Dave in Green

Not so fast: How Rajon Rondo spent his two hours as a Maine Red Claw

Hilltopper and I have bought some nice seats in the 7th row at court center. Looking forward to seeing Zeke on court and also maybe getting a chance to say hello if GameChngr44 has had any luck setting up a few minutes where we can meet him after the game.

I just wanted to follow up and say how much I appreciate your passion for Zips basketball. Misinterpretation is common on forums. For example, criticisms of Coach Dambrot can be misinterpreted as being mean-spirited attacks, and questioning of perceived attacks can be misinterpreted as being overprotective. You've made it crystal clear that you're not a basher but a concerned fan who only wants the best for Coach Dambrot and the Zips. I also wanted to make sure you had read the George Thomas story about the lack of communication that's been hurting the Zips this season. It goes into detail about previous Zips teams having better chemistry than this season. Among all the interesting points made by the players in that story is a quote from Coach Dambrot that specifically addresses the blown play the Zips tried to execute against OU at the end of regulation:

Another slow start and another strong finish for the Zips. With three of Miami's starters playing 33+ minutes and slowing down late in the second half, the Zips' finishers were rested enough to finish them off in the end. Two players off the Zips bench played more minutes than all but one starter, and a third player off the bench played more minutes than all but two starters. Coach Dambrot's strategy of not starting all of his finishers has paid off so far with the Zips being the only undefeated team in the MAC after three games. It's an unconventional strategy that makes some observers uncomfortable. But it appears to be making opponents even more uncomfortable.

It's hard to get excited about spending valuable time participating in a competition to determine who's the best cheater. Seriously, these "contests" have nothing at all to do with producing a legitimate winner. They're all about driving additional traffic to websites. The more hits they get on their website, the higher rate they can charge advertisers. Those who spend a lot of time casting extra votes are essentially working with no compensation to make more money for the folks running the websites.

@1981grad, some players perform better and contribute more to the team as starters and some coming off the bench. Coaches experiment with different lineups to see how each player responds under different conditions and how team performance is affected. Q has a long track record of producing his best results coming off the bench, as demonstrated by his MAC Sixth Man of the Year Award. The winning formula with Q has been to bring him off the bench about 3-4 minutes into the game, play him longer minutes throughout the game than any other player but Tree, and have him on the floor to finish the game. I don't think that Coach Dambrot is going to mess with this proven formula this deep into the season, but I've been surprised by coaching decisions before.

It's more important to finish with your best 5. Fast finishes overcome slow starts. Q must be fresh enough at the finish to finish fast.

Heck, Reggie or Nick are perfectly capable of bringing the ball upcourt one-on-one as long as the defense isn't pressing or trapping. So is Deji, for that matter. And if the defense does go to press or trap, Q could become the outlet. Let Q come upcourt without the added responsibility of protecting the ball. Let one of the others dribble the ball upcourt and hand it to Q after he's had a chance to survey the defensive set. Then let Q trigger the offense with a pass, drive and dish, drive and shoot or shoot from the outside. Conserve Q's energy for doing what he does best, especially near the end of close games.

In the typical D-League offense, centers are expected to create their own shots off of rebounds. So the most important offensive play for Zeke to excel in is offensive rebounding. Last night, Zeke had 6 offensive rebounds -- twice as many as any other player on the floor. Those 6 offensive rebounds led to most of Zeke's field goal attempts, and he made 4-7. He added 5 defensive rebounds for a total of 11, most for his team and tied with a player on the opposing team. This is noteworthy for a guy who was not considered a great rebounder in college. If Zeke keeps steadily progressing in his rebounding and putbacks, he may catch the attention of an NBA team. He needs to learn to love rebounding at the pro level with the same intensity that he loved blocking shots in HS and college.

@jupitertoo, Nyles is a junior and a year older than Melo, who's a sophomore. Even though Nyles' added experience over Melo is at the juco level, he's not younger than Melo in any sense of the word. That's why there were higher expectations for him. I agree with you that Q needs to be the primary ball handler, especially toward the end of close games. But he can't run that pace the whole game. Nyles and Melo have to carry some of that load, if only early in the game. The Zips can't afford to run Q into the ground and have him playing at half speed in crunch time. On the issue of carrying the ball, Q has a unique style that makes it appear that he's carrying the ball more than other players. Q has such long strides that his dribbles are much longer than typical ball handlers, who are usually smaller. Throw in his speed and ability to change directions quickly, and the illusion of carrying the ball more than smaller ball handlers is magnified.

@pdt1420, good description of how D-League ball is played and how Zeke's style of play fits into that. As a D-League freshman, at times Zeke looks like he did as a freshman at UA adjusting to a higher level of play. To succeed in the D-League, he needs to look more like he did as a senior at UA, but he doesn't have 3 years to get there. He did end up scoring his first double-double with 12 points and 11 rebounds, leading his team in rebounding. But his team absolutely collapsed in the 2nd half, shooting less than 30% from the field in the second half and going from a 70-56 halftime lead to a 120-107 loss. The Red Claws' record fell to 8-12, so they're not exactly burning up the D-League. Zeke ended up playing a full 35 minutes, by far his longest minutes of the season. Hopefully Zeke will also get long minutes when the Red Claws play in Canton next Monday and we can get a chance to evaluate his performance live instead of on a computer monitor.

