Dave in Green

If it's a recording of the Zips band, it's not a very memorable one. I'll listen closer next time.

Seems as if it would be pretty simple to make a digital recording of the Zips band playing the national anthem and play that back when the band isn't there and they can't find someone to sing.

You guys are definitely on the right track not to make any noise over the playing of the national anthem, or do anything that could be considered disrespectful to the U.S. flag. While many are unaware of it, there are actual laws about conduct during the playing of the national anthem which are covered in United States Code Title 36. Some take this much more seriously than others, and acting in any manner that appears to show disrespect to the flag and the national anthem would definitely tarnish the Rowdies' image with some. In fact, the flag code states that non-military personnel should stand facing the flag with their hands over their hearts. I notice that a few teams who visit the JAR require all their players to stand at attention with their hands over their hearts. Many teams do not do this, including the Zips. I'm sure that those who do not mean no disrespect, and are simply unaware of the flag code.

Sorry if my response wasn't clear. I understood that it was not your opinion but that you were just reporting what others were saying. If being perceived as cool will help attract more students to join the Rowdies at games, then I guess some effort could be made to try to raise the cool factor. I just can't be any help in figuring out what college students consider to be cool these days, or what it is the Rowdies are doing that's considered uncool.

OMG, if it's all about what group kids feel are cool, I can't help you on that. I outgrew trying to hang with the "cool" group almost a half century ago when I realized how shallow that crap was.

I understand. It's not that he HAS to be a scoring machine, but that he COULD be. The important thing is that he can be a balanced player who can do whatever the team needs most at any given time. That's what creates winning teams. You're obviously getting good feedback from the right people.

@GameChngr44, I'm an optimist, and yet I'm still blown away by the improvement in Zeke's offensive game. Of course he still has a long way to go to be NBA-ready. But I honestly believe that if he gets it in his mind and in his heart that scoring points is as important as blocking shots, he could turn into a scoring beast. He's already showing flashes of that, and I understand how frustrating it must be for you when some Zips fans don't see it even when it's written large in the NCAA stats.

On RPI alone, there's plenty of room for movement up and down, so the Zips could end up drawing North Dakota State, Stephen F Austin, South Dakota State or Eastern Kentucky. There are no big-name options available, so we just have to hope to draw the highest-ranked team and beat them soundly to gain a small point or two in the national conversation.

@GameChngr44, those who matter understand. Those who don't understand don't matter.

@UAZip0510, I have a specific question for you. You say that your friends from other MAC schools have bad things to say about the Rowdies, but you won't share what they said. Therefore, there's no way to know if that has anything to do with why "UA students don't show up to non-Can't games." Productive discussions require full disclosure of perceived problems so that solutions can be found, and if what your friends from other MAC schools say doesn't relate to that, they are not pertinent to the conversation. If they do have something to do with it, they should be fully disclosed or the perceived problems can't be addressed. My latest experience with the Rowdies was watching them represent UA at Can't. They did a great job of cheering the team on, and did not do a single thing I saw that anyone from UA could reasonably object to. In other words, I can't see the problems you're talking about, and you're not providing me enough data to help me understand what the perceived problems are.

This could be a really productive discussion as long as everyone stays on point and doesn't drift.

I absolutely cannot imagine Zeke P***ing away money like some of these kids from the poor side of town who just never had the family background or training to handle financial success, and who have no earthly idea how fast money can disappear when no planning is in place. Those are the ones who really need help

The following is totally speculative. RPI Forecast currently projects the Zips going 14-2 in the regular MAC season and having a 22-6 record with a 52.6 RPI going into the MAC tournament. They apparently do not include a projection for the BracketBuster game until the pairings are announced. They further project that if the Zips win all their conference games and finish the regular season at 24-4 (again excluding the BracketBuster game), they'd have an RPI of 35.1. Add to that a good BracketBuster win and a win in the MAC tournament semifinal, and the Zips would have a record of 26-4, a 23-game winning streak and an RPI close to 30 entering the MAC championship game. If they lost there to OU by 1 point, they'd be 26-5 with an RPI probably somewhere between 30 and 40, but would have an undefeated conference season and 23-game win streak on their resume. I'm guessing they'd be on the bubble for an at-large bid depending on what happens with other teams.

