Dave in Green

It certainly opens up more minutes for any of a number of players who might step up and try to fill Q's very large shoes. I hope whoever it is can give me the same thrill that Q did late in a game when I sensed him coiled like a rattlesnake on the defensive end, and then that sudden strike and he's upcourt with the ball, taking those huge long strides and almost-but-not-quite-impossible changes of direction that seemed to defy the basic laws of physics. That's the Q I'll always remember -- the guy who thought he could do the impossible, lived for that moment, and backed it up with the payoff. My kind of guy when he was in the right zone.

Good people make mistakes. Doesn't mean they are bad people, just that they used bad judgment in a specific situation. It may be a case of two good people who couldn't stand to be apart and couldn't stand to be together, and the emotions were more than they could handle. Again, we're never going to know exactly what happened.

Absolutely, we as Zips fans should not believe all the rumors we might hear. I've been hearing bits and pieces about this situation for a couple of weeks, and have not said anything publicly out of respect for Q, the coaching staff and the team. There's been a lot of speculation about what actually happened, and I'm not confident that I know the whole story, so I won't be passing on any rumors. I continue to believe that Q is a good person from a good family who deserves the support of Zips fans. My sincere hope is that there will be a happy ending to this situation.

Something like that.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It doesn't matter who started it, it only matters who was caught. For some reason, the Zips got caught by the officials Saturday more than Miami players, no matter who started it. Pratt's a smart player. He didn't run out of bounds on his own. In fact, the Miami defensive backs were forcing the Zips' receivers toward the sidelines throughout the game. Might have been a case of veteran players taking advantage of less experienced players. More lessons learned. Things like this will continuously improve throughout the season because we have a smart coaching staff that won't let the same mistakes be made over and over again.

I believe I saw exactly what you saw. No wonder the Zips kept trying to have 12 men on the field. They kept thinking they saw 12 men playing against them from the Miami side of the field.

Ha! You think I'm being emotional just because I lost my voice from yelling at the refs? Ha! You think I'm being emotional because for the first time in more than a half century of attending ball games I stood up and gave the refs a lefty-righty double-digit salute? Ha! You think I was predisposed to being emotional about the reffing after continuously yelling throughout the game for the Zips defense to get their assignments right and at least appear to be covering Miami's receivers? Ha! You are so right. The Zips could still have won that game if they'd played just a little bit better or not received so many questionable calls. The team needs to ignore the bad calls and stay focused on what they can control, which is how they play the game. Fans, on the other hand, have a right and an obligation to sound off about everything that goes wrong in a game. For the last couple of years, the refs didn't really matter. If all the calls had gone against our opponents, the Zips still wouldn't have won many games. Now that the Zips are competitive, the refs can make a difference between winning and losing, as they did Saturday.

SeeTeeZip, you know how much I respect your opinion on football matters. But I will annoy you back by saying that in an offensive shootout, there is virtually no defense on either side. I'll remind you that Miami's defense was so bad (or UA's offense was so good) that the Zips led into the final minute of the game. Considering all the good and bad from both teams, they were pretty evenly matched. The difference was in the calls by the refs. Did you see the replays on the big screen of the hits on which the Zips were penalized on Miami's final scoring drive? Are you saying those were good calls? If not, why would you not think they made the difference in an otherwise excruciatingly close game when the ultimate goal of reffing is not to influence the outcome of a game?

Some Miami fans are talking on their boards about how UA got screwed by the refs and some UA fans are making excuses for the refs and pinning all the blame on the Zips? Please tell me I'm only imagining this. Hey, we all know the Zips are slowly digging themselves out of a deep hole and trying to become competitive again. The odds are against them in almost every game. They aren't going to be blowing out any good teams for awhile. The most we Zips fans can hope for right now is that the Zips play just good enough to squeak out a close win over a decent MAC opponent in a fairly and evenly officiated game. Today the Zips did play just good enough to squeak out a close win over a decent MAC opponent in a fairly and evenly officiated game. I would hope that all Zips fans could join in with the honest Miami fans in recognizing that the missing element today was a fairly and evenly officiated game.

@Districtballer, thanks for clarifying that. I'm not familiar with every NCAA rule, but I can see where the scholarship situation could get out of hand if there were more than 13 scholarships of any kind available for college basketball teams to leverage. There may be things happening that are not generally known to the public that could have an effect on a team's scholarship situation. The coaching staff has to be prepared for situations that might develop which are out of their control. We might be surprised by what happens with the Zips.

Agreed. If the MAC stands behind the calls that were made today, UA needs to find a conference that knows the difference between clean, hard tackles and illegal hits. Neither team could consistently stop the other. It was a close game all day that could have gone either way. In the end, the refs made the difference.

@trimmy10, no problem. Never a shortage of things to laugh at around here.

