GP1

The quality of the Big South isn't near the quality of the MAC. In fact, it is a terrible league. I would be surprised if CCU finished in the top two spots of the MAC East if they were in our division. A close loss to CCU, if they win their conference, will not even enter the minds of the selection committee. It's MAC Championship or bust for the Zips this year.

How short memories are. Some years ago, UCONN came to town in their first year of d1 and beat the zips.

@STZ your contempt is understandable. Over often thought Akron would be a great book in terms of their football failure. Chapters could be, but not limited to the following. 1. Faust knew what to do and nobody else did. 2. The mistake of keeping Dennison as AD. 3. A natatorium does not a d-1 team make 4. Apathy 5. Replacing the rubber bowl 6. Marketing vs winning: they are the same thing. 7. Keeping coaches too long 8. Recruiting: no NE Ohio high school coaches, your leftovers are not d-1 players....get over yourselves. 9. Tob Wistrello: Akron's Katrina. Over the next two years, this book could be written with the two possible titles for the last chapter. 1. Finally 2. Enough is enough.

It could always be worse. You could have been stupid enough to drive three hours, through on cotton field after another, to the game and then made plans to spend the rest of the weekend in Redneck Central. What kind of idiot would do that?

CCU is not a good team. Suspended players should not have mattered. More of the same. Zips pooping their pants n the clutch. Offense with guys standing around. No meaningful improvement YOY in key players(s). Losing easily winnable ooc games. I will say this next one as nicely as possible so I don't hurt anyone's feelings...KD was absolutely terrible last night and should give his salary for this week back....I hope he enjoyed his trip to the beach because he didn't do much else while down here. $500K a year? More waiting for the Mac to start so we can get excited about the mAC Tournament. None of this has to do with suspended players. I hope I'm wrong, but this programs looks stale to me. KD could have shaken his staff up some last year and decided not to. New ideas produce new strategies. The same old ideas produced more of the same. CCU was so much better prepared for us than we were for them it wasn't even funny. I know we are not supposed to talk about Q, but his loss is a huge problem. He just wasn't a player, he was a key player.

First of all, congrats to CCU. With MUCH less talent than what the Zips put on the floor last night, they put clinic on how to beat the Zips. Every team who plays Akron should watch the film of last night. Some rambling thoughts.... The loss of Q will hurt this team. Let's start with the basics....overall athletic talent. Running fast, jumping and hand/eye coordination. AA can run fast with the ball. There isn't anyone who can keep up with AA and the team overall is much slower and thus, less athletic. Jumping...let's see how we are when suspended players return. Hand/eye...It's there, but I think the team, overall, could use some physical conditioning. Loss of hand/eye corrdination sometimes can be a sign of fatigue and the Zips look more tired at times than they should. Depth. This team is not 10 deep and everyone needs to stop pretending it is. They have 10 guys KD plays, but the base talent isn't there to play that many. The Zips have an 8 man rotation and two guys who should play when in a pinch. Other than that, everyone should enjoy a great seat to watch the game. My favorite Zips is AA. I joked about it last night, but he is just a little chubby from his time off. Needs some exteded workouts and watch what he eats until he is 100%. Was not limping. I think he is one of the players whose eye/hand coordination will be greatly improved with conditioning. He was trying to do some things last night, but his body wasn't keeping up with his mind. Zeke is my second favorite Zip. I don't see improvement in his offensive game this year. This will be a problem because the loss of Q's point have to be made up elsewhere. He'll get points at the foul line and dunks, but not much offensive coordination there. Coastal figured that out early. They doubled early and when they realized there was no threat, they played him straight up and did a good job guarding the perimeter. It's on film now...Lesson learned for the MAC. CCU had this center who was what we called in the old days, wirey (sp?). Sort of this skinny guy who plays his butt off because he isn't very talented. He was 50% talent and 25% hustle and 25% crazy and he played a very good game against Zeke. Even though CCU went on a little run right before half, I think it was 6-0, I really felt the Zips had figured something out. Even thought the game was close, it felt as if the Zips had gained some sort of upper hand againt CCU. CCU did all of the littel things to win the game against a team with better players. Hustle and hard work really paid off for them. Nice new arena for CCU and the crowd, especially the students, were very lively. I think a lot of people are overreacting to the loss last night. There is a looooong time between now and March. My biggest concern is I see more of the same. More of the same does gets a trip to the MAC Finals and a 50/50 shot at the NCAA. Later, more of the same results in a first round NIT or NCAA loss. I understand we had two guys out, but they are part of the more of the same and I took that into consideration when i wrote the previous thoughts. I'm going to go walk on the beach. Have a great day everyone.

Yes. AA doing ok. Not limping. Needs some conditioning. A little chubby. Pp

@ Dave Zeke looks ok in post. Doubled a lot. CCU is average at best. Zips wear them down with more players in second half and win easy. AA need to be careful of his paella consumption when on rehab.

Sluggish AA out of shape.

@ Dave.....Nice! I've never thought of it that way, but the enforcement arm at the NCAA is more like the Vichy French than Nazi Germans. Sort of a group of witless bumblers taking orders from a bunch of goons. Good people get harmed in the wake of their stupidity. Thanks again for the paradigm shift.

Thanks for posting. Goes to show how explosive our passing game is. We took a four year bench warmer at an unknown school and are breaking school records with him. Give me a little more mobility in our QB and an improved running game....watch out!

