Dave in Green

Wow! Two quick goals for the Zips. 2-0 with about 36 minutes left.

Yeah, you can run along now and go back to playing with the little kids.

I heard this comment as it was spoken. At the time of the remark Ian (sp?) was behind me, Jodi Kest was to my left and Keith Dambrot was across the table from me. iCoach was standing behind KD when he uttered that blunt, painful remark. The three of us were aghast to say the least. Ian handled the remark with a great deal of class and dignity. It was a "teachable moment" if only iCoach were aware of his faux pau. We are not cretins, country bumpkins, rubes or what have you. Akronites and the Zips are as educated and urbane as any one in South Bent (intentional). Get it icoach? Sigh, probably not. The football players that stuck it out for the entire year did themselves proud in the end. The mountain of adversity was more iCoach made than any other factor. Perhaps he a) resigns, or b ) grows up and becomes a part of this community and develops into one outstanding football coach. At this time, option "A" is preferred. So no one has the slightest idea why this comment was made, and no one has made an effort to find out? The comment was just made out of the blue with no circumstances to help explain it? Everyone just accepts the assumption that there's only one side to this story? Look, if no one involved in this is incident is willing to make an effort to try to eliminate any misunderstandings and resolve the issue, I'll volunteer to get involved. I will personally contact the athletic department and tell them that if Coach Ianello dissed the Rowdies for no reason and is unwilling to make peace with the Rowdies, I'm not going to renew my season ticket to Zips football games as long as he's coach and will become a card carrying member of the I Hate Ianello movement. If by the middle of the week the Rowdies have not posted here that they are making some kind of constructive effort to try to resolve this issue, I'm going to jump into the middle of it and do my best to learn the full circumstances and what could be done to resolve it.

The story is gradually breaking into mainstream media: Williamson Herald Link And those who have suggested that Terry Bowden would be a good candidate for UA might want to read what shows up about his time at Auburn in the following: SportsByBrooks.com Link

For anyone interested in digging deep into the history behind the current situation at Auburn, ESPN in 2006 actually had quite a nice investigative reporting piece on the highly unusual situation that exists in Auburn's board of trustees: ESPN Story

Listerine is good for baited breath.

That question should have been the immediate response by the AK-Rowdies President, not asked later in a press conference. Are you telling us the AK-Rowdies are unable or unwilling to open direct lines of communication to address this subject?

Brett McKnight was neither a great player nor a total loser. He was somewhere in the middle along with the vast majority of other college players. One stat I noticed last season was that Brett was ranked 17th nationally among all D1 players in percentage of team shots taken. While he was on the floor, Brett took 33.7 percent of the team's shots. But while he took a larger percentage of his team's shots than all but 16 other players in the country, he wasn't listed anywhere in the top 500 players in terms of effective field goal percentage. So what the Zips as a team need to do offensively this season to improve their position without Brett is to have a higher effective field goal shooting percentage on the shots that Brett would have taken if he was playing. Defensively, I thought Brett was putting more effort into defending and rebounding as last season went on. Again, he wasn't great and he wasn't a total loser. But his experience will be missed on defense. I don't see any single player ready to immediately step in as the 6th man and replace what I think Brett would have brought to the team this season. Euton has a lot to prove before being able to fill Brett's shoes. I think he has the potential to do it at some point in his career, but have no idea how long it will take. Egner has more physical ability than either McKnight or Euton, and will probably be a better defender. If Egner had a more reliable outside shot, he could also be in the picture to fill Brett's shoes. But it's all about "what-if" right now. With Brett we knew what we had, both the good and the bad. With the new guys, all we have is potential that has yet to be realized.

Or he decides that building a long-running national soccer dynasty in Akron, Ohio, is a more impressive career accomplishment than anything he or any other coach could accomplish at one of the "name" schools where everyone automatically expects success.

If I were the guy who wrote the linked piece, I would want to remain unidentified, too. It reads like a software translation of Portuguese to English.

So far I think everyone has realistic expectations for next season. We know the Zips will have a much younger, less experienced team next season. If Coach Ianello delivers on his recruiting reputation, the caliber of players should be higher than in the past. Also, there should be no surprises next season for the players about how the team is run, and no more adjustments for the players to make after having played under a previous coaching staff that ran things much differently. This should all help the team play a little more cohesively next season, which should help overall team performance. So 3-4 wins is certainly a reasonable and realistic expectation.

I honestly think that no-fumble call on the QB fumble deserves a formal letter from UA to the MAC. The officials had plenty of time to review it in slow-mo. There's no excuse for getting it so wrong. Even though the Zips won, that call still sticks in my craw.

Now that I've cooled down a little about all the things I saw go wrong for the Zips against CSU, I have a slightly different perspective. My first reaction was that the new guys needed more PT, and the starters shouldn't all be playing more than 30 minutes. But I see now where the starters also need more time playing with each other to develop their new system for this season. With Zeke continuing to develop different aspects of his game and become more a focal point of the offense, it's going to take time and experience to get the chemistry right. Nitro is also playing a much greater role this season, and needs time to fully develop the role he will be playing on the team. It's going to take time for everyone to adapt to the new roles and have good timing and chemistry. So as much as the new Zips players need to be given enough PT to develop into significant contributors, the starters also need plenty of PT together to get in synch with each other, learn what works best and play more like a team. Even by the end of the season when the new players are contributing more, the starters are still likely to average 25 or more minutes per game. So when KD says he plans to be playing the younger players more minutes by January, maybe it's as much because he knows the starters need more PT together as because he thinks the younger players need to be brought up to speed more slowly than some of us would like to see.

