Dave in Green

Sorry, Cincinnati. Source: ACC adds Louisville

This ESPN story on Cincinnati's efforts to join the ACC throw out some numbers that show what kind of riches it requires to join the big boys' club.

The heck they aren't. They fooled me into thinking there were five when the BCS actually uses six. I miscounted.

@trimmy10, the BCS standings are mathematically computed from the Harris Poll, the USA Today Poll and five different computer rankings. Can't is 18th and NIU 19th in the Harris Poll, and they're exactly reversed in the USA Today Poll with NIU 18th and Can't 19th. So that's pretty much a wash. The average of the five computer rankings has Can't 18th and NIU 23rd, so there's your margin. You'd have to talk with all the computer programmers to understand their various formulas for determining why the 11-1 record for Can't registers higher in the computers than NIU's 11-1 record. You can't just single out Kentucky's blowout of Can't or NIU's near miss against Iowa. Each of the 12 games each team has played contributes to the overall computer rankings, and the computers are unanimous in ranking Can't higher than NIU. BCS Standings

Right, UCLA and Texas both have to lose, because if Texas upsets Kansas State, they'd move ahead of Can't but Kansas State would not drop down below Can't. But it's not unreasonable to expect both UCLA and Texas to lose, as Stanford and Kansas State are both better teams. Barring an upset in those two games, Can't could be playing in the Orange Bowl if they can beat NIU. Just what would this mean to the BCS? Worst potential BCS bowl ever? A Can't State-Ga. Tech $50M Orange Bowl fiasco

You can't link to anything that has k e n t in the link because ZN.o automatically turns it into can't. You have to copy the link from ZN.o and then manually edit can't to k e n t. EDIT: By the way, the story is a TERRIBLE piece of journalism. They wax long and hard about lowly Kentucky beating Can't, then they go on and on about Rutgers or Louisville earning a BCS bowl berth from the Big East. But they NEVER mention that Can't whipped Rutgers.

A star in the Mid-American Conference at Central Michigan, Zeigler scored 1,011 points in two seasons. At Pitt, a lack of outstanding shooting skill has kept him behind several other wing players, including junior J.J. Moore and senior Lamar Patterson. Ouch!

Not for those who are big college football fans. Let's face it, the world is full of multitudes of conflicting events. We all have to look at everything that's available and prioritize. College basketball games on Sunday, Saturday, or any evening during the week will not cause major problems for those who place a higher priority on college basketball than all the competing events. For those who assign a lower priority to college basketball than other events, there will always be insurmountable conflicts.

As I said, a step backward based on the ongoing methodical dismemberment of the Big East. No one knows where it's going to end for the Big East. There's no guarantee that it will continue to exist as a conference once the buzzards are done picking over the carcass.

I think it's pretty safe at this point to say that this season has proven that a MAC team is fully capable of making it into a BCS bowl game without feeling guilty about wishing that Can't is not the first to do it. And what a slap in the face wakeup call that the widely hinted UA desire to land in the Big East to achieve something like this is not only totally unnecessary, but would have been a step backward based on the ongoing methodical dismemberment of the Big East.

This is one of the reasons why I have such a hard time trying to follow soccer. Like so many other things in life, soccer is an acquired taste. I really appreciate that UA has been so good in soccer for so long, and I really appreciate how dedicated Zips soccer fans are. Believe me when I say that I feel your pain and frustration. Over the years I've felt similar pain and frustration in other sports. But soccer seems to take that pain and frustration to a higher level.

Right, I was just quoting the pure SOS rankings, not the enhanced statistical analysis used by Sagarin, Pomeroy, etc., that create a variety of different stats to choose from.

Richmond may have been a top 50 RPI team at some point in their glorious past. But their current RPI is #153. Looks as if the more Bobkitty fans post here, the more fact checking will be required.

@The Hip Zip, I believe that team won two straight state HS championships. @Quickzips, I can see Zeke being on McDermott at times, but not as the primary defender throughout the game. McDermott has a better all around game than Justin Greene, with much greater ability to stretch the floor. Zeke is at his best on defense close to the bucket. I don't think that KD will want Zeke chasing McDermott all around the floor. But you bring up a couple of good points on Kretzer and Forsythe. Kretzer appears to be a similar player to McDermott in size and raw skills, and could develop into a similar complete player. Jake may also spend some time trying to guard McDermott. And the twin tower approach of having Zeke and Pat on the floor together for at least brief periods could pay off against a team like Creighton.

Currently the Zips OOC SOS is ranked #143 with the Bobkitties back at #261.

Doug McDermott (6-8, 225 pounds) is generally considered the #1 ranked power forward in college basketball this season. At the PF position, he will most likely be guarded by Tree and Harney, who both match up with him pretty well in size. It's doubtful that anyone can shut McDermott down completely, so it's going to be a matter of not letting him run wild and keeping his teammates in check. Player for player, the Zips rotation matches up pretty well in size with Creighton's, with no major size mismatches.

There's no doubt in my mind that a full-strength Zips team could have beaten Oklahoma State, Tennessee and NC State in PR. Doesn't mean they would have, just that they would have had a reasonable chance. But it's all pure speculation at this point. We'll have another chance to see how good the Zips are when they play Creighton, #14 in the AP poll and #12 in the coaches poll.

The ESPN numbers database must have gotten garbled. If you look at 2011, only one team in the country had more than 1,000 yards in penalties. In 2012, it shows dozens of teams with more than 1,000 yards in penalties.

Zach, really appreciate your good work on this. Having compiled a few stat posts such as yours, I understand that it takes time and effort to put it all together. The only thing that didn't really look right to me was penalties, as 196 penalties for 1,552 yards this season seemed way out of line in comparison with last season's 63 for 523. Sure enough, when I looked at this season's stats on GoZips.com, they showed 101 penalties for 797 yards against the Zips. Maybe the increase came from installing a whole new system. But at least it was not such a massive magnitude as the numbers you had. Perhaps you accidentally pulled penalty numbers from the wrong place.

This is why the asterisk was created. This was not a normal basketball game, but an exhibition. It belongs in the same record book as Harlem Globetrotters records.

@SeeTeeZip, the answer to your first question is that the definition of lionization is to treat someone as a celebrity. Coach Bowden was a celebrity before he came here, and he still is. So far what he's done at UA is to reduce the embarassing magnitude of the Zips losses into somewhat less embarassing losses. For that he deserves some credit. There's much more to be accomplished, and if Coach Bowden doesn't continue the upward trajectory, more Zips fans will start dumping on him as you've elected to do before his first season was even completed. The answer to your second question is that fan forums are for fans to sound off, and for other fans to tell them their remarks are stupid and that they'd come across as more intelligent if they kept their traps shut. Most fans who've posted on sports forums have been on both sides of that equation at one time or another. Any other questions?

Which is more likely: An experienced football coach moving over to serve as a successful football analyst in the media or an experienced media person moving over to serve as a successful football coach?

Must depend on your browser settings. I got amazon.com when I clicked on the link with the left mouse button. But if I use the right mouse button, copy the link and paste it in a new browser window, I get the wav file.

Basketball State looks interesting. Thanks for sharing the good info.

If anyone knows another source of data on college basketball with a better track record than Pomeroy, I'm always open to finding more accurate data sources.