Dave in Green

Storming the court after almost blowing a game in which you were a big favorite to win? Sounds to me like signs of insecurity in Kittyland.

Exactly the opposite. If they get failing grades in most of the segments, it documents what they're doing wrong and when. The point is to strive for consistently good grades throughout a game, just as you're supposed to do in a class. Think of it as a class broken into 10 segments with a test score given at the end of each segment. Getting a high score in a couple of segments is not going to get you a high grade for the class.

I like the idea of breaking the game into segments and grading the players on how they do in each segment. It may help the players focus better on each of the elements being graded, and resetting the grading clock every 4 minutes helps keep them from losing track of what they're supposed to be doing.

@Quickzips, I agree with all of your points about BGSU except you not considering Holmes a legit D-I player returning next season. He's not only a high level shot blocker, he's a decent rebounder and scorer in his first season at the D-I level. I plan to keep an eye on him tonight as I believe he has the potential to become BGSU's leading rebounder and one of their leading scorers next season. Everything I can find on the guy tells me he's a legit D-I player.

Isaiah Johnson's Cincinnati Walnut Hills HS finished its regular season last night with their 21st win. Their only loss of the season was by 7 points to Huntington (WV) Prep, the #1 HS team in the country with the #1 ranked HS player in the country, Andrew Wiggins. Over the last 3 games of the season, Johnson hit 20-27 from the field, raising his final regular season FG percentage to 70.4%. Johnson leads his team in scoring (17.5 ppg) and rebounding (9.1 rpg). He's playing at a high level for a high level HS team. Next up is the Ohio HS tournament. B.J. Gladden's Charlotte Olympic HS also finished its regular season last night with a win, going undefeated at 22-0. Olympic is a well-balanced team with all 5 starters averaging double-digit scoring. Gladden is the team's 2nd leading scorer (13 ppg) and leading rebounder (6.8 rpg). Olympic is ranked #2 in North Carolina going into their state tournament. Like Johnson, Gladden is playing at a high level for a high level HS team. Kwan Cheatham's Cincinnati Winton Woods HS (13-9) and Aaron Jackson's Gahanna Lincoln HS (15-6 with 1 regular season game left) have not performed at the same consistently high level as the 2 HS teams above. Lincoln lost a number of games while players were suspended, and Winton Woods appears to be a good but not great team. Cheatham finished the regular season as the 3rd leading scorer on his team (11.3 ppg), but was the leading rebounder (8.9 rpg) and shot blocker (2.7 bpg). I can't find any summary of Jackson's season stats.

As I said earlier, take a closer look at sophomore Richaun Holmes, who is only 7 blocks away from the BGSU all-time single-season block record. He blocks shots at a higher percentage rate than Zeke, shoots better than 60% from the field and is their second leading rebounder despite averaging only 18 minutes per game.

Basketball seating capacity at Savage Arena is 7.300. They may have had almost 4,000 paid attendance counting season ticketholder no-shows, but certainly not that many butts in seats.

(Moved to Zeke and the NBA Draft thread.)

Pomeroy's ranking for Belmont after two straight losses makes more sense to me than their mind-boggling RPI of #26. I guess it's good that there's still a lot of RPI value there if OU can knock them off at Belmont. BPI ranks the Zips even better than Pomeroy, #49 to Belmont's #52.

Cameron Black has been sharing the center position with JC transfer Richaun Holmes, who led the JC ranks in blocked shots last season. Holmes actually has a better block percentage than Zeke this season. He's not only more athletic than Black, he's also a better shooter, hitting 62% of his field goal attempts. Since the Zips played BG at the Stroh Center, Holmes has been playing more minutes than Black on a regular basis. He adds a new dimension to both the BG offense and defense, so keep an eye on him in this game.

