Dave in Green

This is why I never watch or follow Zips games in DeKalb. It's the Zips' Bermuda Triangle. Looking at the box score in retrospect it appears that the Zips outperformed NIU in almost every statistical category except getting the ball to go through the hoop. Biggest mystery to me is why Jake played just 5 minutes. Maybe someone who watched can explain it to me. All of you who followed the game are really brave. I'd vote on leaving the MAC just to escape DeKalb.

I don't see an individual stat for this posted anywhere. Prior to this season Coach Dambrot had a 10-year regular season record in the MAC of 119-47 for a winning percentage of 72%. Taking half of those 166 MAC games (83) as home games, that means his teams would have had to win .88 X 83 or 73 home games to reach an 88% MAC home game winning record. Subtracting those 73 wins from his 119 MAC wins would leave him with only 46 of 83 MAC road wins for a road winning percentage of just 55%. Just guessing here, but I'd think his MAC home winning percentage is a little lower than 88% and his MAC road winning percentage is a little higher than 55%. Maybe someone wants to take the time to add up the individual season home and road MAC wins and losses.

If possible, one thing that would be helpful would be to convert that document from portrait to landscape and try to squeeze it all onto one page, which would make it a lot easier to compare various seasons than switching back and forth between page 1 and page 2. You might be able to squeeze the line spacing and maybe go down in font size to make it all fit on a landscape page. To add some perspective to JAR attendance, I've gone back and pulled a few numbers from previous posts I've made on the subject of college basketball attendance: 4,759 = earliest available average D-I home game attendance from the NCAA (1975-1976) 5,641 = peak average attendance (1994-1995) 4,817 = average attendance last season (2013-2014) Average college basketball attendance was generally on an upward trend for the two decades from 1975-1995, peaked, and has been generally on the decline for the last two decades from 1995-present. It's now just about back to where it was when the NCAA started publishing these numbers in 1976. 3,790 = average home attendance for all MAC teams 10 years ago (2003-2004) 2,869 = average home attendance for all MAC teams last season (2013-2014) 2,902 = average Zips home attendance 10 years ago (2003-2004) 3,609 = average Zips home attendance last season (2013-2014) Average Zips home attendance has gone up about 25% over the last decade at the same time that average MAC home attendance has gone down about 25%. UA and the MAC have been going in opposite directions over the past decade when it comes to spectator interest in basketball.

Every season for the past decade there have been about 200 D-I teams with easier SOS than the Zips. How many of those teams with easier schedules than the Zips have won 88% of their home games?

MAC and OOC averages do appear to be transposed in 2013/14 and also 2011/12 and 2009/10. MAC attendance should always be higher than OOC. And for 2014/15, the season average is shown as lower than both the MAC and OOC averages.

Z.I.P., sorry, I forgot you were so old. As we can all see now, Zach had a much better source than Wikipedia.

Balsy, nice work. It takes more time and effort to actually assemble data than it does to criticize data or speculate about it, and it takes even more time to properly analyze that data. The raw numbers are an important starting point without which further speculation is futile. But variables also need to be factored in, and there are many variables that affect attendance, such as weather, conflicting events, relative success of the Zips at the time, attractiveness of opponents, etc. It can't be reduced to a simple A=B as some want to do. It's a much more complex formula than that. You've provided an excellent starting point for a long and interesting discussion.

Z.I.P, I am disappointed that your Green education did not teach you the fundamentals of modern life. Please allow me to remind you how it's done: 1. Highlight and copy Zach's first sentence (All FBS teams must fund at least 90% of the scholarship limit of 85) 2. Paste into Google search window. 3. Hit enter. 4. Read Wikipedia hit. 5. Choose whether or not to believe Wikipedia. 6. (optional) Check other sources to see if they verify Wikipedia.

Have game, will travel.

