Reality has entered coach Keith Dambrot’s world — not that it wasn’t in the back of his mind before.
The coach has given his team a goal for which to shoot — an at-large bid into the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament next month.
For many other mid-majors with the name Virginia Commonwealth, George Mason or Butler, such lofty goals are more attainable.
But even as the Zips embark on the rest of their schedule to try to finish the season without dropping another game against teams that are likely top-100 programs overall, an at-large bid will likely remain elusive.
“I think it’s still a long shot because we’re the Akron Zips,” Dambrot said Thursday after a limited practice.
College hoops fans locally must have heard mentions of Murray State and Wichita State, but rarely has mention of the Zips passed the lips of college hoops analysts.
“When you’re never in the discussion, it’s pretty hard,” Dambrot said. “So we keep dripping and dripping and dripping and in the end maybe we’re in the discussion. If it doesn’t help us this year, eight years of winning has to help us eventually.”
Dambrot said that it’s not happening now, but winning consistently will eventually take care of the situation.
“I don’t think a lot of people consider us in the same breath as the George Mason’s of the world, but we’re not far from being there. We have to win,” he said. “We need to go into the NCAA Tournament and win and we weren’t ready to win with the two teams we took yet [in 1986 and 2009].”
He thinks that his team and the program overall is getting closer.
Tournament talk
As the Zips grind through the rest of the season, they find themselves in the enviable position of being two games up on nearest competitors, Buffalo and rival Kent State. That is important given the fact that the MAC Tournament’s format has been changed so that the top two teams, regardless of division, receive the top two seeds. Dambrot, however, still isn’t sure about it.
“I don’t really think about it and if I did, I wouldn’t tell [the media] about it because I respect my elders and my bosses and the commissioner is our boss, right?” he said with a laugh. “My thing is we won it when we had to win four games, I don’t know. I haven’t gone through it. Probably at the end of it, I’d have a better opinion.”
With the Zips, provided they don’t run out of gas or suffer a major injury, possessing the potential to run the table in the regular season, it’s quite possible that they could end up with one of those seeds.
“The one thing I don’t like — and some guys would like it — I don’t like sitting there. I don’t know what the hell I’d do with them for six or seven days,” he said. “[The media] may coach them for the first two, but I don’t want to be around them for seven days of practice. But I can’t do anything about it. I just have to make sure we’re sharp if we get that bye and we’re ready to play on that first game.”
Playing scrappy
Dambrot saw something he liked out of senior forward Nik Cvetinovic that he had not seen in a while in the 74-59 win Wednesday over Miami— some of his old scrappiness.
“I’ve been really hard on him in the past two of weeks. He needs to get back to being a junkyard dog. He keeps wanting to shoot those threes and doing all the things he wants to do,” Dambrot said. “But what he’s really good at is being Dennis Rodman – offensive rebounding, defensive rebounding, playing hard defensively, taking the charge, making the extra pass. When he does that, he’s one of the best players in the league. When he doesn’t, he’s not very good.”
Stay off the road
Center Zeke Marshall recently enjoyed a rite of passage that most people go through as a teen — he got his driver’s license.
“I didn’t have a want to get it, really,” Marshall said when asked about it. “I wasn’t like other kids. What do I really need to get a car for? All I do is play basketball.
“When you have folks such as a brother to drive you to and from hoops and you spend a lot of time traveling for school, that makes sense.”
He doesn’t know what type of car he’ll be getting in the coming weeks, but the 7-footer has no plans to remove the front seat.
Soccer news
The men’s soccer team will play four games at home and one away as part of its spring schedule, coach Caleb Porter announced.
The Zips will welcome Pittsburgh (April 6), Colgate (April 7), Cleveland State (April 14) and Wright State (April 28). They will travel to Xavier (April 21). All exhibition matches are free and open to the public.
George M. Thomas can be reached at gmthomas@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Zips blog at http://zips.ohio.com. Follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/GeorgeThomasABJ and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/sports.abj.
