Dave in Green

Maybe Coach Dambrot secretly reads ZN.o and waits to make the big change everyone wanted just when everyone had given up. How about these final game minutes: 37 - Tree 36 - Jake 34 - Q 28 - Melo 27 - Nick 13 - Big Dog 10 - Reggie 9 - Pat 6 - Nyles Coach really rode the strong horses tonight, but who would have guessed who all those horses would be? Tree and Jake aren't that big a surprise because they both have great motors. But I'd just posted in another thread before the game started that Q hadn't really shown that he had 30+ minutes in him. And whoever imagined in their wildest dreams that Melo could play a strong 28 minutes without going down with leg cramps? What a contrast with Toledo that always starts the same players who play the same minutes game after game. The Zips are Forrest Gump's box of chocolates.

Harney has half of the Zips turnovers -- 6 of 12.

7 first half turnovers -- just slightly less than their season average.

Interesting minutes played during first 20 minutes: 19 - Tree 18 - Nick 17 - Jake 16 - Q 10 - Melo 8 - Reggie 4 - Nyles 4 - Pat 4 - Big Dog Much longer minutes than usual for Nick and Jake with much shorter minutes for the centers (Pat and Big Dog), and more minutes for Melo than Nyles. Hard to argue with the results so far.

@skip-zip, checking a number of team RPI values on the Zips sheet vs. Live RPI shows that most are not exactly the same but all are pretty close to current RPI. If that sheet is identical to the way the NCAA does it, then my assumption was wrong and it's the final season RPI that counts. So you don't get full credit for beating a team that may have been much stronger when you beat them than they end up at the end of the season. I suppose the counterargument is that you get more than full credit for beating a team that was weaker when you beat them than they end up at the season's conclusion, and that it all balances out. Thanks for questioning that. @The Hip Zip, it's not so much that I love stats and numbers. In fact I find them annoying in the sense that it takes time to look them up and then try to translate their significance. In my case, I just like to doublecheck what I think I'm seeing against other measures of what's happening, and stats and numbers can be useful tools in helping develop a more complete and accurate understanding of things.

Like it or not, here's the reality of Q. As a junior he averaged 25 minutes per game. This season he's averaging 27 minutes per game. His PT was flat through most of his junior season, and it's been flat most of this season. His minutes are not increasing as the season goes on. We all know how important Q is to the overall performance of this team. So does Coach Dambrot, who would like nothing more than to have Q on the floor 30+ minutes per game like Tree. But Q doesn't have Tree's endurance. When Q's on the floor, he gives it all he's got on both ends of the court. He literally burns himself out. I've seen him at times look exhausted, and that's when his performance starts deteriorating. So there will be about 13 minutes or about a third of each game when Q is not going to be on the floor. If he starts, there will be big gaps in the game when he's on the bench. Pick your poison.

The ABJ story I linked to earlier in this thread confirms what your source said: So that should have completed his academic requirements as a junior and makes him eligible to return as an academically eligible senior. But the 5-year clock starts the minute a student first enrolls in college and doesn't stop just because a player sits out a season. If Alex doesn't come back next season to complete his 4th season of play, his 5-year clock will expire and he will no longer be eligible to play after the end of next season.

To the best of my knowledge the opponent's RPI at the time you beat them is what counts at the end of the season. Otherwise you could beat a top 50 team when they're at full strength, and if that team for instance later lost their three top players to injuries and their record and RPI cratered at the end of the season, you wouldn't be getting credit for what at the time was a much better win than the opponent's final RPI might show. You can see where the top 50 wins and losses are called out on the Zips NCAA Selection Sheet right here.

Yes, twice -- 11 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 6, and 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 26, according to their schedule.

Over the years I've read lots of stories about recruits following a coach or assistant coach from one school to another. Ideally you'd want members of your coaching staff to use the school and program as the primary recruiting tools. But some recruits and their families are always going to be more swayed by personal relationship, and if the person doing the recruiting moves from one school to another, a certain percentage of their recruits can be expected to follow. Sometimes your school benefits by gaining an incoming coach's recruits and sometimes it loses recruits along with departing coaching staff. It's all part of the game.

Skepticism is valid because we can never be 100% sure about anyone due to people not being 100% predictable. Some who've been caught doing something wrong can become completely rehabilitated model citizens and some can backslide. I think that most of us want to reward those we consider good risks to be rehabilitated and avoid enabling those who are likely to backslide. The best we can do is consider the relative seriousness of the transgression, try to measure how well a person has progressed since their wrongdoing and use the most accurate sociological tools available to estimate that individual's likelihood of remaining straight if given another chance. There's almost never universal agreement on the best course of action because, like weather forecasting, it's an imprecise science.

Skip, I do respect your position. I think we all want the best outcome based on the best knowledge we have available to us. The information that's publicly available leaves room for interpretation. For example, I think the fact that he admitted to police that he might have done it again showed an admirable degree of honesty. He didn't have to admit that and no one could have ever proved that he had an intention to. To me that's a sign that someone is not incorrigible, and from what I've read I think the prosecutor was also impressed with his total honesty. The parole violation remains a mystery. But the fact that it resulted in only 48 hours incarceration suggests to me it may have been an unintentional minor technical violation. A serious violation would have had more serious consequences. I have confidence that all circumstances would be carefully considered, including details that aren't available to us, before any decision is made on his possible reinstatement.

