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1-8-2016 vs. Western Michigan


LoyalZIP

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Statistics should be a guide, not an absolute measure. He is correct that our perimeter defense is our biggest weakness. Nobody needs to shoot 3's on us because everyone gets to the rim at ease. Why shoot the 3 when you can get layups?

After last night, rebounding is gaining ground quickly.

Winner!

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Wadszip makes some great points about the pressure of starting league play and being on national ESPN. When we were getting killed on the boards I though Jimond should get some playing time since he is stronger than our other guards, athletic, and a good rebounder. He had some nice drives to the basket and went to the foul line 4 times and made only 1 of 4. He is a good foul shooter. There is no question that he is feeling the pressure.

Josh Williams has not done much in conference play and Robotham has not played well since conference play has begun. But we are still winning.

When I look at earlier threads everyone thought the Jimond and Josh would excel and be immediate impact players. I think in most cases in take a frosh time to understand the quick pace of college ball. Western did a great job of offensive rebounding and hopefully our guys can learn from that and understand that you need to rebound, box out and hit the weight room on the off season.

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First game I've seen in person. I agree with 01 that Akron's perimeter D is its biggest weakness. I'm am hopeful that this will get better with time as Noah is not close to 100%. He just doesn't have that lateral quickness he had last year.

Pat needs more touches to get back into a groove. He seems to be a player that needs confidence to be effective and I haven't seen it since his role change.

Antino's 3 ball was huge. Just before he shot it I said this is a situation were he usually launches one. I love that he has that kind of confidence.

Not completely knocking Kwan but he looks like he spent very little time in the weight room. He is still getting pushed around and it becomes very obvious against a team like WMU. Again some players just don't like to be muscled up with Reggie being another example of that.

Wish Aaron Jackson had a little more to offer on O as he certainly helps on the defensive side of the ball.

The team has a lot of talent and I'm excited to see both Ivy and Williams develop throughout league play. You can see that they both think they belong and that is a big step in college. This team could have a bright future!

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Perspective on statistics:

Badly offensively rebounded, but WM missed 45 shots from the field (excluding foul line attempts) while the zips missed 35, so
WM had 10 more offensive rebounding opportunities. Results still not good, but not as bad as raw numbers indicate. (If you shoot 100%, you will get zero offensive rebounds).

On the other hand, our 3-point shooting percentage defense (highly ranked nationally) may be an anomaly. Good article on kenpom explains that defense affects 3-point attempts, but has little effect on 3-point percentage because most 3-point shots are wide open, otherwise they would not be taken. While I would like to believe otherwise, I did not see that our defense caused WM's poor 3-point shooting.

Go zips!

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It's for the entire season so far, collectively. Not just one game. I would completely disregard it as an anomaly too, if it wasn't happening through half of a season.

Read what I said above about Keith mentioning that we become accustomed to coming out on 3-point shooters because we have to guard our own long range shooters so much in practice.

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Saying that teams don't focus on the perimeter against Akron so they drive to the basket and don't take and make a lot of threes is true. They don't drive on us because of our good three point defense though. They drive because the drive defense is the weakness, which leads to less importance of three pointers. That doesn't make perimeter defense your biggest weakness, it's still the drive defense. Don't overthink it.

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As far as their offensive rebounds, westerns offensive rebounding % was an astronomical 48%, which is by far the most we've allowed. But i think one of the reasons they didn't score more points off that than they could've is because they're not good at shooting the three. It's often said the best shots coming off an offensive rebound are an open three, but western simply is not good from there, so it limited their shot selection.

For the overall team defense, wilder really killed us, which was to be expected. But their big guys really couldn't get much and obviously the three wasnt there, so it made them kind of one dimensional. I'm content with the zips overall defense and i think if it wasn't for the insane rebounding disparity we would've won by 20+

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It was nice to see the Zips in-person for the first time in a month last night. But that was a really tough game to endure. I taped it, but I'm deleting it asap. Sitting through it once was too much.

The Zips won because they are more talented. Certainly not because they played harder or smarter. WMU relentlessly crashed the boards. I'd love to see the Zips put forth a collective rebounding effort like that one day. Last night, Antino and Kretzer matched WMU's intensity, but everyone else fell short.

If Ivey and Aaron Jackson want more PT, they need to produce in the time they're given. Last night extended PT was there for the taking, and neither stepped up to take it. Make your free throws and your PT will increase.

I think a lot of our vaunted #1 3-point defensive ranking is due to playing crappy teams that can't shoot very well. I don't see us doing anything special on D...I just see opponents missing shots because they aren't any good. WMU is a terrible 3-point shooting team. That Heymond kid is a whirling dervish of action, but his shot (14 of them last night) looks like mine. And that isn't a complement.

Robotham looks better than a month ago. But there's no hint of the "special" qualities we saw from him in his Freshman year. Hopefully we start seeing some glimpses of the old Noah soon.

It is a credit to Dambrot that he's assembled such a talented roster that we can play like we did last night, and still lead wire-to-wire. But as wadzip has stated, the ceiling for this team is much higher than what we saw last night. That makes them a bit frustrating to watch, even though they're winning.

We're now in January...it is time for that potential to materialize on the court. A like-talented WMU team would have beaten us by 8 last night, because they wanted it more. Teams like OU and K.e.n.t....and maybe EMU are of like-talent too, and you know they will be gunning for us.

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I wanted to mention something that Keith said last night:

He thinks Antino can get 15 each night?

Wow. That's really notable since I don't think we've had a guy average 15 per game since maybe Romeo?

