Dave in Green

Offensive rebounding percentage is based on the percentage of missed shots by his own team that a player rebounds while in the game. For example, if Tree plays 15 minutes, and if during that 15 minutes of play when he's on the floor the Zips miss 10 field goal attempts and Tree rebounds 2, he would have an offensive rebounding percentage for that game of 20% (2 rebounds out of 10 opportunities). You can see the current national standings here.

Live RPI is apparently automated, and updates automatically as each game concludes. The automation doesn't take Sundays off.

The real issue here is Dr. Proenza. It was Dr. Proenza who made the decision to hire Tressel after measuring Tressel's positive attributes vs. whatever mistakes he may have made. Would Dr. Proenza risk his own good reputation and everything he has accomplished at UA by hiring someone who he thought would have anything but a net positive effect on UA?

Stats backup Quickzips. As a team, the Zips are currently shooting 65.9% from the free throw line. That ranks them #263 of 344 D-I teams. However, it should be noted that the Zips are shooting free throws better than the mighty North Carolina Tar Heels, who shooting 65.1% and are ranked behind the Zips at #283. There are some other big name schools ranked behind the Zips. Doesn't mean the Zips should be satisfied with where they are. They can do better.

Counting "team" rebounds, the Zips outrebounded EMU 46-29, including 20-12 in offensive boards. I haven't gone back over every game box score, but I believe that 20 offensive rebounds is by far the Zips' best effort this season. As a side note, Tree has now moved up to #2 in the country in offensive rebounding percentage. There's now only one college player in the country who snags a higher percentage of his team's missed shots when he's on the floor than Tree.

Riley was a bust. I can see why he left Syracuse. Zeke wins the big matchup by a bunch. Harney seemed to have problems with EMU's zone. Tonight was a learning experience for him. He'll get better against zones. If EMU had any kind of offense, they could be a pretty competitive team outside of the MAC West. The only team this season that has scored more points and had a higher victory margin against EMU was Syracuse, which won 84-48. The Zips' passing game wasn't perfect. But there sure were a lot of quick, crisp, accurate passes being thrown. That was a key in breaking down the EMU zone. The Zips also had 20 offensive rebounds. Nice! The Zips continue to improve, game by game. There's still plenty of room for improvement. But overall I'm pretty satisfied with the progress they're making. The crowd was fairly large for a MAC West opponent, and they were also fairly enthusiastic. Maybe word is getting out about how great this Zips team is to watch, and attendance will start moving up.

I eyeballed the JAR dimensions tonight, and even with all the lower level seats removed, there's no way the building has a 200-foot dimension in any direction without running through a cinder block wall.

The Ryan Center has one of the best seating layouts I've seen for basketball. Take a look in the link below at the interior images, which you can click on for even larger images to see details of the seating. It's all at a very steep angle and up close to the court. The size is also very close to optimum for an improving Zips basketball team with aspirations of drawing larger crowds than the JAR will hold. I don't know about the rest of the Ryan Center, but I love the seating. Ryan Center

Spin, I think there may be a failure to communicate here. I'll bravely step in and hazard a guess at what I think you're asking. If I understand you correctly, you want to know if the JAR is big enough for a rink if some of the lower section seats are removed. I think what people are trying to tell you is that if you took out ALL of the seating at both ends of the basketball court that you still might not have the 200 feet required for a rink. The width would be no problem. But the rink would be 106 feet longer than the 94-foot basketball court. That means you would need 53 feet at each end of the court from the end line to the wall to fit the rink in. The rink would be longer than two basketball courts end to end, and I just don't see how that would fit based on my recollection of the available space. But I'll take a close look tonight to refresh my memory.

Yes, we're all deeply ashamed of having Bowden, Amato and Tressel at the University of Akron. We only hope the rest of the world appreciates the sacrifice we are making here in Akron to keep these unsavory characters tied up and off the market so they don't end up in your hometown and threaten the purity and wholesomeness that exists everywhere they aren't. Please pray for us.

The matchup between Zeke and DaShonte Riley is definitely going to be this evening's highlight. They are two amazingly similar players -- same height, same wingspan, same weight, same quickness, same running ability, same focus on blocking and defense, even the same ESPN scout rating out of HS -- 92. They are so similar that it's downright eerie. This is a matchup worthy of drawing in NBA scouts. Riley obviously has talent or he wouldn't have been recruited by Syracuse. Apparently he got a little homesick for the Detroit area, and followed his Syracuse assistant coach, Rob Murphy, when Murphy became EMU's new head coach. Since Riley sat out his sophomore season at Syracuse with a foot injury, he'll have three seasons to play at EMU. So he and Zeke will be going at each other next season, too. I hate to think of the Zips going up against EMU and Riley as a senior in the 2013-14 season without Zeke.