Pomeroy may have EMU at #95. But the really important number is RPI, where Live RPI has them at #44. Why is that so important? Because there's a callout on the NCAA tournament selection committee sheet for top 50 RPI wins. A top 50 RPI win on the road can make a difference in NCAA tournament seeding should the Zips get there. When's the last time the Zips had a top 50 RPI win on the road? No matter what anyone here thinks about EMU's real strength, RPI loves them because they had the #5 toughest OOC SOS in the country with games against Syracuse, Kentucky, Duke and UMass among others. EMU's 2-3 zone will be a serious challenge for the Zips to crack.

I've never seen a truer statement about fans on this forum.

I remember reading all the newspaper stories. What sticks out in my mind is what the prosecutor had to say in court on the day Alex pled guilty: Certainly there could be an enormous benefit to Alex from being able to come back and prove on a public stage that he's learned from his mistake, is completely rehabilitated and sincerely wants to be a productive member of society. In any case, it's not a decision that will be made by counting votes on a sports forum from people who've read a few newpaper stories. It's a decision that will be made by responsible adults working with the best available information trying to do what's best for everyone involved.

To the best of my knowledge, no details have ever been published about this. If it was an inadvertent minor violation of an obscure legal technicality, that would be a lot different from deliberately thumbing your nose at the law. Since none of us is ever likely to have access to all the details, we're going to have to rely on the good judgment of Coach Dambrot and other UA officials who would be making any decision on the basis of more factual data than we'll ever see.

@RACER, BJ Gladden and Aaron Jackson will likely be used next season to fill Q's role at the wing. No one currently on the roster has yet shown they'd be able to adequately replace Q's time at the point. The Zips appear to be in good shape next season at all positions except PG.

Good advice. I'll start skipping over weedy posts.

Interesting comments about the Boston Celtics interest in Zeke. Before the NBA draft I'd heard a vague rumor that the Celts were interested in Zeke, but couldn't find anything solid and never mentioned it here. Marla Ridenour: Former UA standout Zeke Marshall in NBA’s D-League Ex-Zip Marshall finding his way in D-League

+1

Comparing the talent of this season's players who actually play (non-redshirted) to last season's players really comes down to comparing four departed players with their four replacements because the rest of the roster is the same. Alex Abreu, Zeke Marshall, Chauncey Gilliam and Brian Walsh were replaced by: Nyles Evans, Isaiah Johnson, Kwan Cheatham and Quincy Diggs. Of course with the younger players we can only estimate raw talent because they haven't really had the same chance to show all they've got that the departing upperclassmen demonstrated over multiple seasons. But for this season's team to be more talented than last season's team, the second four players would have to prove over time to be more talented than the first four.

You keep talking in generalities, and generalities can't be measured. Please let me know when you come up with something more specific, and I'll give you some metrics that may or may not support your theory. But if it appears to be a game of continually moving the goal posts, I'll take that to mean that there's no interest in engaging in serious discussion.

Here's what I think about Alex returning. It absolutely cannot be about making the basketball team better. It has to be all about giving a second chance to someone guilty of a temporary lapse of good judgment if there's a high degree of confidence that person has taken all the appropriate steps to prove that they are truly reformed and can be counted on to be a good citizen in the future. It has to have the full support of Coach Dambrot, the team and UA that it's the right thing to do for a young man who is worthy of their confidence. If Alex should return for all the right reasons and then have a relapse of bad judgment, it would be damaging to Coach Dambrot, the team and UA. That's what makes the decision so terribly difficult. The easy thing to do with the lowest risk is to simply dump anyone who makes the slightest mistake and offer no one a chance to right their lives. But often the right thing to do is not the easiest or the one with the least risk.

That was a lot better than watching Zeke on YouTube. The first treat was watching him practicing monster jams during warmups. At the end of the day I'm happy to be able to report that Zeke passes the eye test and belongs in the NBA D-League. He's a lot different from the Zeke we used to see at the JAR and the Zeke who looked a little lost in his first few D-League games. He was way more aggressive and way more confident. He was much stronger boxing out on rebounds and was even better blocking out defenders to clear a path to the bucket for his teammates. He showed great on-court communication with his teammates, especially calling for the pick and roll where he showed good moves to the bucket. It was apparent watching the game flow today that the Red Claws played better when Zeke was in the game. That was confirmed by the +/- stats that showed Zeke with the highest rating on his team today at +7 (second best was a +2) while starting center Ty Walker ended up at -12. His biggest problem was personal fouls. The D-League is pretty rough, with some contact worthy of an NFL game. But Zeke kept drawing small bump fouls, and eventually fouled out with several minutes to play. He still needs to get a better understanding of what D-League refs consider worthy of a whistle as he did his senior season at UA with college refs. The main thing is that he hasn't stalled out. He's still getting better and may yet work his way up to that next step. It was almost like being at the JAR, seeing and chatting with Captain Kangaroo, Doug Snyder, GameChngr44 and the rest of Zeke's family, Coach Dambrot, Terry Weigand, Charles Thomas, Steve McNees, Q, Nick, Jake, Aaron and probably some others I'm leaving out. Most of all it was great getting a chance to shake Zeke's hand after the game and tell him "You belong out there."

Unfortunately, 70% free throw shooting (about NCAA average) would have only added 3 points to the Zips' total, which would only have reduced the final margin from 14 to 11. But eventually there will come a close game where 3 points could make the difference between winning and losing.