Dave in Green

Just having a little fun with the obvious. There is no one who believes that defense alone or offense alone wins games. The only debate is over the appropriate mix of offense and defense. In reality, the mix is not as important as the sum total of offense and defense. Historically, there've been teams that have won lots of games and championships with more focus on defense than offense, while other teams have produced similar results with more focus on offense than defense. Variables include individual coaching philosophy, athleticism and skill sets of the players, etc. For example, if I'm a coach with 10 players on the bench who can reliably shoot better than 50% from the field, I'm not going to tell them to forget about shooting and focus full time on defense. On the other hand, if I don't have a lot of reliable shooters, I may focus more on defense to stop other teams from scoring more points than my guys are capable of scoring in 40 minutes. Again, the very best teams are the ones that are above average on both offense and defense. They may be better at one than the other, but the key point is that they are consistently better at combined offense/defense than their opponents.

I think the Missouri Valley Conference could be considered a step up over the MAC in basketball.

Duh. Who would have ever guessed that's the way to win basketball games and championships? You read this board as much as the next person. Reading this board, one would think playing defense is the only way to win. If you notice from my post, scoring points comes before defense and mistakes. A lot of points can cover up mistakes and a bad defense night. You cite 3 major elements of basketball -- scoring points (offense), defense, and mistakes. In reality, mistakes are not a major element in the sense of offense and defense. Mistakes are nothing more than failures to effectively run the offense or defense. The more mistakes that are made on offense or defense, the more the performance in that element declines. So, in reality, offense and defense are the 2 major elements of basketball. In any given game, performing either of the 2 elements better than average can cover for the other element being under average. The team that wins is the one that has the best combined performance in both offense and defense. It doesn't really matter if your team either scores a lot of points or defends the other team from scoring a lot of points. All that matters is that your combined offense/defense results in your team scoring 1 more point than the other team at the end of the game. The best teams are capable of playing a combination of offense and defense that results in them consistently having more points at the end of games than the teams they play. If your shooting is off and you're not scoring, your defense better be capable of stopping the other team from scoring. If you're allowing the other team to score a lot of points, your offense better be capable of scoring even more points.

So can we all agree that Shaka Smart taking #11 seed VCU to the Final Four puts the final nail in the coffin of anyone wanting the NCAA tournament to return to a 32-team format? Butler, as a #8 seed would have been one of the last teams into a 32-team field, and they're also in the semifinals playing against VCU. One of these two mid-majors is going to be playing in the national championship game.

And now VCU makes the semifinals. The bad news is that VCU will play Butler in a semifinal, so we lose the possibility of two mid-majors playing for the national championship. The good news is that we are guaranteed to have a mid-major playing in the national championship game for the second straight season. Gotta love college basketball.

Duh. Who would have ever guessed that's the way to win basketball games and championships?

Zeke's game does not lack for effort. For example, he puts tremendous effort into trying to block every single shot, even those he's not likely to reach. He tries so hard so often that he physically exhausts himself. Zeke's lack of consistent effectiveness is more related to focus and decision making. He needs to focus on the most important elements of the game and shrug off things of less importance, which are just distractions. He needs to understand where his efforts will most likely be rewarded and where they will most likely just waste energy. It's a learning process, and he continues to improve in these areas. I expect him to be better next season, and better yet as a senior.

Go Butler! Two years in a row to the Final Four. Who would have thought they could have repeated this feat with Gordon Hayward leaving early for the NBA? Absolutely amazing, and a great message to the Zips about what's possible.

I knew there was a reason why I waited to post in this thread. ZW just said it better than I could have. Having attended both of the Zips NCAA tournament games in the past 3 years, I think the Zips started this ascendancy by playing Gonzaga even for the first three-quarters of their game. This year I think the Zips played ND fairly even for all but the first 5 minutes of the second half. Even with that 5-minute cold streak, the Zips could have won this game if their shooting had been average. I agree with ZW that the Zips knew they were not overmatched against a #2 seed. They had every bit as much opportunity to beat ND as OU had to beat Georgetown last season. All the Zips need to do now is to start next season knowing they are a better team than they may have believed this season. They need to go into the tough OOC games knowing they can do in that game what they almost pulled off against ND. It's all going to come down to executing in all phases of the game. If they do, they have the potential to beat any team on next season's schedule, and they should believe they are going to do it. Ascending is a great, positive term that acknowledges the improvements to date and promises even better in the future.

I have no problem with college football players being given the option of taking jobs as long as there's a way to fairly and consistently enforce that they are legitimate jobs and not a free pass to take cash from boosters for not doing any work. That would simply be legitimizing the worst kind of cheating that goes on today. The cheating doesn't start with college-age students, either. It starts by slipping cash and other favors to promising high school players, kids who are underage and still under the responsibility of their parents. Advocating a system that hasn't been thoroughly and thoughtfully examined for shortcomings and loopholes is not very productive. Simply legalizing a bad thing does not automatically make it a good thing.

Say goodbye to Richmond and Marquette, both being blown out at halftime.

