Dave in Green

Money creates its own slippery slope. The more money, the slipperier the slope. To eliminate the fight over who gets how big a cut, in which attorneys always come out on top, simply make a rule that all money generated by college sports must be donated to legitimate charities and not used for selfish interests. Let the fight over money be confined to professional sports. Otherwise, the college battle for money will eventually move down to a high school battle for money, and then on down to pee-wee football. Draw a line somewhere and make it stick.

Can't start Harney and Betancourt together as Harney is Betancourt's backup. If either of these two players is on the floor much over 25 minutes, they will be running on fumes. Neither has Tree's motor.

@GoZips, you'll recall that Hilltopper and I were just a few steps in front of you. They waved us scrubs out of the way so they could get a clear shot of the superstar.

Wait until the NCAA inspector comes along to check jock straps on court in the middle of the game.

Am I the only one who's noticed that Pat Forsythe regularly buries a high percentage of 3-pointers from the corner during warm-ups? Someone who watched him play in HS said that Pat scored at least half his 22.5 points per game with a deadly outside shot. VCU has no answer for a 6-11 guy who sets up in the corner and pops 3-pointers over a much shorter VCU defender while VCU's only big is tied up guarding Zeke inside. The Zips have weapons that haven't even been seen yet. They just don't have cool names like "havoc."

The season began with enormous respect for OU, yet the Zips get zero respect for what they did to OU three straight games. They all predicted that OU would wipe out the Zips in the MAC tournament without our starting PG, yet shrug away the Zips' 19-point beat down of OU as if it were some kind of fluke that couldn't possibly translate to being the slightest bit competitive against VCU. We're on familiar ground here. We Zips fans know what it's like for our team to be disrespected. It only makes the wins so much sweeter.

I've been following Silver and Pomeroy for years. They're a couple of brilliant numbers geeks. I'd probably trust Silver a little more on understanding the finer nuances of election numbers and Pomeroy for all of his experience with basketball. It's fun to compare what the emotionless numbers geeks predict versus the flamboyant, opinionated pundits.

Well, you forced me to go look at the stats, which I really hate to do. VCU easily leads the country in steals per game at 11.8. OU, who the Zips beat three times this season, is #10 at 9.2. Interestingly, #3 in the country is Arkansas-Pine Bluff at 9.9. VCU also leads the country in forced turnovers at 19.9 per game, while OU is #5 at 17.6 and UAPB is #23 at 16.2. So the UAPB game helped prepare the Zips for OU, and the three OU games offer at least some lessons for the Zips on how to protect the ball against a national leader in steals and forced turnovers, with the understanding that VCU is a much better overall team with a different style of forcing turnovers. Against UAPB, the Zips committed 25 turnovers and had the ball stolen 18 times. But the Zips were so dominant in other areas that they were playing a little carelessly and still won, 76-46. Obviously VCU is a much, much better team than UAPB, and the Zips will not be able to win by even 1 point if they commit 25 turnovers and allow 18 steals no matter how well they execute the rest of their game. But it does show that there was some wisdom in scheduling UAPB to get some experience against defenses that get lots of steals and force lots of turnovers. The three OU games are more interesting. In the first OU game at the JAR, the Zips had 12 turnovers, gave up 8 steals and won by 14 points. In the OT game in Athens, the Zips had 13 turnovers and gave up 5 steals in 45 minutes and won by 7. In the MAC tournament championship game against OU, playing without Abreu at the point, the Zips had 14 turnovers and gave up 6 steals -- virtually the same as in the first two OU games with Abreu -- and won by 19. So in all three games against OU, the Zips had the ball stolen and gave up forced turnovers at a much lower rate than OU's average. But the most telling stat is that OU was not able to get any more steals or forced turnovers against the Zips without Abreu playing. That is an impressive stat, and shows that the Zips are fully capable of protecting the ball when they really focus on it. Again, of course it's understood that VCU is a better team than OU with a different style of forcing turnovers. But it can't be ignored that OU returned all the players who made a Sweet 16 run last year and came one bucket away from beating North Carolina and going to the Elite 8. However much we might dislike the Kitties, they are a dangerous team that wins games with steals and forced turnovers. While VCU's Havoc is impressive, it's not invincible. The Zips are capable of doing a reasonably good job of protecting the ball if they execute to the best of their abilities. This team wants to be remembered as the best in Zips history, and they know that the only way to do that is to beat VCU. They will be ready.

Scared me at first, too. But it's really a good bump. The depth we thought we had was only really deep against weaker opponents. It's that time of the year when you really have to lean hard on your veterans. Without Chauncey, I'd be really concerned about the Zips' chances in the NCAA tournament. Chauncey's time has arrived, and I know he's ready to rock and roll. This is why Chauncey transferred to UA.

Trying to be objective here, Cooper had a great game against WMU and a terrible game against the Zips. If one good game is all it takes to make the MAC all tournament team, then Cooper certainly qualifies.

Good thing I like driving at night, and have made the trip from Akron to Detroit and back more than 300 times over the years.

