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The NCAA basketball tournament has always had a pretty good history of allowing the defending champion into the tournament to defend. And sometimes they weren't having very good years. Does anyone know if the soccer tournament has a history of the same sort of unwritten tendency?

I saw that !! What the heck was that all about? Could they have been a little more discreet, or handed out a few more to the few folks who were at that exhibition game?

I'm satisfied with calling this game a "good defensive performance" when we held an SEC school to 58 points on their own home floor.

I only wish soccer generated the kind of publicity that can elevate the notoriety of your school, and the other sports. But unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. But I'll take the #1 basketball ranking. I plan to tell people all season long that we were "The #1 team in the country in the computer polls back at the beginning of the year"

....and congratulations to the coach and his staff for being in a position where you get asked for interviews by a girl who looks like that

I don't think it's been mentioned yet, but the thing that impressed me the most about last night is that it appears that the new guys are quickly understanding that Akron Basketball is about playing DEFENSE. Beyond that, I think I am seeing what I expected this year. Quincy is turning his potential into reality. He may be ready to darn near carry this team. On several occassions we were able to get past defenders to the basket. When was the last time, if ever, that we could say that about an Akron team?I know we've beaten this Miss. State program before, but to start the season with so many new players and beat any SEC team on the road is a good thing. And we can keep debating about how good Miss. State will be this year, but it's still too early to tell. I'll hope that in the coming weeks we may find out that we beat a good team.

Yes. Ianello going for the field goal at halftime, when he was in the redzone, and had 3 time outs to work with. Nicely was trying to make a play. He's getting snowed-under by 4 K.e.n.t. defenders. I can't fault him. It sucked...I wish he didn't do it...but I can't use that specific play as some sort of definitive moment.It's funny...PN7 threw a beautiful 50yard pass to Suel at the end of the Miami game...hit Suel right between the 1 and the 5 on his jersey...a sure TD...and Suel dropped it. Was that Nicely's fault? Seems so.To be fair, I'm sure some of Ole Miss' 16 incompletions (out of 19 throws) were the WR's fault too.Whether we could ever agree or not on the magnitude of that play, lets at least get the circumstances correct.It happened with 3+ minutes left in the game, with Akron down 4 points, with the ball. The safety puts us down 6, with a chance to still win the game.And, if you recall, the ball wasn't shoveled out of the end zone because he was getting "snowed under by 4 defenders". They had already knocked the ball away from him in the end zone, and he successfully recovered the fumble. It was at that point that he mysteriously decided to try to push it back across the goal line. I will also contend that we should have challenged the play, which should have resulted in a safety because he had clearly recovered the fumble and was down. The play should have been dead at that point. After a disasterous performance with 3 ints, one for a pick-6, he still would have had one more chance to redeem himself and win the game.

I laugh about it too.

Wow. Steve looks like a beast !!He's one of those down-to-earth guys that you will always root for. I'll always say that he was one of the nicest, friendliest, enthusiastic and most accessible guys that ever wore a Zips uniform. He loved talking to people. Considering the stuck-up nature of many college sports "stars", Steve was a breath of fresh air.

You can never seem to resist the urge to take a shot at Nicely, can you? All to prove that "you were right all along" when your buddies gave you their inside scouting report coming out of high school. Well good for you, Skip. You were right. Now will you give it a rest?I hate being right when it's bad for the Zips.Could there be a more memorable, or more costly play from last years game? Avoiding that type of costly mistake would increase our chances of winning this year, which is the subject of this thread.I can't recall ever posting an "I told you so" statement on this board, if that's what you are implying. It is what it is. Regardless of who did it. And this has to be about the 100th post that criticized the dumb and costly nature of that play last year. Yes, I knew some things about him before he came here that suggested to me that he may not succeed. And I've shared it with fellow fans, both on and off of this board. Others who had knowledge of him have done the same. How many posts do you see on here every day that relate to talent evaluations, and criticism and praise for play on the field? Just about every post?

We won't (hopefully) have someone on the field this year who is boneheaded enough to try to push the ball out of the end zone in an inexplicable attempt to avoid a safety by giving up a touchdown.Come on folks!! Ken+ will ALWAYS be beatable. No matter how bad we are.

Having a packed Info and a Top 25 team would suuuuuck...For 3 posters here it would suck big time.Because the almighty OSWho ex-coach must certainly be able to take any D-1 program and elevate them to the Top-25 and fill their stadium?Which, of course, doesn't even matter. He won't be allowed to coach for awhile, if ever, because he's now elevated himself to the status of one of the most notorious cheaters and liars of his era.

This conversation had actually been over for a while until you and skip stirred it back up.Stir it up? How about, adding information that appears to indicate that he won't be able to coach in college for some time, thus pretty much eliminating the possibility that he could become our next head coach. I see the title of the thread. And his name has been mentioned several times. So, wouldn't this be pertinent information?

For the Tressel lovers..If you've been paying attention to some of the recent conversations and speculations about his future, you'll see that a 5-year ban is being projected as his fate. I guess that might explain why he looked so interested in the NFL. So, can we finally get his name off of the table now? I would hope we wouldn't stoop to that level to even consider him anyway.