Everyone on this site has been fooled before, and everyone has been correct before. No one has been fooled all the time, and no one has been correct all the time.

There are possibilities for good players to remain on the team without a full athletic scholarship. Some might be capable of earning a full ride academic scholarship. For example, Blake Justice earned a 3.9 GPA in HS and membership in the National Honor Society. In any case, it's a good problem for the team when more talented players want to be in the program than there are athletic scholarships available. Likewise, it's a good problem for the team when there are more talented players on the bench than there is available playing time. As DistrictBaller noted in another thread:

@Zipmeister, next time you speak with Bob, you can let him know that Pat is responding well to living closer to his father and being able to see him more often. Concern over his father's well-being was undoubtedly a distraction for him at WVU, and may have affected perception of his work ethic. So far the Zips coaching staff is pleased with Pat's efforts, and after seeing him go up against Zeke in open gym, so am I. It's true that work ethic makes the difference between an OK performer and a great performer, and it's hard to predict which players will demonstrate a sustained high level of work ethic as they move up from HS to college. But it's interesting to note what Pat's HS coach had to say about the work ethic he demonstrated between his junior and senior seasons that turned an OK sub on no college team's radar into a great HS all-star offered by many high majors: “The fact that all these big schools showed interest in Pat says a lot about his work ethic since his season ended,” said Brunswick boys basketball coach Joe Mackey. “Pat has great hands, great feet, great work ethic and he competes harder than anyone I’ve seen.”

I still think this one was more creative:

PM me your PayPal e-mail address, and I'll PayPal you compensation for what I think this advice was worth.

Bayamon, hometown of Alex Abreu. It's official now that the Zips will have a homecourt advantage. Think Rico might produce the best performance of his college career to date?

Also being discussed here. George Thomas broke the story today.

GT's story fits what I heard about a tall young man with a striking resemblance to Kwan Cheatham being spotted in the vicinity of the JAR sometime in the last 72 hours.

A process is only as good as the people trying to implement it. The right people + the right process = the right results. Coach Bowden is the right person using the right process, and the results are starting to show.

Do your homework. B.J. Gladden was offered by Wake Forest (ACC), Tennessee (SEC) and VCU (NCAA Final Four team).

Here's the bottom line for me: For 3 1/2 quarters, a long-suffering little team from Nowheresville in Rustbeltland stressed out a pedigreed, entitled, big-budget, semi-pro team that was supposed to be playing subs from the beginning of the first half to keep the score from exceeding 100-0. The Zips lost late in a game that the naysayers said they'd never be in from the first play of the game. If you call yourself a Zips fan and you only see the negative side of this game, then you darn well should make an appointment with your shrink and begin learning WTF is wrong with your head. But that's just me.

Flannigan has been on Wisconsin's radar for at least two years, and already has an offer from the Badgers. Guess who recruited him? Coach (Lamont) Paris was very excited about using his Ohio connections to go after the higher-level players who would never have considered Akron. Badger Basketball Board

Getting back to Isaiah Johnson, he's a good enough HS offensive lineman to get football scholarship offers from Louisville (Big East) and Kentucky (SEC). Yet he chooses to play basketball for UA (MAC). I've searched the internet to try to find something that hints at his reasoning, but so far don't have anything. What I have found is that Triple Double Prospects, which ranks Johnson the best HS basketball center in the Cincinnati area, describes him as a "throwback center who lives in the paint" and a "pure back to the basket scorer (who) has excellent strength and great touch around the rim", and that "for now looks like a mid-major recruit who could go higher if he continues to trim down and get quicker." TripleDoubleProspects.com I'm guessing that he looked at a future of either bulking up to 300+ pounds to be a big-time college offensive lineman or trimming down to become a quicker, more effective basketball center, and sees his future as a slimmer, more capable basketball center. When he's done with football and puts all of his focus on basketball later this year, we'll start to get more of an idea of what he can be. His HS junior basketball stats aren't too shabby for an overweight center, though, especially that 62.1% FG average and double-digit scoring in all but one game plus double-digit rebounding in all but four games: Isaiah Johnson Basketball Stats from Last Season UPDATE: Now I'm wondering if Johnson has decided to give up his senior season of HS football to focus exclusively on basketball. He's no longer listed on the Walnut Hills HS football roster: MaxPreps.com And yet another clue: Cincinnati.com does not mention Johnson among its players to watch for Walnut Hills' 2012 season: Cincinnati.com And I guess this settles it. Cincinnati.com reports today that Johnson's HS basketball coach says "Johnson dropped 15 pounds within the last 30 days and is in the best shape he’s been in," and "Johnson is happy with his verbal commitment to Akron and said the Zips coaching staff outworked other schools during the summer in their recruiting efforts." He obviously would not be dropping 15 pounds over the last 30 days in the middle of the HS football season if he was playing football. Cincinnati.com This could turn into a major coup for the Zips.