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Good thoughts Quickzip. But, regardless of where his skills are at this point, I'm just talking about some simple things he should be able to accomplish just by someone of his physical stature being on the floor for those kinds of minutes. Maybe at least just a few offensive rebounds or tip-in baskets each night?

Some of the ownership is on Zeke. But why do we have a 7-footer outside of the 3 point line playing defense on 6-foot guards? The majority of the ownership is on the coaching staff notice this and make the adjustment. How many games will it take? I think you're being too kind. Regardless of whether we want to blame it on foul trouble, coaching, or his teamates not getting him the ball enough, we still have to expect him to make more of his own opportunities simply by his size alone. But look at some recent numbers: EMU: 1 Offensive Rebound in 28 min. Nik had 10 in similar minutes. Toledo: 2 TOTAL Rebounds in 25 min. (seems impossible) during a game in which Nik pulled down 9 boards with similar playing time. WMU: NO Offensive Rebounds in 21 min. The guy simply needs to do a better job of getting after it when he is on the floor, squeezing the ball, finishing with some conviction around the hoop, and making more happen on his own.

If my calculations are correct, the win over Ball State last night moves us into the #6 spot right now?

I'm a little puzzled by the emphatic "Zeke Shut Down Jones" comment. He made a couple of good defensive plays in his monsterous 12 minutes of play, but without several missed free throws, Jones scores 20+ in this game. Give the credit to Nik, Brett, and Bardo who were forced to share responsibility and double team to keep him from having a huge game. I'm actually very disappointed this morning that the big potential Zeke/Jones matchup ended up being so lopsided. It's another missed opportunity to show that he's growing. I'm also a little disappointed that several people on here were so quick to argue that Zeke had certainly "broken out" with his Ken+ performance. Back to the game.... Bardo: Becoming a 10 min. per game workhorse. I said at the start of the season that anything we get from him is a bonus, and I think we're getting more than "anything". And we need it. Alex: As the hope of what he could have added to this team offensively this year may have faded, the Bardo-like intangibles that he added to this game were quite valuable. Great hustle. And he showed a couple of signs of improved decision making. McNees and McKnight: I'll say it again. These two guys HAVE to carry some significant scoring load for us to have a chance to win this league. And they did that last night with 28 combined points. Honestly, who would have guessed a couple of weeks ago that we could dismantle a good MAC team at any point this season without any scoring from Zeke?

Maybe you'd like to present some evidence that he has NOT had any impact on the Akron area. Come on. That's an absurd remark. A world-famous athlete promotes his hometown like no athlete I've ever seen. You can't buy that kind of publicity. If you truly believe that this has not benefitted Akron or the University, I might have to question which planet you live on. His basketball tournament and bike-a-thon only scratch the surface.

Are you from Akron? Sure, lets not take any benefits from having maybe the most well-known athlete in the world as our hometown boy. He talks about Akron at every opportunity, and his contributions to the area continue, as promised. But lets push him away because he saw a better opportunity in his career by working for another team other than the team in Cleveland. And lets remove the picture of him and KD that's in our basketball program. We don't want to use any of those connections ot our advantage.

A coach from this staff recently was hired by the University of Michigan, a member of the vaunted BCS conference known as the Big Ten. Thus, some one was doing a good enough job to gain a major promotion. Hear, hear, Vince seems like the man for the job. Based on his performance, not that folks on ZipsNation want him, even though many of us do. In case you missed the details, he took a lower level position with the Michigan staff.

I only have one thought. Do we really want anyone from this current staff to get a promotion? If so, aren't we saying that they did a great job?

Perfect

Could that be the best game we've played against a quality opponent since we beat Ken+? Sad to say, but it might be true. I hope it's the start of a magical finish. Diggs getting into the mix might prove to be really helpful to us. KD gave some high praise for his potential during the post game. As I keep saying, this team needs McNees and McKnight to score points. We did it last night, and you see the results. Zeke: I keep seeing some people say that he's not producing because we don't get him the ball enough. As someone touched on arelady, it's still a mystery much of the time as to what will happen when he is given the ball. I think we are still seeing too many occassions where he drops passes, gets the ball knocked away, or puts up an awkward shot. It could be a matter of his teammates not having enough confidence in his ability to finish.

I wish I could count the number of times I've said that I was sure a coach wouldn't leave his current post.

I know. That's a bad combination. Lets hope these kids are better than projected. But, it's scary to me is Akron was the best offer for most of these kids.

