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I suggest that you carry a barf bag around with you. Whenever players run faster and jump higher than those they're playing against, and use those abilities to make their opponents appear slow and soft, the "A" word will be used frequently by douche bags and non-douche bags alike.The most "A" team doesn't always win. There are other aspects of the game that can compensate for lack of "A." But all other things being equal, the team with the most "A" will usually win.You are allegedly a writer. How would you grade another writer who uses one adjective? How interesting is it to read? If spoken, how interesting is it to listen to?If all one has to say about K.e.n.t.'s basketball team is "they are athletic...they are more athletic than the Zips...they have great athleticism...etc" then that person obviously has a shallow knowledge of the game.I like reading and listening to people that offer depth and insight. If all you bring to the table is "athletic," you're shallow and pedantic.Writing tip: If you don't write exactly what you mean, there's a high likelihood that you will be misinterpreted. Heck, on this forum, even when you write exactly what you mean there's a high likelihood of being misinterpreted.What you really meant to say was:8.) If I hear some douche bag use only the term "athletic" to describe K.e.n.t. one more time, I'll puke.OK, back to the regularly scheduled stream of insults.I know many knowledgable, long-time Zips fans who say that they do not participate on this site because of this very reason.

And you forgot about Schutz transferring here from Cleveland State. The 1986 OVC title and NCAA tourney appearance would have been nothing more than a crazy dream if these things didn't happen.Please though.....I insist that we separate the debate about "should we accept JUCOs/Transfers" and "should we take a chance on troubled kids". Many good college athletes decide to transfer, or start their careers at JUCOs, for a lot of different reasons other than grades or trouble. Lack of playing time, a coaching change, lack of money, and needing time to grow and develop physically would be a few of those reasons.

I suggest that you carry a barf bag around with you. Whenever players run faster and jump higher than those they're playing against, and use those abilities to make their opponents appear slow and soft, the "A" word will be used frequently by douche bags and non-douche bags alike.The most "A" team doesn't always win. There are other aspects of the game that can compensate for lack of "A." But all other things being equal, the team with the most "A" will usually win.And unfortunately, that was pretty evident throughout most of the 80 minutes we've played against those guys this year.

If I had to choose what is most upsetting to me right now...We all spent the last year expecting certain things when we knew we'd be returning nearly every player, and adding a highly-touted 7' center. But in my opinion, we didn't get much better. Ken+ has gotten a lot better over the course of the last two seasons. They now appear to be a mismatch for our personnel, and that's not going to change over the next week. But, what's also not going to change is that anything can happen in the MAC tournament. I'll certainly hope that Ken+ gets knocked out by someone else. And I don't want to play OU either, after what I saw from them in our house a couple of weeks ago. We probably didn't have a team in our league who was this much better than us last year...but I'll hope for everything to fall our way again from a very favorable #3 spot.

Thanks for posting this ZB. I agree and disagree. I understand where KD says the team isn't good enough. But I disagree in not doing it. I think more can be gained by losing to a good team than beating a bad team (a couple times early in the schedule).BTW I wonder if his team considers it an insult when he says they aren't good enough for a tougher schedule?I couldn't agree more with that statement. AND, if you do win the game, it's a big-time extra bonus.

The sad thing is, I'm guessing it was worse last year. I actually was a little more encouraged by the way many of the West teams performed, as opposed to last season. But, there's still a lot to be done to get to the point where they are not a burden on the conference's standing.

1992 was the first year the 85 scholarship limit was in place. Prior to that, it was 95.Which means that we spent about 5-6 years playing D1-A football against teams with 95 players. I think Mr. Faust deserves a little more respect than he gets from some people in this area.

Good points, but remember that our NIT fortunes have been a little unpredictable in the past. Our 26-win 2007 team didn't get a bid, but the team before and after that year DID get a bid. I wouldn't be surprised if someone wants to see the MAC regular season champ also win the tournament so that a spot can remain open for some "name" team that has a crummy record.