@zipdiehard, you make a good point about the number of students actually living on campus within walking distance of the school's basketball arena. The UA website says their "residence halls are home to more than 3,000 students." Using OU for comparison, their website says they have on-campus housing for "nearly 8,000 students." I'm not sure how many students live in off-campus residences close enough to be able to easily walk to the games. But I'd guess that schools like OU have an advantage over UA there, too.

The Zips 3-point shooting percentage is off from previous seasons, when they were above average. Their current 34.1% is just slightly above the national average (#157 out of 347 teams). A number of Top 25 teams have worse 3-point percentages than the Zips, including Louisville, Syracuse, San Diego State, Missouri, Michigan State, etc. So you don't necessarily need great 3-point shooting to be a highly ranked team as long as you have a strong inside game to compensate.

After today's MAC games, the Zips and Bobkitties are both 4-0, and the next best conference record is 2-2.

Quick update after today's Can't game on where Zeke stands in various national offensive statistical rankings: #1: Zeke remains the nation's leader in free throw rate (number of free throw attempts per field goal attempt, i.e. they have to foul him to stop him from scoring). #2: Zeke has moved up from 4th to 2nd best in floor percentage (an individual's scoring possessions divided by his total possessions). #5: Zeke has moved up from 13th to 5th best in field goal percentage at 67.3%. #8: Zeke has moved up from 9th to 8th best in true shooting percentage (summary of 2-point, 3-point and free throw shooting percentages) at 69.1%. #9: Zeke is currently #9 in effective field goal percentage at 69.8% (not sure why I didn't include this category in the original post). #23: Zeke has moved up from 41st to 23rd best in offensive rating (a player's efficiency at producing points for the offense based on field goals, free throws, assists, offensive rebounds and turnovers). Of course, Zeke is still well in the top 10 in all shot block categories. But that's old news. Everyone knew Zeke could block shots. It's the extreme improvement in offensive categories that's going to register with the NBA scouts come NBA draft time. As the season goes on, his offensive numbers are going up, not down.

So far today, the Zips win plus other results have pushed them up to #69 in RPI, and they're currently #49 in Pomeroy, which should go up a little when Pomeroy is updated overnight. Even big wins in the next three games would not push the Zips up too much, as the opponents are considered too weak. The Zips will have to put together one heck of a winning streak, including a decisive win over OU, to get any top 25 attention. Any stumble along the way would cause the voters to quickly recoil from any respect that might be slowly building for the Zips. Toledo did lead OU at halftime today in Athens, which is fairly impressive. But OU took them out in the second half.

All the nerds knew that Beta was better, but VHS had better PR.

@akronzips71, I didn't see any strange color shifts in the building. Must have been a TV camera filter to create a traditional Can't psychedelic view. Who knows, some of the Can't fans in the building may have been seeing similar colors today. I believe that building went up in 1952, and is pretty similar to what it was in the early days with minimal updates. They have taken out some of the columns that used to make it important to get there early for unobstructed cheap seat views. No seatbacks at either end or on the second level. I still listen to Blood, Sweat and Tears CDs. Great sounds.

I can't complain too much about the reffing, especially since they didn't pile on Zeke. We needed Zeke every one of the 33 minutes he played. From way up in the bleachers there were questionable calls on both teams. It probably looked a little different at court level. In the first half the refs called 11 on the Zips to 8 for Can't, and in the second half they called 16 on each team. So for the game the home team had only 3 fewer fouls than the visitors, which is not a bad split. My biggest concern is that Harney couldn't seem to play tight D without fouling. Nick played only 12 minutes before fouling out. In the last 3 games he's had 12 personals, averaging 4 per game. While I appreciate his effort to play strong D, he's going to have to develop a little more defensive finesse. He needs to get better at defensive positioning so that he isn't forced to foul when his man slips by him and is heading for an easy bucket.

