Dave in Green

@LZip, Q was the MAC Sixth Man of the Year last season and would have been a senior this season at the top of his collegiate skills. Sometimes a top sixth man can be as important to the team, or more so, than some of the starters. When you lose some of your best players, you can adjust all you want. But the adjustments basically involve trying to fit less experienced and/or less effective players into the bigger shoes of the missing players. The backup players may do better than expected in their new roles. But the finished product (team) is not likely to be as strong as it was with secondary players trying to fill bigger shoes. These guys are not cardboard cutouts that you can replace indiscriminately with no effect on team performance.

@Districtballer, I was hoping that you'd post a response from the VCU perspective to skip-zip's question. The VCU team I saw last night was far superior to the one I saw at the JAR last season. I think the only thing you didn't include about the Zips was the loss of Quincy Diggs for the entire season. Adding that to the loss of Abreu and the effective loss of Walsh for last night's game severely depleted what was expected to be a strong, veteran Zips backcourt this season. Replay last night's game with Diggs, Abreu and a healthy Walsh playing and it's a much closer game. No team in the NCAA tournament would be unaffected by the loss of its top 3 guards.

It's not "every few years." The Zips have now been to the NCAA tournament 3 of the last 5 years. That's 60% of the time. Only a handful of elite teams have done better. On the one hand, I'm pleased with "just getting there" on a regular basis because it is a significant accomplishment. On the other hand, human nature is to always want more. I like the idea of continuous improvement. At some point the only available improvement is going to be winning NCAA tournament games. The alternatives are not making the tournament on a regular basis (regression) or continuing at the same rate of one-and-outs (stagnation). UA has asked us all to Think Bigger, which encourages us not be content with the status quo.

Of course it's fair to discuss Coach Dambrot's job performance. Virtually every employee gets an annual job performance review. While we fans are not the ones who formally conduct that review, we certainly have some skin in the game by virtue of the game tickets that we may purchase and the funds we may donate to UA that end up helping pay his salary. A good performance review is fair and comprehensive, and considers all aspects of the job, not just a few of the one-liners that are casually tossed about on internet forums. For instance, consider the following from Marla Ridenour's ABJ story this morning when evaluating Coach Dambrot's performance and deciding on an action plan: So whoever the UA basketball coach may happen to be is charged with putting together a winning program on the Creighton/Gonzaga/Butler/VCU level without a Creighton/Gonzaga/Butler/VCU level budget. How many qualified coaches are out there looking for a job like that? MAC level schools with MAC level budgets get MAC level coaches. The occasional high performer moves on at the first opportunity for a bigger paycheck. A rising young coach like John Groce comes along, takes OU to the NCAA Sweet 16 and immediately leaves for the big bucks of the Big Ten. His replacement takes the same lineup of players with another year of playing experience and loses in the first round of the NIT. Arguably, Coach Dambrot is currently the most consistently successful veteran coach in the MAC. He's slowly and steadily been building up the level of the Zips' recruits and their level of play. It's a great question to ask whether he can take the next step and start winning in the NCAA tournament or if he's reached his ceiling as a coach and will never rise above where he is right now. But even if an extensive analysis arrives at the conclusion that he can't continue improving, what's the next move? The UA basketball budget is not going to be raised to the level of the best mid-major teams with high-major budgets that regularly win games in the tournament. Where do you find the mystery coach who can exceed Coach Dambrot's results at UA over the long haul at the same salary and with the same budget? Again, I see no problem with having such a discussion. But to be meaningful it needs to be fair and comprehensive, as well as taking into consideration whether or not there are any viable options.

VCU blurs the lines between really tight defense and fouling. For Michigan and any other team in the tournament, a lot will depend on how tightly the officials call the game. If the officials call the Michigan-VCU game as loosely as they did the Zips-VCU game, VCU wins. An article in the Detroit Free Press (Mark Snyder: VCU's 'havoc' defense will be tough for Michigan) talks about the problems Michigan will have, using the Akron game as an example, and concludes:

Speed kills. It killed the Zips last night. It wasn't the only thing. As someone else mentioned, it was a perfect storm of everything going right for VCU and everything going wrong for the Zips, right down to which team was affected by the flu. From all I've read and seen about VCU's havoc, I thought I knew what to expect. It's different being up in the stands watching it play out on the floor in front of you in real life. I had read an article acknowledging that VCU was loaded with great athletes, but questioning if they were sufficiently skilled. Last night they certainly were. This was a far different VCU team from the one I saw at the JAR last season. It wasn't too many minutes into the game before I had a sinking feeling that the Zips were not going to turn this one around. The Zips were under constant pressure on both offense and defense. Look at the playing time for the individual players on both teams. VCU had 11 players with 10-26 minutes played. The Zips had 4 players with 30+ minutes played. The deep Rams just kept rotating fresh players in while running the shorthanded Zips into the ground. It's hard to believe that Melo survived 31 minutes against this. In the best possible scenario, with both Abreu and Q playing and everyone healthy, the Zips could have put up a much better fight last night. The Zips were really good this season in spite of more adversity than I can recall with any previous Zips team. Last night, VCU was simply great.

Good story on hustlebelt.com that includes a tweet from Tree: Akron Madness: Zips take on VCU Rams

@zen, VCU relies on creating turnovers more than any other team in the country, so they're more vulnerable to losing than just about any other team when they don't create lots of turnovers. Other teams rely more on other areas such as rebounding or 3-point shooting. The Zips, for example, rely more on blocked and altered shots than most teams. The Zips averaged about 13.5 turnovers per game this season. You'd think if they had 25 turnovers in a game that they'd be in trouble. But they had 25 turnovers against UAPB and still won by 30 points. So I do believe the comparison of VCU's win-loss record with over and under 15 forced turnovers is significant in a way that it would not be for other teams.

