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First of all, this is a good win. It's against a team that almost anyone ranks higher than us right now. And getting them at home gave us a chance to get a good win.Ok...I'm going to stay away from the obvious problems with free throw shooting and address something else that really concerns me.Going into this season, we probably knew that Wood/Dials/Middleton would carry the scoring load. But they need help.We probably thought that Linhart would pick up some of the deficit left by the Travis/Joyce departure. But that's not happening.Now what?Has Jimmy Conyers finally shown that he might be our best small forward? If so, we need him. We HAVE to get more points from that spot.Can we expect any continuation of the offensive development of Quade Milum? Not seeing it so far. McNees and Bardo have sat on the bench for an entire season now, and I really thought they would both be hungry to produce. It now appears that both are tentative, and aren't quite ready to pitch in with any significance offensively.Thank God for our defense!!!Anyway...those are my thoughts.

I thought I would post this since I spent my lunch hour today browsing through the Sagarin ratings.OUR RANKING126TEAMS WE'VE PLAYEDSouth Carolina Upstate - Win - Ranking=340Portland State - Loss - Ranking=169 (ouch)Tennessee State - Win - Ranking=281Binghamton - Win - Ranking=293Not much to write home about so far, especially with a "bad loss" already on our resume. UPCOMING GAMESTemple - Ranking=98 (this would be a "good win")Wyoming - Ranking=160Winthrop - Ranking=65 (the highest ranked team we'll play during our OOC schedule)KEY MAC EAST OPPONENTSMiami - Ranking=51 (the highest ranked team we'll play all year)Can't State = Ranking=93OU - Ranking=100This looks to be the basis for the prognosticators picking us to finish 4th in the MAC East.

Believe it or not, we're listed as a 6 point FAVORITE in this game.I guess we do get some respect when playing at home.

Well, this could get interesting. According to the website, the vote counts will NOT be posted during the playoff voting. So, there will be no way to determine where we stand during playoff voting.Just to bring some of you up to date, we now have a bye in the quarter finals, and will face the winner of Otto and Cavman in the semi-finals. So, if anyone prefers that we face one or the other, you may want to vote in the quarterfinal round.Other than that, just get ready for next week !!!

ZippyAlum...I have to agree with your comments, especially when I see arguments like the one I see above. FYI...Buffalo and Temple happened to be 5-3 and 4-4 respectively in MAC play this year.It probably does not take a great deal of insight to come to the conclusion that both of these teams were far better this year than they had been in the past.Does this mean that we should start evaluating our current wins/losses based on how our opponents performed in past years? I think that would be pretty ridiculous.

Zips Win...you are correct. "Unprecedented", for those who don't know, refers to "never been done before."The MAC East Division Championship, the MAC Championship Game win, and the D-1A Bowl Appearance are all unprecedented accomplishments during the JD era.

It amazes me that anyone that posts on this site (and therefore is a hard-core Zips fan) would not have ever heard about Joe Jakubic.I had the pleasure of being in school during his time as a player. It was pretty cool to see a Zip lead the nation in scoring. Unfortunately, his game was not multi-dimensional enough to translate into an NBA career.I have never heard his name associated with our troubles with the NCAA that occurred in the early 80's.

Great discussion...Bird Zip, I think you are on the right track....We need to get at least one or two of those kinds of games on our schedule each year. It would generate a number of positives for a program like ours, that is trying to make a name for itself. g-mann...the risk/reward is truly ZERO if you play a Portland State instead, and lose. So, what are you really accomplishing with a "softer" schedule? If you schedule like us, and lose games like that, you expose yourself in a major way. Lose to Duke? You've really lost nothing. And you've increased your SOS.This program desperately needs a few games a year against the Big Boys. Win or lose. If not. Well, then we will continue to experience repeat performances of the dissappointments of the last 30 years.

Well...you can look at it this way....Jacquemain completes right about the same percentage of his passes as Derek Anderson. And there's a couple of people on here that are ready to crown him as the great savior of the Browns.Using that same logic, maybe we should give the same accolades to CJ11. :lol:That 400 yard passing game against Central Michigan seems like such a distant memory now...doesn't it?

And in the Ohio picture, his hand appears to be in the middle of the ball.