Uh oh. If that's true, I think they play the games in pairs and clear the arena out between the two pairs. Since the Zips are on the Michigan side of the bracket, it could mean something like a 9:30 pm start for the Zips game, and a very late drive back to Akron. Sure hope I'm wrong.

That was mostly earlier in the season when four freshmen were being worked into the lineup. The Zips will know exactly what's going to be thrown at them by VCU, and they're better prepared to deal with it than earlier in the season. They have more confidence in playing together as a team now. They will need to play with a sense of urgency. That's different from a sense of panic. Will the Zips make mistakes? Of course. Can they offset the mistakes with enough offensive and defensive pressure on VCU to put themselves in a position to win? Certainly. Both teams have great coaches. Both teams will come in prepared to win. In the end it will come down to which team executes their game plan best Good thinking to fight an aggressive defense with an aggressive and creative offense.

Havoc causes panic, panic leads to errors, and the more panic the more errors. So one thing Coach Dambrot will be telling the Zips this week is that they all have to go into the game mentally prepared and with a solid plan never to panic. They need a fairly simple set of options that are triggered quickly by specific circumstances. No matter how well they execute, mistakes will be made. But they can't get down on themselves when things go wrong, as things surely will at times. They have to brush it off and know that they will make it up somewhere else when VCU makes mistakes, as they surely will. The Zips have to focus on their own game plan and not let VCU disrupt it or totally dictate the pace of the game. This is exactly what the Zips did to OU in the second half. VCU is a bigger challenge, but VCU is not invincible. The Zips will enter the game believing that they can win and knowing what they have to do to achieve it.

One problem with getting Michigan fans on our side: Akron is in Ohio.

I believe that there's only one person who has said the Zips have no chance to win, and no one pays much attention to him. Others have pointed out in various ways the difficulty of beating VCU. I think it's reasonable to acknowledge when your team is an underdog to a higher-ranked team. But after that acknowledgement I think it makes sense to focus on what it will take to win the game. Isn't that what fans are supposed to do? I've never seen a definition of "fan" that includes a description of "someone who spends all their time wringing their hands while imagining how many different ways their team can lose."

@DistrictBaller, we're you aware that Coach Smart participated in a video shown to the Zips on their bus trip up to Cleveland for the MAC tournament? In the video he told the Zips players that they could not only win the MAC tournament, but that they could win games in the NCAA tournament. Coach Dambrot joked about it tonight when he said that Coach Smart would probably like to take that statement back right now.

I'm well aware that VCU has more athletic, better coached players than OU, and that this will be a far more difficult matchup. But there are counters to everything, and the best coaches are good at finding ways to at least partially offset the strengths of their opponents. I have confidence that Coach Dambrot will come up with a counter to at least partially offset the effectiveness of Havoc, and that the Zips players will effectively execute his game plan. It will be a really tough game with lots of ups and downs, and the Zips will be huge underdogs. Losers believe they're going to lose and winners believe they're going to win. I know what this Zips team believes. By the way, for anyone who's not familiar with Havoc, there's a good detailed description in this SI story.

OU was going to cause problems for our PG situation, too. VCU will try to exploit the Zips' weaknesses, and the Zips will return the favor. I always hate it when two good mid-majors are matched up in the first round.

The Zips' SOS is currently ranked #131 of 347 D-I teams. Middle Tennessee is dancing with a #129 SOS. Lunardi projects both teams as #12 seeds. As far as driving goes, Kansas City is at about my driving limit at just under 800 miles and about 12 hours with a couple of fuel/pit stops.

Don't know why there's a problem with Harney being hunched over while dribbling when he's closely guarded. The hunched over dribble worked pretty well for this guy:

Melo performed beyond expectations for 27 minutes. He looked a lot more comfortable on the floor than I've seen him before. He may be mentally coming to grips with what he has to do to keep the Zips' season going. I know he got a leg cramp again, and was on the bench having his calf iced. But I'm not sure if the cramp came due to extended playing time or the fact that a Kitty player collided with Melo's leg a second before he went down on the court, which may have triggered the cramp. As well as Melo was performing, it's risky to use up all of his minutes early in the game. If Melo goes out with leg cramps too early in a game, it puts a huge burden on Harney, who was looking pretty worn out near the end of last night's game.

@Dr Z, exactly the comparison I've been thinking of. Ben Wallace was listed at 6-9, but admitted he was closer to 6-7 -- same as Tree. Wallace could earn defensive player of the year playing center in the NBA because he was physically strong and had incredible intensity, toughness and tenacity. Sound familiar? At 6-7, Tree could be an undersized but overperforming power forward in the NBA if he keeps developing like he has so far. A four-year career at UA would give him just the right amount of seasoning he needs to earn a solid spot in the NBA draft.

Cooper looked like a lost little kid on the court last night. You could tell in the second half how badly he wanted to get off a few long bombs, and he couldn't even get a clear look from 30 feet out with all the long bodies on him. That's what Cooper would face every night in the NBA, which is why he's never going to get there. Any NBA scouts who were at the Q or watching on TV got a clear demonstration of how Cooper's performance would be affected by playing against NBA-size players.

Wherever the Zips are playing this is my favorite bubble watch item ever: