Dave in Green

Not sure exactly what qualifies as an upset in the MAC this season. But since a lot of folks thought Eastern Michigan was hot stuff this season I'll go with Can't dropping EMU to 0-3 as the upset of the night. Certainly Toledo dropping OU to 0-3 is no longer in the realm of upset. Maybe Western Michigan taking 2 overtimes to hand Ball State its first conference defeat of the season is a little surprising. CMU beating Miami is no shock, but 105-77 is a little surprising. And Buffalo topping NIU was expected. Anyway, the East and West now have mirrored records of 4 teams each at 2-1, 1 team each at 1-2 and 1 team each at 0-3. EAST Akron 2-1 Buffalo 2-1 Can't 2-1 Bowling Green 2-1 Miami 1-2 Ohio 0-3 WEST Toledo 2-1 Western Michigan 2-1 Central Michigan 2-1 Ball State 2-1 Northern Illinois 1-2 Eastern Michigan 0-3

Let's not get confused by accounting methods. The fact that UA identifies most of a specific student fee as going toward athletics is purely an accounting method. To put this at a more basic level, all the money that comes into a university can be thought of as a single pile of cash, out of which everything the university does has to be paid from. UA could just as easily say that specific student fee is used exclusively for academic expenses and pay for athletics out of the general fund. In fact, that's what many schools do. So UA can't be faulted for lack of transparency. College athletics cost a fair amount of money and the money has to come from somewhere. The more successful you want the athletic programs to be the more it's going to cost. Everyone needs to make up their minds about how much of its total budget UA should dedicate to athletics and not be distracted by the accounting detail of whether the costs are assigned to a specific student fee or the general fund.

BG started the game with a lot of defensive intensity and the Zips had several turnovers and seemed to be a little lethargic and lost. Time for a shot of energy. Deji entered the game at 15:30 of the first half with the score tied 7-7. At 9:21 Deji scored on a dunk to cap his 13-point explosion over 6:09, as the Zips outscored BG 17-4 for a 24-11 lead. During that 6:09, Deji also had 2 of his 3 steals and an assist. BG would never recover. Except for the lethargic start, there was a lot to like tonight. The Zips played great defense, with Pat being especially effective (with help from Kwan) in limiting Richaun Holmes to just 10 points. Deji and the other guards were also good at guarding against the long ball, with BG hitting only 20% of their 3s. Aside from a few lazy passes that resulted in turnovers, I thought the passing game showed a lot of improvement tonight with many long pinpoint passes as the players are becoming more familiar with each other. The Zips also handled the press really well when Noah was on the floor, but struggled a little with Antino at the point. I expect Noah to help teach Antino how to avoid the traps that true freshmen PGs typically have trouble with early in their college careers. As a team the Zips had 8 blocked shots tonight. They're averaging about 5 blocks per game, which puts them among the top 50 teams in the country. For perspective, in Zeke's senior season the team averaged 5.7 blocks per season. Stat of the night is 84%. Anyone who can't guess what category that stat came in is forgiven because it's not what anyone would expect. That 84% is what the Zips averaged on 2-point field goal shooting. They hit 16-19 of their shots inside the arc, led by Pat's 5-5. I guess that's a sign that the Zips could do pretty well if they shot a higher percentage of 2-point to 3-point shots.

CK, Deji scored 13 points in about 7 minutes.

Deji for MVP.

Josh Williams sighting at the JAR.

I remember how surprised I was two years ago when I first discovered what a gem BG uncovered in the junior college ranks when they landed Richaun Holmes: Post #1 Post #2 Post #3

TCU did it the old-fashioned way -- TCU spends more on college football than any other team in Texas. You know, the stuff that UA doesn't have a lot of. Putting it in canine terms, there are schools with chihuahua athletic budgets and schools with pit bull athletic budgets. Now chihuahuas may run around behind a fence and yap a lot. But throw a chihuahua into a ring full of pit bulls and it gets torn to shreds. UA's football program lives on a chihuahua budget compared to pit bulls like TCU and tOSU. UA's football budget is already primarily built on student fees to a higher degree than most other programs, so there's no more juice to be squeezed out of that dried up fruit. Given similar resources, some athletic teams will invariably rise to the top and perform better than others. That's the nature of pure athletic competition. Given widely varying resources, the gap between the top and the bottom will increase exponentially.

What is grey shirting?

Here are the 5 games from 2 seasons ago where the Zips exceeded 4,500 at the JAR. Note that the Zips had won only 10 in a row when they drew the big crowd for Buffalo and that the 19-game winning streak ended before the Miami and Can't games. Note also that the OU and Can't games exceed the listed capacity of 5,500. Jan 26 Buffalo 5,403 Feb 2 Ohio 5,770 Feb 16 Bowling Green 5,247 Mar 5 Miami 5,189 Mar 8 Can't State 5,699

Over the past 2 seasons the Zips have had 8 MAC home games with more than 4,500 attendance and a few more just under 4,500.

