Dave in Green

Some of the rationale for using athletics to market colleges is cited on IMG's website here. UA is one of IMG's 90 university clients, serviced by the IMG College arm of the marketing conglomerate. When IMG was sold in 2013 for $2.3 billion, Forbes wrote the following about how IMG College affected the sale price:

There's a perception issue when student fees are specifically identified for athletics because some people simply aren't interested in athletics, or at least spending a lot of money on athletics. That portion of the student fee should be identified as marketing and community relations expenses, because that's the way athletics are used today. There are plenty of studies about the marketing value of athletics cited by universities to justify some level of investment. The key question would be exactly how much is worth spending based on return on the dollar compared with other marketing options? In the current economic climate of increasing college costs and flat income for most of the workforce, it's pretty reasonable to expect students and parents to question how their fees are spent by universities. A good case can be made that a prudent investment in athletics can produce good marketing and community relations returns, but there will always be a debate over exactly how much is appropriate. On the other side of the equation are economic forces pulling for increased spending on athletics. Student athletes are demanding to be paid for their services and are in the process of unionizing. Professional football coaches are leaving the NFL to take plum college coaching positions that pay even more millions than the pro league. Fans are demanding nicer facilities and more wins from their teams, which all requires more and more investment. Where is the point of diminishing returns? Will college athletics continue to grow indefinitely or has the bubble become unsustainably large and getting close to bursting? Where does UA fit into this ecosystem and what's the best strategy for success over the long haul?

Yep, I should have noted that they were more than 3 years ahead of the most recent iteration of questioning student fees.

If the object is to score more points, the Zips are currently more proficient at shooting the 3 ball than the 2 ball, as the simple math presented earlier indicates (for every 2-point attempt they're scoring .918 points vs. 1.059 points for every 3-point attempt). Again, the balance of 2s vs. 3s is out of kilter for several reasons. First, Tree was the Zips' primary inside scorer before leaving the team. Second, Big Dog was expected to provide more inside scoring than he's been able to so far. Third, none of the other players on the roster has been able to take up the slack. The result is that the Zips have so far had to rely more on the 3 than originally planned when the season began. Even shooting more 3s than originally intended, the Zips are pretty close in 3-point performance to a team many hold up as an example of what they'd like the Zips to be -- VCU. Of all field goal attempts the percentage of 3-pointers for VCU is 36.0% vs. 37.4% for UA, and VCU hits 36.5% of their 3s vs. 35.3% for UA. So in those categories UA is on par with a winning major program. Like Coach Smart, I'm sure that Coach Dambrot has thoroughly analyzed the skills and abilities of all the players on the roster and is trying to use each of them in the way that produces the best overall team performance. If it means shooting more or fewer 3s, that's just one of many aspects of the game. Stats can give you an idea of what's happening in various areas of the game. But the most important thing is that the mix of all individual aspects of the game results in more wins than losses.

Once again, Can't journalism students are on top of it: Examining the University Bill

Pat, Big Dog, Kwan, Jake, Reggie, etc., all played both last season and this one, so that's a wash. You need to look at who played last season who's not currently on the team and who's playing this season who didn't play last season. Gone from last season: Nick (6-8) Tree (6-7) Q (6-6) Melo (5-11) New this season: Aaron (6-8) BJ (6-6) Noah (6-2) Antino (5-11) Average player height across the roster is down less than a half inch this season, so the Zips are only slightly smaller overall. What's more important are individual player skill sets as well as depth and playing time at each position. Center is the same with Pat and Big Dog. But Tree gave the Zips a low post presence at power forward that no one on the current roster comes close to matching. You can't just take an oversize wing like Kwan and magically transform him into a Tree clone. Outside of the center position the Zips are loaded with players who are more proficient at 3-point shooting than battling in the paint (Tree) or driving the lane (Q and Nick). BJ and Aaron are the wild cards.

Peter should arrive at UA fairly well developed as a player since his HS coach has produced more than 900 wins at Greensboro Day and has previously coached a list of players including Shane Battier, Metta World Peace, Elton Brand, Baron Davis, and most recently, 2014 Los Angeles Lakers lottery pick Julius Randle. Coaches’ Korner: Fred Johnson Wins His 900th Game

Not sure how long he's been in the U.S., but he still has a strong Nigerian accent.