Most of the ranking projection systems use metrics that account for upsets. For example, if a team has 8 games remaining on its schedule and is favored to win all 8 of those games against weaker opponents, the stats project that the team will go 7-1 in those games because teams usually don't win all the games they're favored to win. RPI Forecast currently shows the Zips favored to win all of their remaining 6 regular season games except for the OU game in Athens, where the Kitties are a slight favorite. Yet RPI Forecast also projects that the Zips are likely to lose 2 more regular season games.

NDSU is obviously looking ahead to their game against the Zips. They just lost their second game in a row, this time to Western Illinois by a MAC West score of 49-36. Ugh. Are there any good teams left that can just keep winning, if even by only a few points a game? Oh, yeah -- Akron.

Ready for another one? Remember mighty Montana, proud leaders of the Big Sky Conference with a 14-0 record, riding a 14-game winning streak and hoping for the Zips to stumble so that they can hold the nation's longest winning streak? The Grizzlies have turned into teddy bears tonight, and trail Weber State at halftime, 44-24. Now maybe they are good enough to bounce back from a 20-point halftime deficit. But I doubt it. I think they're destined to be the next undefeated conference team to fall by the wayside.

Belmont just got upset again for the second time in a week, this time by Tennessee State, 80-69. Belmont is now 20-6 overall and 11-2 in the OVC. As recently as earlier today, some sportswriters were still rating Belmont as a possible at-large team for the NCAA tournament, even after their loss a few days ago to Murray State. This second loss in a week will put an end to that talk. And speaking of Murray State, they were just upset by SIU-Edwardsville, 65-60, falling to 18-6 overall and 9-3 in the OVC. So, the OVC has just lost any shot at an at-large selection. Belmont had been a mid-major darling of the media, and ranked ahead of the Zips in all polls. With this second loss in a week, there's no reason the Zips can't move ahead of Belmont. This is just an insanely competitive and unpredictable season, with top-ranked teams rolling along and then losing several in a row to lower-ranked teams. The NCAA selection committee is going to have an interesting session trying to fill the field with clearly deserving at-large entries.

I think someone already did the math in another thread. You guys have it right. If the Zips are 12-0 in the MAC after Saturday's game, the worst they can finish is 12-4. OU is the only one that could beat that and WMU is the only eligible team that could tie it. But the Zips own the tie-breaker with WMU, so a top two seed would be locked in. Thinking about this scenario is a giant leap back from the one I just painted in another thread about the Zips winning out through the MAC tournament championship game, going 28-4 and entering the NCAA tournament on a 24-game winning streak.

