Dave in Green

Great input from everyone. Mavs date corrected. Philadelphia 76ers added. I would think that NBA teams always pay attention to the bench press. Some guys who look strong may fall short on the weights, and some who appear weaker may surprise. Lots of comments on various draft sites from "experts" who've seen Zeke on TV and think he looks skinny and weak. The weights don't lie. Zeke has NBA strength. How to appropriately use that strength in the NBA can be learned. Dallas Mavericks May 31 Detroit Pistons June 2-3 Houston Rockets June 5 Phoenix Suns Friday, June 6 Portland Trail Blazers June 13-14 Los Angeles Lakers June 17 Chicago Bulls June 18 Philadelphia 76ers June 21 Indiana Pacers June 22

Other sources say the workout was yesterday. Could be that GT wrote the story yesterday but it was just posted today. I'll keep checking Dallas media.

@headaviatorrowdie, thanks. I was just looking at those dates in this George Thomas report. GT says other unnamed teams are also interested. He doesn't show Portland in his story, but I'll leave it in for now. DJ Cooper is working out with the Trail Blazers today. Wouldn't it be a hoot if Zeke and DJ ended up with the same NBA team! No mention in the Dallas-Fort Worth media about Zeke's workout yesterday with the Mavs. But the Detroit media has been covering the Pistons' workouts, so we may see some mention there. Joe Dumars has been quoted as saying the Pistons would draft a big man if he was the best player available, so Zeke's workout in Detroit could pay off. Dallas Mavericks May 30 Detroit Pistons June 2-3 Houston Rockets June 5 Phoenix Suns Friday, June 6 Portland Trail Blazers June 13-14 Los Angeles Lakers June 17 Chicago Bulls June 18 Indiana Pacers June 22

Stats don't excite me; great performance does. Stats are just metrics used to quantify performance. Taken by themselves, numbers don't tell the whole story. Properly interpreted, the right stats can be helpful in understanding results.

I'll keep updating the list as dates are added. Sometimes the local newspapers where the teams are located have articles about individual workouts. For example, also working out with Zeke today for the Dallas Mavericks is Rudy Gobert, who is considered one of the top centers in the draft and a likely mid-first round pick. Gobert is one of the few players in the draft who is taller than Zeke (7-2 to 7-0) and the only one with a bigger wingspan (7-9 to 7-5). It's a great opportunity for Zeke to show what he's got compared with a center who's projected as a higher draft choice. The Mavs beat writers for the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram may report on this workout, so I'll keep checking their websites and will post links to anything they may write. Dallas Mavericks Thursday, May 30 Detroit Pistons Monday, June 3 Houston Rockets Wednesday, June 5 Phoenix Suns Friday, June 7 Portland Trail Blazers Thursday and Friday, June 13-14 Chicago Bulls (date?) Indiana Pacers (date?) Los Angeles Lakers (date?)

A little mystery from SB Nation in their article entitled 2013 NBA Draft big board: SB Nation's ranking of prospects: Scrolling down their list of prospect rankings, one of the deviations from the norm is the player they rank as 60th best -- Zeke Adams, a center from Marshall. Problem is, the Thundering Herd didn't have a basketball player named Zeke Adams on their roster. Who is this mystery center named Zeke? Editing their list to move Marshall from the school column over to Zeke's last name, and changing Adams to Akron and moving it into the school column works better for me.

The four teams that have so far invited Zeke to private pre-draft tryouts all have mid-to-late second round selections. Phoenix is the lowest with the #57 pick while Detroit picks just ahead of them at #56, with Portland #45 and Dallas #44. The Pistons also have the #37 pick, the Trail Blazers also have the #39 and #40 picks, and the Mavs may exchange draft positions with the Los Angeles Lakers, which would move them back to #48. Most of these later picks are realistic possibilities for Zeke with any team that has a need for an athletic rim defender and is impressed with Zeke's potential. Dallas, Portland and Phoenix all have a need for better defensive centers while Detroit has somewhat less need and would likely only take Zeke at #56 if they thought he was the best player available regardless of position.

Zeke has lots of dates these days -- NBA pre-draft workout dates: * Dallas Mavericks Thursday, May 30 * Detroit Pistons Monday, June 3 * Phoenix Suns Friday, June 7 * Portland Trail Blazers Thursday and Friday, June 13-14 Zeke is ranked by The Wages of Wins Journal as the 3rd most productive (wins produced, i.e. WP40, ADJP40) college center in the NBA draft behind only Mike Muscala and Nerlens Noel.