It was similar, but Faust had an additional problem. Faust had a problem with the number of scholarships he had to offer and the number of partial scholarships being used. Keep in mind Faust took over a I-AA team with I-AA talent. I wasn't quite in school yet, but I believe Dennison had 65 scholarship players and not all of them were full scholarships.The first step Faust took was to dare to have an honest discussion with each player from the Dennison era and tell most of them they were not D-I talent and they would never see the field. A lot of these players were on partials and weren't D-I talent. This pissed off a lot of players and caused it's own problem, but Faust did the right thing. Combining enough partials freed up enough money to start to offer more full scholarships. If anyone can remember, I would like to know the answer to this. When did UofA finally have enough money to field the NCAA limit of scholarship players? If my memory is correct, it was about half way through the Owens era. Reason 287 why this program has done little in the last 20 years.You are correct. The NCAA didn't let the Zips automatically jump from 65 scholarships to 85. We could only offer 25 scholarships per year, working our way up to 85. If 8 kids quit the team...to bad...you got your 25 per season, maximum. It took us forever to get up to 85. It might not have happened until the Owens-era.Nothing like playing against schools like Auburn and Florida with 70 only scholarship players.Depth was certainly an issue for the Faust era teams. I think the number was 95 back then, and only recently got peeled back to 85 players. And it did take quite a few years. But, I think you are right about the limitation of 25 scholarships per year. But, after you subtract what we lost each year, the net gains were very small some years.

As you know, there are no "I love Steve at the point" people on this forum. Some fans who recognize what a great shooting guard McNees can be simply ask that other fans not pile on to McNees for doing the best he can at running the point, which is not great but not bad. McNees is playing the point because his coach doesn't believe that any of the other point guards have stepped up and taken the job away from McNees. I personally like some of the things that happen when Hitchens and Steward are making their slashing attacks. But both of them make errors that McNees does not make. So whoever runs the point is not going to be faultless.Believe me, I would love to see one of the other guards earn the point position away from McNees, if for no other reason than to end the relentless griping by a few "I hate Steve at the point" people on ZN.This is pretty much where I stand right now too. I've always felt that Humpty makes poor decisions. I still feel like I see him running when he should be stopping, throwing ill-advised passes, and (my biggest frustration) trying to dribble through traffic and traps too often. And in my opinion, he's simply not a good enough shooter to play on the wing. Although, I have seen him show a few instances of good play-making ability this year. Maybe he can still develop into a good player at that role. With Ronnie, I can only wonder what could have happened with him if he did not have to sit these last couple of years. Sometimes he looks like he has what it takes, only to follow that up with a mistake that's typical of someone who hasn't played much. I really do like his energy, and hope that he can still work his way back to being a productive point guard in his career here.Steve may not ever be a great point guard, but he seems to be the reliable choice right now. Kinda reminds me of Dials playing the point by default a couple of years ago. And knowing how he performed last year in Cleveland when the MAC title was on the line, I still believe our best option is to have the ball in his hands.

Sorry, I just have to note how much I detest this line of thinking...So, if this were football, you would have picked Dilfer, Hostetler or Brad Johnson at QB over Marino? Because Dan never won a Super Bowl?

But that's exactly the problem....our schedule isn't good enough to allow us to absorb bad losses, and still have a good RPI. And college basketball teams play bad games. Yet, it seems that we continue to put ourselves in that same position.

And therein lies a problem because if Can't was so superior to us, they would certainly have a much better conference record. After all, we play the exact same teams! So it does not really take into account the success or failure against league opponents later in the season, when some teams play better (especially young teams that don't have prior years together) and some teams fall apart.Might as well quite ringing the bell Dave....nobody is home.Well...quite a few people aren't home. Some people get it.People can complain about how this works all they want, or offer their thoughts on a better system. But the choice for Akron remains the same. We can either sit on the sidelines, or get in the game. And for the most part, I think Akron is sitting on the sidelines.

Or, in a few cases, some of those teams may have gotten better during the course of the season along with us.We beat Miami pretty soundly at home a month ago, and they appeared to play much, much better against us this time around. And, after beating OU on the road a month ago, we struggled against them at home. In fact, I think OU might be good enough to beat any of us on a neutral court in Cleveland...and they aren't going to be a high seed.It should be a typical MAC tournament...any one of 6-8 teams are good enough to win it.

