Dave in Green

Just guessing here, but maybe UA didn't bring in employees to clean all the seats prior to the Zips game because they wanted them to enjoy Thanksgiving with their families, and they knew the crowd would be small on Black Friday. Maybe the staff showed up Friday morning early enough to clean off enough seats for the crowd expected for the Zips game, and then stayed after the game to clean off more seats for Saturday's HS game. Again, just speculation on my part.

Austin gets credit for making the correct read and properly executing. Coach Bowden and his staff get credit for preparing Austin to make the correct read and instructing him how to execute when appropriate.

@Spin, there's a tendency for fans to be less sensitive to perceiving bad calls against their team when they're winning. When they're losing, there's a tendency to believe all the bad calls going against your team are helping prevent them from winning, which just adds to the frustration of losing. A good example of wrong perception from the Toledo game is that we could have sworn from our seats that a facemask call against the Zips was a bad one so we booed the refs. But after the game we talked with someone we know who was standing on the sideline and had a clear, closeup view. He said he saw the hand on the facemask and the Toledo player's helmet twisting. The refs had made a correct call, but we would have always thought it was a bad one if we hadn't gotten a reliable eyewitness account.

San Jose State 42, Fresno State 41. But wait, that's not the final score. That's the HALFTIME score. Incredible shootout going on in San Jose with 1,006 yards of total offense in the first half.

My feet are cold but my heart is warm. That was even more fun than beating Can't because the Zips were such big underdogs in this game. Having learned something recently from @Captain Kangaroo about reading body language, I can say with great authority that you could read the confidence in the Zips players from their body language. They played with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of heart. They looked like they knew they could win all game long, even when some things were going wrong, and they went out there and executed in areas where they've fallen short in recent years. What a great way to end one season and immediately go into recruiting overdrive for next season. The Zips are winners. It's a winning program. Bring on the talented recruits who want to play for a winner.

News of Zeke from Taiwan went into stealth mode a couple of weeks ago. Now it appears that we may no longer have to rely on poor Chinese translations to follow his progress as he tries to work his way into the NBA: Source: Dexter Pittman, Austin Freeman, And Zeke Marshall Have Entered NBA D-League Player Pool

Can't argue with that. If beating MAC West teams was the Zips' highest aspiration, we'd be just fine. An interesting point about Malone is that this is their second season in the GLIAC, and they're projected to be in the mix for the GLIAC South divisional championship. Malone's star player is 6-2 senior point guard Isiah Elliott (#11, Canton McKinley), who was GLIAC South Division Player of the Year as a junior. Last season he averaged 19.2 points per game, and so far this season he's averaging 5 assists and 1 turnover per game. He was almost single-handedly able to break the Zips' press possession after possession. His coach says that after this season Elliott will probably be ranked as Malone's best PG of all time. If the Zips only had a 6-2 PG who could perform at the D1 level like Elliott is doing in D2 ...

An exhibition game gives a coach the chance to focus on specific players and specific aspects of the game. I think a good indicator of what Coach Dambrot wanted from this game is to look at minutes played. Nyles played 30 minutes, more than any other player, and Melo just 3 minutes at the point. Nyles was given plenty of time to play through his mistakes and gain confidence in his ball handling and distribution as well as shooting. Q, Reggie and Deji all played 29 minutes each. I think that Coach Dambrot played Q long minutes to help him regain his game endurance after sitting out a year. Reggie responded to long minutes by hitting 6-12 treys. And Deji looked really good, knocking down 3s, scoring 18 points and making good offensive and defensive plays. Of course, this was all against a D2 team. Harney played 27 minutes and looked impressive at times and inconsistent at others. I expected to see more Big Dog than Pat. But it was the opposite with Pat playing 26 minutes and showing some good moves to the basket as well as some excellent passing. Kwan played 16 minutes and seemed more focused on driving to the bucket than popping 3s. He looked good at times on offense but still has a ways to go on defense. Big Dog was the only other player with double digit minutes at 11, and had a pretty quiet game. I'd say my biggest impression from this exhibition is that the Zips' passing was really crisp and accurate. They moved the ball around a lot without losing it, even though some of the Malone players had pretty quick hands. The Zips totaled 19 assists with only 5 turnovers. They even hit 88% of their free throws. If they could play like that on offense against good D1 teams we'd all be happy. Defense was another story. Malone had good ball handlers that had no problem with the Zips' press and scored way more easy points than they gave up on turnovers. You have to wonder if the Zips' press produces results like that against a D2 team, is it really worth expending all that energy on full-court pressure that appears incapable of producing a fraction of the results of VCU's havoc defense?

So you say you're missing seeing Ianello coaching the Zips?

@Dr Z, inexplicably, @GoZips' explanation was in a thread entitled Schedule Question.