I think I would consider the idea of tailgating, and staying in the parking lot for the game. It's the only part of the experience that's fun anymore.But I think for some of us, we're missing something in that scenario. If we don't buy our tickets, and don't make our donations, we don't get our preferred parking spots.

I don't like to make much out of a scrimmage, but I just have a few thoughts...1) The starting lineup seems like a no brainer. KD has always seemed to love having experience on the floor when games matter. And those 5 guys are the most experienced. And we played our best basketball, by far, with those 5 guys together on the floor.2) If more up-tempo play means sloppy with more turnovers, I'm bored already. 3) Gilliam, by far, showed me the most ability to contribute among the newcomers. 4) I'm concerned about how we'll play under the basket with Zeke on the bench. I think we'll miss Bardo more than we want to admit.5) Was I the only one who noticed KD really getting on Alex last night? I'm still not a big Alex fan, but he's pretty much all we have at the point. And I didn't see anyone else doing any better. I think we'll see a lot of isolation plays featuring Diggs when we are in set offensive situations. 6) I'm embarrassed that a tremendously undersized John Carroll team pulled down 35 rebounds. 7) A few more new guys need to quickly get a grasp of what "Akron Basketball" is all about....in a hurry.

+1-72Nicely has beaten K.e.n.t. Moore has beaten...no D-1A team. He was 3-18 tonight. He's played 1 decent 1/2 of football the entire season. He needs to see the bench.If in fact, as you state, Moore has only played one decent half the entire season, but has far surpassed PNs ratings numbers, then doesn't that explain everything we need to painfully remember about how much good football we saw from PN?And we even got another reminder of that in the 2nd half tonight.

Sorry my voice can only carry so much over a freakin pep band. I'm not here to argue. We have 5000-10,000 soccer fanatics chanting and singing in unison, the pep band is welcomed back.Did you just wake up from a really good dream?

It still hurts to be getting less respect than schools like Belmont and Harvard...and of course, Ken+. But if it's true that we haven't appeared on this poll in two years, I guess that's some indication that some people feel as if we might be better than we've been the last 2 seasons.I don't think you understand quite how good those teams are. That's not disrespect to Akron. When you look at the big picture Akron had a great run in the MAAC tournament but still got a #15 seed which reflects how the selection committee viewed the overall season. Belmont won 30 games last year and returns 4 starters from that squad. They are as legit a mid-major team as there is in the country. Tommy Amaker is building a powerhouse in the Ivy over there and has nabbed some 4-star guys as late. They are both legitimate threats to make deep post-season runs this season. That doesn't mean that Akron can't have a great season and prove the prognosticators wrong, but no one outside of an Akron fan is going to put Akron above either of those two squads right now. I personally think both would take VCU to the woodshed at this point of the season.I'm not doubting that they are both respectable teams. I guess most of my reaction was just a result of my disappointment that the best MAC teams would not be as highly regarded as the best teams in lame conferences like the Atlantic Sun and Ivy League.

In this CMU game, you need points to close a lead, you just forced a punt. Any points close the gap. You go for the touchdown and fail you give them decent field position and have no win to help pump up the offense. A field goal is a win offensively.Getting the ball on their own 5 yard line would have been good field position?

With me, I guess the problem is the decision making. In other words, when he decides to gamble, and when he does not.Gamblling on a two-point try in this game when we had scored to cut the lead to 14 was NOT a good gamble.The two-point conversion at the end of the the game still makes no sense at all.On the other hand, we've seen this guy kick a field goal when down 21 points....THIS would be a good time to gamble.And, during an earlier series in the CMU game, when we were down 14 with the ball near the goal line, we took a short field goal. THAT seemed like a good time to try to get the touchdown. I don't get it. And I can't attribute it to anything else except his lack of on-field decision making experience when he became our head coach.

It still hurts to be getting less respect than schools like Belmont and Harvard...and of course, Ken+. But if it's true that we haven't appeared on this poll in two years, I guess that's some indication that some people feel as if we might be better than we've been the last 2 seasons.

Fair-enough answer.Is it? I think we are undefeated in overtime over the last 1 and 2/3 seasons.I'm sure you're thinking "since Gardner Webb". But, I am pretty sure the Ball State loss late last year was an overtime game as well.

Then maybe PN shouldn't have performed like the 114th rated QB in the country last year. Or maybe he could have taken advantage of his experience advantage in this year's training camp over a guy who had never played a D-1 game before. Then maybe we could be witnessing him diplaying the NFL-caliber ability that you think he possesses right now.

I hope cm8 PLAYED BETTER,, HE SURELY CANT PLAY MUCH WORSE,,and with him getting ALL the snaps,, he bettero be,,but hey we still are terrible..so are we to assume RI goes and gets another juco qb to bring in NEXT spring,,so he can say it was the QBS fault we are doing so bad,,oops,,he tried to use that this year with Nicely,,and id hasnt worked,,,coaching is still terrible,, PN7 got bounced after aseason so hey im all about treating RI the same he treated pn7 ,,time for you to go RI,,can we start a collection to buy you out? can we go find a juco COACH to run this team?Is this your first season watching Zips football? Our QB last year had an 85 rating, and had about 8 or 9 previous starts under his belt. Moore's rating just hit 110 after yesterday's performance, in his first season, with far less experience around him. And he has the ability to run. Are you possibly related to the person who posts here as Akron Football?