Dave in Green

Hope Tressel shows up to say a few words to the fans at Saturday's game like Bowden did. He can get an idea of what we're currently dealing with at the JAR and see how much enthusiasm is generated by talking about a new facility.

The Serb is not a steady player. He's streaky. His off games will be followed by on games. Everyone has known that he's an emotional player since the first game he played at UA, and emotional players tend not to be steady players.

What? You're not going to the new arena that will be built with funds raised by Tressel in his first assignment as a UA VP?

I think this Zips team now believes that they can turn it on whenever they need to, and that they're perfectly satisfied to just win without blowing out other teams. As long as they keep doing it, everything's just fine. If they stumble at some point, can't turn it on, and lose, that will be a wakeup call.

Haven't seen it mentioned here yet, but it was reported by several Columbus news sources that Tressel has just sold his home in Columbus.

What I've heard fits with what's being reported. It would not be an athletic position.

A source has kept telling me there was something going on between UA and Tressel, even after Bowden was hired. Tressel has a lot to bring to a university in Ohio that aspires to greater things. If it isn't obvious now what Tressel would bring to UA, it will become clearer to everyone as this plays out. Buckle up and prepare yourselves for an exciting ride that will carry UA and Zips athletics into a new dimension. Think Big.

I think the only thing we can go by is official announced attendance, unless someone wants to take the time to count individual butts in seats, and I'm not volunteering for that. Just be prepared for the actual crowd to be somewhat smaller than the announced crowd depending on the number of season ticketholder no-shows

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe that UA counts basketball attendance the same way as football attendance, i.e. tickets sold plus student ID cards scanned vs. butts in seats. If so, then the announced attendance would be greater than the number of fans who actually showed up due to the fact that a number of season ticket holders do not show up for every game but would be counted in paid attendance at every game.

Reading this article reminded me that I'd recently picked up some info on Harney and Tree that I'd intended to share here. Heard directly from a source close to them that Harney and Tree have been basketball buddies since the 8th grade, and had for a long time planned on playing college basketball together. When they looked around at their options, UA and Can't were both possibilities. It's fortunate that KD recognized their talent level and their seriousness about spending a year getting their grades in order. It's possible that if both players had not been offered by the Zips, they may have ended up instead at Can't or another school that would have taken them both. What a nightmare to think of the Zips having to play against Harney and Tree in Golden Felons uniforms for four years!

I'm hearing that Josh Egner has been pretty intense in recent practices, and is serious about working himself back into the rotation. Hope to see him get some PT against Toledo tonight.

Contrary to popular opinion, I really don't spend endless hours browsing stats. I'm like everyone else here in that I tend to believe what I see on the court. However, since I don't live under the delusion that I'm always right, I periodically spot check myself against hard stats. I also spot check stats when I see someone say something here that doesn't fit with what I've seen. So I will definitely not be spending endless hours browsing these NCAA pages, though I will bookmark them for future spot checks.

RPI forecast is not current RPI, but "the best estimate for an individual team of its end-of-season RPI Rank." They are predicting that the Zips will climb from their current actual RPI of #59 to #50 at the end of the season.

Zips are the road team, ORU the home team. Lunardi bracketology currently has the Zips as a #14 seed in the NCAA tournament while ORU is a #13 seed. If we win at their place, maybe we switch seedings.

ORU has a pretty decent record.

According to the latest RPI on StatSheet.com, Iona is currently #58, Zips are #57 and Oral Roberts is #51. So I can't argue with getting a higher-ranking team vs. one that's currently ranked just behind us.

My usually reliable source was not so reliable on this one.

Thanks for clearing that up. I'll give the guy credit for making the most thorough presentation of his educated guess. The Zips-Iona pairing does fit in with what I've seen and heard elsewhere.

Response to Districtballer here.

That BracketBuster schedule image is not hosted on VCU Ram Nation. The image of the schedule is hosted on https://p.twimg.com, which is the image hosting site used by Twitter. Looks to me like that schedule got tweeted to someone, and people are linking to the image on the Twitter image servers: https://p.twimg.com/AkX4oioCQAABWpc.png

The schedule that RatFink linked to in the other thread looked pretty solid to me. It shows the Zips playing at Iona at 7 pm Friday, Feb. 17, with the broadcast on ESPN2. I'm going with that until a better source comes along.

It's just crazy to watch the RPI numbers bounce up and down on Live RPI, where each team's RPI is recalculated the minute that a new game result is finalized. Right after Northern Iowa lost and the Zips won, the Zips moved briefly ahead of Northern Iowa in RPI. But as the results of other games came in, the Zips dropped back a few positions behind. Today, Iona beat a weak St. Peter's team, and Iona's RPI dropped about 10 positions. As I type this, Iona is #54, Northern Iowa #58 and the Zips #60. Everything still points to the Zips being matched against Iona. But since the two teams are now so close in RPI, the Zips wouldn't get much of an RPI bump if they beat Iona.

I will happily concede the margin of victory quality indicator to Buffalo, OU or even Can't as long as the Zips keep winning more games than any other team in the MAC.

Were the Zips playing tonight? I just got home from a nice, relaxed dinner with the family. But seriously, it's funny to read through this thread and see the emotional ups and downs of Zips fans. Winning from behind and catching them at the end, winning from ahead all the way, winning from ahead and then almost throwing it away, winning pretty, winning ugly. The common denominator is winning. Doesn't matter to me how they did it this time or the last time. Regardless of what they did wrong in any given game, it only matters to me that they keep finding different ways to keep winning. Winning is a good habit. Losing is a bad habit. Right now the Zips have more good habits than bad habits.

You're right, Buckzip. Zeke is not an NBA player. He's a college player right now. NBA draft websites currently project him as a second round draft pick in 2013.