In 1966, Elvin Ivory became the first black to play basketball for a predominately white university in the deep south when he enrolled at the University of Southwestern Lousiana, now known as University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Prior to 1966, there was not a single black player at any predominately white university in the deep south, not a single one. How do I know all this? Not from reading history books. I was there. I lived it. I watched Ivory play. I was at Louisiana Tech and USL was our biggest basketball rival. Think Zips vs. Flushes. Much as I hated USL, I admired the heck out of them for breaking down the color barrier in deep south college basketball. A dozen years earlier in 1954 (just two years after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling), USL was the first university in the south to integrate its student body. They did it in a way that was so quiet and peaceful that it barely made the news. So let's hear it for the Ragin' Cajuns from Lafayette, La., who were way ahead of their time when it came to race relations in the deep south.

Any college athlete receiving a scholarship is getting paid. The question isn't about paying the players to play. It is about them being able to earn money outside of a scholarship from places other than the university they attend. They should be able to have a job or earn money of some kind. It's a free country. First of all, it's not a free country. It's a country of laws and regulations. A totally free country without laws and regulations would be anarchy. So you'd need enforcement officials to check on every player with an alleged job to ensure that they actually show up for work. It would be way easy for wealthy boosters to pay kids big "salaries" and not require them to show up for work. That's not a job. That's called evading laws and regulations in order to cheat the system. Any system regulating compensation for amateur athletes must be fair and enforceable. The current system is obviously far from perfect. But it would do no good to replace it with a system subject to equal or greater flaws.

Physically, the closest thing to a B. McKnight clone among the new Zips players would be Chauncey Gilliam, who's 6-5, 235 compared with McKnight's 6-6, 245. From everything I've heard about Gilliam, he's quicker and can jump higher than McKnight. Hopefully he has McKnight's shooting eye, but with perhaps a little more consistency. If Gilliam is a B. McKnight clone, that might be another reason why Dakotah Euton is considering transferring, presuming that rumor is true.

You just knew that Ralph Nader would eventually get involved in this discussion: ESPN Story

Whoever is in the White House at any given time, regardless of party affiliation, is always a moron to roughly 40% of the population.

The Lone Ranger does not strike me as a player who is lacking in self-confidence. All he needed to do was look at PN7's stats from last season, and he likely would have felt confident that he could win the starting position away from the incumbent. Hopefully a healthy, open competition between the two will make them both better QBs.

I think Cameron Black was a shooting guard (3-point specialist) before sprouting into a big frontcourt guy.

The following story is a deep dive into an early chapter in Bruce Pearl's career, and a glimpse into the dark side of college basketball: deadspin.com

Where do you draw the line on paying amateurs? College? High school? Grade school? Whatever you make it today, someone will be pushing to extend the age further and further down. Somewhere along the line, responsible adults need to make a stand and try to hold the line. Money corrupts, and adults who corrupt kids are the worst scum.

Like snowflakes, no two human bodies develop exactly the same. When I look at Zeke, I never imagine him turning into a thick wide body. The player I tend to think of when I look at Zeke is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who became the dominant player in the NBA for many years. Kareem was always a finesse player, not a beast in the sense of a Dwight Howard or Shaquille O'Neal. I don't see Zeke coming remotely close to O'Neal's 325 pounds or even Howard's 265, as they have totally different body types. Not many people realize it, but Kareem was 7-2 yet weighed only 225. Think about it. Zeke is already within 1 inch and a couple pounds of Kareem's playing height and weight. If Zeke can develop a reasonable fraction of Kareem's skills, he could do some serious damage in the NBA, let alone the MAC. Side story: Back in the 1970s, I was sitting in the lobby of a major corporation in the Los Angeles area waiting to be called into a meeting. About 20 feet away, 3 people were seated on a couch and a chair -- 2 caucasians and a black guy. I looked at them casually and didn't recognize any of them. Seated, they all appeared to be about the same height. As they stood up, the 2 white guys were up first, and then the black guy stood up, and up, and up. He towered over the other 2 guys by a foot. It was none other than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I never realized how much of his height was in his legs until I saw him unfold from that couch. It's a memory I'll never forget.

Just speculating here. But if slow foot speed is the primary reason for Euton to leave the Zips program, it doesn't necessarily mean he couldn't make it in DI. There are still some schools that run deliberate, slow-down offenses where Euton's 3-point shooting could fit in pretty well.

Zeke played more than 30 minutes in several games this season. He seemed to gain a little endurance as the season wore on. Most of his 20-minute games were due to foul trouble. If he continues training hard and building endurance, and if he can learn to stay out of foul trouble, I see no reason why Zeke couldn't average 30 minutes per game or slightly more next season. That would leave only 10 minutes or less per game when the Zips would be playing without a true center. Heck, many college teams don't even have a single true center, and only a few have a true center backup.

An upset of #1 seed Colorado would have had even more people talking. Like the Zips against ND, Can't didn't embarass themselves. This is all good for the MAC.

A healthy sense of humor is good for the soul.