BirdZip

There was a search committee. They twice recommended that we hire Luke Fickell out of a pool of some great candidates. And twice, Wistrcill overruled them to bring in a coach that wasn't recommended by anyone and was only approached by one other school who was more desperate than we were. Source?

Could be half of the Bottom Ten next week!! And we play three of the other four this year. Show a little progress and we could at least give the illusion of improving with a much-improved record.

Wow. Three MAC schools in the bottom 10 (UA, Buffalo and EMU) and two more on the waiting list (CMU and BG).

So you're saying that Tree is blossoming? Sorry, had to...

I don't know who we will be playing, but I hope we schedule Carleton, Saskatchewan, and Dalhousie or teams of their caliber. I fear we will instead schedule teams like Chabot, Ohlone, and Siskiyous. Regardless, the extra practice time should be beneficial. Well, the schedule turns out to have a little of both with a tendency towards the weak side. The last game against Carleton could be interesting. The first 4 against Sheridan, Quebec, McGill and the Champlain hasbeens should be name the score outings for the Zips. I'm interested in the game against Carleton. They have won seven of the last nine CIS (the Canadian NCAA) national championships. They had an 87-game winning streak going from 2003-2006. How we do against them will tell us a lot about our team. The four games preceding this one are pretty much just to figure out a basic depth chart. It would appear the Carleton Ravens lost to LaSalle but beat Illinois State recently. I don't know if I'm impressed with 7 of the last 9 CIS. My son's T-ball team was pretty strong, too, but we couldn't have held a candle against the little leaguers. Quoth the Ravens: "Never Scored"...

There are three players who look like triplets. They are Q, CJ Oldham & Nick Harney. Get in line now for "Fear the Fro" shirts... I had a "Fear the Fro" sign back when Wood was sporting one. Looks like I'll have to dust it off...

I knew a guy from Wooster and he used to correct people all the time by saying, "And what is a tree made out of? Wooood?" What grows on the tree? Foooood...

Wonder no more. There is no chance WVA ever comes to the JAR. K.e.n.t. fans have a better chance of having a felon-free roster. We took this game because WVA waved a bunch of money around. We can only wave coupons for $1 hot dogs in front of Huggins. That's not enough. "I came last time but they ran out! Never again!!!"

I think high schools should be allowed to pay high school athletes to play for them. After all, high schools charge admission to those games, and the bigger and high profile schools have games on TV on occasion. What harm could there possibly be to paying high school students. And that wouldn't give the private schools an advantage over the publics because, hey, the publics would be allowed to do the same thing. And my son plays travel baseball. Certainly there's no harm in paying 10-year old kids (or their parents) to try to get them to come over to our team, right? That would help ensure that parents didn't get benefits without people knowing about it. What could be the harm? There are several people at my company that have earned patents for the company. The company literally makes hundreds of millions off of those patents. The individuals came up with them. It is obviously unfair that the company should benefit so much. Those patents' benefits should go to the individual(s) who invented them. Nevermind that they did it using the company's resources--that can't be relevant, can it? Nevermind that they signed an agreement when they agreed to work for my company. Why should that agreement mean anything? And hey, those free-ride scholarships aren't worth anything, so don't go telling me they already get paid in that way. Tuition/Room/Board at OSU is a mere $34K a year, so a full ride with a redshirt year is only worth $170,000. That's chicken feed.

I'll bet our defense would improve...

I like the writing above the doorway (above the doorman's head on the close-up).

I like how the author knew Can't State graduates would be reading the article, so he helped them out by doing the math for them.

Cap'n, what happened two or three years ago really isn't all that relevant to this particular conversation. Just for that comment, you're on our Basketball Golf Scramble team again this year.

Really wouldn't change much from what I can tell. East - Akron, Buffalo, Can't, Miami, Ohio, Temple, UMass West - Ball State, BGSU, CMU, EMU, NIU, Toledo, WMU In a North South allignment it would likely be: North - NIU, WMU, CMU, EMU, Toledo, BGSU, Buffalo South - Akron, Can't, Miami, Ball State, Ohio, Temple, UMass So We would have Ball State and they would get Buffalo, Akron would then have its three rivals (Can't, Miami, and Ohio). If you look at the map, there isn't any other way to do a North South division. My understanding is that FB division reconfiguration would be done such that Temple and UMass are NOT in the same division. Having them in the same division would double the excess travel burden for the other teams in the division. Look for Temple & UMass to be in opposite divisions when it's all played out. Go Zips! Perhaps the most practical reason for UMass and Temple to be in opposite divisions is so that, when they both bail to a better conference, the MAC doesn't have to reshuffle.