Maine's starting center, Ty Walker, left the game at 4:48 of the first quarter and hasn't returned. Zeke ended up playing 18:45 in the first half, scoring 10 points and grabbing 7 rebounds as the Red Claws ran up a 70-56 halftime lead.

Zeke just had his best quarter as a pro in the fist quarter of this game -- 2-2 field goals, 3-5 free throws, 2 rebounds, 1 steal. Zeke was tied for second leading scorer in the first quarter with 7 points. He was on the floor for 8:36 of the 12-minute quarter -- third most of any player on his team. He's slowly working his way into a prominent position in the rotation.

@johnnyzip84, I absolutely agree with you. If the Zips look past Miami to Toledo they could be in big trouble. In fact I almost posted earlier that starting a Toledo thread before the Miami game was over might bring bad luck. In this case, my one step at a time comment was strictly focused on the national TV aspect, which the Miami game lacks.

Understood. The Zips still have a way to go to be in demand for prime time national TV. But you don't get there overnight from being previously ignored. You have to earn your way by putting on a good show in whatever time slot they initially give you. Zips need to put on a really good show Saturday. One step at a time.

We all agree that the starting time is not ideal. The real question is whether the tradeoff for national television is worth a few sacrifices to help elevate the program. This is really the same issue as the Zips' messed-up early schedule this season. It was a terrible strain on the team, and some on this forum complained for weeks. But it resulted in more national TV and future invitations to more prestigious tournaments. Would everyone be willing to trade a more even schedule and more regular starting times in exchange for less national TV and less prestigious tournaments like the Zips used to get?

In HS, Bill Edwards was Ohio Senior Player of the Year in 2009. His 24 points against WMU in his first game of the season was no fluke. He's a really talented player who has been cursed with injuries. After playing in 26 games as a true freshman at Penn State, where he played through a knee injury, Edwards transferred to Miami and sat out a year. Two seasons ago he showed promise in Miami's first 7 games, but sat out the rest of the season with a wrist injury. Last season he started out strong only to have a season-ending knee injury after only 5 games. Miami is a much better team when Edwards is healthy than they were in their first 12 games of this season while he was out. At 6-6, 245, he's built a lot like Javon McCrae.

I think the concept of "car sharing" was pioneered on the Can't campus several years back by at least one member of the Golden Felons basketball team, though it may not have been described exactly in those terms on police reports.

Everyone knows that was just another poorly planned play from Coach Dambrot that only succeeded due to an OU defensive failure.

Elton does one of his best analyses of the Zips, including the following:

Problem solved or worse problem created by lying to your kids? Now every father whose kid reads ZN.o is going to have to explain to them that daddy would never take the advice of that no good scoundrel GP1 and lie to them.

N'dour is a big challenge because he's not your typical MAC-level player. As Elton wrote, he was highly recruited by Big East and Conference USA teams:

Miami isn't great, but I don't see them as a pushover. Of their 8 losses, 4 have been to Notre Dame, Arizona State, Xavier and UMass. Taking WMU into OT after WMU beat Toledo by double digits is a clear warning that the sweaters shouldn't be taken lightly. In national stats, their biggest strengths are in steals, free throw shooting and rebounding. They're #17 in steal percentage, swiping the ball on 12.4% of their opponents' possessions, which will be a challenge for the Zips' sometimes shaky ball-handling. They're #37 in free throw percentage at 74.1%, which the Zips can only dream about. And they're #57 in defensive rebounding percentage, snagging 71.9% of their opponents' missed shots, which will challenge the Zips' excellent offensive rebounding. They do it with a fairly small lineup, as their top 7 players in order of minutes played are 6-0, 6-7, 6-3, 6-3, 6-7, 6-1 and 6-7. As long as the Zips have recovered from the 2 OT marathon in Athens, this should be a manageable challenge to keep them sharp for the following game against Toledo.

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I understand the fan frustration when things go wrong because I'm a fan and I get frustrated at times. Fans of all teams go through similar experiences. When I first started following basketball and saw something go wrong, I was quick to point a finger and blame someone. As a former professional basketball player and coach, my dad had been there and done that. He patiently explained to me all the things that can go wrong and how there can be many reasons that aren't obvious to a fan. That's the perspective I've had for many years. I don't know where coach Dambrot stands among all college basketball coaches in terms of drawing up final plays. I've never seen a stat that ranks all coaches so we could know for sure who's below average and who's above average on that issue. I do know that fans are more sensitive to perception of shortcomings by their own coach and players. Whenever I see something go wrong I think back to my dad's words that coaches, players and fans all make mistakes, and it's not always clear who did what to whom.

Honest question here. My dad was a professional basketball player and coach, he taught me a lot, and I've been following basketball for about 60 years now. For the life of me, I still can't definitively tell from watching a play fail whether it was primarily due to the coach not clearly drawing up the right play, uninspired execution by the players, good defensive counters, or some combination of the three. Can you please explain how you can so clearly tell the difference and blame it all on one thing? If there's something to look for that I'm missing, it would really enhance my enjoyment of the game to be able to know exactly what to look for in order to make that determination.