BirdZip

Lunardi now has Akron as an 11 seed in Dayton vs Pitt. How can the guy say a week or so ago that Akron has no chance at an At Large yet put them at 11 now?

The fact that you've been consistent with this position for years tells me that maybe you don't know when to stop. Our schedule, in an extremely weak year for the MAC, has us at #24 in the coaches poll, #28 in the AP, and with an RPI somewhere in the 30's. When the schedule came out, everyone loved it. In early February, we lost to Creighton and Detroit. Do you really think we'd have beaten Duke at that point? Also, replace Texas Southern with a loss to Michigan State and Akron is never in the headlines for the win streak. Best D1 season ever for Zips basketball. Enjoy it for crying out loud!

Go to the Akron-Ohio Recap page on ESPN here and look to the bottom right where they give MAC East standings. Shows Akron with the #24 before it.

Put huge Zippy heads on the corners of the jumbotron (or, maybe better yet, the streamlined mean-looking kangaroo head) and have them spray fire out of the nostrils at pivotal points in the game. Same as the Q with the swords (you can feel the heat when they do). Actually, I thought I heard somewhere where the Cavs owner wants a new jumbotron...

8/9 winner will play the 1, but I don't think we need to worry about the perils of being a 9 seed.

I'm not a fan of OSU discussions, but your comment made me look up OSU's schedule to review their games against Top 25 teams: AWAY GAMES (0-5) Lost at #2 Duke by 5 Lost at #11 Illinois by 19 Lost at #18 Michigan State by 3 Lost at #3 Michigan by 2 (OT) Lost at #20 Wisconsin by 22 HOME GAMES (2-2) Lost vs #9 Kansas by 8 Won vs #2 Michigan by 3 Lost vs #1 Indiana by 13 Won vs #4 Michigan State by 8 Five games against the top 4 with a record of 2-3.

Didn't Nick Goddard find himself on the floor during the last 0.x seconds of the Miami MACC debacle? Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I don't necessarily disagree, which is why I went back to the previous "bad loss" (CCU) as well.

I'm going to channel my inner DIG here... In the scenario you describe, I would put the odds at 1 in 16 of the Zips meeting OSU. 1 in 256 would be the odds for a particular seeding matchup at a particular location. If OSU is a 3-6 and UA is an 11-14, there are 16 possible combinations where the Zips would be playing OSU. That's 16 in 256 or 1 in 16. The other way to look at it is that wherever OSU is slotted, there are 16 different slots where UA could be put, and 1 of those would be against OSU. Again, 1 in 16. I for one don't think UA will get an 11 seed. 12 is likely tops. If we had made our run with 20-point blowouts, that might be a different story, but not only are our oppoennts not impressive, the manner in which we're beating them isn't impressive either. The sad part is, we're good enough to be inflicting blowouts, but for the most part, we aren't doing it.

And no 3-point shots. Excluding the game against John Carroll High School, I believe Deji is 6-35 from 3-point land (17%).

Someone please send an ambulance to wherever ZipsWin! is right now. I'm pretty confident he either just had a heart attack or his head exploded after reading this.

What I found intersting about that article was that when they discussed Middle Tennessee, they poo-poo'd their bad loss because it happened so long ago: They have a good (26 RPI!) but not slam-dunk at-large profile with only one bad loss, which they suffered all the way back on Jan. 3. Just as in 2012, there is very little margin for bad-loss error, which the Blue Raiders have thus far done well to avoid. Welcome to life as the Sun Belt's best. Our most recent bad loss, if you use Detroit, was 3 weeks earlier, and any other "bad loss" was another month earlier than that (and without two key contributors). You can spin it any way you want to, and my guess is that the committee would spin it against Akron (and MTSU for that matter) in favor of a "big name".

Whoever had that assignment, it seemed clear to me that he was getting an earful as Dambrot ran across the court to yell at him. I watched online but my impression was that Chauncey seemed to be struggling with his ability to change directions on defense.