@Dr Z, to the best of my knowledge UA counts attendance at all sports events (men's and women's) the same way -- tickets sold to the general public plus the number of students who actually show up and have their student IDs scanned. So it's kind of a hybrid system of general public tickets sold plus student butts in seats. I believe that most schools do it like this.

NCAA D-I women's basketball attendance has been pretty flat for the past decade, with the average of all games in the low-to-mid-1,600s season after season. Link Average attendance for the Zips women's team has risen from the 500s to the 900s over the past eight seasons, according to GoZips.com. Link

@skip-zip, I think they sincerely believe that they are not minor league. The term that comes to mind is delusions of grandeur.

@LZip and @akronzips71, based on what I'm seeing here I'd be afraid to be sitting between you two in a bar if you were drinking. Seriously, you both make good points, and are not that far apart. Give peace a chance.

The Zips coaching staff has said that there is not a big difference in the roles of the 2 and 3 positions in the team's system. Most of the Zips' small forwards and shooting guards can be interchangeable wings in the Zips system. The best 6th men can usually play more than two positions, adding the 1 and/or 4 positions to the 2/3.

Gotta improve the bottom line by bringing in more money and cutting costs. Bigger name teams would bring in more money for a bowl game. Easiest way to cut costs is to cut heads, which is why ESPN is laying off hundreds.

While I think most Zips fans want the team to stay classy, a little bit of edginess and cockiness can be helpful at times in terms of energizing the team. I think that Nate Linhart brought an appropriate dose of that to the Zips most of the time he was on the floor. Nik Cvetinovic did it at times, but had a hard time staying under control even through his senior season. Quincy Diggs has probably been somewhere between those two in terms of energizing the team, but steadily improved in his first two seasons and could deliver the right amount of just-under-control spark this season. Aaron Jackson might be a candidate to fill that role in the future. It requires a knife-edge balance of appropriate volatility to help the team without going over the edge and hurting the team. It may be easier to dial a naturally volatile personality back a little than encouraging a steady personality to hang it out more. I think Coach Dambrot is good at recruiting and integrating the mix of personalities required to produce effective team performance.

SPCA and PETA will be after Q for cruelty to Bobkitties.

UA = University of Arkansas.

Arguments are best supported by lots of data. It can take a lot of time and research to produce a lot of supporting data. If we properly researched every debate point on every internet forum to support our arguments, we wouldn't have time to do anything else. So we typically just throw out our opinions with little or no research. I personally like to research some things, but not everything. This one requires no research beyond what we all already know. Reality is that tOSU was ranked higher than the Zips by almost every measure last season. But the Zips were rated high enough that there was a reasonable chance of an upset. The only point open to reasonable debate is what the odds of an upset would have been, and that's mostly speculation.

Yes, and since you are also a random fan, your opinion is also meaningless.

Too funny! You are also a random fan, so your opinion is meaningless. I'm a random fan, so my opinion is meaningless. Everyone posting on forums like this is a random fan, so it's all meaningless. Why are we even wasting our time?

George Thomas breaks the news that Quincy Diggs is officially reinstated by UA.

At fuill strength, the Zips would have had a fair shot at beating tOSU this season. As I posted a couple of months ago, even tOSU supporters were paranoid about drawing the Zips in the NCAA tournament, with one going so far as to say he was "terrified of Akron" and "pray we avoid Akron."

@GameChngr44, I think what LZip meant is that there isn't much of a public draft buzz about Zeke. I can attest that this is true because I search the internet every day for news about Zeke and the draft. The fact is that there is not a lot of public buzz. That certainly does not mean that there isn't a quiet, internal buzz among NBA teams. There are draft surprises every year when players who were not getting much public attention get drafted by NBA teams who see high level potential in private workouts which the general public knows little about. I think that Zeke has a good chance to win the Stealth Award in this year's NBA Draft.

The news is filled with odd stories these days, and this one ranks right up there. It just makes no sense at all that a gun was needed to make a quick grab and run. For a scholarship student with no prior record to make such a poor decision on such a trivial item makes me think he must have been chemically impaired at the time. It will be interesting to see what details come out of this case. But it appears that there's no chance he returns to the team.

Pretty standard every year for the previous MAC champion to be automatically entered as a placeholder in early bracketology for the next season. The #14 seed is also pretty automatic unless the MAC team has made an NCAA tournament run as OU did. In other words, they spend zero time actually analyzing the relative strength of next season's MAC teams.