Dave in Green

So it's time to create new momentum and motivation, not give up. This is one of the things that separates good coaching staffs from average ones.

Close finish. But if the South Carolina starting QB doesn't miss the whole game, chances are UCF loses a little bigger. UCF probably belongs just outside the top 25 as they're currently ranked. UCF and NIU are probably pretty close in overall team strength.

It turns out that South Carolina's starting QB left the game with an injury after the first drive, so their offense went sour. They've now roared back to score 21 unanswered points with their backup QB and lead UCF 21-10 early in the 4th quarter.

How good is UCF? At halftime today they're beating #12 South Carolina, 10-0. An upset win today would likely move UCF into the top 25.

I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one who's referred to Tree as "undersized." To be clear, I've only said that regarding Tree's NBA potential. He is in fact slightly undersized when compared with the best NBA power forwards. Doesn't mean he can't make it in the NBA, just that it will be more difficult to outperform bigger, taller competitors. As a college power forward, Tree is not undersized at 6-7, 235. He matches up well with any power forward he's likely to go up against this season and will likely outperform most all of them.

Playing with numbers for the 13 scholarship players, last season's average height was 6-5.46 and the average weight was 208.85. This season the averages are 6-6.15 and 215.15. That means that this season's Zips average more than .6 inch taller and more than 6 pounds heavier. So it appears that while we are backing the Zips this season, we should also still be thinking bigger.

I'm in for that one. Those guys are extremely entertaining.

Looking at the official roster heights and weights, it appears that some of the returning Zips have had changes (which I've noted below). An interesting factoid is that the four players in the freshman class average 6-8 and 232 pounds. That's thinking bigger. Big Dog's official height is 6-10, an inch over his official HS height, and his weight is 285, which is a bit of a surprise to me. I thought his HS coach said last year that Big Dog had lost some weight as he didn't play football his senior season and didn't have to bulk up. He has nice moves for someone that big and heavy. I just hope that he can carry that much weight without hurting his endurance in a running game. There will be no problem in him establishing position and holding it against any center in the MAC. Avsec 5-10 180 Betancourt 5-11 182 (+7 lb) Cheatham 6-9 233 Diggs 6-6 209 (-6 lb) Evans 5-11 170 Forsythe 6-11 235 (-5 lb) Gladden 6-6 215 Harney 6-8 210 (+1") Hoisten 6-5 180 Ibitayo 6-4 205 (+1") Jackson 6-7 193 Johnson 6-10 285 Kretzer 6-7 215 (+5 lb) McAdams 6-7 210 (+10 lb) Stalyga 6-8 220 Treadwell 6-7 235 (+10 lb)

@GoZips, I love your enthusiasm. But it will take me awhile to develop confidence that the returning players with an additional year of experience, plus the reinstatement of Q, plus the arrival of Nyles Evans, plus the freshman recruiting class can more than offset the loss of Zeke Marshall, Brian Walsh, Chauncey Gilliam and Alex Abreu. That's a major talent loss from last season's team, which only produced the longest winning streak in the nation. I'll know this season's team is better than last season's team when they produce better results.

There will never be agreement on who the Zips' rivals are as long as people have different interpretations of what rivalry means. Rivalry is really a pretty general term, so it's possible to have many different rivals at different levels. It's the adjectives used in front of the term, i.e. mild rivalry, longterm rivalry, bitter rivalry, etc., that separate the many different rivalries that exist in sports.

Maybe @MommaZeke knows something that she's not free to share. On Sept. 16, the day that Zeke departed the Polish team, she posted the following on Twitter: It's hard to imagine her being so excited about Zeke leaving his first professional basketball opportunity without something better in the works.

Zero offensive skill set? Zeke Marshall? #4 in the country in field goal percentage #10 in the country in floor percentage #10 in the country in free throw rate #17 in the country in player efficiency rating (PER) #55 in the country in offensive rating Imagine the offensive stats he would have racked up in his senior season if he had an offensive skill set.

Sportando's take on Zeke's departure from the Polish team:

Big Dog looks like an itty-bitty kid in that long-range video. At ground zero, it takes on a totally different perspective.

In Coach Embick's defense, he has a tough act to follow. So far his first team as head coach is not performing at the level of his predecessor's teams. But they're still playing at a top 20 level as he plays through his rookie head coach learning experience. The important thing to look for now is progress. Will the coach and players learn from what's not going right and start getting it right? It appears this season in college soccer that many annual power programs -- even those that didn't have a head coaching change -- are having uncharacteristic performance problems. This could be one of those seasons when there are lots of surprises in college soccer. I hope that one of the big surprises is that Coach Embick turns out to be a great December coach.

Zeke shot 65.1% for the season and 65% in MAC games. Many of the other Zips players shot a lower FG percentage in MAC games than in non-conference games.

Steve Fetch predicts that the Zips are likely to win the MAC again this season, but thinks they only lost Zeke and no one else, overlooking the loss of Brian Walsh, Chauncey Gilliam and Alex Abreu:

OK, why not mention that the Zips won, 1-0, and explain a little more about the "atmosphere?"

Any discussion in any ZN.o forum is fair game for a general tOSU discussion to break out. It's pretty easy to go back to the beginning and see how the discussion evolved and who contributed what. It's like officials looking at video replays to see who threw the first punch.

A seismic shock was recorded on earthquake monitoring devices this morning with an epicenter at the JAR. Further investigation revealed that Big Dog brought down a backboard on a vicious two-handed jam. Fortunately, the glass didn't break. Big Dog overrode the hydraulic system holding the backboard up and it came down as he did. They were able to raise it back up and reset the hydraulics, and the Zips were able to continue after a short break during which much laughter was heard coming from the JAR. Scientists have not yet released an estimated Richter Scale reading.

Uh oh. I sense that this statement will start another attendance discussion. To be clear, those are paid attendance numbers (including season ticket holders), not butts in seats. Just getting most season ticket holders to show up for a game would be a huge breakthrough.

If you're saying that we shouldn't necessarily believe the report that Zeke was cut by the Polish team without ever getting a chance to play because they didn't think he could perform, and that there's more to the story that will turn out to be positive, then I'll be smiling like you. I want the best for Zeke and am trying desperately to be optimistic in the face of one punch in the gut after another. Please let us know what you can as soon as you can.

Hey, wait a minute. I'm supposed to be the resident Zeke optimist. @skip-zip can vouch for my credentials. But I no longer feel optimistic about Zeke's professional basketball career. If he can't get on the floor for a single minute against a friendly opponent for a middling Polish team before being released, what are his odds of making another Euro team? As I've said before, if you could transplant Tree's intensity and ferocity on the court into Zeke's body, you'd have an NBA star. Zeke has all the physical tools to play professional basketball, and he may have more passion for playing basketball now than his first few seasons at UA. But the level of desire and commitment required to play at the pro level just may not be sufficient.

Yep, that's exactly what I was searching for. Couldn't find a hint of any NCAA football stat like the NFL one. I'm usually pretty good at internet searches, but maybe someone else can do better on this one.

@Dr Z, as far as I can tell from researching your question, snaps is not a stat that the NCAA requires in the official scoring in the same way as they, for example, require subbing in and subbing out be documented in the play-by-play of basketball official scoring. Each team may keep its own record for internal use. But I don't believe it's generally made public. If football play-by-play showed all the subbing in and out the same way basketball does, it would be relatively easy to track the number of snaps each player was in for.