Are you saying we had a problem complying with the NCAA's Bible-sized book of rules?

Good discussions on playing a tough schedule. Here is my opinion. We should play every team in the MAC East every year. That's why you have divisions...In order to find the best team in a single group of teams that will compete for a championship against a team from the same conference, but in another division. It streamlines the process. If the division is tough, so be it. If it isn't, so be it. I don't know why the MAC doesn't have every team in the division play each other every year. Doing so allows teams to develop programs designed to win their division and then take their chances in the MAC Championship. Really good NFL teams design their teams around winning their division first, maximizing out of division games, getting into the playoffs and then seeing where the chips fall at that point. The MAC should do the same.

Sounds like nobody really knows why the players may or may not be at CCU so this is just a general comment. There always have been and there always will be professors who stage protests because they believe their University spends too much money on sports. It goes on everywhere. For the most part, they are probably right if they believe big time college athletics are contrary to the mission of a university. They are, but I still like them and will continue to follow.

The good teams are getting better players all around. That's how good teams are made. It's like saying, "Defense wins championships". Good teams win championships, not defense.

Bachelor Party? That only means one thing. I know a guy who worked as a bar back and later as a bartender at The Dollhouse when he was younger. He made $600 per night on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Less on other nights, but still a lot. The also paid $50 just for showing up to work. The guy could tell stories you wouldn't believe, but they are all true. He worked there seven years.

Talk?...You should see the way the locals dress. Summer attire is cut off jeans and a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Winter attire is jeans with a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off.

My offer still stands. I thought there would be several people who used this as a chance to spend a weekend at the ocean the best time of the year to visit MB. Rumor has it there are $49.00 round trip tickets out of Arnold Palmer airport in western Pennsylvania to Myrtle Beach on Spirit Airlines.

Even though Ok State plays the same offense, their QB has a net rushing total of 254 yards this season. Even if you take out his longest of 50, he is still averaging around 5 yards per running attempt. He may not be a "dual threat", but he is enough of a threat. I'll take a four yard gain any day over an incomplete pass. Offensive coordinators say all the time, "Get yards". When the opportunity presents itself, we have to get yards. Why should the defense rush more than three on a clear passing down? There is no threat of our QB running. Heck, they could drop 10 and there would be no threat of running. Of the Top 4 BCS teams right now, three of the four (Oregon, Can't State and ND) have QBs who are at least a threat to run. Alabama's QB has a net loss of yards this year, but when you have two RBs with over 700 yards rushing each, there isn't much need for a QB to get yards that have already been gotten.

Good points. The solutions are pretty simple. A QB with a cannon arm and pinpoint accuracy solves this problem....Very hard to find in the MAC and the good teams know it. Second solution, which is easier than banging your head against a wall trying to be right about something that is almost impossible to be right at (see JD Brookhart never giving up on the 3-3-5 defense). What the good teams in the MAC have also figured out is there has to be a running component with the QB as a threat to run in an offense in the 21st Century. Being able to run isn't as important as being able to pass, but a team had better have some running component to open up the field for passing. It doesn't have to be a 50/50 balance, but there as to be some action that provides deception and surprise to a defense. For a long time now, the NFL has had good runners who open up the field for passing. Think back to Steve Young and how his ability to run opened up the field countless times for the 49ers. Heck, you can go back as far as Otto Graham and Sammy Baugh to see NFL QBs who have, in their time, opened up a passing game with their feet. As time progressed, there have become more guys like Young. Ben Roethlisberger has been doing it for a while now. It's nothing new, we are just seeing more of it and a different evolution of it in college. I know a lot of people aren't going to like this, but look at how OSU has done with their last two running threat QBs with little talent on the team. Let's join the party...There probably isn't much pot left at the party since we played at Can't last weekend, but we can always buy/grow more. There are other solutions, but the second seems to be the one that works every time a turn on a television.

This makes me sad. When I was in school, we were always looking for something to do that would entertain us. The basketball team wasn't very good, so it wasn't a good form of entertainment and we didn't go. If they were good, I know lots of people who would have gone. It bothers me that the students have such a great form of entertainment within walking distance from where they live and don't go. I still don't understand why every game isn't sold out. It's great entertainment. These students are creating the next generation of empty seats. Other than school or work obligations, there is no reason for them to not go. Go to the games kids. You'll have fun.

I agree. My percentage might be a little higher next year with around 33%, but 25% is still a good number. I'd start out at 33% of the recruiting class and then try to taper that percent down to around 10% in four years and keep that at a permanent level.

The mac is going through a period of improvement and has room to get better. The league is deeper than in past periods of improvement. If you guys remember, Marshall was a regular Top 25 program and Miami finished in the Top 10 Roethlisberger's last year. We still don't see that team or the quality of QB they had. Maybe they have replaced star power with depth...I don't know, but there is room for the league to get better in terms of stars. Plenty of good depth though and plenty of quality play on the field. I wouldn't want to give up depth for stars. It got old watching Marshall, when they were loaded with stars, make the rest of the league bad.

EA does pick Doug McDermott. Should be a great game when the Zips go to Omaha in December. Big scorer vs the best MAC defensive team. The Zips will need a huge win here to make my undefeated December prediction come true.

I don't have a photo, but I do have an over/under question. How many times will children under the age of 10 say something like, "It smells like a skunk."?