Reggie McAdams is the guy I just came here to write about -- 31 points vs. CMU and 0 points vs. BGSU, 31/2 = 15.5. While Reggie's 31-point explosion shocked a lot of people, there were already signs that he's more valuable to the Zips than some might think. While some look only at individual stats like average points, shooting percentage, etc., there's a single stat that sums up many offensive contributions by a player and tells how efficient he is -- offensive efficiency rating. As Dean Oliver defines it in his 2004 book Basketball on Paper, "Individual offensive rating is the number of points produced by a player per hundred total individual possessions. In other words, 'How many points is a player likely to generate when he tries?'" The offensive rating calculation includes individual total possessions and individual points produced, with total possessions broken down into scoring possessions, missed FG possessions, missed FT possessions and turnovers. The complex version of the formula can be seen here. Looking at the current individual offensive efficiency ratings of all the Zips regulars tells an interesting story: 136.0 - Reggie 128.5 - Jake 118.4 - Deji 116.1 - Nyles 110.8 - Pat 103.0 - Kwan 101.6 - Noah 90.0 - Aaron 85.5 - BJ 82.1 - Isaiah 80.4 - Antino Offensive rating tends to favor catch-and-shoot 3-point shooters, so it should be no surprise that Reggie, Jake, Deji and Nyles rank highest among the Zips. On the other hand, ball handlers like Noah and Antino tend to rate lower as indicated above. So how does Reggie stack up nationally in offensive rating? 1. 146.61 - John Simons, Central Michigan 2. 142.35 - Joey Ptasinski, Lafayette 3. 141.55 - Kevin Pangos, Gonzaga 4. 139.94 - Josh Kozinski, Central Michigan 5. 137.61 - Devin Booker, Kentucky 6. 137.45 - James McGee, Southern Utah 7. 137.44 - Lorenzo Cugini, High Point 8. 137.14 - Javier Martinez, Tennessee-Martin 9. 136.44 - James Webb III, Boise State 10. 136.25 - Isaiah Williams, Iona 11. 136.05 - Reggie McAdams, Akron 37. 128.52 - Jake Kretzer, Akron Reggie is #11 (and Jake is #37). It's interesting to note that Reggie's big performance happened to come against the team (CMU) with the #1 and #4 ranked players. Going back to the description of offensive efficiency rating as how many points a player is likely to generate when he tries, maybe Reggie should be trying to score more points for the Zips, as his offensive rating suggests he would likely be more successful than most. For anyone interested in more on this subject, Jon Nichols wrote a piece called The Importance of Efficiency on Basketball-Statistics.com.

UAZipster0305, is that you, trimmy10?

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words. I was fortunate to be a journalist back in the good old days. I wouldn't want to be one in the current environment. It's nice to be able to write what I want when I want without editors sending me places I don't really want to go, as GT has to deal with. I just started a new thread called Stats in which I'll try to dig into obscure areas of Zips basketball that I find interesting when the spirit moves me. Hope you find some of them to be of interest. Most of them wouldn't fly in the modern newspaper world.

All you have to do to register is give them your e-mail address ... and then deal with the spam e-mail ads that will start showing up in your inbox.

After posting in the CMU game thread a comparison of Zips individual free throw shooting percentages, I thought it might be interesting to have a separate thread (like the officiating thread) where we could focus on numbers in various categories to see how they match up with our impressions about the Zips. Those who are interested in stats can follow this thread and hopefully contribute to the discussion while those who can't be bothered with stats will be pleased to see this discussion moved out of the game threads. For example, there have been references to this season's team as "young." But what does that really mean? How do the Zips compare with other teams? Fortunately statsheet.com has us covered. They have a list of all 351 D-I team rosters sorted from least experienced to most. It's pretty simple in that you give each player on the roster a number from 1 to 4 based on their class of freshman to senior, add up the numbers and divide by the number of players. Disclaimer: Zips are shown with 6 freshmen, and 3 each sophomores, juniors and seniors for a total of 15 players. That means they're counting walk-ons. The 3 seniors means they're also still counting Tree on the roster as Deji and Nyles are the only 2 seniors currently on the roster. So these numbers are not 100% accurate and are only roughly indicative of relative roster experience among teams. Binghamton is #1 with an average of just 1.46 -- halfway between freshman and sophomore. Other baby teams include #3 Southern California (who the Zips beat in Charleston) at 1.69 and #6 Kentucky (the classic one-and-done team) at 1.80. On the other end of the scale at #351 are the senior citizens of North Carolina Central with an average of 3.54 -- halfway between junior and senior. The Zips just make the top 100 youth teams at #94 with an average 2.42 -- halfway between sophomore and junior. Without Tree, they're actually a little younger than that. So while it's fair to say they're young, they aren't exactly babies compared with the youngest teams. You can also sort the list by conference and just show MAC teams. In that sort, the Zips (2.42) are the 2nd youngest team in the conference to Ball State (2.07) while Can't is the oldest at 3.30. Here are the links to the full list of D-I teams and the MAC conference only. Enjoy.

Fire marshal says spectators are not allowed to block any aisles in an arena, and clear paths must be maintained to all emergency exits. Where in the JAR is any standing room with a view of the court other than the aisles?

Skip, the NCAA approved additional autonomy for the power 5 conferences last year (note the MAC's comment at the very end of the linked story). If 75 of 345 D-I schools had objected, the measure would have been overridden. But only 27 filed objections (none from the MAC). The fear of the have-not schools was that if they had overridden the measure the power 5 conferences would have broken away from the NCAA.