That second half was so good that it actually made me glad to be on the Can't campus. Don't know if you could see it on TV, but they were laying all over Tree in the first half, bumping him and pushing him around. You could see his blood pressure rising, and we were afraid he was going to get a T. At one point near the end of the first half he pushed a Can't player away from him so hard that the guy landed about 12 feet away. Fortunately the refs didn't see that one. But that's what happens when the refs let one team run wild over another. The payback came in the second half when the Can't players were just as aggressive, but the refs started calling fouls they ignored in the first half and Can't got into foul trouble early. If the Zips could have hit their free throws, they could have taken over control of the game. Instead, Tree focused his first half frustration into second half intensity and just took over. Tree and Zeke owned the boards in the second half. Can't outrebounded the Zips 26-20 in the first half, and the Zips outrebounded Can't 31-13 in the second half for a final 51-39 Zips advantage. That's the biggest rebounding turnaround from half to half I can recall seeing from the Zips. My biggest takeaway from this game (no cooties!) is that the Zips are so strong in so many areas that they can be off in a couple of major areas and still win against a tough rival on their homecourt. Opposing coaches have continually talked about how the Zips can beat you in so many different ways, and they did it today with rebounding, an area that hasn't been one of their strongest this season. It was great seeing Q there cheering on the Zips to a big conference road win.

@zen, your original post was a pretty aggressive challenge, i.e. "sounds like throwing darts at the wall and making excuses now." I thought my response was pretty civil, ending with "No one believes that's (rural or urban location) the only attendance factor." You agreed, saying "I just believe that there are other factors far more comparatively relevant here." You used OU's NCAA tournament run as an example of another factor, and I again in a civil way said that all you had to do to prove your point was provide attendance numbers before and after the tournament run to show it. Your response to that was pretty flip. How do you expect people to react to something like that? Anyway, since you and I are in agreement that cow tipping is not the only available entertainment activity in Athens and that there are many variables that affect average home attendance, let's go beyond your reality and my reality to attendance reality for anyone reading this who might have an interest in actual numbers: OU AVERAGE HOME ATTENDANCE 6,050 = 2012-2013 season to date after NCAA tournament sweet 16 run (average likely to go up as conference games draw larger crowds) 6,177 = 2011-2012 season after 19-16 overall record 5,599 = 2010-2011 season after upsetting Georgetown in NCAA tournament 5,289 = 2009-2010 season after 15-17 overall record 5,016 = 2008-2009 season after 20-13 overall record and 1st round NIT tournament win over Brown and 2nd round loss to Bradley 5,135 = 2007-2008 season after 19-13 overall record 4,502 = 2006-2007 season after 19-11 overall record 4,738 = 2005-2006 season after 21-11 overall record and 1st round NCAA tournament loss to Florida 4,397 = 2004-2005 season after 10-20 overall record 4,514 = 2003-2004 season after 14-16 overall record 6,175 = 2002-2003 season after 17-11 overall record 7,474 = 2001-2002 season after 19-11 overall record So, there you go -- a general trend down in attendance following losing seasons and a general trend up after winning seasons, but not always a significant apparent direct correlation. There are too many other variables to analyze this in greater detail. But the numbers generally tend to support the position that team performance one season affects home attendance the next. But we already knew that.

Thanks for letting me know not to take your posts seriously.

Thanks for that. I'm a Louisiana Tech grad. I was there for the Terry Bradshaw golden era and have many fond memories. Amazing how much offense they put up this season and how close they came to beating the only team to beat Alabama. But I'm a total Zips convert now. If UA ever plays La Tech in any sport, I'll be cheering for the Zips.