Personally it doesn't affect me if the JAR's capacity is reduced by 1,000 because I'll still have my season tickets and reserved seat. My concern is for other fans and students who might get shut out of big games. UA needs to think this through very carefully and not be surprised by unintended consequences resulting from inadequate vision and planning.

JAR average attendance peaked at 3,782 just the season before last when the Zips had their best team with the long winning streak prior to a certain point guard exercising extremely bad judgment. Last season, when the Zips were not as good a team overall as the previous season, average attendance fell less than 200 per game to 3,609. It's too early to draw any conclusions about this season's attendance. Last season's MAC home opener drew only 300 more than this season's, and last year the Zips had already won two conference games on the road before the home opener. Individual game attendance is affected by weather, whether or not students are on campus, and many other variables. If the Zips can create a little buzz this season they will draw more fans. Right now a big buzz killer is that Tree is gone and some may be assuming the Zips are toast. By the way, the number I gave above for Loyola's average home game attendance was from 2012-2013. Last season attendance fell from about 2,300 per game to less than 2,000 as the Ramblers won 5 fewer games than the previous season. So that beautiful arena renovation by itself is not enough to increase attendance if the team doesn't continue winning.

The Gentile Center looks pretty nice from all the images I can find. I see only two problems. Number one, we don't know how the architecture of the buildings differ. It may or may not be possible to do the same thing with the JAR that was done with the Gentile Center. Number two, any all-chairback renovation of the JAR will result in about 3,000 bench seats turning into about 2,000 chairbacks, reducing capacity from about 5,500 to about 4,500. If average attendance at the JAR had dropped 25% over the last 10 years like the rest of the MAC, that might be reasonable. But JAR attendance is up 25% over the last 10 years. Reducing JAR capacity to 4,500 would put a cap on further UA basketball attendance growth. Loyola can get by with less seating than UA because they have 10,000 fewer students and only average about 2,300 attendance per game, about 1,300 per game less than the Zips did last season. So 4,500 capacity makes sense for Loyola but not necessarily UA. While attendance at college basketball games has been falling slightly overall, it has increased at schools with consistent winning programs and in the bigger conferences. Locking the Zips into a 4,500-seat arena should only be done if everyone agrees that Zips basketball is never going to get any better, is never going to end up in a bigger conference and is never going to have an attendance increase beyond the 25% growth over the past 10 years.

Here's a link to a comparison of current conference RPI. We all know RPI is imperfect, but average conference RPI is a commonly used system that provides at least rough conference strength estimates. I've followed this for years now, and the current #11 is as high as I've ever seen the MAC ranked. For many years the MAC was ranked from 15-20 before going to #12 last season and now #11. While the MAC has been going up in strength the Horizon has dropped down to #15. One challenge is finding another conference with 12 teams like the MAC. There are currently only 3 other 12-team conferences in the country, and none of them look to be viable options. The Pac-12 is too highly ranked to bother with the MAC and the Ohio Valley and Big Sky are ranked too low for the MAC to bother with. One impressive thing to note is that the MAC is currently ranked just behind the MVC (#10), which is usually ranked well ahead of the MAC. Another interesting point is that C-USA, a conference some have suggested that Akron try to move to, is way down at #17.

Of course Can't beat NIU, 67-65, to make a lot of 1-1 teams in the MAC. It shouldn't take long for Bowling Green and Ball State to join the other losers. It's really wide open this season. EAST Bowling Green 2-0 Akron 1-1 Buffalo 1-1 Can't 1-1 Miami 1-1 Ohio 0-2 WEST Ball State 2-0 Central Michigan 1-1 Northern Illinois 1-1 Western Michigan 1-1 Toledo 1-1 Eastern Michigan 0-2

Upsets continuing in the second round of MAC action today. So far: Miami (1-1) came back from 25 points behind to upset EMU (0-2) in OT, 82-81 WMU (1-1) upset Buffalo (1-1), 78-68 Ball State (2-0) surprisingly hammered CMU (1-1), 83-65 OU's (0-2) woes continue to grow with a bad 69-54 loss to Bowling Green (2-0) With only tonight's game between Can't (0-1) and Northern Illinois (1-0) remaining, Bowling Green and Ball State are currently the only undefeated MAC teams at 2-0.

I don't think there's a clear MVP yet. Surprisingly, Pat is the leading scorer, rebounder and shot blocker, which makes him a candidate. Noah's steady play at the point as a true freshman has been crucial to the team's success so far, which makes him a candidate. Deji has been a great 6th man off the bench, but MVPs are almost always starters. There's just no obvious star now that Tree is gone. It may take the rest of the season to see if one player separates himself from the rest to be an obvious MVP.

