Dave in Green

Agreed that the Zips didn't play great, but they played good enough to win. They looked a lot like they did during the 7-game win streak. They should have looked good playing a team whose only conference road win of the season was against Toledo. But they've been inconsistent enough this season that you never know. Zeke definitely had a highlight reel play when he blocked a shot, landed on his feet, chased the ball to the sideline and flipped it back to a teammate before his momentum carried him into the seats. On defense, the Zips got a boost from playing zone. For whatever reason, this edition of the Zips just can't play man as well as previous editions. Switching to zone at the right time at the Q could pay huge dividends. I like the player rotation right now and the balanced PT. Rico and Q bring a big dose of speed and aggressiveness to the lineup when they sub in, B. McKnight brings a reasonably steady shooting performance and Bardo is holding his own in the post. The starters are all playing pretty steady ball right now, even though every one of them isn't at his best every game. I was thinking before this game that I wouldn't be surprised if the Zips lost tonight, and I wouldn't be surprised if they won 4 straight on their way to a tournament championship. I honestly don't know what to expect from this team. I think we're in for a wild ride at the Q.

Kinda makes me remember that ridiculous rumor back in December that OSU was going to dump Tressel. Everyone laughed off the source (Chicago-based blog). But the blogster insisted his multiple sources were good, and said that if he was proven wrong that he would "publish a strong statement to that effect in the future." He never published that strong statement, so no one ever convinced him that Tressel's job wasn't in jeopardy. What if the tips the blogster got were good, and OSU has been trying to bury the story that's just now coming out? If the latest story is true, then the guy who wrote the original blog item on this may have had really good inside sources. Maybe that blog story is what triggered Yahoo! Sports to dig deeper into the situation. Hard to say at this point. But it looks like this "wild rumor" may have legs. ZN.O Discussion of Tressel Firing Rumor

Back from my ZN.O vacation. It was both relaxing and traumatic to go from visiting these forums many times daily to going cold turkey. I missed the thoughtful posts and camaraderie here, but enjoyed missing some of the silly negativity that sometimes seems to flood out of control. I guess this thread is a microcosm of what can go wrong on a sports forum. Someone starts a not serious thread, others take it seriously, and it spirals into contentiousness. In many ways ZN.O is pretty typical of forums where people of many different personalities gather. Some people post on forums mainly to participate in thoughtful discussion, some to vent, and others for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the conversations go well and sometimes there's serious conflict. In the real world, everyone doesn't get along in social situations. People with different personalities often turn others off, and we tend to avoid those we don't get along with. Outside of ZN.O, some of us posting here might not hang with others posting here. There's nothing at all wrong with that. That's just the way people are. The positive side is that on forums like ZN.O we get a wide diversity of opinion, which can be enlightening. The negative side is that some of that opinion can be presented in a way that really grates and grinds on us. My little vacation has taught me that I need to focus more on the ZN.O conversation that mosts interests me and do a better job of tuning out the things that grate and grind on me. Others will find different things to be grating and grinding and have their own ways of dealing with it. Over the years I've had my share of people tell me that they find me really annoying at times, so it's no surprise that I sometimes find myself annoyed with others. We all go through this. It's part of life. Anyway, for better or worse, I'm back here posting. I plan on trying to be more focused on what interests me, more tolerant of viewpoints with which I disagree, and less annoyed at things I find annoying.

Worst thread ever on ZN.O. Fighting like a bunch of little kids over who to pin the scapegoat label on after an embarassing Zips team loss is even more embarassing than the loss. I'll tell you what I'm losing confidence in. I'm losing confidence in Zips fans. Please pardon me while I take a little vacation from ZN.O. The atmosphere in this place just stinks.

With Can't beating BUGS tonight, Zips can no longer catch Can't. The chances of getting a bye are growing dim. Zips basically have to beat Can't and have Miami beat OU to earn the #4 seed. It may also be possible for the Zips to get the #4 seed if Miami loses to both Buffalo and OU. But the Zips are really going to have to suck it up big time to come back and beat Can't on the road. Otherwise, it's back to the JAR one more time.

Comparing Zeke's sophomore season to Kaman's sophomore season is silly? Well, it's true that Kaman had better stats in some areas. But it's also true that Zeke has better stats in other areas. When it comes to Offensive Rating, they were pretty darned close -- Kaman at 103.6 to 101.7 for Zeke. Kaman's sophomore stats certainly didn't rise to the level of a can't miss NBA player. Here's the direct comparison for anyone who's interested in doing a detailed comparison in all categories: StatSheet.com

Back to reality. Apparently the Zips great winning streak was nothing but an illusion when it comes to OU.

Zips getting killed on the boards, 15-8.