I respect your opinion...But as the saying goes...."do what you've always done, and you'll get what you've always got"I'm an old man, so I've been around this basketball program going all the way back to the Bob Rupert era. I've seen us get snubbed by tournament selection committees many times. And there's plenty of better tournaments than the one we played in this past weekend. And that's in addition to all of the times I've seen the NCAA and NIT snub the Zips. The mentality of the selection committees (both preseason and post season) has not changes in the past 30 years, so you have to take steps to elevate yourself to that level (i.e. upgrade your schedule, which helps recruiting and increases your SOS). But beyond that, my original point was this.....If you are going to follow the scheduling philosophy that we've followed the past two years, than you HAVE to win those games. The UIC loss and the UALR loss killed us last year, and this year's loss to Portland State will stick out like a sore thumb to anyone looking at our resume this year.

Try that argument with the Can't State players who took Duke DEEP into the 2nd half during an early season game last year. AND it was on national television. I guess that leaves you with two choices. Play those games, or refuse to play those games and NOTHING changes. I know which one I would pick.

g-mann....These schools ARE scheduling mid-majors (Can't State played at Duke last year). Just go and look at some schedules of the major schools.The debate isn't over whether they will schedule you or not, because they will, and they do. The debate is whether we should play these games, and what benefit they give to our program.

I think a win over the MAC West champ would be a great boost also.Although, I do understand Racer's point about how late season wins that don't mean anything gave us false hope under the previous staff.But this is a new staff, and a new era. We want to show that we've rebuilt, and will be poised to make a run next season.

Actually, this is somewhat encouraging.Did anyone really expect us to be a top level MAC team this year? With an offense that had to be nearly entirely rebuilt? I was hoping for the best, but it didn't happen. But the fact that the analysts think that we are about in the middle of the pack this year is not something to hang our heads about.Sure, there were dissappointments....1) The loss to Temple hurt. 2) The fact that our new offense has not shown much development is also a concern.I'm going to stay positive and hope that the experience some of these young guys got this year will transfer over to next year.

Sure is starting to look like a practice game to me.

Great discussion....good thoughts.I just think it's bad logic to throw away that other opportunity. Sure, our conference affiliation doesn't help much in giving us the SOS that we need, but we do have one area where we DO have control over our SOS, and that is in our OOC schedule. A better OOC schedule also helps recruiting, which would ultimately elevate your program as well.Ok, so we go and schedule a few premier teams on the road, and we lose. Those losses have no impact on our conference record, or our MAC tournament seed, AND they increase our SOS. So, why not play them? Plus, I like those games, and think you should play a few of those games early in the season, if for no other reason than to get a measurement of how well your program is progressing. Plus, if you play a competitive game, or pull off an upset, it gets noticed...NATIONALLY. Which once again helps your recruiting. As far as the NIT goes, they invited Toledo last year because they deemed them to be the regular season MAC champ. So, there is certainly something to play for by having a good regular season.

Sorry. Playing the entire season for only ONE opportunity to make the NCAA tournament would be really, really bad logic. Especially when that one opportunity can dissappear in the blink of an eye? Didn't last year's ending prove that to us?

I'm merely pointing out that when you put together the kinds of OOC schedules that we are putting together, you HAVE to win those games. If you're not going to win those games, I'd much rather have played higher-level teams to increase our SOS. I'd be shocked if the strategy is, as uakronkid suggests, that we "know" we have no chance to get an at-large bid to any tournament, so we're just playing out the season to prepare for the MAC tournament.

You can't have "bad losses" when you try to get into post-season tournament when you are an "Akron". And much like last year, that will be viewed as a "bad loss".Sorry.

Thanks for the info.

Don't hold your breath.National ranking makes it "iffy".Hope for the best.

You have to WIN tournaments like that. Although, the way they scheduled the times has me ticked off too.We played a team in the consolation game that played Thursday, and early on Saturday. And we had to play Friday, and late on Saturday. Thank God we pulled it off. I'd never go back there again if that's the unfair disadvantage that we'll get in the scheduling.So anyway....here we go again, same as last year. Because we have few legitimate teams on our OOC schedule, we HAVE to win. And now, we'll be saddled with a loss to Portland State come tournament time, just as we had to bear the loss toe University of Arkansas - Little Rock last year.So now I ask, what good did we do ourselves, come March, by scheduling mediocre teams, and then losing. It's not good.

Only the top 16 teams get byes. It's gonna be close.

zipboy....Cincinnati is a GREAT example. A few years ago, nobody went to a Cincinnati football game. And they were in a similar situation to us (in Ohio State's backyard, and in a large city). It's amazing what happens once people start to recognize you as someone who can compete on a national level. That changed everything for them.