That little guard from Coppin is 5-10, 165-pound senior Taarig Cephas, the team's leading assist man, second leading scorer and third leading rebounder. He had great quickness and hustle against the Zips, getting 7 steals, 8 assists and 10 rebounds. Four seasons ago as a freshman he probably looked a lot like Antino. Noah got a pretty good schooling there that finally knocked some of the calm demeanor out of him, put a little fire in his eyes and caused him to aggressively attack the rim late in the game. As good as Noah is, he's still a true freshman with lots of D-I college lessons to be learned.

A little insight on Big Dog from the ABJ:

Tonight Miami took undefeated and #3 ranked Virginia into double overtime before losing. Miami's for real. Also tonight, the same South Carolina the Zips beat in Charleston upset #9 Iowa State to raise their season record to 9-3.

Zips are shooting a higher percentage of 3s because they lost their leading 2-point scorer (Tree) and the player who's picked up most of Tree's minutes (Kwan) is a better 3-point shooter than inside scorer. They could use a little better balance of inside vs. outside scoring, and that will require other players stepping up their inside games. But the results are not as bad as they might seem. So far this season the Zips have hit 45.9% of their 2-point attempts and 35.3% of their 3-point attempts. That means for every 2-point attempt they're scoring .918 points vs. 1.059 points for every 3-point attempt.

Correction: BJ did play the first 6 minutes of the second half against Marshall. Not sure why BJ went to the locker room tonight and then returned but didn't play after that. He looked more confident and under control in his 5 minutes tonight before leaving the floor. Coach is bringing him along slowly. If BJ keeps progressing he may get more minutes later in games. Same with Aaron who's starting to get more minutes and playing more under control and with more confidence. But the confidence award tonight has to go to Big Dog, who matched his career high with 13 points. He played more like he was at the end of last season. It's just one game, so we'll have to see if this gives him the boost he needs to start performing like this on a more regular basis. It seemed as if the Zips had way too many turnovers, but it turns out they only had 10 while Coppin had 22. Coppin just plays a wild mayhem game that makes it appear that everything is out of control.

No.

BJ, Aaron and Big Dog all looking better.

LZip, that's a great site for playing the numbers game. Looked through a bunch of items, and the one I got the biggest kick out of was this:

Dear Alone in Ashland, The world can be a harsh place for minorities. My suggestion for you is to stop hanging out with elitists, even if they're from your own family. Spend all your time with like-minded people, even if it results in a small circle of friends. If none live nearby, try setting up a computer in your basement and spend most of your time on a forum with like-minded people. Shutting out the real world is a valid strategy for those who become emotionally distraught over a feeling of not fitting in. By the way, what's a "MAC?" Signed, Abby Normal

Not many MAC-level teams have two 6-10+ true centers who can effectively play the low post and legitimately challenge each other for the starting position. The Zips were poised to have that this season before Big Dog's wrist fracture. The best scenario would be if Pat and Big Dog pushed each other to higher levels than they would otherwise reach if not challenged. Big Dog was moving ahead at the end of last season and Pat has clearly moved back ahead so far this season. It's now up to Big Dog to answer the challenge and prove over the course of this season that he's still a worthy challenger to Pat. With Tree gone, it's more critical to have an effective center in the low post at all times to rebound and guard the paint.

Josh has always been a combo guard who could run the point but also score in bunches. At 6-2 he's not especially tall for a shooting guard, but he's 3 inches taller than the Zips' current starting 2, 5-11 Nyles Evans. If Josh doesn't end up redshirting, it's likely that he and Jimond Ivey (6-4 combo guard) will be competing for the starting and backup 2 position next season.