Shocker. Coming off an 11-loss season, I have to believe that any good thing shown by a player or unit is mostly caused by the failures of the unit opposite them. I guess that explains why I'm thinking Keener'92 is such a great poster right now...

Our OOC schedule last season was fine...we just lost all the games that mattered. BTW - Any talk of a Zips' at-large NCAA bid is valid with Zeke in his Junior and Senior seasons. If anyone says an at-large is not possible, they're a low-aimer. +1. However, we can't lose to the MAC West teams or any weak OOC opponents, and we must win a game or two against a reputable OOC program. Based on this year's schedule, that puts us at roughly 23-10, no losses to EMU or NIU, and a win or two against CSU, Dayton, Minnesota, or Miami-FL going into the MAC Tournament. This past year VCU lost to South Florida (10-23), Georgia State (12-19) and Northeastern (11-20) and finished with an overall record (prior to tourney) of 23-11. They beat some good teams, but no ranked teams. They got in. We had our chances this year playing teams like Temple, Minnesota, Miami and Dayton. We need to win most of those. We didn't. Let's also not overlook that the rest of our conference is crap. We're not going to go undefeated in our conference, and losing to anyone in our conference is a crap loss. This year's schedule (OOC) was as good as VCU's. But they won theirs.

Seems like the perfect opportunity for me to tell my favorite story--how I played basketball against Joey Galloway in high school and blocked one of his shots...Of course, I usually leave out the part where he dunked on me. And I never talk about running the 200m against him where he coasted the last 100m looking back over his shoulder at the rest of us also-rans. (His scholarship to OSU was for track.) Dude was amazing. are you from the valley? Hometown = Adena. Wife from St. C. Went to Buckeye West, then Buckeye SouthWest after West burned down (Buckeye Local now).

Seems like the perfect opportunity for me to tell my favorite story--how I played basketball against Joey Galloway in high school and blocked one of his shots...Of course, I usually leave out the part where he dunked on me. And I never talk about running the 200m against him where he coasted the last 100m looking back over his shoulder at the rest of us also-rans. (His scholarship to OSU was for track.) Dude was amazing.

Interesting--I'm a season ticket holder and no call yet. What section and at what price?

My wife and I talked about the same thing last night. When a team has a big lead, you have to expect the other team to come out swinging like crazy in the second half. It happens in the NBA all the time. The key is to keep your composure and weather the storm. The game may have gone into OT, but it looks like the Zips did just that. All you have to do is win and it doesn't matter how you do it. I'm sure that game was well worth the price of admission for anyone at the game last night. The last time the Zips won the MAC, they did it in a season when they shouldn't have. I have a feeling this may be one of those years. The Great GP1 guarantees a win tonight (don't ask me about Saturday yet) for the Zips. Take it to the bank. I feel as confident about the Zips winning tonight as I did yesterday late in regulation. And the last time they did it, their record after winning the MACC was 23-12. Hmmmm...

I know. We got absolutely no credit for beating the bottom 4 West teams...especially when we could only beat 2 of them. Hahaha. Yes, actually beating all of those teams certainly wouldn't have hurt. Without those two losses, this season is completely different. I'd give us a nod for the CBI or .com tournaments with 22 wins already. Even though we blew them out, the Milliken game is a blemish on our schedule/record as well. The RPI doesn't even consider it a win and neither do I. As a D-III program, they have different rules and standards by which to operate their program. So, it wasn't a fair fight. I hope to not see any more of these glorified scrimmages on our regular season schedule in the future. Let's get win #20 by beating the Sweaters today. Go Zips. Correct me if I'm wrong, but without those two losses, aren't we the MAC regular season champs right now? Nope. That would have put us at 11-5, and Can't finished 12-4. It would have made the last game of the season at Can't that much more meaningful though. If we had won our last 2 games, Can't would not have finished at 12-4.

Final Exam:

Zach, Zach, Zach--7,485 posts and still not a good one. McNees--> <--ZN.O The guy only gives everything he's got for the past 4 years and some folks can't help but pile on every chance they get. When McNees is carrying this team in the Q again this year, I'll simply laugh to myself as those same posters talk about how important McNees was and that they always knew he'd come around.