the die hard fans are all aware that we've never scored a "major" upset, but I don't think that too many people would consider 7 point spreads to be "major" upsets. It will take everything we have for it to happen today.

I'll take anything that's an improvement over the way we played in the 2nd round in Hawaii last year. Getting spanked badly by Iowa State the day after playing a solid gem against OSU.

I have one thing to say, and it seems like a repeat of sooo many past years..... F-ed by the NCAA again.

Did anyone else notice the Suckeye announcer saying that we "forfeited" our right to have this game at home for some unknown reason?

French brought this up, and actually thought it was ridiculous that our fan was being scolded. I was wondering what the situation was all about, and if anyone who might have been closer to the situation knew more. And for the record....I've had my moments heckling refs, even recently, and I'm pretty old.

Amazing. USC might be young, and not very good, but I still wasn't expecting this. 1) I'm going to continue to allow my wife to yell at Pat at home games, because it appears to be working. A little bit of extra focus, and a little bit of extra effort was all he ever had to do to improve his game. Having more minutes and very little competition from USC close to the basket also helped. 2) I already feel that Kwan and Nyles are really the keys to this season. Those two are probably always going to be the unexpected contributors. And when they do contribute, we should win. Here's the deal. Today, a team responded to a crisis. We see it all the time. A coach gets fired, and a team responds and plays their best game of a season. It often happens after a season-ending injury to a key player, etc. But, where will these guys be 5 games from now? Or, 10 games from now? Will the fire to respond to such a big change in their situation still be there?

And the 2005 SnowBowl Game was ON Thanksgiving. At this point, I am thinking that the Buffalo/Can't game will get played in the next couple of days, which means that they'd probably delay the Akron/Ken+ game until next Saturday. It would probably be foolish to make this a Friday-after-Thanksgiving game on such short notice, since fans of both schools never previously altered their Thanksgiving travel and family plans around the game.

I'm sure when we hired him, the fact that his last name was Bowden was figured to come with it's benefits. Just the name alone. But he's carved out his own success and legacy to some extend at well, including being a very entertaining TV personality. But I think it could be even more than that. He's also taking a "down" Akron football program back to a bowl game. Both the highly-recognizable coach, and the Akron program would represent the underdog story that Americans seem to love.

I hadn't even thought about that, but it probably would have to be moved. Could we get lucky enough to play this game next Saturday? Although, that would surely mean that there's no chance the game would be on ESPN2.

Ask yourselves....has there ever really been much change in the way we've played over the KD years? After this year, when Tree was gone, would anything have changed? We'll be working the ball into the post, we'll be firing 3 pointers. The rotations and personnel will just be a little different. We'll simply need to find a way to pick up the slack for 10+ points and 10 rebounds from someone else to be remotely as successful as we were with Tree. Keep something else in mind. Tree is a workhorse. I hope some guys on this team learned something from him, and can dig deep and find the same motor that he has on the court.