Akron-Notre Dame news clips

Men's basketball

Below are links to some interesting articles about Friday's game:

Marla Ridenour wrote a great feature about Zeke Marshall. (link)

A Notre Dame fan site, "Rakes of Mallow," has a unique preview, parsing the statistics. (link)

The PD's Elton Alexander muses about the Zips' chances against the Fighting Irish's size and motion offense. (link)

The Charleston Daily Mail (W.V.) caught up with Brett McClanahan, who described the growing pains of becoming a player in Keith Dambrot's rotation. (link)

Below is what Notre Dame coach Mike Brey told a radio station about the Zips. (link):

“Well that’s the one thing I talked to our guys about Sunday night after we got our assignment and our matchup, I said everybody gets on and starts projecting out their bracket, or you’re the pick to do this — I said I don’t think we can do anything until we win a first round game. And really that’s been internalized by this group. I think one of the reasons we were very good early was we had a little edge about us all summer because we lost a first round game. We had a great run last year from being a 6-8 in the league and an NIT team to being a six seed and we lost to a heck of a team. Old Dominion’s a heck of a team, and I’m sure as heck glad they’re not in our bracket again. That’s the first thing I was looking for; I was saying keep them out of our bracket. I think that’s driven our group, I think they’re very aware. Hey can you get on a run, can you do this — I said, everybody slow down, let’s win a first round game. And for everything this group has done this year and they’ve been really consistent, I think that’s something that they’ve really internalized. Akron is a team that has won a championship. They cut nets down. They’ve won 12 of 14 games; we’ve won 12 of 14 games. So I mean, they’re a group that’s used to winning. They’re older which happens coming out of those leagues. They can really shoot it, and they’ve got a couple front line guys that are physical guys and skilled, a foreign kid. So they know how to play. They’re really well coached. They’ve been in the MAC title game four of five years. They’ve been winning for awhile. So college basketball is so crazy we have to be very ready to go on the afternoon on Friday.”