Dave in Green

Early weather forecast for Akron is cloudy on Tuesday, showers Wednesday morning, and then clearing and partly cloudy Wednesday afternoon through Friday night. So the field should be in decent shape Thursday evening. High on Thursday, however, is expected to be only 41. So it will probably be in the 30s at game time.

That one first place vote is a start. Wonder if it was Ernie Zeigler or Steve Hawkins, the MAC's two voting coaches, who was impressed with what he saw on TV? The main thing, though, is that the Zips are now ranked ABOVE Can't.

If the Zips win, they will travel to Texas to play SMU.

Saw on the broadcast that UA is rated as a "sleeper." Let's just hope they mean that in the positive sense! Well, here's the revenge match that everyone wanted. If the Zips can't get up for this one, they're in suspended animation. I sure hope there's a darn good poor weather plan in place this time.

Got our man. Mark Berman of The Roanoke (Va.) Times voted the Zips 25th, just behind Cleveland State in 24th. You can read his logic here: My AP Top 25 ballot By the way, I give Elton credit for not being a homer. Many voters went for Cleveland State as their 24th or 25th choice based on their big upset of Vanderbilt. It would be undertandable for Elton to do the same. But he played it straight and went with the consensus top 25 teams.

It doesn't (even though it is listed as a win). I don't think our RPI went up, I think the few that were with us went down. Zips' RPI went from .75 to .8333. I think I've figured it out. We got a small bump from MSU's win over South Alabama. It's so early in the season that the RPI numbers bounce up and down a lot based on the changing records of your opponents and your opponents' opponents. This is why early season RPI seems so goofy. RPI numbers become more reliable after a statistically significant number of games. Zips could actually stay pretty high in RPI for awhile if they keep winning -- especially road games -- and all their opponents and opponents' opponents keep winning. Last season, William & Mary stayed at or near the top for about the first 10 games.

That 1 vote ties the Zips with West Virginia, Minnesota and Marshall for 47th in the country. Wonder if it was an Ohio voter or a Mississippi voter? Still way, way premature. But fun to speculate what would happen if the Zips could put together an early season win streak.

I'm still trying to make sense of the mysterious Gerry Faust Nether Regions Gurgle Factor:

It sure didn't take long for Pennsylvania to make the first questionable call in this case. As a volunteer for Sandusky's group, The Second Mile, Judge Dutchcot should have recused herself from the case on grounds of personal involvement. Instead, she gave Sandusky the lightest possible ruling -- going free with no bail posted unless he failed to show up for a court hearing. This kind of small-town friends mentality is exactly the kind of situation that invites federal intervention. Get your house in order, Pennsylvania. The whole world is watching.

Just send a note with a copy of Marla Ridenour's ABJ story and say that Marla speaks for all Zips fans.

As we often discussed while Humpty was here, he's a shooting guard in a point guard's body. Funny that 2 of JMU's 3 starting forwards had more assists than both Humpty and the other starting guard. Since the two starting guards combined for 49 of JMU's 82 total points, they appear to have a guard-oriented offense where the forwards kick the ball out to the guards for most of the scoring. That would be an ideal situation for Humpty's playing style. Great to see Humpty find the right program where he can be successful. Will be interesting to see how he performs against Can't on Dec. 6. Even better, JMU's Jan. 12 game with VCU will be on ESPNU.

I thought the Hiram game wouldn't be counted in the Zips' RPI due to Hiram being DIII???

Funny, I told the guy sitting in front of me at the game that Stefanov reminded me of Nick Goddard. He was firing away without hesitation from well beyond the arc.

37, it is about a 400-mile one-way trip for 71 from where he lives. From UA to WVU, it's only 180 miles each way, mostly on interstate highways. So the bus trip should only be a little over 3 hours each way, and we should be back at UA around 1 a.m. Are you in for this? You can hitch a ride with me and Hilltopper up to UA to catch the bus for the nice, relaxing trip.

Good points. Aaron Stefanov, Hiram's 3-point shooting ace, played only 6 minutes in the second half. Stefanov had a total of 13 trey attempts for the game while all the rest of the Hiram players took 11 attempts altogether, and no other player took more than 2. I think the switches will go smoother with experience as players in the different lineups get more used to each other. But it's true that playing tight defense at the arc has not been a strong point for the Zips in recent times. In the players' defense, I'll just say that after soundly beating MSU on the road, it had to have been hard to get up for a DIII team at home. The players looked like they were trying to have a little fun out there, and playing tight defense is not fun. It's exhausting. KD was obviously not happy with what he saw on perimeter D. But he also seemed a bit more tolerant than he would have been if the players had been that lax with a stronger opponent. This was the last easy game before a string of tough ones. I expect to see them returning from this little "vacation" playing tighter D in upcoming games.