@Captain Kangaroo, what a wonderful perspective on ZN.o. That's the best description of these forums that I've ever seen. I actually liked Walter Cronkite back in the old days and I like Bill Maher today, so I guess that makes me eclectic. The way you describe ZN.o makes me realize that it's the variety of styles and opinions that makes this place so attractive to me. I expect whenever I post on here that some will disagree with what I say, and I often disagree with the approach that others take. It's all part of the democratic process of forums where everyone is free to speak their minds and everyone else is free to vote their approval or disapproval. Sometimes we take things too seriously and get into p***ing matches, but they all seem to blow over pretty quickly with an appropriate dose of humility and good humor. Happy Thanksgiving to you and everyone else reading this.

Blame @GoZips since he tried to explain the schedule here a couple of months ago and obviously didn't do it in a way that stuck in everyone's memory. Everyone's been saying for years that the most important thing about the Zips' schedule is to focus on having a stronger OOC SOS. If doing that results in an unevenly spaced schedule, that seems to me like a fair tradeoff.

I tried to analyze the UMass season record and quickly became ill.

Come on, give the Zips some credit for ingeniously conspiring to plant the Tree dustup story to keep them in the news in the big gap between games.

@Captain Kangaroo, I just want to make the point that I respect your sports knowledge and analysis. I read all of your posts with interest as I've learned a lot from them. At times I think you're prone to exaggeration, which is a pretty common style in sports talk today. I'm old school in that style points are irrelevant to me. As Detective Sergeant Joe Friday used to say back in the days of black and white TV, "Just the facts, ma'am." That still works for me. So I don't think that anyone watching that game "knew" that CSU would make a big comeback after Kentucky made their big first half run, or "knew" that CSU was toast when Kentucky made their big second half run. CSU came back from the first but not the second. Neither you nor I nor anyone else "knew" the result of either until it was over. Only in retrospect is it obvious.

CSU had a 19-10 lead in the first half when Kentucky went on a 15-3 run as CSU similarly unraveled. I'm sure a lot of people thought the game was over for CSU at that point. But CSU stopped unraveling and bounced back with a 9-2 run to retake the lead at halftime. It was not unreasonable to think CSU might be capable of repeating their first half bounce back near the end of the game. I could care less who @Zipmeister agrees with.

The score was tied 57-57 with 2:09 to go. CSU was down only 3 with 1:23 to go. CSU had bounced back from a similar Kentucky run near the end of the first half to retake the lead at halftime. CSU was in it right up until the last minute of the game.

CSU was in it right up until the last minute of the game. I don't expect them to be intimidated by the Zips.

Not MAC, but gotta post right now before the score changes that the Zips' next D1 opponent, Cleveland State, has run out to an early 13-6 lead over #3 Kentucky at Rupp Arena. Edit: It's getting more interesting -- 19-10. Update: Kentucky came back to take a 25-22 lead, then Cleveland State came back to take a 31-27 lead at halftime. Pretty impressive. Upset alert: Halfway through the second half, Cleveland State has pulled out to a 47-38 lead.

@skip-zip, I'd say that the CMU score alone doesn't prove how formidable or bad UMass is, as every team can have good and bad games. I'd say that a team's total season results prove how formidable or bad they are.

@GoZips, I'm calling your bluff. I don't think Coach Dambrot sits around criticizing Coach Embick's game strategy any more than Coach Bowden sits around criticizing Coach Dambrot's game strategy or Coach Embick sits around criticizing Coach Bowden's game strategy. Time to fess up and admit you made this up before Coach Embick calls up Coach Dambrot and asks him if you represent Coach Dambrot's official position.

It's really easy to get hypersensitive after a big loss and say things in the heat of the moment that we'll later regret. It's also easy to misinterpret valid points that others are trying to make. It's a good time to give careful thought before pushing the Add Reply button.

Beating Toledo sure had a major impact on NIU's status in the latest BCS standings:

I'll be interested to read the detailed game analysis from those who understand the finer points of soccer. From my uneducated soccer viewpoint, the one thing that really stood out to me was that the Marquette players seemed to be about as skilled as the Zips, but they appeared to play with a greater intensity and with higher energy. It seemed that whenever there was a 50-50 chance of one team or another gaining control of the ball, the Marquette players prevailed by roughly a 2:1 ratio. Another thing that sticks out in my mind is that it seemed most of the time when the camera focused on the ball, there were more yellow shirts than blue shirts in view. If I didn't know better, I would have thought the Zips were playing a man short. Marquette players seemed to be drawn to the ball like a magnet. But the Zips were unable to capitalize on this by getting the ball out to an open player. It seemed as if Marquette's aggression caused the Zips' possession game to fall apart. Sadly, the NCAA selection committee will be nodding their heads at their infinite wisdom. They knew enough to rank the Zips better than Indiana but not Marquette. So, where do we go from here?

Unfortunately, the better team won. Marquette just played a better game most of the night.