What's even more surprising is that Antino has probably passed Noah in terms of being more effective at scoring and creating plays. I didn't see that coming. Of course, part of it may be Noah not yet being at full strength, physically. But, I really believe that Antino's opportunity to run the show at the close of last season really allowed him to blossom at that position. We didn't know how that would translate into the next season, but I think we're seeing it now.

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Lot's of good points today. Good job guys. I'm not sure many watched the first half of the CSU/Zips game. I loved that half of basketball. The Zips played very efficient team basketball. Lots of movement away from the ball. What happen to that? They are miles from that half of basketball.

Antino is a special player. I hope he continues to have the opportunity to progress. He can be one of the better players we have seen in the JAR in a long time.

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Enjoyed many of the observations.but we won that game for one reason only-3 point shots. We made 9 3s,they made 2-that's a 21 pt differential and that my fellow fans is how we overcame all of the deficiencies mentioned. As I stated in previous posts, this team will live or die by it's 3s. If we are on, we could probably beat most teams ranked above us-when we are off, we become very beatable because we don't drive to the hoop, don't have cutters or backdoors and don't have overall team speed among or first 7.

I have stated before that Kwan has not improved-sure he hits an occasional 3 and once in a while a tip-in,but he has some horrible looking misses and just doesn't battle on the boards-he is a nice young man, but he simply isn't an inside presence-he did have one nice drive last night and we need to see much more of that. After the first 15 minutes, Western adjusted and began doubling BigDog and limited his shot opportunities,but he kept trying to beat the double-he needs to look to find the open man-someone has to be open.

I still believe we will be favored in every remaining conference game and IF they get by these next 2 on the road, we could very possibly run the table. Lastly, Cant is NOT on a par with us talent-wise. I have watched then twice in person and other than Jimmy Hall, they do not have a player who could crack our top 7. We should beat them easily.

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What an odd game. That 6 or 8 minute stretch in the first half was as good as I've seen them play all year, but they had some very bad spells the rest of the game.

The Zips seemed to have problems putting their bodies on the Broncos when going to the board with some awful or non-existent blockouts. It seems to me that Noah is still just a little tentative, but I expect that to dissipate with time, and Forsythe's rust will go away with time. Kwan really seems to be struggling and I keep hoping for that breakout game that boosts his confidence. I really like the way Ivey is working on defense. His offense hasn't yet arrived, but he's working as hard as anybody on the defensive end.

This team leaves me scratching my head, but as long as they keep winning I'll be happy to scratch my head like I've come down with the mange.

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A win they should have expected. Looking forward to see where things stand next tuesday.

On a side note.... shouldn't an Athletic Dept and University bleeding money be a little concerned that only 2600 fans showed up? for a team that is 13-2, and won 10 in a row, and is 7-0 at home?

who are you to say they are or aren't concerned?

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A win they should have expected. Looking forward to see where things stand next tuesday.

On a side note.... shouldn't an Athletic Dept and University bleeding money be a little concerned that only 2600 fans showed up? for a team that is 13-2, and won 10 in a row, and is 7-0 at home?

I bet they don't care at all. If they were concerned the JAR would be sold out every game, right?

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who are you to say they are or aren't concerned?

Well obviously they aren't concerned because NOTHING has been done about the lack of attendance in three years.

Here's an example....I tried to buy tickets to the game and wanted seats in the lower bowl. What was I told? the only way I can but tickets in the lower bowl is if I buy a 3 game package. Sorry, I'm not interested in going to 3 crappy games.

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I bet they don't care at all. If they were concerned the JAR would be sold out every game, right?

They can't hold a gun to people's head and make them show up. The Zips consistently win 20+ games each year and always contend in the MAC, but that clearly isn't enough.

In reality the only way I see the attendance spiking is if they get a new arena or if they start winning some March Madness games. The Jar is very outdated with poor sight lines. I'd rather watch from home to be honest. Combine that with the fact people have gotten immune to watching the Zips win 21-25 games just to get knocked out in the 1st round of March Madness or NIT and you can see why the casual fan has no desire to attend.

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Whether we like the home non conference schedule is not the point now... They are in MAC play, with a very good ( top MAC) team .. I haven't seen any real push to get people in there. They didn't push real hard with the soccer team either in my opinion-- a missed opportunity for a great team. What was the push with football ? Some free tickets to alumni?..to business owners? Why not get some people into the basketball games -- maybe they will become regulars. You aren't competing with the football Buckeyes or have weather concerns--- and the team is a winner.

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Well obviously they aren't concerned because NOTHING has been done about the lack of attendance in three years.

Here's an example....I tried to buy tickets to the game and wanted seats in the lower bowl. What was I told? the only way I can but tickets in the lower bowl is if I buy a 3 game package. Sorry, I'm not interested in going to 3 crappy games.

That's ridiculous. I sit in the lower bowl, splitting the season with a buddy. There have been empty seats down there all season. There are two seats next to mine that no one has sat in for the last two seasons.

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Let me try to address a few things:

1) This isn't the first season that they have tried to "save" many seating combinations for the purpose of multi-game packages. I think it's a bad idea.

2) In past seasons, we've often been told that the lower bowl is "sold out" to season ticket holders. I think the only exception is the section where the visiting guests sit. Maybe someone has a current update on that.

3) I'm not going through another season listening to complaints about the JAR as a reason why fans aren't coming.

4) The 2,600 for a conference opener, with a long winning streak and a huge road win a few days earlier, is pathetic.

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