It was formally announced by the Big East when they released their 2011-12 schedule that ESPN will be televising the FIU-Louisville game. I believe that qualifies as a confirmed fact. My reasoned deduction is that when FIU was offered the opportunity to play Louisville live on ESPN instead of a non-televised game with the Zips that weekend that they politely asked if UA might be able to help them out by rescheduling the FIU-UA game. Big East Schedule

Just checked the OU url, and they have a link up to "listen" to the game but not to "watch" the game. Hope this doesn't mean a radio feed only.

By the way, forgot to mention that some Louisville fans were grumbling on their forum about the FIU game being moved to a Friday night. It seems that Louisville tailgaters greatly prefer Saturday afternoon games to weekday night games. It was explained that ESPN decided they wanted to televise the game nationally on a Friday night. So enter ESPN into the reasoned deduction formula for speculating on who was at fault for the FIU date change.

Reasoned deduction is thoughtful speculation, so certainly a step above casual speculation, but still a step below confirmed fact. Thanks for clarifying.

I wasn't just addressing you, but was presenting statistical data for all to see that the situation was not as dire with either of the two players as some of their critics might think. I think everyone would agree that Abreu plays a little more out of control than McNees. Very nicely stated. I couldn't agree with you more. At the risk of boring those who don't care about numbers, looking at McNees' turnover percentage stats from his freshman through senior seasons shows just how much a PG can improve: Turnover Percentage 26.1% -- 2007-08 21.1% -- 2008-09 16.2% -- 2009-10 14.6% -- 2010-11 Abreu's current turnover percentage of 26.3% is right on top of McNees' 26.1% in his freshman season. If Rico improves his turnover percentage at the same rate as McNees did throughout his Zips career, and if he continues to improve on assist percentage and steals while avoiding fouls, he has the potential to be an amazingly good PG over the next 3 seasons.

RootforRoo44, if you're saying that some players are easier or more difficult to coach into a certain style of play than others, then I'm with you 100%. A basketball player's performance is a combination of the player's inherent physical ability and inner drive to improve his performance along with the quality of the coaching he gets. So Zeke's failure to perform at a consistently higher level than many fans expect is some combination of all that. If Zeke was 6-feet tall, we probably wouldn't even notice him riding the end of the bench. But since he's 7-feet tall, we automatically have higher expectations for him. It sounds like you want to place more of the responsibility on the coach than the player. I can't do that because I don't know what percentage is related to coaching, what percentage is related to Zeke's inherent physical ability at this point in his life when he's still physically growing, and what percentage is related to that inner drive of how badly Zeke really wants to be an all-star basketball player. If the coach had total control over all those elements, then I'd say it was totally the coach's fault. But that's not the way it works. One thing we know is that Zeke is a late bloomer who's behind the development curve for other college players his age who started playing basketball much earlier in life and have made basketball the focal point of their lives. We know that Zeke is a nice kid who tends to be a little shy and has many interests in life beyond basketball. We know that he would rather help his teammates than be the focal point of the team. Maybe if Zeke truly believed that becoming the focal point of the team would be the best way to help his teammates, he'd be willing to take on more of that role. Who knows? I don't know what to do other than to have patience that the light will go on somewhere and stay on. We certainly saw Zeke's light go on in the Can't game, and in my case I mistook that for the light going on and staying on. Maybe that will happen in the MAC tournament, maybe next season, or maybe never at all. Even with the best coaching, there's no guarantee that every 7-footer is going to become a consistently great basketball player.

I've seen some speculation that someone at UA somehow caused this scheduling problem, but I haven't seen any specific details. Do you have any specifics, or is this still just speculation? For example, is it possible that FIU may have asked UA if the game could be rescheduled, UA agreed to try to find a solution, and Temple happened to have an open date they wanted to fill? If it was something like that, then the scheduling problem really wasn't "caused by us" (UA).

Being real here for one second, I reflect back to how well the KD-coached Zips offense worked when run through Jeremiah Wood in the post. OK, now I'm back to my usual unreal self ..... TRUE center. Wood was essentially Brett McKnight with a little more post skill and a lot more heart. So KD is qualified to coach a power forward into being an effective post to run the offense through, but doesn't have a clue as to how to coach a true center into being an effective post to run the offense through? Could you please help me out by explaining in a little more detail exactly what the difference is? I'm having a hard time understanding why KD couldn't simply coach Zeke to do exactly the same things he coached Wood to do.