In games, players generally shoot free throws at about 10 percentage points below their practice average. Dwight Howard, who shoots less than 50% from the free throw line in games, is said to hit 80% of his free throws in practice. Game pressure and fatigue have varying effects on different players, and are hard to replicate in an empty arena. Maybe some ZN.o members should volunteer to come to practice and harass Zips players when they're practicing free throws to help toughen them up for game conditions. You know, like, "Hey you big bozo you can't hit the side of a barn! Ha, another airball, you stink! Why don't you give up your scholarship to a worthy player!" I'll bet some forum members would be really good at that.

Free throw shooting and inbounding the ball against pressure are both concerns right now. Seems as if it wouldn't be too much trouble to practice some new inbound plays at the same time they're practicing their pressure defense. There's a bit of whac-a-mole here in prioritizing where limited practice time is spent. Ultimately it's up to the coaching staff to decide if letting some areas slide is worth the trade of spending more time in practice on other areas of the game. Free throw shooting is a common issue for many teams. Over the past 10 seasons the Zips have averaged close to the NCAA average of about 69% from the free throw line. At one point this season the Zips were hitting an above NCAA average 70%+ of their free throws. But their recent slide now has them at a below NCAA average 66.8% and ranked #239 in the country. Oddly enough, they're in some good company: 236. 66.9% Wichita State Missouri Valley 236. 66.9% Arizona State Pac-12 236. 66.9% Utah State Mountain West 239. 66.8 % Akron MAC 239. 66.8% Butler Big East 239. 66.8% Missouri SEC For the Zips it's really an individual problem. The top 5 free throw shooters are above the NCAA average but the bottom 6 are below average -- some way below: 95.0% Jake 77.4% Deji 76.7% Noah 75.0% Kwan 72.7% Reggie 68.4% Antino 62.5% Nyles 55.9% Pat 54.8% Isaiah 50.0% BJ 45.5% Aaron Looking at the below average guys, Antino started the season missing a lot of his early free throws as a raw freshman but has been steadily improving. I expect him to be over 70% before the season is over. BJ and Aaron have only recently started playing regularly, so like Antino I expect their free throw shooting to steadily improve with experience. Nyles is a disappointment because you generally expect shooting guards to be high percentage free throw shooters. Pat and Isaiah really hurt the team because they get fouled so much, so I'd focus on working with them along with Nyles.

8-13 from the field, check. 3-6 from the free throw line, check.

I doubt UA will sell more tickets than there are seats due to getting in trouble with the fire marshal. So I suppose it's possible that the JAR has more than the officially stated 5,500 spectator seats. Another possibility is that there are in fact 5,500 actual spectator seats, and anything over 5,500 reported attendance includes the media, those in wheel chairs, all the worker bees who don't actually sit in seats, etc.

Tree starts off his professional career with a typical Tree performance: Interesting that Jeremiah Wood is also now playing in Argentina.

I can speak from years of experience in this area. Every professionally run sporting event in the world has special media parking that is both convenient and free. Having the media cover your event is a bonus that every event promoter understands and caters to. The number of media covering Zips games is so small as to be inconsequential in terms of parking spaces. Free parking, free passes and free refreshments is a fair exchange for free media coverage. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

Overreacting in support of Zips fans is not all bad. I'd expect no less a defense from a truly great Zips fan like you. You may have in the back of your mind the ZN.o privacy rules. The moderators have made it clear that they have zero tolerance for anything that threatens the privacy of a forum member, which would include discussion trying to connect forum members to people seen at Zips events. Anyone who doubts the seriousness of this issue should read this Captain Kangaroo post.

Good call! Reggie had a great HS career and came to the Zips with a high rating. He did a lot more than just shoot 3s last night. Whatever lit his fuse needs to be repeated. Announced attendance was 3,513, not terrible but certainly less than this team deserves. If they can just put together a winning streak and create a little more buzz, maybe we can get closer to filling the JAR at more games. Everyone tell all your friends what they're missing.

It's hard to get into next season while in the middle of this one. But it is intriguing to think of the possibilities. Zips lose Deji and Nyles, who've played increasingly important roles this season. But we should have 9 players back who are currently in the rotation, and all will have an extra season of experience developing their own games plus working together. That's a mighty impressive lineup right there. Any contributions from incoming players Josh, Jimmond, Peter and Emmanuel could help raise the Zips another notch. Since we're losing two shooting guards from the rotation, Josh and Jimmond will get big opportunities to fill that hole.