Here’s the Rasor’s Edge to rebut all you haters…

The Buchtelite has plenty of enemies. Some say we are way too liberal (probably true). Some say we make way too many errors (we try hard, but every paper screws up occasionally).

A new enemy appeared recently. Through our message boards on www.buchtelite.com, a member of the rifle team let us have it. This is one of her tamest posts: "It would be nice if the Buchtelite could report results from all of the sports teams and not just football and basketball."

This is a problem that every newspaper deals with. For example, two Akron teams won championships this summer: the Aeros (minor league baseball) and Racers (pro softball). Editors at the Akron Beacon Journal had to decide between covering these events and giving space to the red-hot Indians.

Through surveys, the ABJ knew that few Akronites care about the Aeros and Racers. The Tribe’s popularity was also gaining steam. So the Beacon downplayed the championships in favor of the Indians.

Luckily, we don’t have such a problem. Three Zips teams have popularity: men’s basketball, men’s soccer and football. Other teams have interest, but nothing compares to the big three. We easily can cover those sports as they deserve, but because of space constrictions, we are limited beyond that.

I believe journalists are obligated to write about their readers’ interests. But if readers don’t care about something, and we think they should care, then journalists should tell the community that it ought to care. We did that with men’s soccer.

As for the rifle team, the sport is incredibly boring compared to the major sports. Rifle ranks up there with billiards and bowling as far as athleticism is concerned. I would prefer to watch a spelling bee instead of a rifle match.

However, if the rifle team is one of the nation’s elite, the UA community should know about it.

Last spring, we devoted a lot of space to Akron Rifle. The squad nearly earned an appearance at the NCAA Rifle Championships, an eight-team tournament to determine the national champion, so we wrote about it.

Right now, however, the team is in the regular season. If we write a story about a match against John Jay College, the only people who will care are the players, the coach, the players’ parents and the players’ friends. Maybe 100 people will read the story. Compare that with the thousands who attend men’s soccer, men’s basketball and football games.

Even GoZips.com, the university’s athletics Web site, barely gives attention to the rifle team. While football players have full profiles, rifle shooters have only their name, hometown, high school and birthdate on display. The site’s last feature about a rifle shooter came more than three years ago.

After searching the Beacon Journal’s archives, I noticed that the last rifle feature was written in 2002. Before that, it was 1997. Akron’s three biggest teams get that much coverage on a weekly basis.

GoZips.com does it right. The Beacon Journal does it right. So do we.

Now if we could only stop being so liberal.

Football

Call me a sports dweeb, but I’ve done some math about Akron’s chances for a bowl game. Akron is 5-5. A win against Kent State this Thursday and the Zips are bowl eligible for the second-straight year. Last year, Akron was the only bowl-eligible team that didn’t go to a game. This year, it might be similar.

Currently, 64 teams in the country are bowl-eligible - just enough to fill the 32 bowls. Several five-win teams are looking to get their sixth win. The five-win teams are Maryland, North Carolina, Kansas, Kansas State, Texas A&M, Baylor, Pittsburgh, Houston, Southern Mississippi, Colorado State, Utah, Stanford, Arizona State, Oregon State, Louisiana Lafayette, Arkansas State and Vanderbilt. I didn’t have time to check if all of these teams have a game left, but most do.

So Zips fans need to root against each of these teams as they play their last game of the season. If they all lose, and Akron beats Kent, the Zips’ bowl chances will improve greatly, even if they don’t get help from Ohio or Toledo this week. (Ohio must beat Miami and Toledo must beat Bowling Green for Akron to win the MAC East.)

Cross country

As you can tell, I don’t write too much about running. Track and cross country are boring to me. If you’re an honest person, you probably agree. Anyhow, I will give the team some props for leading the conference with five all-academic teamers.

Morgan Sulzener, Adriana Zalucka, Gina DiAntonio, David Pykare and Jeff Swartzel each got the honor for good grades. To perform well in the classroom while missing class for meets, spending a lot of time in practice and being mentally spent is impressive.

Women’s basketball

The Zips lost their opener to Dayton Friday, 61-54. The game was even closer than that. The Zips made it a one-possession game with less than two minutes to go in the second half. But the turnover saga continued from last year. The Zips had 24 turnovers, 17 of which came in the first half. Yuck. That means Akron only had two more points (19) than screw-ups in the first half.

However, if they can make it a good game on the road against an established Division I school, they must have improved something. I heard part of the first half on the radio while driving home and couldn’t decipher anything. Looking at the box score, I also found nothing to suggest this game would be close at all. Akron was outrebounded, outassisted, outshot and outdefended.

If anyone attended the game, I’d love to know how this wasn’t a blowout.

Men’s soccer

I don’t know how to feel about Akron’s No. 9 seeding. On one hand, I’m upset that the Zips didn’t get the respect. On the other, I know Akron will be in the final four if it can beat a team that it already beat (Maryland). Akron doesn’t and won’t get respect.

Remember Akron being the only bowl-eligible team to not go to a bowl last year? Remember how the Zips had a good argument to get an at-large bid to the NCAA basketball tournament but didn’t even get an NIT bid?

Oh well. If I wanted to root for the favorite every time, I would’ve gone to Ohio State.

Football

Both games went as planned tonight. The Zips crushed Ohio at the mostly empty Rubber Bowl, 27-3. Meanwhile, after a weather delay and four beyond-terrible punt snaps Miami lost to Bowling Green, 42-14.

If you don’t remember from last week’s Rasor’s Edge, now Ohio must beat Miami in Athens and Toledo must beat Bowling Green. If that happens, Akron will go into Thanksgiving morning with an opportunity to win its first MAC East championship.