Obviously a train carrying one passenger gets much worse fuel economy than a car carrying one passenger. Where trains excel is in carrying large loads while consuming less fuel than other modes of transportation required to carry similar loads. For example, the average fuel economy of freight trains in the U.S. is cited as 436 miles per gallon per ton of freight carried. I haven't seen a similar statistic for passenger trains measured in terms of mpg per passenger carried. But it's unlikely to be as high as freight trains because passengers could not comfortably be packed in as densely as freight. A modern small sedan that gets 40 mpg on the highway would get 160 passenger mpg when carrying 4 people on a highway trip. Rail is not by itself the solution to the world's transportation problems. But it does make sense as part of a diversified passenger and freight transportation system that includes highway, air and waterborne transport. Finding agreement on what is an appropriate mix of rail service in the U.S. is difficult because it has become so politicized between the right and the left. Each side tends to believe only data presented by those who represent their own political view and tends to dismiss any claims made by the other side as propaganda.

Temple is a nice replacement for FIU in the Sept. 10 home opener.

In their last meeting, the Zips appeared not to know how to deal with the Bobkitties' aggressive, attacking offense and defense. They've since shown that they are more poised and confident against this style of play. Buffalo played a similar aggressive, attacking style, and the Zips didn't fold under pressure. That was a good tuneup game. Any team can have an off night at any time and lose a game. But I'm not as worried about the Zips not being able to match up against the Bobkitties. If the Zips continue to play the way they have been recently, they make this their 20th win of the season and set up a potential MAC East championship showdown with Can't. OU embarassed the Zips at the JAR. Time to return the favor.

Being real here for one second, I reflect back to how well the KD-coached Zips offense worked when run through Jeremiah Wood in the post. OK, now I'm back to my usual unreal self .....

I agree. Let's be real here. Realistic comparison of what we think different players do better or worse than others can be interesting. Hyperbolic criticism of players that is not realistic is not to be taken seriously. For example, here's a pair of real stats that make McNees and Rico look both better and worse than the other: Assists Per Minute Of Playing Time McNees -- .09 Abreu -- .19 Turnovers Per Minute Of Playing Time McNees -- .04 Abreu -- .11 So for every minute on the floor, Rico gets more than twice as many assists as McNees, but McNees has less than half as many turnovers as Rico. Here's another pair of contrasting stats: Steals Per Minute Of Playing Time McNees -- .02 Abreu -- .07 Fouls Per Minute Of Playing Time McNees -- .06 Abreu -- .10 So for every minute on the floor, Rico gets more than three times as many steals as McNees, but McNees commits fouls only about half as often as Rico. Being real about this is to admit that there's no way anyone can watch the games, compare the stats and come to a reasonable conclusion that one of these two players is head and shoulders above the other in all aspects of the game.

It would be stupid if a player did that every single time. Of course, Rico didn't do that. Far from it. He had 4 assists in 15 minutes -- more assists per minute played than any other Zips player. What's the deal here? Are we playing "I'll match your silly McNees exaggeration and raise you a double silly Rico exaggeration?" Very disappointing to see a Zips fan forum turn into a Zips player trashing exercise in the middle of a big win streak where the team is performing at its highest level in a long time.

GoZips, what's the deal with you still trying to spread the misconception that Rico blows away McNees in the stats? We already resolved that myth in the WMU thread: Depends on what stats are being considered. A thorough direct statistical comparison between McNees and Abreu on statsheet.com shows that they're fairly closely matched, with each doing better in some categories than the other. In the important Offensive Rating category, which measures total player impact on scoring, assists, rebounds, turnovers, etc., McNees rates higher than Abreu, 98.4 to 91.8. I like Rico. He's going to be a great asset to the Zips this season and, hopefully, the next three as well. He's definitely more of a pure PG than McNees. But he's a relatively inexperienced freshman and McNees is a senior who's been there and done that. Also, McNees tends to peak toward the end of the season, as he's been showing the last few games. Overall, McNees is the best guard to lead the Zips right now, with Abreu playing an important supporting role. McNees-Abreu comparison on statsheet.com Anyone can click on that statsheet.com link comparing the current stats of McNees and Abreu and see that they are both effective PGs with each having the edge in different statistical categories. There's no reason for any Zips fan to try to belittle one of these two players to try to build up the other. They're both good PGs, but in different ways. That's a really good situation, because it can throw the other team's defense off to have to try to play against two different style PGs who are both effective in their own ways. I'm glad the Zips have two such different PGs. I like them both, and I especially like the game results the Zips have been delivering with the way KD is playing the two PGs down the stretch.

A lot of forum members took offense when Elton Alexander suggested that Zeke would benefit from redshirting. Imagine what Zeke's senior season might be like if he had redshirted and was playing as a freshman this season. Hard to think of a 7-footer as a still-growing kid. But Zeke has always shown signs of being a classic late bloomer.

That's the way I understand it, Skip. If the Zips win out, they earn the #3 seed at minimum regardless of what all other MAC teams do in their final 2 games, and the #1 seed if Miami loses to either Buffalo or OU. Not a bad position to be in except for the fact that the final 2 Zips games are against tough teams on the road. If the Zips do win both games, they will have proven themselves to be one tough team peaking at just the right time of the season.