Dave in Green

Now wait a minute. Isn't that the primary reason why these forums exist in the first place?

Kretzer gets lots of minutes because he has a complete game, starting at the defensive end. Keep an eye on his defensive positioning, how well he guards other players and his positioning for rebounds. On the offensive end, he's had two off shooting games in a row. It happens to everyone. Walsh had two off shooting games in a row in the two games prior to last night. Prior to the last two games, Kretzer was a 50% shooter, and he'll get back to that. Even after the last two games, he has the second best 3-point shooting percentage in the MAC. In the meantime, he protects the ball well on offense and passes crisply and accurately like a veteran. He's already one of the Zips' best all-around players as a true freshman. KD likes Kretzer because he listens, learns and executes in all phases of the game.

GoZips makes some good points. Zips starters played only 101 of 200 minutes. With the game's outcome never in doubt, KD was obviously experimenting and trying to give the freshmen more experience so that they can contribute more later in the season. As for McAdams, he has a lot of strengths -- especially on offense -- and should contribute a lot over his career. But the quick little A-PB guards just absolutely blew around him as if he were nailed to the floor a few times. KD is always watching to see which players do the best job on the defensive end. The only Zips PG the A-PB guards were not able to out-quick was Deji, who always seemed to be able to stay in front of them and force them to pass. Lock down defense was what Deji was noted for in HS. KD has said that he is about a year away from being really good. If Deji develops a little quicker, he could get significant PT before the season is over.

I found an NCAA document showing 2009 college football attendance numbers for top schools in all divisions. As consistently good as Mount Union has been, they had only the 13th best attendance average of all D-III teams at 3,561 per game (32,050 for 9 games). Number one D-III team for average attendance was St. John's (MN) 8,208. Now you could speculate that a much larger school (UA) with many more alumni in a larger metropolitan area (Akron) might be expected to draw larger crowds than that presuming that NEO fans could be counted on to be among the most enthusiastic in the country. But 10k would be pretty optimistic for a perennial national power in a lower division considering only three D-II teams in the country averaged more than 10k attendance per game in 2009. Now, if UA could be transplanted to Texas and morphed into a perennial high school football power, rabid Texas HS football fans could easily average 10k at those games. 2009 National College Football Attendance For All NCAA Men's Varsity Teams

There was a mistake on the calendar in the Zips locker room that showed this was a night off. The players all had other plans and were highly annoyed when informed at the last minute that they had to show up for a game. You could tell they didn't want to be there. The Arkansas-Pine Bluff Golden Lions were a little short on talent, and a little short overall. But you could tell they really wanted to be there as they played their little butts off from the opening tipoff to the final buzzer. They were quick and aggressive and forced the Zips into what must be close to a team record 25 turnovers. It was the sloppiest performance by a winning team in a 30-point victory I've ever witnessed. I understand that it's hard to get up for a game like this. But playing that sloppy in any game can lead to bad habits. A couple of items of note: It was between semesters, and as had been rumored would happen at the end of the semester, Josh Egner was gone. It appears that he has transferred. Also, first backup point guard off the bench was not Melo but Deji. It appears that Melo is not adjusting to college play as quickly as expected. The more experienced Deji played at the point for 12 minutes and did a pretty fair job. Melo played 6 minutes and had 5 turnovers. The Golden Lions basically took the ball away from Melo whenever they wanted it. If Q were playing with the Zips this season, he'd be spending at least part of his minutes at backup PG as he did last season, and the Zips would be a better team. KD has a lot of work to do with this Q-less team.

Is anyone saying that KD shouldn't be questioned? Does anyone really know for sure if KD can or can't take the program to the next level? Does anyone really know for sure if any available coach who would come to Akron would be more likely than KD to take the program to the next level? Is UA committed enough to provide all the resources required by KD or another coach to take the program to the next level? Lots of questions to be asked and lots of different opinions to sort through, some more educated than others. Productive discussions are good to have. I don't think there's any disagreement with the fact that UA is not a destination school for a sure big winner coach. At best, UA is a temporary stop for an aspiring young coach like a John Groce to come and build a resume for a few years and then move on to bigger things for bigger money. In that scenario, the program bounces up and down as some aspiring young coaches hit it big and some fall flat on their faces. Maybe one of them hits it big and the Zips have their first NCAA tournament run. But I'd have a hard time getting excited about Zips basketball during those years when UA was stuck with an aspiring young coach who couldn't win half of the games on the schedule, and then have to go through the rebuilding years when the next coach comes in and tries to clean things up.

