Dave in Green

No doubt the Zips are set to be deep in forwards and shooting guards for 2011-12, and that's a good thing. As things stand now UA will be shallow in the middle, with Zeke being the only true C on the roster. Assuming he will be playing long minutes by then, a PF can fill in at backup C. More concerning is that Abreu would be the only PG. Even if Abreu turns out to be brilliant and capable of playing long minutes, there would be no one else on the team with PG experience. So without another PG, a SG would have to fill in as a backup. Don't even think of the chaos if Abreu should suffer any kind of injury! Beyond that, Abreu has yet to play his first college game. None of us really knows how good he's going to be. It's simply unthinkable for the Zips to be planning a 2011-12 season with only one unproven PG on the roster. Something is going to happen to ensure that there are at least two PGs on the roster for 2011-12. But this discussion really belongs in the basketball recruiting forum.

The Zips would need to have a sensational season to suddenly become attractive to high-level PGs who previously would not have considered UA. It's possible. But it would require something like Zeke making a monumental leap in performance to a truly dominant force, or for a lot of things to fall into place for several other players, or all of the above. Again, it's possible. But we can't rely on this. I suspect that KD has a number of PGs he thinks he has a realistic chance of landing, and that he'll hold that last scholarship for the best available PG. The good news about Walsh is that he represents yet another break from KD's past recruiting form. This is another indication that KD has blown up the old system and is really trying to make a giant leap forward. The Zips are going to be more loaded with experienced players from other programs than they've ever been in my memory of Zips basketball. This is the kind of gamble that many of us had been hoping for. Now we all just have to keep our fingers crossed that it works out for the best.

According to LeBron's latest tweet, he has not been ignoring everyone piling on him: "Don't think for one minute that I haven't been keeping mental notes of everyone taking shots at me this summer. And I mean everyone." You have been warned. nba.fanhouse.com story link twitter.com link

There's a shortage of quality pure PGs in the NBA, so no surprise that the same situation exists in college. We all need to be honest with ourselves that it would take a true miracle for the Zips to land a PG with enough obvious big-time potential to be selected by coaches like Izzo at schools like MSU. It's just not realistic to think that UA is in the running for proven, highly skilled HS PGs who are being recruited by college teams that regularly show up in the top 25 and are often in the running for the national championship. It's even less realistic to think UA should reject an otherwise qualified PG due to lack of height. I just hope that KD is able to land the best available PG regardless of height after the perennial basketball powers are done skimming the cream, and that the Zips end up with a late bloomer who shows better in college than he did in HS.

I don't know how any sports fan couldn't get excited about their college sports team being picked #1 in the country in any sport. With soccer being the #1 sport in the rest of the world outside the U.S., this probably does even more for UA's and Akron's global image than it does for UA's and Akron's image in the U.S. There's just no downside to this, no matter what the American football, basketball, baseball, etc., fans may think.

Jarrell McKinney, 6-4, 201, Detroit Cooley (Detroit, Mich.). Big-time sleeper needs to add weight, but has great athleticism and swagger; Western Michigan and Toledo have offered. Note: The above quote is from ESPN RISE High School Football. And one recent article lists him at 220 pounds.

Unbelievable. On a whim I just checked through the State of Arizona where my deceased parents had lived, and discovered five different properties of some kind that belonged to my parents and being held by the state. It will be weeks before I learn what they are. But whether it is some remembrance of them, or a few bucks left in a safety deposit box, or whatever, this is an amazing service. If anyone else decides to do this, just be careful not to get trapped by one of the scam sites that takes a percentage, or tricks you into calling a phone number that automatically bills you for the call. The two sites I researched that are approved by various state governments are http://www.missingmoney.com http://www.unclaimed.org . If you find any property to claim, the only thing I'd advise is to only enter the mandatory information before printing out the claim. You are NOT required to enter your social security number or e-mail address on the forms, so I'd advise leaving them blank when filling in the forms online, and write them in by hand before mailing the forms to the appropriate state government office. If you don't trust any online service, the other option is to go to the state government website, download a copy of the correct form, print it out, and fill it all out by hand before mailing.

Agree with your assessment. In the highlight film Knipp looks a lot like a skinnier Egner having to do it all without a Henniger-type teammate to carry the scoring load. One caution: He plays in one of the weaker areas of Kentucky HS basketball, and most of those great, dominating moves are coming against smaller, weaker competitors. He's good, but he is not playing regularly against the level of HS players that Dakotah Euton did in Kentucky. Louisville Courier-Journal Link

You're not crazy on this one. You just nailed Journalism 101.

