I have a lot of respect for Akron.  I hate them, but I still respect them.  They have a great squad this year.  That being said, they seem to be winning a LOT of games this year by unimpressive margins, considering the competition.  They played a great game against us, but games against teams like EMU last night, Miami last weekend, and Buffalo at home when they trailed by 20 are pretty shocking for a team undefeated in conference this late in the year.  When I watched some of their game at BG I thought they were pretty unimpressive for stretches.  Is it playing down to their competition?  Are they weaker than their conference record indicates?  For as talented and deep as they are, I expect to see them blowing out weak teams in the MAC.

I'm really excited for their trip to Athens to see how they handle the atmosphere.  Obviously they were overwhelmed here last year, and I'm starting to think it could happen again.  I still think the only game between us that will matter will be in Cleveland, though.

I agree about Akron struggling - point deferrentials are one thing, but if you watched them play against CMU, Miami and EMU, you can tell something isn't right (or at least compared to the game against us). They were losing or tied most of the Miami game until the last minute, same with CMU. And EMU was within 2 or 3 with a few minutes to go.

It reminds me a little of our football team - we kept winning MAC games for a little bit against bad teams where the games were really close and we had to come back. You could tell injuries, other things weren't right, but some people kept saying "we are winning", "we are playing down to competion", etc. and eventually we ran into better teams and things went wrong for a bit.

Maybe the Zips are just struggling a bit, maybe a couple of injuries are slowing them down, maybe they are playing down to competition...and they'll be fine and not lose another game. But if I were a betting man, I could see them losing two or three games in the last month.

Ohio clearly established itself as superior to its opponent by the early part of the second half in all but a few games (WMU, Toledo, Kent State, Akron, BG) and had only the WMU and Kent State games came down to the last few minutes. The Bobcats have won by 18+ four times in one less game.

Akron's most convincing wins actually were against Toledo and Western Michigan (the Zips' only win of 16+). Ball State was within four in the last three minutes, Kent State was tied with just over a minute to go, Buffalo down one with just over a minute left, CMU trailed by one with two minutes left, Miami tied with 2:30 left, EMU down 4 with less than five left.

I think Ohio certainly had a chance to add to its scoring margin but went to its bench very early on multiple occassions. Buffalo and NIU were cases where the margin was well over 30 but ended up 20 or less.  I don't think Akron had the luxury of sitting the starters early more than once.

I'm not sure what this all says. Maybe Akron takes longer to get playing at a high level (it took them a little time even in the Ohio game). Maybe teams bring it more against the Zips. Maybe it is an Akron flaw. Or maybe it's just a bit of luck in the way games have played out.

But even in their game against us, as poorly as we played from the 10 minute mark on, it was a single digit game late.

Akron's winning streak looks alot like our football team's winning streak- one impressive win and a whole bunch of games that had no business being as close as they were.

Let's wait and see if Akron can keep it within 20 at the Convo, then we'll have a better idea of how good they really are.

thinking about their final 4 apperance imo

I will only say this, when this much screen ink and energy is spent trying to convince ourselves that we are still a better team than the team that beat us handily, it smacks of envy.  Give them credit, for heaven's sake.  They beat us and every other team on their MAC schedule so far.  If we beat them (twice in a month) those will undoubtedly be our two best conference wins of the year.  i wouldn't want it any other way. 

And, by the way, just like we visit other team's board after wins to see their snarky remarks about being better then us so we can laugh at their inadequacy (PSU football, anyone?), I'll bet the Zip faithful (all three of them) are doing the same thing right now.

Maybe but their resume isn't much better than ours. The difference is they played one fewer road game OOC (they lost all their OOC road games as well) and our head to head matchup was up there. Right now they are and should be ranked ahead of us but that could easily change after they come down to Athens.