A couple of comments about Savage Arena have been made in the Toledo game thread. I thought it was appropriate to discuss in more detail in this thread. My first impression was that it's a lot nicer than the JAR. Then again, most arenas are. My second impression is that the seating on the team bench side of the arena has a much shallower pitch than the other side, and even shallower than the JAR. The rows go up at such a shallow angle that the last row at the top is miles away from the court. It's far from optimum for basketball. I saw other details that smacked of renovation rather than new construction. My overall impression is that even though it seats 7,300, it's not as fan friendly as the 5,100-seat TD Arena where the Zips played in the Charleston tournament. Savage Arena was originally built in 1976, a few years before the JAR, with seating for 9,000. It's not only much bigger than the JAR, it's built with long span trusses that allowed renovation into wraparound seating without the 4 big pillars in the corners that limit how much renovation can accomplish in the JAR. But it's still a compromised design compared with new, modern arenas, and the renovation cost a healthy $30 million in 2008. The JAR is so bad that almost anything looks better, and Savage Arena is certainly a quality renovation starting from an original design that was already superior to the JAR. But I've yet to see a renovation that compares with the best new, modern designs.

I wouldn't say that Kwan has established himself as the Zips' MVP. But with the early departure from the team of Tree and Harney the Zips are thin on experienced forwards who can shoot, rebound and defend opposing teams' athletic forwards. As a matter of fact, Kwan is the only pure forward left on the Zips roster. All the others are either centers, wings or guards with the exception of BJ who's listed as a wing/forward. Jake and Reggie lack some of Kwan's abilities and BJ and Aaron (a guard playing backup power forward) are still too raw and inexperienced to fill Kwan's shoes. Prior to this game Kwan was tied for second leading scorer and was second leading rebounder. He leaves a pretty big hole in the Zips lineup when he's not playing.

Of course there were questionable calls in the Toledo game. Seated in the 3rd row with an unobstructed view of bodies banging together 25 feet away, I unquestionably saw some slight touches draw whistles and some hard body slams not. But that's the nature of the game. The refs don't get all the calls right and shouldn't be expected to. All you can ask for is that the mistakes average out over many games to 50% in your favor and 50% against you. To reach that 50-50 average, there may be some games when they're 75-25 for or against you. Over the long haul 50-50 officiating mistakes for and against is the reality we all have to live with, except for those who may believe in some kind of sinister conspiracy against UA. Coach Dambrot gave the following opinion after the game: And there you have it from the coach's mouth taking full responsibility. The Zips have to play a little smarter and adjust to the way the game is being called. Any team with 4 freshmen in the rotation is going to take more time to get the experience to become smarter and adjust to these kinds of situations. The Zips have to continue working on playing tough defense without making the kind of minor mistakes that catch the attention of the refs and draw the dreaded whistle.

We covered the Bowden-at-Auburn issue pretty well in this thread.

Let's get this out of the way up front: The Zips came into this game as underdogs for a reason. Toledo has a talented, well-balanced team led by veterans. Brown, Weatherspoon and Drummond are all seniors and Boothe is a junior. They played like talented veterans with their backs to the wall after being upset in their conference season opener. This was as much a statement game for them as WMU was for the Zips. With all of that, the Zips played them even for the first half in a tough road game even with an 11-6 disadvantage in personals over the first 20 minutes. I think the game would have been closer had Kwan not been hurt. On a successful shot block by Kwan, he was clobbered by a Toledo player (no foul called) and sustained a serious hip pointer that sent him to the bench and required ice. He wasn't able to play the rest of the first half, and was only able to limp through the first 3 minutes of the second half for a total of 9 minutes. His absence on the floor for the other 20 minutes he'd normally play left a hole the Zips couldn't plug in scoring, rebounding and defense. Kwan started the game defending Weatherspoon, and Kwan's length and quickness was effective in holding him in check. When guarded by a healthy Kwan, Weatherspoon scored 1 point on a free throw (the foul was not on Kwan). After Kwan was hurt Weatherspoon scored 16. The other Zips who tried to cover Weatherspoon in Kwan's absence didn't have the length, athleticism and experience to keep him in check. As Weatherspoon became more effective it opened up the floor for other Toledo players. Having a healthy Kwan guarding Weatherspoon the whole game may not have resulted in a Zips win, but it would have been closer. It wasn't all bad news for the Zips. The Zips' center combination of Pat/Big Dog outperformed the Rockets' Boothe/Garber combo, outscoring them 14-11 and outrebounding them 11-7. The Zips have an advantage at center over every other team in the MAC, including Toledo. And the margin of victory would have been greater if the Zips hadn't outperformed their season average free throw shooting by hitting a commendable 87% (13-15). Considering all of the above, I expect the younger Zips to continue improving and have a solid chance of beating Toledo when they meet again Feb. 18 at the JAR.

Kwan warming up. No more ice pack. Looks to still be in pain. His shooting is off.

Kwan on the bench with an ice bag on his side.