Dave in Green

As an assistant coach, his Miami Hurricanes whipped the Zips in the Charleston Classic a few months ago. Really nice that he would give the Zips an opportunity for revenge so soon.

Just wait and see how purty this looks next month.

Here's a good story on the problems that caused the NIT Season Tip-Off to be reduced from 16 to 8 teams along with a proposal to fix the current flawed (from a mid-major POV) format: Fixing The NIT Season Tip-Off: A Proposal

Just when I thought I had it all figured out, more news rolls in. Zeke has just signed with Octagon to represent him in place of the small Canton agency he signed with out of college. Octagon is big time. It's part of The Interpublic Group, an advertising/marketing giant with more than 47,000 employees worldwide. Octagon bills itself as the world’s leader in sports and entertainment management and marketing, and has more than 800 employees in 22 countries. Some of their better known NBA clients include Stephen Curry, Rudy Gay and David West among others. Apparently Zeke is not done with basketball.

Always hard to figure out from a distance exactly what happened in cases like this. Seems like this kind of thing happens a lot when a high-profile coach jumps to a new school. If UB loses any more of their best players they'll have a hard time staying at the top of the MAC. Anyway the part about blocking Evans from transferring to VCU, Old Dominion or Arizona State appears to be a false alarm. UB gives Shannon Evans release to transfer to any school

That's a different tournament held at the Orleans Arena with 8 teams and a mix of mid- and high-majors. I doubt they would invite both Can't and UA. The Las Vegas Holiday Hoops Classic is held at South Point Arena and has traditionally consisted of 4 mid-majors.

I believe the Dec. 20-23 Las Vegas Holiday Hoops Classic at the South Point Arena is the pre-Christmas event in LV where the Zips will be playing. I think the Zips have played at this venue in the past, and it's a great place to showcase Noah as he still has many fans in LV who would be cheering for the Zips. Last season UC Irvine beat Green Bay in the championship game and Arkansas Little Rock beat Bradley in the consolation game. Teams haven't yet been officially announced for this season. But Bradley has played there the last three seasons so it would be no surprise to see them back there. Green Bay included the following quote when they announced being in last year's tournament:

That's the most important point. I don't even think of it as being a true tournament when mid-majors like the Zips aren't eligible to play for the tournament championship. The value to the Zips is not being in the tournament but in the strength of the individual teams added to the schedule. Villanova and Arkansas provide the kind of challenging road games against top 25 high-major teams that will help prepare the Zips for the kind of opponent they'd likely meet in the first round of the NCAA tournament while Wisconsin Green Bay is a solid mid-major program to add to the home schedule.

It's a disservice to merely call Tyreek fast. He's one of the fastest players in football. His 200-meter time of 20.14 in 2012 was just .01 second off the national HS record of 20.13 set in 1985. His 100-meter time of 9.98 in the 2013 NJCCA championship is only .4 seconds off Usain Bolt's world record of 9.58 seconds. He reportedly clocked a 40-yard dash time of 4.25 seconds at a Nike Sparq Camp. Dri Archer's 40-yard time at the NFL Combine was 4.26 seconds. Tyreek is a rocket.

You were only a little off. GoZips.com reports the following:

Imagination is sometimes confused with awareness. But it's certainly true that I back most of Coach Dambrot's decisions over most of the alternatives posted by fans who are unaware of all the circumstances that led to the decisions in question.

In that other thread I mentioned the quote and copy/paste features did work OK for me when I tried them on an older computer with Windows Vista and an older version of Internet Explorer (9.0). Later this year Microsoft will be making Windows 10 a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8.1. Windows 10 will come with an all-new browser called Spartan, which is supposed to be more like Chrome and Firefox. That may resolve the issue as most will take advantage of the no-cost upgrade to Windows 10, which early beta testers say is a major improvement over previous versions of Windows.

Skip, I mentioned that problem here. To the best of my knowledge there was never a solution to this. It's apparently a problem related to the latest version of Internet Explorer that comes with Windows 8.1. It got me to switch to Firefox while others are using Google Chrome.

We haven't talked about Zeke in the last few months. I have no inside information, but this is what I believe based on what I've been able to pick up from various sources. Coach Dambrot had said that Zeke would need about two years of seasoning before he might be ready for the NBA. Those two years are now over. While Zeke has done OK in several overseas stints plus the NBA D-League, he hasn't been dominant. Every undrafted player I know of who has made it to the NBA has become dominant in one of the lesser pro leagues. Zeke is now back in the U.S. after his latest pro stint in Lebanon. Back on Feb. 24 Zeke posted the following on his twitter: My unofficial interpretation is that this was the point where Zeke had reached the decision that he was not destined to play professional basketball, but that playing a couple of seasons of pro basketball had opened doors that would help him in the business opportunities that he was really more interested in all along. I may be wrong, but I don't think I am. I think that Zeke's future is in the business world rather than in professional basketball. I think he's finally proven to himself that he's a computer geek trapped in the body of an NBA center, and that his mind rules his body. Let's face it. If Zeke's primary interest was basketball he would have never ended up at UA. He would have gone to one of the college basketball factories and focused his life on making the NBA. Instead he came to UA and anchored some of the best Zips teams we've ever seen. I look back with great fondness on watching him perform at an ever higher level and in his senior season leading the Zips to the longest winning streak of any D-I team that season. I think it's likely that Zeke's professional basketball career may have reached its end. But I still look forward to seeing how he represents UA in the business world.

I think it's smarter for a head coach to judge the value to the team of each assistant coach on his own individual merits rather than stereotyping assistants who don't aspire to be head coaches as all somehow being inferior to assistants who do.

Taxpayer, I get it now that you were talking about Zips current assistants and not those who've already moved on to other schools. I don't know what aspirations the current assistants have. Generally speaking, not all assistant coaches actively pursue head coaching positions. Some are satisfied being an assistant to a head coach who they respect.

Dr. Scarborough has a chart on his wall listing UA's primary strengths, with some in larger letters than others, as he considers the university's best path for the future.

Promoting the recruiting coordinator to head coach might help hang on to the latest recruits, though if some have high major potential they still might be tempted to try to follow the outgoing head coach.

Would MAC officials have caught this?

Shaka Smart, head coach, Texas Lamont Paris, assistant coach, Wisconsin Jeff Boals, assistant coach, The Ohio State Pretty fair coaching tree.

Looks like DJ has been playing the 4 in HS, and that he was also getting a look from TCU:

Great idea to have an observatory in Akron where clouds are almost never a problem.

I keep seeing references to DJ being a skilled ball-handling wing with a muscular physique who can bang inside like a 4. BJ Gladden was also a skilled ball-handling wing in HS who was described by one scout as an "undersized power forward." BJ was listed at 6-6, 215 pounds this season more than a year out of HS while DJ is currently listed at 6-6, 215 in his senior HS season. The similarities between DJ and BJ are remarkable.

Daniel is of Nigerian descent and is listed with other Nigerian HS players along with Peter Agba. Daniel was named one of the top performers at the 2014 TX Classic for high school talent from across the state, which was attended by many college coaches: Daniel was ranked the 60th best 2015 class HS player in Texas by Texas Boys Basketball.

Skip's feelin' it! Good creativity. I'd suggest that UA invest a few bucks in a couple of buckets of paint and send someone out there to cover up all the UA markings. It's no longer owned by UA, but some looking at all the school markings will still associate it with UA, which is not good for UA's image. Maybe painting a big Team 1 Marketing Group logo on the RB and getting their name more associated with the mess would help expedite their plans to do something with it.