I find Joe Lunardi to be thoroughly annoying, but here are a few interesting tidbits from his chat on Monday: Jeff (Columbus) Joe - Still not buying Akron as an at-large candidate? Where do you have them overall and is there any chance at all of 2 MAC teams in the big dance? Joe Lunardi (2:22 PM) It's not a question of "buying," it's a question of beating NCAA-level teams. Akron has a home overtime win over Middle Tennessee and that's it. Don't shoot the messenger. Tim (Columbus)You may not be collecting this data, but has the committee's selection and seeding tilted towards KenPom/BPI etc and away from RPI in recent years. If yes, do you think this will benefit a team like Iowa? Stronger in KP/BPI than RPI. Joe Lunardi (2:45 PM) Great question, Tim, and I do track such things. My answer would be "less RPI" and more so-called "eye-test" determinations by individual committee members. Sometimes those choices correspond to non-RPI metrics, sometimes not. Greg (East Lansing) I would say that the so-called "eye test" would be a very biased way to evaluate teams, don't you think? Joe Lunardi (2:49 PM) Do we have an hour? Yes, Greg, in a word, I've always said the "eye test" belongs in opthalmology (and not bracketology!!).

Was looking at various teams that are still undefeated in their conference and noticed that the MEAC has two. They have Norfolk State at 11-0 and NC Central at 10-0. The interesting part, though, is that they don't play each other at all! If I read their schedules correctly, they each play everyone else in their conference at least once but never each other.

Bump.

That was my takeaway, too. It seems maybe he is believing himself a little too much about winning a National Championship. Too many fancy passes when a standard pass would do. Too many forced passes when it clearly wasn't there. Oh, and don't throw an inbound pass thirty feet away from everyone on your team. I also wasn't very impressed with how we "attacked" the defense. I don't remember a lot of penetration and the passing was sluggish and predictable. My wife sat down and wathced the game with me for the first time this year. About 5 minutes in she asked herself why she was watching this. After another 5 minutes, she declared it unwatchable and left. I was impressed with EMU's defense, though. I thought they did a great job putting pressure out on the perimeter and disrupting us before we could get anything going. All in all, though, if you're going to have a time when you're playing poorly, do it when you're playing CMU, Miami and EMU. Two Top 25 teams lost last night to unranked teams and a few more barely squeaked by. The Zips are still streaking.

This is misleading. Their home wins are against the following: Rochester (Not D1) Eastern Illinois (7-18) IPFW (10-16) Texas Pan-Am (12-13) Madonna (Not D1) Purdue (12-12) Siena Heights (Not D1) Central Michigan (9-14) Miami (OH) (8-14) Northern Illinois (5-17) Buffalo (9-15) That concerns Akron? And the worst part is EMU lost by 2 to both Ball State and BG and by 4 to WMU. Different endings to those games and they'd be 7-2, on top of the MAC West and with the 3 seed. Man, the MAC stinks this year!

This is seriously your source? "I asked a friend?" Can you ask another friend for his opinion, too?

For me tonight needs to be a blowout. A close win is a loss from a "respect" standpoint. You have people throwing you a couple of votes now, so now they're really looking to see how you did. Beat CMU by 5 and they may decide to throw that bone somewhere else. Beat CMU by 30 and they probably feel justified in having you there and start to think a little more seriously about you. Our foot is in the door--we need to storm across the threshold before it gets slammed.

I'll take basketball wins over petty typo barbs any day...

According to Andy Katz this morning, it was more than a throwaway comment, but the MAC nixed it... "Akron coach Keith Dambrot said Saturday he was willing to switch and play on the road instead of being a home team in BracketBusters Feb. 22 or 23 in order to get a better game. Dambrot was turned down Sunday by the MAC office and the Zips will be a home team when the BracketBusters pairings will be announced Monday at 6:30 p.m. ET on ESPNU."

I want to see one thing in particular, and I want to see it early. I want to see Cooper picking himself off the floor (slowly) after being knocked down hard when he penetrates the lane. Nothing dirty, just a good hard foul to make him think twice when he does it again.

Made it to ESPN's main NCAAM page.

Got there about the same time but didn't get the north side tip. Was disappointed for the kids I brought but realize it was my own fault for when I arrived. What I don't understand is why limit it to 1500? If it was a marketing thing, you can still say 1500 but have more. If someone does come that normally doesn't, don't tick them off. On a related note to the attendance, if the JAR is going to be more packed like this on a regular basis, they need to find a better way to allow freedom of movement. If you're a lowly GA season ticket holder like me, the track in front of the upper chairbacks was off limits. That means everyone had to use the track on the other side, but that track was full of standing people. The camera people building their cameras right on that track didn't help either. I understand worrying about people going into seats they don't have tickets for, but if you're going to force traffic to one area, you need to keep that area open. Good problems to have, though...