Dave in Green

I get it now. WVU and Hartwick played only one game each. In the championship game, UA's GK was mostly napping while the action was all going on at the other end of the pitch. After shutting out Hartwick, the WMU GK was peppered with shots from the Zips and stopped all but 4. Process of elimination.

The best hope for the Zips is that Toledo has a letdown after their NIU game while the Zips have built up confidence by winning 3 of their last 4 games. A Zips win is not likely, but it's not impossible. I'll be happy if the Zips put up a heck of a battle and I'll be ecstatic if they pull off the upset. But I'm realistic about the chances of beating a team that to this point has lost only on the road to Florida, Missouri and Ball State.

@LZip, thanks for making my point. You can find something negative in everything. But you can also find positives. Then you have to balance the negatives against the positives to come to an overall conclusion. From the negative POV, two seasons ago, Mississippi State self-destructed toward the end of the season and failed to make the NCAA tournament. So that devalues the Zips victory over them early in the season if you choose to look at it only from that perspective. Now, let's look at a more detailed analysis. Before Mississippi State self-destructed, they were highly rated early in the season. They started off the season 12-1 with wins over teams like Texas A&M, Arizona, West Virginia and Detroit. Their only loss in those first 13 games was to Akron at Mississippi State. It was a seriously good win for the Zips at the time that it happened. Anyone on this forum could have done what I just did, which was to simply go back and look at the actual record instead of relying on a mostly positive or mostly negative memory. Why don't more Zips fans do this?

I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to use "tantrum" in my last post. I'll just follow up with the Wikipedia definition of tantrum and, without pointing fingers, everyone can decide for themselves if anything on the forum has risen to this level: I think some Zips fans have calmly and intelligently expressed disappointment that the Zips appear to be "stuck" at "only" winning consistently at the MAC level and not beyond. There are some fair points to be made in this area, and I believe that all Zips fans share this disappointment to some degree. I also see some people totally focused on the negative and reluctant to acknowledge anything positive. The Mississippi State upset two years ago seemed to be forgotten by some as soon as the next Zips loss occurred. The 19-game winning streak last season, which generated huge publicity for the Zips, is never acknowledged by the most negative posters even though no team in the country beat it. For some, everything positive is brushed aside and everything negative is magnified. I sincerely believe that some on this forum will never be satisfied no matter what the Zips do. @GP1 said today that going to the final four doesn't make VCU a great program, so I guess that would also apply to the Zips if they ever made it. I think if the Zips went to the final four, some on here would put more focus on losing and not winning the national championship. And heaven forbid that the Zips should ever win a national championship, because after that nothing less than a national championship every season would ever be adequate. Life is a mix of ups and downs, positive and negative, good and bad. It takes thoughtful perspective in order to have realistic expectations. Am I pleased that the Zips lose the majority of games that they're predicted to lose? No. Am I pleased that they win most of the games that they're favored to win and a few of the games they're predicted to lose? Yes. Am I pleased that the Zips don't play consistently throughout the season? No. Am I pleased that they tend to play better at the end of the season than the beginning? Yes. I'm aware of the ups and downs, the positives and the negatives, the good and the bad. I acknowledge both sides. From what I read on this forum I don't believe that everyone else does.

Someone should send that quote to the NCAA soccer tournament selection committee. If conceding "only" 4 goals to UA qualifies a GK for the all-tournament team, what does that say about the Zips?

@mes102, I really respect your support for the Lady Zips. But I know what this board would be like if the men's team lost back-to-back games to Dayton and Wright State early in the season. You should feel relieved that you don't have to put up with that.

@LZip, sorry, I wasn't clear enough in my Kentucky comment. I understood that your comment about Kentucky was a play on someone else's comment. I was only quoting your comment to make the point of what happened to Kentucky last season. Kentucky lost one key player and failed to make the NCAA tournament. The Zips lost one key player and did make the NCAA tournament. If someone had made that prediction on this forum at the beginning of last season, most would have laughed at it. That's the only point I was trying to make.

What, we have to stomp our feet, throw a tantrum and pee all over the coach and team every time they don't live up to the highest expectations to prove that we're "not content?" It's actually possible to not be content with the status quo while still giving the Zips credit for what they do accomplish and not going into a Debbie Downer funk. Every Zips fan wants the Zips to keep getting better. We just react and express ourselves differently.

Going into this season, Coach Dambrot was well aware of the fact that neither of the designated PGs had proven themselves in D1 competition. He knew that a 3rd player would need to be prepared to take over primary PG duties if required. Coach Dambrot knows the capabilities of his players better than any fan possibly could. He knows that Nick filled in well enough to destroy OU in the MAC tournament championship game. He also knows that Reggie played point in HS. So who did Coach Dambrot select as the 3rd PG option during preseason practices and scrimmages? Q. Just because the current PGs can't score doesn't mean that Q would give up scoring if he played the point. PGs have been known to lead their teams in both scoring and assists. As far as Q turning the ball over too much, in their junior seasons Abreu averaged 2.8 turnovers per game and Q 2.4.