As I've said before, the problem with wishing for an at-large bid is that it would depend on a perfect storm of all the right highly ranked teams winning their conference tournaments and all the bubble teams losing games and falling behind the Zips in their total resumes. It's possible but not likely to happen. Heck, Creighton and Wichita State have gone from sure things to bubble teams after their recent series of conference losses. The positive scenario to dream about where the Zips control their own destiny is how high a seed they might earn in the NCAA tournament if they win out, including the MAC tournament championship game. It's a wild scenario that would bring the Zips into the NCAA tournament as a 28-4 team on a 24-game winning streak. It would take avoiding a big upset in the upcoming games where the Zips are clearly favored, beating a strong North Dakota State team at the JAR, and likely beating OU twice more -- in Athens and at the Q. Those three wins plus a 24-game winning streak would earn a fair amount of respect from the selection committee when it came to seeding. Right now the Zips' 16-game winning streak is exactly two-thirds of the way toward reaching that extremely difficult goal. They just have to keep taking it one game at a time. But regardless of what happens in the other games, winning two at the Q should be considered mandatory.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The Zips were going to be bringing back a strong nucleus of seniors for the 2012-2013 season. Seniors Quincy Diggs and Chauncey Gilliam were both expected to average even more than last season's 25.5 and 17.1 minutes per game respectively. But first the team lost Q completely, and now Chauncey is losing more and more minutes to a continuing knee problem. Then there were the first three games lost by Tree and Nick, and suddenly the Zips were relying on freshmen a lot more than anyone had anticipated just a few months ago. What has that done to upset the expected balance of veteran vs. rookie players? I couldn't really find that stat anywhere, so I decided to do my own breakdown of the percentage of minutes to date by freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. One difference between my numbers and official NCAA numbers is that the NCAA formally recognizes Tree and Nick as juniors. But they're really sophomore level players who are expected to petition and receive a fifth season of eligibility from the NCAA based on their good academic records. Now onto the basics. The Zips have played 24 40-minute games to date plus 2 5-minute overtime periods, or 24x40 + 2x5 = 970 total game minutes. Multiply that times 5 players and you get 4,850 player minutes. The minutes below don't come out exactly even due to partial minutes played, and I've also left out the few minutes played by the walk-ons. But the following is very close to 4,850 total player minutes: Seniors = 32.1% (1,557 minutes total -- Zeke = 637, Walsh = 573, Chauncey = 347) Juniors = 14.9% (722 minutes total -- Rico = 722) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Upperclassmen = 47% of total playing time -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sophomores = 25.8% (1,254 minutes total -- Tree = 565, Nick = 408, Deji = 281) Freshmen = 27.2% (1,318 minutes -- Kretzer = 499, Forsythe = 313, McAdams = 264, Melo = 220, Justice = 22) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Underclassmen = 53% of total playing time Some interesting points here. While seniors have the highest percentage of PT, freshmen are not far behind in second, with sophomores a close third. When you break it down into upperclassmen and underclassmen, the more experienced players account for less than half of the total PT while the less experienced players account for more than half. This difference may become even more pronounced if Chauncey's knee continues to limit his PT. The bottom line for the Zips is that freshmen and sophomores are playing a much bigger role on this team than anyone envisioned just a few months ago. The bad news is that less experience means more rookie mistakes and less well established team chemistry. The good news is that next season's team will start off with more players with more experience than if this season's PT was dominated by veterans. The big question mark is whether the underclassmen can overcome their lack of experience to mesh with the upperclassmen to produce enough good team chemistry for the Zips to close out this season at a high level and finally make that post-season run we fans have all been dreaming about for so many years.

"The best" at predicting the field? Let's check the scoreboard.

I believe that Lunardi is the most conservative of the bracketologists. Others are starting to give the Zips a closer look, analyzing more details, and liking what they see. I doubt that Lunardi has studied the Zips in enough detail to be familiar with the full impact of losing Tree and Nick for the first three games of the season, or having Rico handicapped for so many games recovering from that severe high ankle sprain. It's my understanding that the NCAA selection committee does consider fine details like that as they're comparing bubble team resumes. So I continue to believe that there's a chance of an at-large bid as long as the Zips win out but lose a close MAC tournament championship game. It's a small chance, for sure. It requires that the Zips not be upset along the way, and that the bubble teams they would be compared against lose a few more games before season's end. So it's probably good that Lunardi is sending the message that Zips fans shouldn't be too optimistic.

Zips move up another notch to #5 in the just released ESPN Mid-Major Power Rankings, moving ahead of Creighton, which dropped to #8 with their 3-game losing streak. The only teams ahead of the Zips now are Gonzaga, St. Mary's, Middle Tennessee State and Belmont. 5.Akron (20-4, 11-0 MAC) – The Zips are still winning. Their 16-game winning streak is the nation’s longest.

Associated Press YPSILANTI, Mich. -- Brian Walsh scored 16 points, Nick Harney added 14 and Akron extended the nation's longest winning streak to 16 games with a 70-62 victory over Eastern Michigan on Wednesday night.

Rico almost had a double-double -- 9 assists and 9 turnovers.

The usual combination of good and bad. Good shooting percentage, rebounding and assists. Bad turnovers. They're not a killer team that goes all out all the time. They're college kids having as much fun as they can, and putting in enough effort to win 16 games in a row. If they can rise to the level required to win each game one at a time, I can't criticize them as long as they own the longest winning streak in the country. I'll leave that to Coach Dambrot.

Another ugly win, but the win streak is at 16.

In control.