I'd say that would be a nice break if we do end up at #8

That's rough. Barely hanging on for a home first-round game, and then having to play the #1 seed in the Quarterfinal round. I hope that improves.

I talked about this a little bit a couple of days ago. One of the biggest jobs a coach has is to decide the who/when to put players on the floor to give us the best chance to win, in his opinion. At this stage of the season, the experiments should be over. It's time to make us as sharp as possible to make a run at a conference title. It looks like we'll be relying a little more heavily on our starters (+ McKnight) than we have in the past, with more minor minutes for Diggs/Abreu/Bardo, but I'll trust that it's a result of what has transpired over the last several months of practice and games. Hopefully our best pieces are in place. We pay our coach a lot of money to put us in the best position to win.

I agree completely with your remarks. But, are you referring to a high school championship with our current QB? His team got completely blown out in the first round of the high school playoffs, and his offense didn't score a single point.

The only way Zeke would be honorable mention is if Cvetinovic gets 2nd team or if Zeke gets honorable mention instead of McClanahan. Because I don't see them giving Akron 3 honorable mentions because their record isn't helping. Again, this is just all my opinion. I don't see McClanahan getting honors over Zeke. Moreso maybe just because of the attention directed towards each of those guys.

It's not that he's not playing well, he's just not hitting shots. You can sometimes see his frustration. Ditto for McNees. And in my opinion, I see those two guys working harder on the defensive end than maybe at any point in their careers. I think Dr. Z is right. Brett and Steve have to start making shots. They might be the only guys capable of carrying us to a championship right now. Let's hope they both break out of this funk soon.

BCS schools dont have to take chances on risky kids. Mac schools do. Yeah...BCS schools would never hold a scholarship for, say, a molester. From Lawrence Phillips to Cam Newton...man, how easy would it be to list all the at-risk kids that BCS programs happily fight over to offer a free ride? No kidding. Forget this notion that the big schools get the good players with high GPAs and no issues. If anything, I think the idea that those schools are going after the best kids no matter what baggage they carry has worsened. We only have to look 2 hours down the road at Cowlumbus State for a good example.

It's easy to pass this off as a horrible shooting game, but we haven't proven to be a good shooting team throughout the course of this season. The root of the problem is that were left with a team this year that does not have dependable and consistent scorers. In fact, I can't think of one guy who fits that category. I had hoped that McKnight would be that guy when he returned in late December. The only encouraging thing is that we appear to be playing better defense over the last week or so. Sure, a low seed "can" win the tournament. But think of the history. OU as a #9 last year was the lowest seed to ever win the MAC tournament. The year before, Akron as a #5 was the lowest ever. It's a long shot. And instead of waiting and resting our hopes on a near-miracle in Cleveland, I'd much rather see us just play a lot better basketball over the next few weeks, and give myself something to raise my hopes of a possible successful finish.

Good point. You have to get him in there and see what happens. We have a senior QB who has hardly played now in almost two seasons, and we've wasted nearly two years now on a guy that has produced a D-1A ranking well over #100. We have to move forward, we have to get much better at this position right now, and this seems like our best option by far.

I prefer winning. Zeke and AA are the best players on the team right now. I would play both 40 minutes. There's a lot of inconsistent play on this team. I think these two guys might be two of the best examples of this. Unfortunately, we're still in limbo every game as to who is going to produce. AA still needs a lot of work. I think KD did the right thing by putting Darryl back in the starting lineup yesterday. We've relied on Darryl and Steve together in the backcourt for at least 2 seasons now. And I think the success of this team between now and March depends heavily on their senior leadership in the backcourt. This should no longer be a starting lineup experiment. The games really matter now.

I'll address a couple of these comments: Transition Baskets: As KD points out all the time, transition basket opportunities come from getting defensive stops. The last time I looked, we're giving up more points per game than we've given up at anytime during his tenure. This alone can limit your opportunities for transition baskets dramatically. Zeke: Some of you thought you saw a breakout during the Ken+ game. Only time was going to show if that was true. I think it's still a game by game kind of thing. Some nights, he appears to be more aggressive. Other nights...tentative. Some nights, we can't even get the ball to him without it getting continually slapped away. I hope it ends soon. But, for now I'd expect to see more of the back and forth between 4 point games and 15 point games depending on the matchups, and how teams decide to defend us with him on the floor.

You don't see the LeBron signs anymore because of the idiots who would have vandalized them. The same idiots who, by their behavior, have created yet another round of embarrassing national publicity for Cleveland. Exactly...FOR CLEVELAND! Us Akronite's are smart! That's why I love the comments that the mayor made recently.