Looks as if Northwestern was a slightly better team than LSU. They both lost their bowl games, but Northwestern's only regular season loss was to the RedHawks while LSU lost regular season games to the RedHawks and Ole Miss. Northwestern was rated as high as #3 in the country while LSU reached only #5. So far that gives Miami the top two football upsets in MAC history.

I think someone once tried that line on Don Rickles. Mr. Warmth replied, "You know, every night when I go out on stage to do my comedy routines, there's always one nagging fear in the back of my mind. I'm always afraid that somewhere out there, there is one person in the audience that I'm NOT going to offend." The moral is that some insults are to be taken seriously and some are to be laughed off as comedy shtick.

By just about every source that deals with definitions. Try any of the online dictionaries, Wikipedia, etc., etc.

I give the Captain high marks for an original thought in a world of copycat thinkers. Seriously. Google the phrase "lower expectations are for losers" or "low expectations are for losers" with quotation marks. There are only a few instances of these combinations of words ever having been used on the worldwide internet. That's impressive, and I really mean that. Most phrases produce thousands or millions of hits. Whether it's accurate or not is another matter.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that moderates are more subtle than extremists. I think you confuse being a moderate with being open minded. An extremist can be open minded as well. William F. Buckley was a solid conservative, but was open minded enough to discuss his ideas with those he didn't agree with. Byron York is a modern day Buckley. By definition, a political moderate is generally open to a wider range of ideas from both the left and the right than a political extremist, who typically follows primarily far left or far right beliefs. William F. Buckley Jr. was an intellectual conservative who evolved away from his early extremism (support of segregation and McCarthyism, for example). He was more moderate and less extreme in his later years, becoming an eloquent spokesman for mainstream conservative principles that are accepted by many moderates.

Discussions comparing the overall talent of players and teams from different eras rarely results in consensus agreement. The further we go back, the fuzzier our memories get.

Sis boom bah! No more low expectations for me. I'm going to upgrade to realistic expectations.

It's always better to be picked low and overachieve than to be picked high and underachieve. Everyone should have low expectations for the Zips until they prove themselves on the field. I'll be pleased with the progress if the Zips can execute more consistently than last season, and if a fair percentage of the plays that are called surprise me instead of being totally predictable. That should lead to more close games and more wins than last season.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that moderates are more subtle than extremists. Moderates have opinions, but they also understand that opinions are formulated by humans, and since all humans are imperfect, so are their opinions. Extremists believe that only those humans with differing opinions are imperfect.

If you really regret saying something about someone on this forum, you can always go back and edit your original post. After all, it's just a sports forum. None of this really matters much in the overall history of the planet, which is less than a grain of sand in the perspective of the universe.

I once knew a guy like you who asked me to consider his opinions as seriously credible. I gave him a chance, and he failed to offer anything but laughable opinions that were demonstrably flawed. So why should I give you a chance? Seriously, we're all individuals, not obvious patterns that any sports forum nerd can pick out and call correctly more than 50 percent of the time. Flipping a coin will make you right 50 percent of the time. Anything above that takes exceptional luck or some real thoughtful intelligence. Ianello has some qualities and experience that don't fit the usual pattern of an older first-time D1 head coach without coordinator experience. The data is out there for anyone with an open mind who's trying to objectively analyze the situation. I found it and I'm far from a genius.

Thanks for warning us about your posts here.

Then there's the group of extremists on the other side who are willing to overlook all bad behavior as irrelevant as long as they get some kind of personal gain out of it. Extremists tend to portray everything in black and white terms of pure good or pure evil. In reality, most people and most things are shades of gray that need to be analyzed in fine detail and dealt with proportionately. Moderates have a more balanced view. They understand that everyone (including themselves) makes mistakes, and that we're all imperfect. They are tolerant of minor indiscretions, knowing they've been guilty of their own share. But they become increasingly less tolerant when a pattern of bad behavior develops, and there's no sign of remorse or effort to improve. I've seen nothing about Erick Howard that suggests he should be either stoned or handed the key to the city. Like most of us, he's still a work in progress.

It's hard to argue with the category in which coacheshotseat.com includes Ianello: Mediocre or Unknown hire. We either think this hire is mediocre or we don't know enough about this coach to have a strong opinion either way. Fact is, none of us knows anything about Ianello as a head coach because he's never been one before. So it's all down to pure guessing about how his non-head coaching experience will translate, though some are obviously more strongly opinionated about their guesses than others.

Maybe he's getting exactly what he wants right now, and he's prepared to live with the collateral damage. It's funny how so many people used to talk about how mature he was for his age from his late teens through his early 20s, and now some are making excuses that any immature actions may be due to the fact that he's "only 25." Maybe we just weren't seeing things quite so clearly before.

Goes to show that even I can fool some of the people some of the time.