Good find, Zach. Though I think that's more of a "winging it" rule than a formal rule, I'll gladly accept them applying it to the Zips.

Are there actually Bottom Ten rules posted somewhere? I've always believed that the Bottom Ten was nothing more than someone just winging it.

Once again, the detestable prevent defense almost prevented a win. That and the unfathomable officiating call on the Buffalo QB fumble that had absolutely no similarity to a forward pass almost ruined the day again. But the Zips finally overcame adversity and came out on top. This one was definitely worth sitting out in a cold, empty stadium to watch. You could tell the Zips players really, really wanted this one badly, and they earned it. Good for them!

Our group of 4 is just leaving for the stadium. Don't know why anyone would want to stay inside on such a beautiful, sunny day.

I suspect from the spelling, grammar, structure, etc., that it was written by a class valedictorian from Can't. The other dead giveaway is that all the phrases have been plagiarized from another poster here.

Under Coach Dambrot, UA typically has a fairly deep bench with a fair number of subs playing significant minutes and the starters generally less than 30 minutes. It may be common for some teams to play all five starters for more than 30 minutes, but it's unusual for the Zips. The problem is that an unexpected number of players from last season departed the team in addition to the expected graduates, and the Zips bench has not in recent years been loaded with so many new players who have no experience with the team.

Skip, I just took the time to go back and read every single post in the "suspension" thread. I could not find a single post by anyone claiming the Zips would be better off in the short run with a raw rookie standing in for an experienced, proven performer like Brett. Most of the comments seemed to agree that Euton might have a bigger upside than McKnight over the long run. Do you not believe that to be true?

Skip, I also understand where you're coming from. But every good basketball coach has at least some grasp of the concept of "pay me now or pay me later." No one ever wants to lose any game. But the best coaches tend to have the best grasp of the big picture, which is that if you cannot be consistently great throughout the course of an entire season, it's better to be good at the end of the season than the beginning. If seasoning young players in actual game situations is important to being good at the end of the season, some coaches do take the risk of throwing them into tough situations early in the season and not just playing them a few minutes at the end of blowouts. There are plenty of instances of coaches being questioned about why they kept inexperienced players on the floor in tough games, and the coaches have said these players have to learn now so that the team will be stronger when tournament time rolls around. It's a balancing act to try to rack up wins while giving inexperienced bench players who are expected to be contributors by the end of the season a chance to learn how to contribute. Coaches don't all have the exact same philosophy on this, and neither do fans. As long as I've been posting on ZN.O, I've been consistent in saying that I would rather have the Zips be strong at the end of the season than the beginning. I support anything KD does to accomplish that. KD said the younger guys will be getting more PT starting in January. After last night, I wouldn't mind seeing that start a little earlier.

I can understand the frustration from the students posting here about the passivity problem. I would have been frustrated if I was exposed to that when I was a student. Frustration tends to breed anger, and anger is destructive if not channeled into positive and productive action. I sincerely meant it in a constructive way when I said earlier: The focus should be on filling all the student seats with rabid, screaming students. If you do, I can assure you from personal experience that you will not have to worry about any lack of noise. If you don't, complaining about the passivity of older fans will accomplish absolutely nothing. The student body really needs to take the lead on initiating a constructive solution to the problem.

What? Do you honestly think it's ok to lose games as long as you got some young guys some extra playing time? I don't know any coach who would buy into that idea. If our coach determines that playing our starters 30+ minutes a game gives us the best chance to win, then expect to see our starters continue to play those kind of minutes in these kinds of games. Many teams have to go this route in order to win games. With our lack of experience on the bench this year, maybe we're going to have to do that to win games too. The young guys will never be able to contribute if they aren't given adequate experience. Which would you rather have, an extra win or two early in the season when the wins don't count so much by playing the veterans long minutes, or a stronger, more experienced bench at the end of the season when postseason play is on the line by giving decent PT to the younger players early in the season? Take your pick, because you can't have it both ways.

If by chance you're referring me, you're misrepresenting me. I've consistently said that losing Brett would hurt in the short run. In fact, I don't recall anyone saying that things would be better in the short run without Brett. But maybe you can cite something specifically that I'm not recalling.

I went to college a long time ago many miles from Akron. I went to every home basketball game and many away games. We packed the place with students and screamed our guts out all game long. We students never thought to criticize the older, non-students who were much more passive. We didn't need them to join in because we students rocked the joint all by ourselves. UA's problem is not the more reserved older folks who pay good money to be entertained by good basketball. UA's problem is a lack of student support and enthusiasm. UA has more than four times the number of students as the college I attended, but we turned out more students at our home games than UA. Maybe the more reserved older fans at Zips games stand out because there is such a high percentage of them compared to students. Whose fault is that? We never had that problem at my school. The focus should be on filling all the student seats with rabid, screaming students. If you do, I can assure you from personal experience that you will not have to worry about any lack of noise. If you don't, complaining about the passivity of older fans will accomplish absolutely nothing.