Dave in Green

I think @Hilltopper's point was that Juwan Howard was 4-10 in the first half and 2-7 in the second half after Jake and other Zips guarding him tightened up the D. Holding Detroit's high scorer to 6-17 from the field helped keep them from making a comeback run. This was in response to the original premise that Jake, Reggie and Big Dog need to learn to move their feet quicker on defense. I think part of what makes Jake such a great defender is that he already has fairly quick feet on defense. As for Big Dog, some of the quick spin moves he makes on offense are exceptional for a player of his size and weight. I'll have to watch a little closer on D to see if this translates to quick feet on D. We need to have realistic expectations about what constitutes "quick" when a player is 6-10, 305 pounds.

I wonder if the Temple forums had an @Zipmeister who had as much fun questioning the challenge of facing Texas Southern. Texas Southern 90, Temple 89

Love the creative writing on that message board!

Q's primary strength is defined by his biggest college award -- MAC 6th Man of the Year. At the college level, Q can play the 1-4 positions. If he gets to the next level, it would likely be on the strength of being able to play the 1-2 positions. I don't think that Q should be pigeonholed at any one position. He's a multi-talented player. At the highest level of basketball, PGs are expected to be able to bring the ball upcourt, create shots for their teammates and score both inside and out, sometimes leading the team in scoring. Who's best qualified to do that for UA right now? If Q can do that at UA, he might be able to do it at the next level. What would be a waste would be to limit Q to one position when his greatest strength is his flexibility.

What's a good alternative?

The odd part about Deji's free throw shooting is that he averaged 68.8% as a freshman when the rest of his game was weak, 56.2% as a sophomore when the rest of his game was improving, and just 30.8% so far this season even as the rest of his game has become respectable. Deji was a career 60%+ free throw shooter coming into this season, and there are currently 6 other players in the Zips lineup shooting less than 60% from the free throw line. If Deji can break out of his slump and match his career free throw shooting percentage, he'd be the 5th best free throw shooter on this season's team.

To everyone else who's been voting over the last couple of hours, that was a nice run to get back ahead of Indiana. But the Hoosiers are working the votes hard, and it's a moving target. It may take a major effort by the AK-Rowdies to win this. Should get really interesting late Sunday. I'm going to give my wrist a little break.

If a consensus franchise QB is available when you draft, you take him unless you already have one on the roster with many years left to play. The real question is how often is a true consensus franchise QB available in the draft? Andrew Luck was described as a "once in a decade" consensus franchise QB. They certainly don't come along every season.

One of the reasons why the Zips have so much zip in the second half is due to having a deep rotation. The Zips currently lack enough backcourt depth to take both Melo and Deji out of the rotation. Melo's minutes per game have been steadily declining since the second game of the season as Nyles and Q have steadily improved their PG skills to the point that a third PG is not required in the rotation. But that depends on both Nyles and Q being healthy. Q should not be expected to play 30+ minutes on a sore knee. It's important that he gets enough rest that his knee fully recovers. Q's biggest value to the team right now is at the 1, not the 2, so that's where most of his minutes should be played. That opens up minutes for Deji at the 2, and it makes sense that most of those minutes should come early in the game. Deji is not an option late in the game due to his poor free throw shooting. But when you look at all of Deji's stats, free throw shooting is the only area where he's a liability. He's improved every other aspect of his game on both offense and defense. Every minute Deji contributes early in the game allows one of the Zips' bigger contributors to have a little more energy left late in the game. Bottom line is that if Melo is the odd man out, Deji becomes critical to having adequate depth in the backcourt.

One of the cool things about Pat's aggressivness on shot blocking, rebounding and defense in general is that he picked up only 1 personal foul, which means that he also played smart and under control. On the offensive end his shots weren't dropping, and some of the shots were forced. But every player has off shooting nights. Pat's progress is critical to being able to go up against teams with big centers the Zips will face this season.

@skip-zip, you aren't too far off in your estimates -- 2-9 (22.2%) in the first half and 9-12 (75%) in the second half. The good folks at GoZips.com make it easy by posting separate 1st and 2nd half box scores for each game, like this.

The minutes played stat doesn't tell the whole story. But it does give a snapshot of who Coach Dambrot wanted to have on the floor against this opponent at this still early point in the season: Treadwell 35 Evans 29 Diggs 26 Forsythe 26 Kretzer 24 McAdams 22 Harney 15 Ibitayo 14 Johnson 6 Betancourt 3

The Beavers look like a United Nations team with one player each from Canada, Australia, Sweden and The Netherlands, and two from Senegal. They also have six players on the roster standing 6-10 to 7-0, and their smallest player is 6-1. The Zips will not have a size advantage in this game. Regardless of our personal political beliefs, I think we can all come together and unanimously agree that we want to see President Obama return to the White House disappointed after seeing his brother-in-law's team lose to the Zips.