Sorry I didn't get to see the game as I was out all day. So the Zips score a maximum of 2 goals per game in the regular season, and then 3 and 4 in the two tournament games. I wonder what @GoZips is thinking about Coach Embick's style of coaching right about now? Did the high, gusting winds affect play?

Kentucky did not make the NCAA tournament last season, and lost in the first round of the NIT to Robert Morris.

This is exactly what Coach Bowden has been predicting: lose big, lose small, win small, win big. Right now I look at the close losses more as forward progress than lost opportunities. But it's really great that this progress has Zips fans thinking more like winners than losers. In the future the close losses will be a lot more painful because we'll have much higher expectations for the team.

We all knew going into this season that the Zips were pretty solid at the 2/3/4 but with big question marks at the 1/5. We're fortunate that the center situation appears to be better than many thought. Unfortunately, the PG situation appears to be worse than expected. Last season the Zips recovered from a similar slow start (for different reasons), put together the nation's longest winning streak and earned a #12 seed in the NCAA tournament. I see little chance of matching last season's record without solid PG play, so my expectations for this season have been lowered until there's some sign of life at the point. It's going to be interesting to see how Coach Dambrot and the team handle this continuing adversity from Abreu's departure.

@GP1, I'm not sure that I get your point. It appears that most large conferences have always had both rotating and non-rotating (rival) opponents on their schedules. I'm not aware of any fundamental change in the way that ADs interface with the conference scheduling committees. Scheduling is more in the news today as a result of all the conference realignments creating the need for many scheduling changes.

No disrespect intended for the Lady Zips. They're obviously a good team with an exciting offense. But as I mentioned to @GoZips the other day, the Dayton game was going to be the same kind of reality check that the Gentleman Zips face every season. The Lady Zips may be the class of the MAC. But it's darn tough for an underdog team to beat a higher-ranked team on their court, as the Lady Zips learned in Dayton.

@GP1, did you read the story I linked to? It states that in addition to the rotating crossover opponent, each ACC team also has a non-rotating crossover opponent (i.e. rival) from the opposite division. In other words, the ACC is not much different in its scheduling from what other conferences are doing. @LZip, thanks for taking the time to research the info on two more conferences. I'm thinking this is likely the way most conferences are operating these days.

You mean an Inphone?

UMass and Can't are obviously not good teams. But I still give the Zips defense credit for giving up only 20 combined points in the last two games. If the Zips can pull off an upset of Toledo, they'd finish 4-4 in the MAC. A .500 MAC season would be beyond expectations.

Gotcha, and thanks. I knew the general rule of thumb in college basketball is about 4 points for homecourt advantage. I was just wondering if the betting world had a different system. That article was really interesting about the different levels of advantage on different homecourts. MTSU was ranked right square at 4.0.

Q obviously had a brilliant game (except for the turnovers), but Tree had a sub-par (for him) game with only 6 points and 3 (!!!) rebounds. Center position continues to look solid with Pat (5-8) and Big Dog (3-5) a combined 8-13 from the field for 17 points, 7 rebounds and only 1 turnover. I expect the two centers to continue to improve throughout the season and be a strong point for the team by tournament time. The wings all performed pretty well except for Nick fouling out, and also represent a team strength. Tree won't have many low-production games like this, and will mostly be the rock who anchors the team. Everything keeps pointing back to the point as the main problem. There's no way of knowing whether Nyles or Melo can work their way into at least average PGs unless they're given a chance to play through their mistakes. Unfortunately, that means the Zips are going to continue to struggle against better teams. If Nyles and Melo can't hack it after being given a fair chance, Q at the point is the only chance the Zips have to recover from this mess and be competitive.

In the final stats, Nyles and Melo were a combined 1-12 on threes and the rest of the team was 6-11. Zips got a combined 7 points and 0 assists from the point. That's not the only problem this team has. But with just average PG play the Zips win this game.

Out-everythinged.

@Dr Z, do you know if there's a fairly standard number for homecourt point advantage in betting calculations for point spreads? I'm just curious how much of that 6-point spread is based on homecourt advantage and how much on the perception that MTSU is a better team.

@GP1, I've just spent the last hour trying to do your homework for you. I've searched and searched the internet for any solid information about how college football conference schedules are set. As I expected, there's precious little out there. But I finally found a story -- ACC releases 12-year rotating schedule -- about how the ACC released a schedule that defines which cross-division teams each conference team will play for the next 12 years. So we can confirm that the ACC does not sit down every year and jigger the cross-division schedule to help the teams that are most likely to go to bowl games. Can anyone else find any data like that, either pro or con?

A long, long time before internet forums, people used to sit around fires at night talking about how obvious it was that the sun and stars revolved around the earth, which was clearly the center of the universe. It was common sense at the time.