@Lee Adams, you are right. The NCAA says: Tickets must be sold for at least one-third of the highest regular established ticket price as established prior to the season, regardless of whether they are used for admission in order to be used in calculating paid attendance figures. Tickets sold at less than one-third of the highest regular established price may be counted as paid attendance only if they are used for admission.

First half: Hiram 7-16 from beyond the arc. Second half: Hiram 3-8 from beyond the arc. Did Hiram cut its 3-point attempts in half in the second half of the game because they weren't happy with the results, or was it because the Zips made adjustments at halftime and defended better in the second half?

How cool is this? The CBS college basketball summary for Saturday gives headline accolades to Arnett Moultrie stepping up for the MSU Bulldogs in their win over South Alabama, "bouncing back in a big way from his disappointing performance against Akron earlier in the week." Night Court: Moultrie steps up for MSU Bulldogs

Vince Lombardi. Dig up his grave and grab some DNA. Take it to Korea and have him cloned. Bring the clone back to Akron and put him in charge of UA football. Easy peasy.

Almost forgot to mention here that in KD's post-game interview, he confirmed to the world that he is actually using a "building process" in those very words. So, by GP1 standards, UA basketball is doomed to failure.

For the Zips to do well in the tournament, it's going to take a fundamental change from what we've been seeing recently. I know it can happen, because I've seen it happen in other sports. And others who've been following soccer longer than I have know that it's happened in soccer, too. We probably all have faith in Caleb Porter to do his part. But, ultimately, it's going to come down to the players. Can they reach deep and do what they know is necessary to get the job done?

Here's a hot one: Cleveland State upsets No. 7 Vandy

I'd like to know who all is going. I know that I'm already in, and so are Hilltopper and Doug Snyder. Good chance for all the hardcore Zips basketball fans on ZN.o who haven't already met to get to know each other on the bus trip. Who else is in?

Egner was not a primary scoring threat on his Jackson HS team. His primary responsibilities were defending and rebounding. But he occasionally came up with big scoring games when his team really needed it. He's likely to be one of the last scoring options on the floor when he's playing, but will get his share of points off of steals and offensive rebounds, and may have the occasional scoring outburst. The Zips have lots of scorers this season, but really need rebounders. So I'm OK with Egner staying focused on that. But I'm sure we will see at least a few plays for Egner like the tosses to Zeke above the rim. Egner can jump so darn high that when Zips fans finally see him throw one down from the top of the backboard they're going to fall out of their seats. Zips fans really haven't seen what Egner is capable of doing yet. He needs more PT to show what he's got, but there are a lot of good players fighting for PT on this season's team. This team is so flexible and multidimensional that I think we'll see a lot of different looks over the course of the season. I can see the lineup and style of play changing against different opponents depending on the other teams' strengths and weaknesses. I really don't even have an answer to the survey question about Walsh or Nitro because I want to see all these guys play a lot of minutes. I like each and every one of them for the different skill sets they bring to the floor. I do think as the season goes on that we'll be less and less likely to see 30+ minutes from any one player. As each of the new players proves they can be trusted on the floor for extended minutes, I think the PT will be divided up more equally among the top 10 or so players.

Anyone can purchase blocks of tickets for promotions, whether it's a sponsor getting a block of tickets as part of their paid sponsorship package, or a school purchasing a block of tickets from themselves to use for the school's own promotional purposes. It should all show up on the books somewhere. If UA's books are open to the public, there should be a line item somewhere that could be checked. Maybe someone on the forum knows where we can go to check this out. I don't know how the NCAA would count tickets purchased by a university toward minimum required FBS attendance numbers. It would be a simple bookkeeping entry for schools to purchase large blocks of tickets from themselves for every home game without any cash changing hands. This would be so obvious that you would expect the NCAA to be aware of the possibility and have rules against it with some form of checks and balances. If not, then the NCAA FBS minimum attendance figures would be meaningless and nothing to be concerned about. Since there were so many additional fans at the Can't game compared with other home games this season, it's certainly plausible that UA could have distributed extra tickets as part of some kind of UA promotion for this one game, though I don't recall seeing any UA promotion being marketed. It's also possible the NCAA may allow schools to do this with a certain percentage of their tickets at one home game per season. There's a document on the NCAA site that tells a lot, but not every minute detail, about how the NCAA counts attendance, and how it requires each school to provide the NCAA with an audit of those numbers. Here's a link to it for those who want to take the time to become more educated: NCAA FBS Requirements Q&A