The Akron Zips take their name from the rubber industry — "Zippers" was the nickname for the rubber overshoes made in town — and no program in college basketball wears its blue-collar identity more honestly. In 2025-26, that rubber-town toughness produced the finest season in school history: 29 wins, a 17-1 romp through the Mid-American Conference, and a third consecutive MAC tournament title, the first three-peat the league's men have ever seen.
The 2025-26 Zips were a machine. They set program records for total wins (29), regular-season wins (26), consecutive home victories at James A. Rhodes Arena (31), total points (3,075), field goals made (1,115), field-goal percentage (.501), scoring average (87.9), and assists (639). When they cut down the nets in Cleveland after a 79-76 championship win over Toledo, it was their fourth MAC tournament crown in five seasons — 2022, 2024, 2025, and 2026 — a run of dominance only Buffalo has matched in conference history. The season ended March 20 in Tampa, where fifth-seeded Texas Tech ended the No. 12 seed Zips' March run 91-71, but the record book had already been rewritten.
And then, nine days later, the program changed forever. On March 30, 2026, John Groce — the architect of it all — left Akron for the head job at the College of Charleston. Hours later, the Zips promoted his right hand: Dustin Ford, Groce's associate head coach for nine seasons, the man who had been in the room for every one of those championships. The handoff was the cleanest in college basketball — a new head coach who never has to learn the program's culture, because he built it.
Groce's Akron was one of the great mid-major constructions of the modern era: 197-94 in nine seasons, 114-50 in MAC play, with a .781 conference winning percentage since 2019-20, the best in the league. He ranks third in program wins behind only Keith Dambrot (305-139, 2005-17) and Russell Beichly (288-144, 1941-59). Senior point guard Tavari Johnson said it plainly: "He's meant everything. He's believed in me from the start... He really changed my life." Johnson and Amani Lyles made All-MAC First Team in the farewell season; Shammah Scott took All-MAC Third Team and MAC Sixth Man of the Year for the second straight year, the first Zip ever to win it twice.
The Dambrot era remains the program's bedrock. Dambrot — who famously coached LeBron James at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron before taking the college job — won MAC tournaments in 2009, 2011, and 2013, and turned overlooked recruits into professionals with a player-development machine. Seven-footers like Zeke Marshall patrolled the paint; pack-line principles and veteran rosters made Akron a nightmare March draw. When Groce arrived in 2017, he inherited that DNA and modernized it: more pace, more shooting, the same pitiless defense.
James A. Rhodes Arena — "The JAR" — is the MAC's most underrated venue. Just 5,500 seats, but packed tight, with the student section on top of the floor, and a building that gets genuinely loud when the Zips are rolling. Thirty-one straight home wins tells you everything: opponents don't fear the building's size, they fear the team inside it.
The rivalries are pure MAC theater. Kent State, fifteen minutes away, is the blood feud — the Wagon Wheel series, where the gyms are never bigger or louder. Ohio, Buffalo, and Toledo have all taken their turns as the Zips' foil in Cleveland every March, and every MAC road trip to Akron carries the same warning: the rubber city doesn't give anything away.
Ford's first roster is a blend of continuity and churn. Committed to the new era: redshirt junior forward Chabi Barre, redshirt sophomore wing Zach Halligan, junior guard Cody Head, freshman guard Josh Henderson, redshirt sophomore wing Marvin Musiime-Kamali, and freshman guard Tai Perkins. The portal took its toll elsewhere — sharpshooter Sharron Young to Western Kentucky, Conner Groce to Charleston to follow his father, Eric Mahaffey to Cincinnati, Rich Brisco to Rider — the standard tax on every championship roster in modern college basketball.
The 2026-27 campaign opens with a November road trip to Wright State on November 23 at the Nutter Center, and the mission is clear: defend the MAC, extend the home streak, and finally win in March. Four NCAA trips in five years ended in the first round every time — UCLA in 2022, Creighton in 2024, Arizona in 2025, Texas Tech in 2026. The program has mastered February. March is the last frontier.
What defines Akron is the grind: a rubber-town program that became the MAC's standard-bearer through defense, development, and a coaching lineage — Dambrot to Groce to Ford — that may be the smoothest baton pass in the mid-major game. In Akron, the Zips are the city's team — tough, unglamorous, and always in the fight when the nets come down.
The broader context makes the run even more impressive. The MAC of the 2020s is a league in transition — realignment rumors, coaching turnover, and the portal pulling talent upward every spring — yet Akron kept winning through all of it, because the program's infrastructure never depended on any single roster. The developmental pipeline, from overlooked high school recruits to all-conference seniors, is the program's true identity: the Zips don't buy championships, they build them. Under Ford, that philosophy continues with a staff that knows every drill, every standard, and every corner of the JAR. The faces change. The standard doesn't.