Cross country

Gina DiAntonio and Jeff Swartzel made the MAC All-Academic team.

DiAntonio, with her 4.0 in biomedical engineering, is doing something pretty outstanding as a student-athlete. Swartzel has a 3.8 in secondary education.

Golf

The Zips will finish their fall season this weekend in Orlando.

Lucky bastards.

Swimming and diving

Akron, ranked 21st among mid-major schools, will start the conference season Friday by hosting Buffalo.

Men’s basketball

I read a passage of Ray Mernagh’s book about MAC basketball. It’s really entertaining to learn about the ins and outs of mid-major programs.

As I have written before, if there’s one expert on MAC basketball, it’s Ray.

Football

Dave Ruthenberg of MACReportOnline.com writes that Zips fans should stop worrying about losing Division IA status for attendance problems.

He breaks down what the rule really means.

• Nick of VanDelaySports.com says the Zips will beat Bowling Green, 28-17.
• The actual line is Akron minus eight.
• Danny Sheridan says the Zips will win by 8.5.

Cross country

To the best of my knowledge, this is my first cross country post.

Anyhow, Akron’s women took third and men placed second at the Buckeye Invitational in Columbus.

The Zips will run next at Notre Dame in two weeks.

Volleyball

Akron beat Denver tonight 3-1 thanks to sophomore Colleen Dryja’s 12 kills and 19 digs.

The tremendous freshman quartet also played well.

The Zips will play Wright State and West Virginia Saturday. Akron defeated WVU earlier in the season.

Tennis

After seven seasons at Akron, Tony Fox resigned this week as coach of the women’s tennis team.

The GoZips.com press release says a national search will begin immediately.

Cross country

We just finished publishing the final Buchtelite of the school year.

Our main sports story was about Jennie Castle, who will skip graduation to pursue her dreams of becoming an olympic athlete.

Miscellaneous

I also wrote a column-like story about the biggest news stories at UA this year.

If you haven’t followed the Buchtelite’s news section this year, reading this is a good way to catch up. Five of the biggest stories are sports-related.

• Those crazy Outsiders debated about which school year will be better for Akron athletics: this year or next. I’d recommend it if you like references to NBA bust Sam Bowie.

Softball

Two of my favorite players helped the Zips sweep Youngstown State in their final home games today.

Megan MacKenzie threw a shut out in game one and Sara Zilles knocked in the game-winning hit in game two for wins of 6-0 and 4-3.

Akron (25-20) will play Eastern and Central Michigan this weekend before the MAC Tournament.

Baseball

Duquesne beat Akron in the ninth inning today, 7-6.

The Zips, who are 12-29, will play at Ohio this weekend as they try to work their way into a spot in the MAC Tournament.

The Buchtelite published its top sports moments from this fall. It has been one heckuva season, so the list is quite robust. Mike Hixenbaugh and Kiel Fleming compiled 10 moments, then I ranked them one to 10.

Women’s basketball

Speaking of Fleming, he made a prediction to me that I found awfully morbid, but still worth posting. He says the women’s basketball team (1-5) will have 500 turnovers this season. They will play 27 or 28 games, so they’ll need to average just fewer than 20 screw-ups a game to satisfy Fleming.

After six games, the Zips are 16 ahead of the pace for 500 turnovers, giving the ball away a total of 136 times. Stay tuned.

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.