Dave in Green

Looking over the stats for this game, it appears that for the second game in a row the Zips hit a slightly higher percentage of their 3-pointers than 2-pointers. As long as the Zips can kick the ball out to an open man on the perimeter, I have no problem with them shooting wide open 3s.

As best as I can interpret the bracket, the Zips will play at 1:30 pm EST Sunday against the winner of this evening's Providence-Penn State game, with the broadcast on ESPNU. So we'll see how the Zips perform with all players available against a decent major opponent.

Remember Rico's early games at the point for the Zips? Remember Humpty's early games at the point for the Zips? PG has lots of responsibilities on the floor. It takes time to adjust. Melo's going to be just fine as he gets a feel for playing at this level.

The announcer just observed that Akron "is a well-coached defensive team."

The Zips are playing an 11-man rotation that will wear down UNCA as the second half goes on.

The obvious question is why they don't put more of a priority on pure RPI, since RPI includes SOS, and Top 25 wins are already calculated in SOS and, therefore, RPI? What they're basically saying is that RPI is flawed. If so, why not correct RPI? Then they'd lose the ability to allow committees with agendas to twist the results to suit themselves. Bottom line is, the excuse stinks. #1 in all the polls + #2 in RPI = a #5 seed only if the system is deliberately set up with a gray area that they can always use as an excuse.

Final score: OSU 62, UT 45. Interesting point here is that, just like the Zips, UT went almost 10 minutes without scoring a field goal. In fact, they didn't even score a free throw. OSU held UT scoreless for nearly 10 minutes. The difference is that the Zips came back to take it into OT while the Vols never recovered.

Tennessee is rated one of the top teams in the SEC this season. But if OSU whips them after just squeaking by the Zips, don't be surprised to see someone say that Tennessee must be overrated.

So the NCAA is saying that RPI is a "flawed" concept (along with the coaches poll) when compared to a committee of people with special interests? The way to disprove that theory is for the people with special interests to be proven wrong on the pitch.

Last year is history. This season, the Big 12 is ranked by ESPN as the 2nd best conference in the country, and OSU is projected as one of the top teams in the Big 12 with "two McDonald's All-Americans." ESPN To everyone reading this: You know, it's possible to be pleased with the Zips team and at the same time not be pleased with losing. We Zips fans are tired of losing in any way, shape or form. But we're fortunate to have a really good basketball team, even though they are going to lose some games for a variety of reasons. There are many reasons why the Zips lost this game, and everyone has a slightly different take on which reasons made the most difference. It's OK to be unhappy with the loss. We all are. But I think we need to separate our unhappiness over the loss with our feelings about the team -- the players and the coaching staff. They're working their butts off and putting up with a lot of pain to make us proud of them. The very least we owe them is to separate our personal sorrow over losing from our support of what they're trying to accomplish and our confidence that they are really trying to do their best.

In the more than 30 years that I've been following Zips basketball, I've never seen a UA team so decimated with missing or injured key veteran players. Q is gone from the team, Tree and Nick weren't able to play, and Rico and Chauncey were slowed by injuries. That's more than half of the regular veteran rotation that we were expecting to see just a couple of months ago. If the Zips were not as deep a team as they are, they would have been blown out of the arena today. I swear, if the whole team came down with food poisoning and all the Zips players were laid up in hospital beds recuperating, it wouldn't surprise me to see someone post on here that they all need to suck it up and go beat a higher-ranked team in their hospital gowns. Anyway, Tree and Nick will make a big difference starting with the next game, and Rico and Chauncey will be back to full strength before long. Then we'll see how this team develops throughout the rest of the season. Despite the disappointing start, this Zips team is still capable of doing big things.

Maybe I'm not being clear enough in making what I thought was an obvious point. First of all, no one, least of all me, is arguing against the fact that over the long run the 2-point shot produces a higher true shooting percentage than the 3-point shot. Everyone understands this. My specific point about this game is that the Zips were shooting a higher percentage on 3-point shots throughout the game, so attempting 2-pointers was not necessarily a higher percentage option for the Zips in this particular game. The fact that a 3-point shot counts 50% more than a 2-point shot also affects shooting percentages. So hitting 33.3% of your 3s scores as many points as hitting 50% of your 2s. Effective field goal percentage [(FG + 0.5 * 3P) / FGA] takes that into consideration, which is why it's a more accurate overall measure of performance than true field goal percentage. I was just pointing out that the Zips were much more effective on 3-pointers (EFG = 46%) than 2-pointers (EFG = 29.5%) today, and the fact that having 3-pointers comprise 37% of a team's field goal attempts is not out of line with the average of all college teams.

Theory is one thing and reality another. The Zips were hitting 2-pointers and 3-pointers at roughly the same percentage throughout the game. There's no reason to stop shooting 3-pointers when you have the same chance to make them and they're worth an extra point. In any case, only 37% of the Zips' field goal attempts today were 3-pointers, which is pretty close to average for all college teams.

Tree and Harney are the Zips' two best inside scorers.

The Zips continued shooting 3-point shots because they were hitting them at a higher percentage than their 2-point shots -- 8 of 26 3-pointers vs. 13 of 44 2-pointers.

Taking OK State to OT was better than a lot of us expected, but not as good as what we wanted.

Missing 18 straight shots from the field and still pulling back to within 3 points is pretty amazing.

Zips currently shooting 29% from the field, but 33% on 3-pointers.

Cold shooting and no Tree to clear the offensive rebounds.

With all the adversity, Zips trail only by 1 point at the half.

Both picked up two quick fouls.

The latest on Abreu is that he is still not completely recovered from his serious ankle sprain. He's recovered enough to be able to play reasonably long minutes, but is still not back to a full 100%. Playing in front of his home crowd in PR will hopefully give him a big boost.

It remains to be seen how this recruiting class will compare to the last one. Even though Pat Forsythe was not "recruited" in the traditional sense, he very much becomes a part of the same class as Kretzer, McAdams and Melo. We'll know for sure in a few years which quartet is "better." But the key point is that these eight players represent a huge pool of talent that should keep the Zips at the top of the MAC for years to come.

At full strength, the Zips would have had a pretty fair shot at this game. With Tree and Harney sitting and Rico still recovering from a worse ankle sprain than many seem to recognize, it will take an alignment of the stars to bring this one home. I'll be watching and hoping for a miracle.

With only a small chance of avoiding a third consecutive 1-11 season, there's no question that Zips football is at its lowest point ever. So it stands to reason that Zips fan morale would be at its lowest point ever. The fine details of this ugliness have been posted here in excrutiating detail by fans who have either completely given up or are close to it. The possibilities that Coach Bowden is in the earliest stages of turning around the program have also been presented by less pessimistic fans. I don't know that there's a lot to be added to the conversation that hasn't already been discussed. UA is not likely to consider making any major changes in the football program until the end of next season at the earliest. So what's going to happen is going to happen regardless of what we fans have to say, no matter how pessimistic or optimistic. Zips football fans have put up with a lot for a long time, and it may seem unfair to be asked to wait just a little longer to see if this might finally be the time that things begin to change for the better. But, for the near future, that's UA's plan. So that's what we have to live with, no matter how skeptical some may be.