Men’s basketball

Here’s the Rasor’s Edge that ran with the Buchtelite’s preview of men’s basketball team preview on Tuesday…

As I grew up in Stow, Kent State basketball was huge. Forget the Cavaliers; everyone loved the Flashes.

That is no longer true. The media predicted Kent to tie for third place in the six-team Mid-American Conference East Division this season. That’s quite a fall from the Flashes’ 2002 trip to the Elite Eight.

For two weeks in 2002, Kent State basketball was the talk of the sports world. In 2005-06, the Flashes will battle Buffalo and Miami to stay out of the MAC’s gutter.

In the preseason poll, Akron was predicted to finish second in the division behind Ohio, the reigning MAC champion. Five of 26 voters also said Akron will win the MAC Tournament. Only Ohio had more votes (14) in the conference.

Do you see what I’m getting at?

Kent State is terrible, and the team has left a void in Northeast Ohio sports. The Zips must start the season hot to tap into the new market.

Winning three of its first five games should be easy. Akron will play at home against Youngstown State, Duquesne and Denison in the first two weeks of the year. The Zips will also have a huge chance to make a name for themselves early in the season with games at California and No. 8 Louisville.

If the Zips win one of those away games, they will be much more likely to get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament or the NIT.

After that, Akron will spend half a week in Puerto Rico for the San Juan Shootout. The games will not count in conference play, but they will certainly matter when the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee convenes in March.

Basketball pundits say early-season success is overrated. That isn’t true for Akron.

But to keep Dick Vitale happy, the Zips will play their best basketball late in the season. The Zips will use a 10-man rotation, rather than the traditional eight. This will keep them healthier and more energized than any team in the conference.

Up-tempo teams typically have larger rotations so they will always have fresh legs on the floor. Although the Zips are equipped to use the fast break, that is not coach Keith Dambrot’s reasoning. He recognizes his team’s incredible depth at all positions, so the team will play better with an extended rotation.

Now that sophomore Nick Dials, an Ohio State transfer, is healthy, Akron will use a four-man guard rotation that also includes junior Dru Joyce and sophomores Cedrick Middleton and Bubba Walther. Any of them could start on most MAC teams.

The forward positions are also solid. Dambrot is happy to have junior Romeo Travis and senior Darryl Peterson back. They comprise the best forward combination in the conference. If Travis continues his Carlos Boozer-like play (before Boozer became a scumbag), he might go down as the best player in Akron history. Sophomore Quade Milum, who is an athletic freak, can back up both spots.

Junior forward Jeremiah Wood’s status is up in the air. His road to recovery from knee surgery has been difficult. If he does not improve, Dambrot may red shirt his super-talented, yet oft-injured, forward. But don’t worry, the Zips played two-thirds of last season without Wood, and have enough big men to do it again.

At center, Akron will have seniors Rob Preston and Matt Futch. Preston was a spark off the bench last year. If he can keep that energy level over extended minutes, Akron’s interior defense and rebounding will improve over last season.

Akron’s depth, however, is irrelevant to many experts who say Ohio is the next MAC powerhouse. ESPN.com’s Andy Katz called Ohio his "It" team, a squad that will make waves in the postseason.

The Bobcats have two outstanding sophomores in point guard Jeremy Fears and forward Leon Williams. The team won last year’s MAC Tournament and nearly ousted Florida in the first round.

But they fear Akron after last year when the Zips beat the Bobcats by 32 combined points in two regular-season wins. Ball State and Toledo are good, too; but the conference will come down to Akron and Ohio.

With a quick start and steady finish, Akron will play its first postseason tournament game since Bob Huggins led the Zips to the 1989 NIT.

Men’s Soccer

It will go in the record as a 0-0 tie, but the Zips won the MAC Championship by a 7-6 shootout. After 110 minutes without a goal, the game went to a sudden-death shootout. With the score 7-6, goalkeeper Evan Bush stoned a Buffalo player by guessing correctly on which direction he would kick. The Beacon got a great photo of the block. Here’s a story about it from Buchtelite and Beacon Journal writer Mike Beaven.

The UA Athletic Dept will begin a campaign called "Fear the Roo" much the same way Maryland has the "Fear the Turtle."

The people at the athletic department have an unenviable task: unite a commuter campus around mediocre sports teams (with the exception of men’s soccer). They are full of original ideas that would be resounding successes at Duke or Ohio State. Here, it’s not so simple. Students go home after classes on weekdays and most have never spend one Saturday on campus.

Anyhow, I’ve learned there are very few new ideas. It’s not bad to swipe a successful idea from someone else. This men’s basketball season, MAC teams should Fear the Roo. For women’s basketbal, um… uhhhh…. FEAR THE ROO!

Men’s Soccer

The Zips beat Western Michigan 5-0 to advance to the MAC Championship (2 p.m. Sunday against Buffalo at Lee Jackson Field). Junior Sinisia Ubiparipovic and freshman Geir Nyheim scored two goals apiece for the Zips. Goaltender Evan Bush continues to be an all-world freshman.

Akron also cleaned up with postseason conference awards. The three biggest awards went to the Zips: Player of the Year, Ross McKenzie; Coach of the Year, Ken Lolla; and Freshman of the Year, Bush. Also, seven of the 11 first-team all-MAC players were Zips. They were Bush, McKenzie, Ubiparipovic, Yohann Mauger, Dino Campellone, Matt Tutich and Ossie Michalsen. Akron also placed two players on the second-team all-MAC: Corey Sipos and Jon McClain.

It has been an unbelievable year and this team got everything it deserved.

Journalism ain’t easy. Your work is on display for so many different interests that if you don’t get people upset, you aren’t doing your job.

Well, a member of our Zips rifle team has voiced her very vocal dissent on the Buchtelite’s message boards. I’m glad she is voicing her concern. But she is dead wrong. Look for the Rasor’s Edge to tell you why.