Dave in Green

@skip-zip, heaven forbid that anyone should be misled on an internet forum. Any fan can obviously see that Coach Dambrot is constantly calling plays throughout games. Many of these called plays end up not being run because the defense counters, and the Zips counter that with a different offensive play. In the case of Reggie's pair of 3-pointers, they worked because the defense left Reggie open in one of his favorite shooting spots. After the second trey, ORU's defense adjusted and didn't allow Reggie to get open. That defensive adjustment left the inside a little more open, and the Zips went back to work inside where they had been having problems with ORU's collapsing defense prior to Reggie's treys opening things up.

@skip-zip, you are absolutely right. Bethune-Cookman outscored the Zips by 3 points in the second half thanks to their stunning 11-3 run over the final 4 minutes of the game, reducing the Zips' final margin of victory from 36 points all the way down to 28. It's completely understandable that focusing on this could make a Zips fan miserable over what turned out to be only a 28-point victory.

The AAU comment sounds a lot like previous comments from some Zips fans that the team doesn't seem to run any plays but just runs around aimlessly freelancing. In reality, Coach Dambrot teaches the team dozens and dozens of plays during practice sessions, and the Zips shift back and forth from one to another depending on what the defense gives them. But it's always good when your opponents misinterpret and underestimate what's actually going on. If your opponents can't figure out what you're doing, they can't prepare for it. @GoZips is exactly right about how ORU has performed against top teams. Wisconsin only beat them by 9 points, and ORU was only 4 points down with 3 minutes to play. Missouri State only beat them by 3 points. The Zips performed as well against ORU as teams with higher rankings and better reputations. With all their weaknesses and flaws that we're so familiar with, the Zips have a lot of talented, well-coached players who are starting to show signs of realizing their strengths and jelling as a team. They still have a long way to go to reach a consistently high level. But I saw some positive signs last night mixed in with the few obvious errant passes and occasional brain fades.

For some reason Elton seems to have gone sour on the Zips. After excluding them from his personal ranking of the top 8 teams in the state of Ohio, he wrote a puzzling review of tonight's game leading off with the line that the Zips had a "misleading 74-64 victory over Oral Roberts." In the rest of the story, he never explains what he meant by "misleading." But he does talk about all the fouls and how ORU was called for more fouls than the Zips. So maybe he meant if ORU hadn't gotten so many fouls that they would have beaten the Zips. Who knows? I just find this story extremely odd.

Ironically, the Zips won this game on turnovers. While they had 12, which isn't great, ORU had a much worse 20 turnovers. In almost every other category, the teams were very close -- 36 rebounds apiece, 17 free throws made to 18, 43.9% shooting to 42.6%. Having 8 fewer turnovers gave the Zips 8 more possessions than ORU, and that was a key factor in the 10-point victory margin. Obviously there are still many areas that need improvement in order to beat teams better than ORU. But the Zips are showing good progress from game to game. Even when ORU made their second half run and briefly went ahead, I was confident that the Zips would come back, and they didn't disappoint me. Nick, Tree and Q took over at the end. Expect to see those 3 a lot in crunch time.

Recheck your math. The 39-6 run went from 9:48 of the first half to 18:46 of the second half, or 11 minutes, 2 seconds. Later in the second half, the Zips also had a pair of 2- or 3-minute runs of 7-0 and 8-0, which is not characteristic of "sleepwalking." Of course there were also periods of uninspired execution, which is typical of most college games. No one's denying that. Let's get real here. It was not a great game and it was not a disaster. Anyone trying to push either of those scenarios uphill is only going to give themselves a hernia.

I haven't heard any specific numbers, just general comments from inside UA that's he's doing well in all aspects of areas for which he's responsible. His promotion to Executive VP tends to confirm that.

Oh come on now. Just because X has a much better RPI than Cinci (#75 to #110) and a much stronger SOS (#109 to #229) doesn't mean that X is the better team. And whatever you do don't try to claim that X beating Cinci by 17 points (64-47) has any significance. Nope, I'm sticking with Elton's magical formula that ranks Cinci way above X.

Whodathunkit. Matt Stainbrook is the leading rebounder (8.5 rpg), second leading scorer (9.7 ppg) and one of only two players to start all 11 games for the Xavier Musketeers.

Richaun Holmes gets a huge shout-out from Elton: And the Zips get a huge snub from Elton: Link

TeamRankings projects the Zips as 80.4% likely to win.

The problem with Melo transferring is that the Zips lose one of their best PG options at the end of this season when Q graduates. Assuming that everyone else returns, that leaves Nyles and Melo as the only two options currently available for next season. Best case scenario is that Nyles develops into a quality 30-minute-per-game player and Melo becomes a good enough backup to cover the remaining minutes. It would be risky to rely on finding a new recruit -- even another juco player -- who could step right into the Zips' system and run the point as a backup to Nyles better than Melo as an experienced junior next season. And if Nyles doesn't develop into a good D1 PG by the end of this season, next season becomes an even bigger problem at the point.

The Wildcats' biggest run in the whole game was when they outscored the Zips by 8 points (11-3) over a span of 3:55 -- the last 3:55 of the game.

