Dave in Green

Here's where the sixth man seed was planted with Q last April: Original Post

I'll really miss seeing CC at games. He's a class act all the way, and it was always great to watch his interaction with Zips fans at the JAR. But I won't miss his style of play! Hopefully his successor is an up-tempo coach.

As I recall, the refs went over and reviewed that play on a TV monitor. How do they look at the replay and still call it wrong?

A lot depends on how you define "popularity." One definition is by participation of kids. By that definition, the popularity of baseball is declining: Has Baseball's Moment Passed? On Opening Day, Gloomy Studies Suggest Kids Are Losing Interest

So the great COY couldn't beat the worst team in the MAC when it counted? This is yet another reason for the Zips to ditch the MAC. In another conference, a different group of journalists would be voting for COY. It's possible that another group of journalists might have a pulse.

Do I detect a little 1950s mentality at work here in the denial of some to recognize the reality that soccer interest is on an upward curve? Of course it's always hazardous to predict where current trends will lead over the next few decades. Things change. Soccer interest might start flattening out, or it could keep right on growing to the point that it challenges traditional American sports.

That's the annual MAC JOY -- Joke of the Year.

We don't need no steenkin' poll to know which team was best in the MAC or which team had the strongest bench. In fact, it may have been the Zips' strong bench that kept individual players out of the top 20. KD teams are always teams, not collections of star players. As far as Zeke vs. Stainbrook, they were fairly close on stats, with Stainbrook having a small edge on offense and Zeke having a bigger edge on defense. Beyond stats, Zeke is obviously more of a game changer than Stainbrook. Zeke vs. Stainbrook Stats

Great observations. Remember how easily Harney blew by defenders at the beginning of the season and was the team's leading scorer? It came too easy. Other teams didn't have a scouting report on Harney, and most of the guys he was blowing by were not prepared for his quickness and athleticism. Then came the phase where other teams got the scouting report on Harney and knew they had to put defenders on him who were quick enough to block his path to the bucket. The result was that Harney ended up getting called for a lot of charges instead of getting easy buckets. Then came the phase where Harney adjusted by trying to start his drives a little quicker to get around the defenders and avoid charging fouls. The result was that he started moving his feet too quickly and began getting lots of traveling calls. And that's where Harney is right now. He's not quite good enough to get it done on his own against defenses that are prepared for his moves, and he hasn't yet figured out how to work with his teammates to offset the defenses thrown against him. As Harney listens more to the coaches and works more with his teammates, he'll develop into a really good player.

Fixed it for you.

The voters are saving up for a few years from now when they can name KD coach of the decade without ever having won coach of the year.

Special recognition for the way the Zips clinched their first MAC regular season championship by beating Can't at Can't for the first time since the 2005-2006 season. And I can tell you who the sweet 16 prediction came from without doing any research -- GoZips. Even if this edition of the Zips doesn't make it to the sweet 16, they've already done something that no other Zips team has ever accomplished with a MAC regular season championship.

KD clearly stated in the post-game interview that he knew that Buffalo would go straight at Zeke to open the 2nd half, and that he was concerned about Zeke getting into foul trouble. In KD's own words, he started Tree in place of Zeke to prevent Zeke from getting into foul trouble and not being available late in the game. Sure enough, Buffalo went right at Zeke's replacement -- Tree -- and got him in foul trouble instead of Zeke. As it turned out, having Zeke available at the end of the game didn't help. I thought it was a smart call by KD when he made it, and I still think it was a smart call even though it ended up not making a difference in the game result.

OU must be swarming Mavunga, who's only 2-11 from the field with 6 turnovers early in the second half.

Correction: It was not the WMU win on the road that clinched it for Can't last season, but the win at Bowling Green.

Upon further consideration, there's a little problem with Marla's story: The Zips headed back to Rhodes Arena to cut down the nets, which might not be as arrogant as it sounds. K S U did the same when it beat UA on the road a year ago. Can't did not beat UA on the road a year ago. Can't clinched last season's MAC championship when they beat WMU on the road before closing out the season with a home win against UA.

The relationship between universities and students is symbiotic: Universities need students to pay the bills to keep the universities in business. Students need universities to get a higher education that will help students earn more money over the course of their professional careers. So students don't really provide financial support to a university. Students invest in a university education for their own personal gain. Athletics represent a small portion of the total package of higher education. The debate over the relative importance of athletics, how athletics should be paid for, what students should get in return for the small portion of tuition allocated to athletics, etc., is as old as universities and college athletics.

At the beginning of the season, Harney was seen as a gifted prodigy and Tree appeared to be a slow learner. Tree continued to steadily progress all season while Harney seemed to hit a wall. I think it's just a case of two young players growing at different rates. Harney still has the potential to be a high-level player. But he's going to have to develop the right mindset and work on his attitude and game the same way Tree has. Hopefully the two of them will stick together during the off-season and continue to share good habits with each other. Tree and Harney together have the potential to help keep UA at the top of the MAC for the next three seasons.

I think the arrogant comment was more about the concept of going back to your own homecourt to cut down the nets after clinching a conference championship on your rival's court. Honestly, I've been following basketball for six decades, and I don't recall ever seeing a reference to something like this before. I guess it's not uncommon for a college team to go cut down the nets at home after winning on the road, as Can't did the same last season. I may have read a reference to something like this in the past, but it sure didn't register. In any case, I could see where a few people might consider this to border on arrogance, though I don't see it that way at all.

While the Zips' home loss to Buffalo briefly dropped them back into the 70s, the road win over Can't brought them right back to #61 on Live RPI. Two neutral court wins at the Q over decent MAC teams would probably put them back in the mid-50s. While RPI helps determine NCAA tournament seeding, I doubt that a mid-50s RPI would be enough to get them above the #14 seed where Lunardi continues to project them. But at least that would be one step up from last season's #15 seed. And it would be the highest final season RPI ever recorded by a Zips team.

Mistake in the schedule: semifinals are Friday, not Wednesday. It's good that the Zips will play in the first game Friday, as it gives them a couple of extra hours to recover for Saturday's championship game.

In the second half, the Zips played great D and they played together as a team. That's the winning formula. Don't lose that formula.

Overall, can't complain about the reffing. I reserve the right to have felt differently had the Zips lost.

I remember as a little kid watching games with my dad on a tiny little black and white TV. Whenever his team fell behind like the Zips did in the first half, my dad would get up and walk out of the room saying, "I'm going outside to work in the yard." My dad has been gone for many years now, but akronzips71 brought back fond memories.

Check.