I think you are correct on the seeding. In fact, it looks like Miami and Buffalo will be fighting for the #4 spot, unless something crazy happens. And if we don't get the #1 spot, the #3 spot is a very nice place to be with the semi matchup against the #2.

Excuse me...but wouldn't we want our bracketbuster opponent to be playing really well when we play them? It seems as if some of us are happy that they aren't playing great right now, and that we have a chance to beat them. But, what would that really do for us? I would want these guys to be playing better than anyone in the country, if I had my preference.

He should "hope" to get a chance to play in the NBA 3 years from now. If this guy leaves early for the NBA, at any point before the end of his senior season, and actually makes it......I'd call that a big time shocker.

The tournament seeding is a minor issue to me. Anywhere 12-15 isn't going to matter much. You can always get the right matchup, and win the game.The bigger issue is, we know that selection committees take teams with a few more losses if they played tougher schedules. We can either go along with the program, or get out of the way and play the cupcakes, and hope for a everything-falls-our-way scenario in Cleveland every year. If we are ever going to elevate ourselves as a program, we must challenge ourselves much more in the OOC part of our schedule, play more games of national significance, generate some revenue, and give our potential fans some games that will excite them. As I say all the time.....the post-season shutout we experienced 3 years ago will happen again, and will keep happening, if we don't change.

I'm with you on that. And let's hope it's good for the team in the end.I'll say one thing about some of the comments. Fans will sometimes tend to criticize the coach in situations like this for not having control of his players. And others will want nobody to get suspended because it can affect Ws and Ls. And that's their opinion.But, does anyone else see that fans may have been more inclined to point fingers at the coach with a "lack of control" accusation when it was JD instead of KD? And, was it because one was winning, and one was not?

A home loss at all during the conference schedule is tough to overcome if you want that #1 seed. But to me, it was much tougher because it was a West team. But, I still think the one big plus is that our season finale game against Can't is at home this year, instead of at Can't. In looking at the road games, the CMU and Miami games are going to be the deal breakers or deal makers for us, because I really believe that 2 more losses puts us in danger of having to play an extra game, just like last year. I'd really like us to get enough out of these next few weeks to get us into the top 100 in rpi. The improved West division is really a good thing for the conference...as much as we wanted that to be an easy 6 wins.

I love that idea, and I think that would be a great (and appropriate) benefit to the lower-conference champs....who actually WON something.But, I'm trying to ponder the possibility of them looking at the total field of teams any differently than they do now. If that were proposed, you know that when some "known" program, such as the 8th place team in some BCS conference with a 17-15 record, discovers that Southwest (enter state) Riverfront State University will be seeded higher than they are, they'll still complain and probably get it changed.

Without a doubt.....no matter what happens, we'll always have a chance to win the MAC tournament.But, I really believe the frustration from most people today stems from the idea that we were returning almost every player, and landing a big-time recruit. And we soooo wanted this to be a year where we had an opportunity to move "above the MAC". Instead, it seems to have turned into a season where we are going to struggle to keep pace with the rest of the MAC.But....that doesn't mean that I am going to stop using my tickets. I'll be there.

I think it could possibly cheapen the first round games a little bit.But...Any system that gives Akron a better chance to get in, and an opportunity to knock off a big team, is good news to me.

I'm not happy this morning. But, I have one thing to rely upon for inspiration. For once, I am happy that we are in a weak league like the MAC, because that means that we'll always have a chance.I'll repeat something I said about a week ago. I personally believe that this team just did not improve in the off-season. For the most part, we traded Nate for Zeke. Beyond that, a few returning guys are playing better than last year, some are not, and some flat-out appear to be a disappointment in terms of their development.I have a feeling that some other teams in our league just improved more than we did, and/or added personnel that made them better. But heck, we won the MAC tourney last year as the #5 team in the league. So, don't lose hope. But unfortunately, this does not appear to be the year where we "separate ourselves from the rest of the MAC", like some of us anticipated.

In the standings but not at the bank.I think Saturday's game scared away a few hundred people from ever attending another Zips basketball game.My guests wanted to leave at halftime.