ORU comes into tonight's game with a 5-5 record. Ho-hummer? Not so fast. Their 5 losses have been to current #6 Wisconsin, #8 Wichita State, Kansas State, St. Louis and Missouri State -- teams with a combined record of 46-6. They've beaten every team they were favored to beat, including Bowling Green. So the Golden Eagles deserve respect because they're fully capable of upsetting a Zips team that takes them lightly. Unfortunately for ORU, they lost their star player in the 4th game of the season. Guard Obi Emegano, who averaged 23.3 points in their first 3 games, went down with a season-ending injury in his team's loss at St. Louis. Forward Shawn Glover has picked up some of the slack, with the 6-7 senior averaging 20.4 points over 10 games. The only other player averaging double-digit scoring is 6-3 sophomore guard Korey Billbury at 11.5 ppg. Jorden Kaufman, a 7-0, 255 lb sophomore center, is the only player in their regular rotation taller than 6-7. But he only averages 13 minutes per game and isn't much of a threat. Most of the time the Zips will enjoy a height advantage. ORU has fair defensive rebounding and poor offensive rebounding, so the Zips should enjoy an advantage on the boards. ORU's greatest team strength is free throw shooting, where they are ranked #27 in the country at 75.1%. With Emegano in the lineup, the Golden Eagles would have been a good challenge for the Zips. Without Emegano, the biggest threat would come from the Zips taking this game too lightly.

Nice NYT review. Sounds like a good read. Browns observers will appreciate this:

Zeke played almost twice as long in his second game as his first -- 9:26 vs. 5:33 -- and the results were mixed. On the one hand he had a perfect shooting performance of 1-1 from the field and 2-2 free throws. But he only had 2 rebounds vs. 4 in his first game, and he also had 4 turnovers and picked up 4 fouls. Zeke has a steep learning curve ahead of him. The D-League is full of hungry, talented players on the fringe of the NBA fighting hard to get a shot at a big contract.

I've never seen Coach Dambrot look happy during a game, so nothing new there. If the Zips were up by 100 points with 5 seconds left and the opponent scored the last bucket of the game due to a defensive lapse, Coach Dambrot would be unhappy and would let his players know it. That's why he's such a good coach. He's always trying to get the best from his players. This game was good training for the Zips to guard the ball against some quick players pressing hard, and the Zips performed well. Bethune-Cookman applied strong full-court defensive pressure throughout the game with lots of traps. The Zips responded with their fewest turnovers of the season (11) and also scored their highest number of assists (17). The game also presented an opportunity to play various combinations of all 11 scholarship players who haven't redshirted. None of the 11 played more than 23 minutes or less than 10. The Zips got what they needed out of this game, the first in a string of 7 increasingly tough games over 14 days.

The Zips have a lot of talented players, and it's tough for them to get up for a game against a badly outgunned opponent. When they finally threw the switch after playing even to 15-15, the Zips outscored the Wildcats 39-6 over the next 12 minutes. If they had played 40 minutes like they did those 12, they would only have been running up the score on a much less talented team. Oral Roberts will be a better test Monday night.

The Red Claws are playing the Armor again tonight, this time in Springfield. Game starts at 7 p.m. and will again be live on YouTube (link below). I'll be at the Zips game but will check it out when I get home to see how Zeke does.

@Z.I.P., there is one other possibility -- a medical redshirt. Should one of those freshmen go down with a season-ending injury early in the season, they could petition the NCAA for a medical redshirt. As long as the injury is legit, the NCAA is pretty good about giving players an additional season.

For anyone who wants to go back and just watch Zeke in the game video replay, it's pretty simple. He came in at the beginning of the 2nd quarter, played 5:33 and didn't return to the game. They were just giving him a chance to get a taste of game play even though he hasn't had time to become familiar with the team's plays. Looking at the box score, Zeke had mixed results. He missed his only shot -- a point blank layup -- and hit only 1 of 2 free throws. But he had 4 rebounds (2 offensive and 2 defensive) and 2 blocked shots in his brief 5:33. He actually had the third best +/- for the Red Claws with a neutral 0 as one player had a +2, one had a +1 and the rest of the lineup all had negative ratings in an 11-point team loss. It will be interesting to see how quickly his performance improves as he becomes more integrated into the team.

In a pre-game interview, the Red Claws' coach said that they're happy to have a second 7-foot rim protector on their roster, and that Zeke will alternate with their other center. He said they've thrown a lot at Zeke in a short time and that they're pleased with how quickly he's caught on. But he said they won't have unrealistic expectations for Zeke while he's learning all the team plays. The only bad part is that the YouTube video is choppy, with the sound cutting in and out. Don't know if it's their connection that's bad or mine.

Looks as if the Portland Press Herald gives pretty good coverage to the Maine Red Claws, so we should be able to get regular news on Zeke as at the end of this story. Hopefully we'll get to see Zeke play some tonight as the Red Claws are hosting the Springfield Armor at 7 pm with a live video webcast on the YouTube D-League Channel:

Looks like it might be at least 5 years: Klinsmann inks USA deal through 2018

Those guys have bought up *fc.coms all over the country. Try searching who.is for clevelandfc.com or toledofc.com.