Dave in Green

Zips finally starting to look more like the Zips.

The extra tall Marquette player is 6-7 Axel Sjoberg from Stockholm, Sweden. They also have four 6-3 players on the roster, plus three each at 6-2 and 6-1. Overall the Marquette players appear to be quicker than the Zips, beating them to the ball too many times. The Zips were outshot 10-5 in the first half, and 3-2 on SOG. It's the opposite of most Zips games I've watched. It's nervous time.

Marquette has really good passing and ball control, even better than the Zips so far. Way too much of this game is being played near the Zips goal.

Nice high-def videocam they're using to produce an image that looks great on a big screen. The Zips really deserve something this good instead of the fuzzy images we usually get at home games.

With all due respect for their 16-1-2 record, UMBC's schedule appears to be a lot weaker than the one the Zips played.

Sorry @Zipmeister but I don't hang out with @groupies.

Imperfect ratings continue on after college, as well. Some high pro draft picks go bust and some low picks become stars. I agree with @UA1987 that it's often the intangibles that make the difference, and I agree with @MAXZip that it's entertaining to go back to look at old ratings and compare them with the results.

Trailing by a single point, Ball State had two chances to win in the last few seconds, but missed a layup and a tip-in as time ran out and lost to Butler 59-58.

Now this is really interesting. Marla Ridenour reveals that one of the students in UA's “Principles of Coaching” class, taught by Jim Tressel and Jim Dennison, is none other than Tree.

Ball State leading Butler at the half, 30-23. Butler may not be quite the same without Brad Stevens coaching, but they were 3-0 going into this game with wins over Lamar, Princeton and Vanderbilt.

Gosh, I thought I would get more cerebral responses on the Mensa forum ... oh, wait, I posted this on the Zips forum by mistake!

According to the National Weather Service, the Sunday forecast for Milwaukee is sunny with a high of 26 degrees, and for Akron 40% chance of snow with a high of 24. Milwaukee will actually have warmer and drier weather than Akron.

Latest retweet from Tree is positive: Sports Psychologist Dr. Joe Carr visits Akron Basketball to talk team chemistry:

@Ada Zip, from what I've seen former Zips forward Rick McFadden is the primary coach for the bigs. He works with them on post moves and footwork all the time. Coach Dambrot also works with the bigs on certain techniques at times. The players work on free throws all the time, mostly before and after practice. If they're having a problem, they get individual coaching attention as needed. Coach Dambrot doesn't call every single travel he sees, especially when the players are working on a play where the focus needs to be more on learning the play. When they're playing 5 on 5 he calls out the obvious travels, and the players also call out their teammates when they see obvious travels.

Assuming the Zips have a good GK coach and the GK is doing what he's been coached to do, it's hard to fault the GK for the strategy he was using. Indiana was a tough matchup for the Zips, so any weakness in execution was going to be magnified.

After Jeff Boals left UA just prior to Zeke's arrival, this theory was floated on ZN.o when fans were disappointed at Zeke's rate of development. I don't recall ever seeing any evidence presented to support the theory. On the other hand, there's a direct correlation between when Zeke said he went from lukewarm interest in basketball to developing a passion for the game and when he made a major leap in his development. That came between his junior and senior seasons, and it was pretty easy to see that improvement on the court and also looking at his greatly improved senior stats. While I don't believe that Jeff Boals or any other coach could have forced Zeke to develop faster as long as Zeke wasn't willing to put his heart into it, I think it's possible that it might have had a minor effect.

@skip-zip, now you're talking my language. "Almost" is an imprecise enough word that people can look at "almost every" and have different interpretations. And I do understand that frustration with not seeing the Zips pull off more upsets makes it seem even worse than it is. I'd try to do a stat study to see how the Zips rank among all college basketball teams in terms of upsetting higher-ranked opponents, but the magnitude of crunching all those numbers is more than I care to take on.

@skip-zip, thank you for finally getting to the root of why there's so much disagreement on ZN.o -- we speak different versions of the English language. Seriously now, the reason the English language has the words "most" and "every" is because they have different meanings and are appropriate for different situations -- you know, like apples and oranges. If someone uses "every" as a synonym for "most," others who converse in true English are going to push back. Please allow me to offer a 100% accurate use of the two words in one sentence: EVERY college basketball team in the country loses MOST of the games they play against teams that are ranked higher due to being stronger and better teams. The debate should be over how the Zips' winning percentage against higher-ranked teams compares with the winning percentage of other teams in the same situation.

Not trying to play grammar police here. But I'm always curious when people post "could of" if they know it's supposed to be the contraction "could've" from "could have?" Just wondering if anyone else has given any thought to the fact that "could of" really doesn't mean anything, though when you search the internet for "could of" there are more than 3 million instances.

@skip-zip, I didn't see this when you posted it. How can you say in one post that you appreciate the Zips upsetting Mississippi State two years ago and then say here that the Zips squander every opportunity to record a big OOC win? You can't have it both ways.

#16 Florida, playing at home, beat up on MTSU tonight, 79-59.

I didn't get to see the second half, but in the first half it appeared that the Hoosiers were aggressive, athletic and skilled on offense. It seems to me that Indiana puts more focus on offense than defense. Fortunately the Zips offense took advantage of their scoring opportunities and played just enough better defense to get the 3-2 win.

Fluellen was hurting for Toledo, but NIU was missing their two best receivers. I don't think Toledo wins if all three are healthy and playing.

Indiana is way more aggressive than any team I've seen the Zips play this season. Zips are doing a nice job of countering.

Now 2-0 on a Quinn goal.