jupitertoo

Quality of MAC basketball is actually on an upswing. Toledo's program has finally recovered, EMU has made huge strides and several teams have great recruiting classes coming in. Ohio's recruiting class is very strong…and KD continues to raise the bar in his efforts. Next three-four years should/could be a very interesting period for fans...

Akron's long-term investment in D1 football has doomed it to low-mid-major BBall. That's true of several other MAC schools, as well, including Can't, Ohio and Toledo. There's no way to support the huge financial requirements of FB (even if we're not particularly successful) and break out of the mid-major trap in BB. Dayton doesn't face the same constraints…nor do VCU, Xavier, Butler and many, many others. And there's no way Akron can turn back after throwing 60MM into InfoCision Stadium. In retrospect, the school would have been better served to build a $35MM on-campus stadium (without Tower to the Gods for Proenza and crew) and invest another $35-$50MM in BBall. Don't know how you get where you need to go in BBall without some very rich guy leaving the program $50MM at this point.

This would surprise players such as George Gervin, Wally Z, Ron Harper, Gary Trent, Colin irish and others whose accomplishments in the MAC far exceed Zeke's. Heck, Ohio had a freshman in the early 70s who was the cover story on Sports Illustrated before he even played a game. So while a given ranking service might not have existed back when these players came in, they were MUCH bigger "gets" than Zeke, whose development I think we can all agree wasn't quite what many expected over his four years. No question that he became a good player but his impact on the team was less than even Tree's impact this year, and we have seen that his career prospects aren't quite what anyone might have predicted four years ago.

There is an article in the latest issue of The Atlantic covering the increased violence and danger of fraternity life, including a rather shocking yet hilarious set of examples related to damage to one's most private areas. Any parent with a college-bound child really needs to read this article.

Bigger than winning in front of a large, hostile crowd in Athens?

Wouldn't it be a third chance given that he violated his parole in the first two weeks?

Ohio was called for it at a particularly inopportune time late in regulation. I thought Dambrot had a GREAT analogy in the post game presser: he said he had told the Zips that they had to be like Joe Frazier, not Ali. That was very much how the game played out - OU showed some flash at certain times in building leads of 8 points in regulation and 6 in the first overtime, but the Zips kept coming back with the same approach of muscling the ball down low. It was fun to watch…after a brutal first half during which both teams were very tight. BTW, I think Diggs needs to be point guard from here on out - Carmelo is a turnover machine and Evans is young.

Ohio University offers free web streaming of all its home games. Go to ohiobobcats.com and click on "audio/video." Or better yet, here's the link: http://client.stretchinternet.com/client/ohio.portal

Where's the discussion? You can't have given up on this team due to some inconsistency. The Zips will be in the mix by mid-season at the latest…if not by 10 p.m. Sunday evening. I've heard they are expecting 12k at the Convo so should be a great environment for those who want to make the trek.

Gerry and Ohio's coach, Tom Lichtenberg, had both been fired just prior to that titanic battle. Ohio jumped out to an early lead, then tanked. Ohio had been picked to finish either first or second in the league that year. They won the last four games of the 1993 season...then went 0-11 in 94. Tough to be a Bobcat fan back then.

I sat in the box/loge next to Gerry and a group of friends during the Ohio game. Gerry literally had his head buried in his hands several times, then just got so disgusted that he left.

Really good post. The worst thing TB could do is overreact to a disappointing loss - a day where everything seemed to go wrong. Those games happen. There are three wins out there for the Zips, so making changes at this stage could set the program back even further. Let events take there course and, hopefully, after three or four wins there's a strong sense of momentum heading into recruiting season.

Dr. Proenza was on WAKR this morning and seemed to indicate that if there is a new basketball facility, it will have to be developed in partnership with the city and most likely would not be on campus. He said something about a 5-year timeframe before a project could commence.

Get your facts straight. Rupert coached at Akron Firestone from 1976-78. I played for him. Prior to that he coached at Canton McKinley. He then went to BW. Also read that summary of MAC NCAA violations. It was more than mugs, big guy.

If I'm not mistaken, Keith Dambrot was a graduate assistant on that 1984 Zips team that was later found to have offered impermissible benefits to players. KD played for Rupert at Firestone High School. How in the world did Rupert get that job at Akron? I believe he spent 2-3 years at Baldwin Wallace before being hired at Akron. At Firestone, he was, shall we say, a little too friendly with the co-eds, but never got caught because the school's swim coach, Mike Wilcox, got all the headlines (and legal action) for his own sexual indiscretions. A different era.

That's a great quote. Unfortunately, if we eliminated the players who don't really belong in college, we'd be playing 7 on 7.

On the contrary, I believe this sort of story deserves aggressive reporting...which GT doesn't do. It's simply amazing and tragic when young men with so many advantages make such horrendous decisions. We need to make examples of them so others will learn.

4 wins. Ohio will be one of them.

Third sentence of story: "The offense, produced some big plays that didn’t hit on deep passes, he said." Can someone tell me what this means?

Let me explain. I'm not grandstanding. I used to have a great deal of respect for print journalism, and in the ABJ we had one of the best, if not the very best, mid-size daily paper in the country. (Full disclosure: My father was an editor there for 40 years.) The people at the ABJ took tremendous pride in their work, and it showed. I have had 3-4 interactions with Mr. Thomas wherein I have pointed out interesting stories that haven't been reported, and his reply has always been, essentially, "Hey, I do what I do and go home. I don't do any more than they ask of me or pay me for." I also have heard him openly criticize MAC sports and UA and imply that he feels this beat is beneath him as a "professional journalist." Well, the effort he puts into this beat is pretty obvious to me - perhaps because I'm a sports journalism junkie - but many of you are willing to settle for anything he dishes up simply because UA hasn't garnered much attention in the past. The fact the he's not even proofing his own copy before posting blogs or articles on Ohio.com tells me he really doesn't care about the quality of his work. So it's not intended as grandstanding - I'm simply decrying the continued lowering of standards caused by lazy writers.

Every George Thomas blog post has at least one typo/grammatical error. He seems to feel mistakes are OK as long as he is typing fast. John S. Knight would not agree. He clearly doesn't like being called out on his accuracy issues. Not a good business to be in if you have such thin skin. Anyone who calls him out via Twitter immediate gets blocked. He's pissy. George, how about proofing your own copy once or twice before submitting it?

Devastating column in today's ABJ. I hope the board heeds the call for an investment in academics rather than buildings. (And that should preclude hiring Mr. Tressel, thank you very much.) ABJ column

As talented a communicator he is, I'm guessing he went on for 15 minutes.

I'm talking about the work that appears on ohio.com and in the print paper. Read his blog post from yesterday; multiple grammatical errors. Read his news stories - quite often rife with non sequiturs. Consider his reporting - Fox Sports broke the story of Abreu's probation violation and subsequent dismissal from school. GT has never covered this story. As a reporter, you're supposed to report news, good or bad. As an objective reporter, you should not trade jokes and rumors via Twitter with the players you are supposed to be covering. I find him lazy, and it's an insult to me as a MAC fan. He doesn't "work" his beat as he would if he were covering the Buckeyes. Just a fact; he has little respect for mid-major sports and it's obvious in the lack of effort behind his work. He doesn't care because he doesn't think anyone else cares.

But a UofA faculty member who wonders why George is so sloppy.