I didn't check back far enough. Miami and Dayton first played in 1909, then again in 1917. When they met for the 3rd time in 1936 it was the beginning of a home-away series that has continued for more than 75 years. Miami and Dayton have a long history of rivalry. UA has played Dayton 13 times over the years, starting in the same 1936-37 season that the Dayton-Miami home-away series began. The first 2 games were played in Akron and the Zips won both. Of the last 11, 10 have been played in Dayton, which makes it pretty obvious that Dayton does not want to play in Akron. Coach Dambrot made a special effort to get Dayton on the schedule, agreeing to play in Dayton in his first season as Zips head coach (2004-2005) and again in 2007-2008. He was finally able to get Dayton to play at Akron for the first time in more than 60 years during the 2008-2009 season, perhaps helped by Dayton having ASVSM grad Marcus Johnson on their roster and thinking it benefited their recruiting to play one game in the Akron area. The Zips also traveled to Dayton again in the 2010-2011 season. So Coach Dambrot managed to get Dayton on the Zips schedule 4 times in his first 7 seasons as head coach, but Dayton agreed to play only 1 of those 4 games in Akron. This all suggests that Coach Dambrot would welcome a regular home-away series with Dayton and has tried to make it happen, but Dayton is only interested in playing the Zips in Dayton and not in Akron.

Skip nailed it. Coach Dambrot has said that Pat's biggest problem was lacking confidence in himself, and there was no sign that he would suddenly find it this season. Big Dog developed well over last season for a true freshman big and did a lot of work in the off-season that had many close to the program believing he would beat out Pat for the starting center position this season. We now know that Pat stepped up big time with Tree's departure and surprised a lot of people with his increase in self-confidence when the team most needed him. All we know for sure about Big Dog is that he had a serious broken wrist that caused him to miss much of training season and some early games, and that he's having a hard time catching up with his promising development curve from last season. We don't really know how much of Big Dog's problems are physical and how much are psychological. But for some combination of reasons he seems to have lost some of the self-confidence he showed last season and appears to be frustrated that he can't perform at the level he expected of himself and others expected of him. The good news is that players who look lost early in their careers can make big breakthroughs at any time. I'd hate to think how much this team would have lost this season if Deji had transferred to a D-II program as some on here were suggesting when he was struggling to get it. We just need to be patient and hope that Big Dog has his Deji moment sooner rather than later.

Following up on free throw shooting in general, it's been remarkably stable in college basketball over the past 50 years. NCAA figures show that the free throw shooting percentage for all players has averaged right around 69% almost every season, never falling lower than 67.1% and never rising as high as 70%. By that measure the Zips' top 5 free throw shooters listed above are all above average. As a team, the Zips are currently shooting 68.8%, which makes them neither good nor bad but just about dead average.

Did you also feel the same about Tree not playing at the end of close games? Seriously, if free throw shooting is the primary qualification for being on the floor at the end of close games, then here's your top 5 free throw shooters regardless of size or playing position: 94.4% = Jake 87.2% = Deji 78.3% = Kwan 72.2% = Noah 70.0% = Antino But others have already suggested that Jake needs less minutes and Antino is a turnover waiting to happen. Poor Coach Dambrot isn't going to know whose advice to take. Anyway, the 2 next best free throw shooters are: 66.7% = Nyles 61.4% = Pat One compromise at the end of close games is to try to sub in your best free throw shooting ball handlers on offense and your big defenders on defense. But there will be times when you can't sub players every time the ball changes hands and you're going to have players with different skill sets on the floor including some who aren't the greatest free throw shooters.

Right, Skip. It was the season before in Dayton where the Zips took them to 2 overtimes before losing by 2. Two tough games in a row like that didn't make it an attractive ongoing series for an A-10 power like Dayton that's not supposed to struggle against MAC teams.

Dayton travels so well that they had a huge cheering section of hundreds of Dayton fans when they played at the JAR. VCU had very few fans at the JAR, so I'd say VCU attracted way more Akron fans than Dayton did. Coach Dambrot really liked the home-away series with Dayton. But after that close call at the JAR, Dayton dropped UA and replaced the Zips with a home-away series with Miami that's continued over the past six seasons. Only Dayton can say why they prefer an ongoing series with Miami rather than UA. Maybe they prefer the 80-mile Miami round-trip drive to the 400-mile Akron round-trip. As far as attracting bigger name schools than Dayton, VCU, Temple, etc., I think most Zips fans understand that there is absolutely nothing to be gained by a really big name team traveling to Akron. They would not get much credit for beating UA, and a loss would be terrible for their NCAA tournament resume. That's why the big name programs play most of their OOC games at home and only rarely travel to a smaller name school.