In the 5 seasons before KD took over as head coach, the Zips averaged a final season RPI ranking of #165, or 48th percentile of the 347 DI teams. In the 8 full seasons that he's been head coach, the Zips have averaged a final season RPI ranking of #81, or 23rd percentile. Last season the Zips finished with their best-ever final season RPI ranking of #60, or 17th percentile. So it's fair to say that KD took a program that was almost dead average in performance and moved it up a level, well into the top quarter of all DI teams. For that he deserves credit. Under the category of what have you done for me lately, everyone agrees that this season has been a disappointment so far. It's certainly fair to question whether or not KD is capable of continuing to lead the Zips to an even higher level until he actually does it. There are many factors involved, and different people are focusing on different aspects of the equation. It's easy enough to point to lost games that could/should have been won and speculate on how much of it was on the coaching and how much on the players. The hard part is predicting how much the team will improve over the course of this season, and whether or not they will peak at a higher level than ever at the end of the season. As painful as the early season losses have been, a single upset victory in the NCAA tournament would easily make fans forget the early problems. And with the Zips having the 9th least experienced roster of 347 DI teams, it's not unrealistic to expect them to make significant performance gains as they become more seasoned. OU finished the last regular season with a 23-7 record and no OOC wins over ranked schools. Compared with last season's Zips, OU had a better OOC record but a worse MAC regular season record. They even had to play a MAC tournament qualifying game in Miami before moving on to the Q, where they beat the Zips by just 1 point on a lucky bounce. Yet they were able to make it to the Sweet 16 and come close to upsetting North Carolina. Every season there are teams with unremarkable regular seasons who peak at the right time and have good NCAA tournament runs. That's what we all really want the Zips to do, and that's still within their reach. That would qualify as taking the Zips to a new level just as much as consistently beating OOC teams early in the season. Until the Zips deliver something they've never done before, this forum will continue to be filled with questions and theories of why not.

This is evolving into the classic small fish in a big pond vs. big fish in a small pond discussion. It's basically a what if UA could become a big fish in a big pond vs. it's more likely that UA would continue to be a small fish in a big pond but could realistically become a big fish in a small pond. We know that the occasional small fish in a big pond defies the odds and becomes a big fish in the big pond. We just don't know the exact odds of that being able to happen at UA, and it's slowly driving some Zips fans to madness.

The elephant in the room is that there is big money in amateur sports, and whenever there's big money in anything, everyone wants a bigger cut. That's why there's talk of paying the kids bigger money than just a scholarship. You either pay them directly above board, or let them take jobs. If they take jobs, big bucks boosters can phony up jobs and pay the kids big bucks for doing nothing. This will change nothing, because the schools with the most big bucks boosters already have the best players and the best teams. We have become very sophisticated at gaming any system anyone comes up with to create any kind of limits on anything. Anyone who comes up with a workable solution is a true genius. Those who believe they have a solution are mostly fooling themselves.

GP1, do you hear an echo of what you've been saying from what was said after the official Big East announcement today? Bearcats men's basketball coach Mick Cronin said Saturday he wasn't surprised by the announcement. "I don't blame them," Cronin said. "My take is it's a shame that football, one sport, has dictated all this. The money that one sport is swinging around is swaying universities to make decisions. Don't tell me that people care about student-athletes. "It's all ridiculous. Let's call it what it is. I've thought about this long and hard and I've waited to say this. If it's all about money and money grabbing, the players need to get paid." Seven schools leaving Big East

Is anyone else missing Q as much as I am?

Has anyone ever done an analysis on how the Zips have done in PK games?

It's certainly official with me now that this is a disappointing Zips team. There were no extenuating circumstances here. The Zips had all their players with everyone in reasonably good health. If the players are at all serious about playing basketball, they ought to have their own private meeting without the coaching staff and make a unanimous personal commitment to each other to start playing together more seriously as a team.

Unfortunately, it's looking more and more like the Zips are a collection of good individual players who don't play so well together as a team.

Tree having a great game -- 17 points (8-9 from the field) and 8 rebounds in 20 minutes.

Absolutely miserable ball handling -- 14 turnovers.

I really like being able to alt-tab back and forth between the full-screen webcast and the live stats on the HL site. The Zips have 9 fouls on them, but Kretzer is the only one with 2. Eight Zips have 1 foul each.

Thanks for the link! I'd forgotten how good the Horizon league is about webcasting games.

Just checked all the usual sports websites, and not a one has a live box score for this game. That's just pathetic.

George, we are all in this together. Wherever it comes from, whoever it's about, it's all about looking for differences and deciding whether differences are good or bad. The animal part of us tells us that differences are bad and that whoever is not like us is not one of us. Our intellect should tell us that diversity is good, and makes us stronger as a whole. It's the eternal struggle. Most choose to dodge the issue. Those who choose to speak up about it are exceptional. You done good.

Lead story on ESPN NCAA FB right now has a title of Beyond The MAC-tion and links to the following story: The MAC's rise to prominence

It just keeps getting crazier and crazier. By the time this round of conference musical chairs is over, everyone will be dissatisfied again and a new round will break out. Maybe the whole concept of conferences is obsolete, and every school should just be an independent. Cincinnati, UConn talk of new all-sports league, could leverage ACC offer

Hoping for the best for Josh Jones. Creighton's Josh Jones to undergo heart procedure

Edging closer to reality. Source: Schools debating how to go

The dirtiness ranking was based on two specific measures -- Sperling Air Quality Index and Sperling Water Quality Index. While there are other things that contribute to dirtiness, clean air and water are two of the big four critical elements that contribute to human survival, along with a healthy food supply and protection from severe weather conditions. Anything that threatens any of these four elements is worthy of our attention.