From the story I linked to earlier in this thread:

I believe it was H. L. Mencken who said, when they say it's not about the money, it's about the money.

Zips turnovers per game: 13.62 in 29 games with Abreu at PG 13.67 in 3 games without Abreu at PG

Just wanted to add that I checked out traffic.com on my smartphone and it works fine. So you can have someone (preferably not the driver) check Detroit traffic live on the way up. If it looks like it's jammed up, you can jump off I-75, make a pit stop and wait until the map is all green again. Beats sitting in traffic.

I monitored the Navteq traffic.com site that Dr Z linked to above throughout the Detroit rush hour. Based on what I saw today, I'd revise my earlier estimate from 3:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. as being safe to pass through downtown Detroit on I-75 without hitting afternoon rush hour backups heading north out of the city. My previous estimate for post-rush hour looks like it's still good, as all of I-75 was back to green (from yellow and red) by 6:30 p.m. Should be a smooth trip up if I-75 through downtown Detroit is avoided from 4:00-6:30 p.m. as there are no lane closures or construction on I-75 in the Detroit area.

Why VCU could make a Final Four run

I regularly commuted throughout the Detroit area for nearly 25 years. My experience with downtown Detroit is that traffic exiting the city on I-75 north generally doesn't start backing up until after 4 p.m., and generally clears up no later than 6:30 p.m. If you decide to go in the afternoon and want to play it safe, plan on passing through the downtown area by 3:30 p.m., which would put you at the Palace of Auburn Hills around 4 p.m. It's likely that late afternoon traffic will be bad around the Palace with all the Michigan State fans departing and Michigan fans arriving. Our plan is to pass through Detroit between 6:30 and 7 p.m. That should put us at the Palace around 7-7:30 p.m., which means that all the Michigan fans will be in their seats and there should be light traffic around the Palace. We'll get to see the second half of the Michigan game, and expect most of the Michigan fans to leave before the Zips game ends, so traffic out should be light.

I just posted something on this last night right here. MTSU is the only team Jerry Palm missed getting right out of 68, and he's been doing bracketology for 20 years. I think we just have to understand that the selection committee will never be 100% predictable. MTSU's lack of top 100 wins was unprecedented for an at-large bid. Next year another team could have identical credentials to what MTSU had this season and be excluded by the selection committee. MTSU's 13-point loss to St. Mary's last night certainly did nothing to reinforce the selection committee's belief that they made the right decision with that selection, and that perhaps another team may have been more worthy. Of course, Kentucky would probably not have been a great choice, either, based on their embarassing NIT loss to #8 seed Robert Morris.

@The Hip Zip, I just got caught in another thread for mentioning something without providing a link, which I usually try to do. Overall I think most of us do a pretty good job of citing sources here.

To expand a bit on Kentucky, they were a #1 seed in the NIT and lost to #8 seed Robert Morris, 59-57. The NCAA selection committee is feeling really righteous right about now. And in fairness to Cooper, while he isn't setting the world on fire tonight, he is the leading scorer in a balanced OU attack with 7 points, and the Kitties lead Denver at halftime, 32-30.

Sorry about not including the link, which I usually do.

Point #1: Can we all please agree to include links when we talk about a great article we just read? Point #2: I've been doing a lot of research on Havoc in articles and on YouTube. It's a pretty darned effective defense. But one point to consider is that it doesn't just pressure the point guard. It pressures every player on the court. So just having a good, experienced PG is no guarantee that a team can overcome Havoc. You need all the players on the court to work together as a team to handle the pressure. One of the side effects of the Zips not having their veteran PG is that it forces the rest of the players to try to compensate instead of relying on one player to do it on his own. This team is pretty tightly knit, and the players who are likely to see significant time against VCU took a giant step forward in playing together as a team between the final regular season loss to Can't and the MAC tournament. This will serve the Zips well in Thursday night's game. There will be times that they will stumble against Havoc, as every other team has. But the Zips still have the ability to overcome this if they continue to play together as a cohesive team.

Money is power. Power corrupts.

Both Isaiah Johnson and Maverick Morgan made the AP Ohio Division I first team. It will be interesting to see how the careers of these two talented centers play out for the Zips and the Illini.

Another thing to keep in mind when we start discussing the odds of an at-large bid in the future: One odd decision by the NCAA selection committee was including Middle Tennessee, which must have given a lot of indigestion to Jerry Palm: Actually, MTSU ended up with a second top 100 win after UCF squeaked in with a #97 RPI late in the season. Along with #48 Mississippi, those were MTSU's only 2 top 100 wins. But the selection committee broke new ground by saying that MTSU had a good road record. Well, they did. But it was mostly against 113-301 RPI teams. Go figure.

Tough find without the right title. Maybe this one? NCAA tournament breakout stars

No consistency from the officials is pretty much what we were saying throughout the game. Some really hard shoves and holds -- like OU players with their arms draped over Zeke's shoulders so he couldn't jump -- were ignored. On the other hand, very light touches and incidental contact resulted in quick whistles. In at least a few cases, whistles were blown in anticipation of fouls that weren't there -- literally no physical contact as confirmed by video replay at home after the game. With the understanding that refs aren't perfect and can't get all the calls right, some do it better than others. If it's fair to talk about the quality of game play, it's fair to mention the quality of officiating. HS Stripes adds a good element of expertise to our officiating discussions.