As I said to Captain Kangaroo on the way out of the JAR: WOW! Just wow! Reminded me of the Buffalo game last season when the Bulls ran up a 30-10 score midway through the first half and the Zips looked like a junior high team before turning around and winning the game. So now this season's team also knows that they can come back from big early deficits. Tree was obviously player of the game for putting together two good halves. He got a lot of support from his teammates in the second half. Two things stood out to me. One is that Q is getting better and better at all aspects of the game. When he picked up his 3rd personal, he signaled Coach Dambrot not to take him out, and he calmly played right through it. He did a great job of feeding the ball to teammates in shooting position, and he knocked down his own shots. Second is that Nyles is starting to look like a solid D1 player. He still makes mistakes, but not as many. And you can see the light going on and the confidence growing, especially in his shooting. Q had 7 assists and 3 turnovers while Nyles had 3 assists and no turnovers. That's a total of 10 assists and 3 turnovers for the Zips' primary ball handlers. The PG situation is starting to look better. I think that having Nyles and Q together in the backcourt when closing out games is going to serve the Zips well as the season goes on. As a team the Zips had 9 turnovers in the first half when Detroit players were just reaching in and taking the ball away, but only 3 turnovers in the second half. They also had more assists (14) than turnovers (12). I also have to give a nod to Pat, who had a miserable shooting night but a nice defensive game with 8 rebounds, 4 blocks, and many shots altered as he did his best to pull a Zeke on D. Add in Big Dog's 2 blocks, and the Zips had 6 blocked shots from the center position.

Q's profile on GoZips.com says he majored in sports management. He may be managing his own sports career in pro basketball if he keeps playing as well as he is right now.

Figuratively, not literally.

It has to be hard for the average person to fully understand the following statement from this story: That's how I was trained a few decades ago. Good reporters take the journalistic oath as seriously as good doctors take the Hippocratic Oath. When I was a reporter, I set aside all my personal beliefs when covering a story and was as objective and neutral as I could possibly be. The world has changed, and advocacy journalism has become more and more common. If people believe something, all they have to do is find a media outlet that advocates the same beliefs, and they'll be fed a steady diet of stories that only reinforce their beliefs and never challenge them. Having experienced both worlds, I prefer the former to the latter. But since we're living in the latter today, I'm at least thankful that my professional training and life experience allows me to see a little more clearly through the modern fog.

Fans always have more sensitivity to and criticism of ref calls in games involving a team those fans have emotional attachments to. It's human nature. If you go to this page on StatSheet.com, click on individual refs who officiated MAC games last season and check what it says under "most common conferences" for each ref, it appears that the most common second conference after the MAC is the Big Ten. Since the B1G is one of the top basketball conferences in the country, you'd think they'd get above average refs.

Toledo is 11-0 if exhibition games were counted, which they're not. Toledo has had an incredibly easy schedule. Their current SOS is a bottom-feeder #279 while the Zips are a slightly above average #159 SOS. I suspect that Toledo would have had serious problems had they visited Saint Mary's and Tennessee State. Toledo may be improved over last season, but their undefeated record so far is a bit of an illusion.

I've been watching Q pretty closely on court, and he's truly a changed man. I recall how he used to have a quick temper, and wouldn't hesitate to jump in the face of an opposing player or even a ref after a questionable call. Now he channels all of that emotion into positive energy to drive his game to a new level. I've seen him on several occasions get a really questionable call from a ref, and he just walks away expressionless -- no scowling, no shaking of the head, no sign that he was disappointed with the call. On the free throw line he's now calm and cool. Two seasons ago he shot 68.7%, and this season he's hitting 81.5% of his free throws. I'm just really impressed with his maturity level. I have no doubt that Q will be successful in whatever he pursues in life going forward.

I just had a quickie look at Detroit's season stats. As a team, they rank in the top 100 in more categories than ORU. Like ORU, they've also played a few good teams close. But they were blown out by UConn, 101-55. They've also lost twice to Toledo, 80-78 and 91-75. Overall, their schedule has been just a little less tough than ORU's -- SOS #27 vs. #21. They should be roughly comparable to ORU in overall strength. Their biggest name player is Juwan Howard Jr., a 6-6 forward who leads the team in scoring at 17.5 ppg. Only one other player averages in double figures, 6-8 senior forward Evan Bruinsma (12.4 ppg). But their other 3 top scorers all average 8-9 ppg, so they're pretty well balanced. If the Zips can match or better their performance just a little from the ORU game they should prevail. If the Zips are flat, the Titans are good enough to take them out.

The priorities of our society right now, for better or worse, dictate that the best college head football coaches make more money than the best college presidents. It's also true that making the most money doesn't always result in the greatest personal satisfaction. We'll all see soon enough where Jim Tressel's personal priorities are these days.

You hear that, @GoZips? We just don't spend enough time listening to the guy in the video to know the difference between an offensive rotation and a set play. As a consolation prize, we at least understand the English language well enough to know that "every" is not a synonym for "continually."

@GoZips, thanks for the explanation about the Zips surprising CSU with their new "horns" offense. There was some speculation in the game thread that CSU wasn't playing with its usual intensity. Maybe "horns" deserves some of the credit for throwing CSU players off their usual game, as confusion and intensity don't mix very well. ORU fans seemed surprised on their forum that their team wasn't playing any zone D despite having so many players in foul trouble, and from what you say "horns" may have been a factor there, too. Coach Dambrot doesn't get nearly enough credit for things like this.

@skip-zip, I get your fine point on set plays vs. rotations. In a non-technical discussion it's common to include rotations under the general heading of plays, with a rotation being considered a multi-part play with options. Coach Dambrot is constantly calling one or the other throughout the game. On Reggie's treys, I think if you can find the video you'll see that on the first one Reggie was wide open and standing in that spot for some time with no defender near him. When he caught the pass it seemed as if he had forever to setup before firing, and no defender even had a chance to get a hand near his face. On the second trey he was more in motion and coming off a screen to the same spot on the court, and had less time to setup as the defender was flying at him from the right side, but just a little late getting there.