He did say the following in the interview: As you try to prepare your students, you want to make sure they have the best laboratories, in athletics the best facilities and those kinds of things. I’ve been very involved in going out and trying to help people realize the needs we have from a fundraising and development standpoint. If he said something like this to the group of students he met with, and since the basketball facility is in the most need of improvement, I can see where someone might interpret that as meaning that part of his work will be directed toward helping facilitate a new arena. That may be how that rumor got started. But you can tell from the interview that he's focused more on the educational side of his job than athletics. He sounds really excited and energized about helping achieve Dr. Proenza's vision for UA as a whole. Whatever he contributes to Zips athletics will be a bonus. The bigger and stronger and better UA becomes as an institution of higher learning, the more likely athletics will also grow, and the more likely it will be that more Ohioans may switch their allegiance from tOSU to UA.

There was a mid-major team that looked a lot like the Zips. They had a bunch of talented and athletic players. Early in the season they knocked off a couple of quality teams similar to Mississippi State and Marshall. They also lost to a number of lesser teams. Their fans questioned their lack of consistency in a similar way to how Zips fans are questioning their team. They squeaked into the NCAA tournament and ended up in the Final Four. That was VCU last season. KD watched Shaka Smart's team pull off a minor miracle with a group of players similar to what the Zips have now. KD knows what's possible if all the stars align at just the right time. But it can only happen if the coach and all the players are absolutely dedicated to making it happen. They need maturity. They need discipline. They need to let loose of the trivial things and focus on the important things. KD knows what this team can accomplish if they get it right. I don't believe the players really get it yet. But there's still time for them to realize that with all the ups and downs, if they do come together as a team, they can still have a season like this.

If true, this is more than expected. It means that Terry Bowden can visit recruits at home, bring them on campus for a visit, and spend a few minutes with the recruits in Jim Tressel's office. How much is it worth to Zips football recruiting to be able to have recruits sit in an office discussing college football with Terry Bowden and Jim Tressel?

"It's not just those guys, it's all of them," Dambrot said. "We are not a mature basketball team right now." This is where coaches earn the big bucks. Team chemistry is a complex equation. The current Zips players are different from previous Zips players in many ways, and may not respond the same way to traditional KD coaching techniques. It's a real balancing act trying to break players of bad habits without disrupting the emotional energy they may use to elevate their games. Maturity is learned over time, and different people progress at different rates. I know from listening to KD that he understands the challenge he has in coaching the current players up to their full potential. I hope the coaches and players can get it all together in the next month or so, because we're approaching tournament time when maturity can be the difference between winning championships or getting an early start on spring vacation.

The Jim Tressel on staff?? thread is the main discussion on this topic.

Careful about unintended double meanings.

Not only that, unbeaten Murray State is down 39-33 at halftime to SE Missouri State. A loss tonight would take a lot of glamor out of the BracketBusters premier game.

Curtis is VP for Capital Planning and Facilities Management. Tressel has the newly created position of VP of Strategic Engagement.

Right, RPI only counts D-I results. That's why we've discussed that it's actually better to play a strong lower division team than a weak D-I game for an early season warmup. The level of competition is similar, but SOS doesn't get dragged down.

There would indeed be risk being under the NCAA's watchful eye if UA planned to use Tressel in a way that violated NCAA rules. However, I believe it's safe to say that UA has done due diligence, knows exactly what Tressel can and can't do, and plans to stay completely within the rules. Most people continue to think of Tressel only in terms of coaching football. But his value to UA goes beyond athletics.

While UA's discussions with Tressel were a pretty well-kept secret, you just can't keep something like this under cover for too long. Vague rumors have been floating around for weeks, and in recent days some of the street talk was starting to get close to revealing specifics. Once the decision was made, I don't think UA had any choice but to formally announce it immediately.

Thanks for the update. I don't think it really matters to UA how much Ianello is making now, as I believe UA negotiated a lump sum settlement. But it reminds me that I had said here that Ianello was likely to land a high-paying assistant coaching position back when others were saying he'd be lucky to get a $100-150k per season gig. Regardless of how he may stumbled in his rookie head coaching attempt at UA, the man has more than 20 years of good credentials as an assistant.

"We don't know yet" is not a bad position to take on many issues because we really don't know for sure how much of anything is going to work out in the long term. I just happen to personally believe from everything I know on the subject that there's a great likelihood that this move will produce a good return on investment for both parties, regardless of how long the partnership lasts. I also believe there's a fair chance it could last for more than a year or two. A lot will depend on what Tressel really wants to accomplish over what is likely to be his final decade of professional work. I don't think any of us knows enough about the inner workings of the man to predict that with 100% accuracy. Trying to evaluate everything in Tressel's life on the basis of football coaching overlooks the fact that there may be much more to the man than just looking for the highest-paying football job.

Good example of Think Big. Some of the other reactions to this hiring have been classic think small. Tressel's first assignment of raising funds for a new basketball arena is just the tip of the iceberg. As good things begin to come out of this, I'm sure that many of the doubters will start to get it. But no matter how much good Tressel does for UA, I expect to be reading posts five years from now from one or two diehards who just think this is all wrong.