Dave in Green

As you grow older and go through this exercise over and over and over, you eventually come to the realization that there's no perfect system. No matter what system is in place, people will find fault with it and complain about it. That's because there's no system without fault that's above complaint. Systems are designed by people, and there are no people without fault. So the people who complain about imperfect systems designed by imperfect people are no more perfect than whatever system they're complaining about. Watch a gerbil running endlessly on an exercise wheel and imagine yourself debating the perfect college football playoff system for the rest of your life. Hopefully the gerbil is having fun, and we should, too.

Speaking of Harney, I hear that he did not suffer a broken nose at the end of the Marshall game as some had guessed from the amount of blood on the court. He apparently suffered a gash above the eye that required several stitches to close up, as that's an area that bleeds pretty heavily when the skin is broken. He was practicing this week with a small bandage on his forehead and should be 100% for the Ball State game. I remember the bad old days when BSU would always play the Zips though in Muncie, even when the Zips were favored to win. I'd like to think those days are gone forever. Majok Majok remains BSU's main weapon. He's averaging a couple of minutes less per game this season than last season, but has raised both his scoring and rebounding averages. He's currently ranked #10 in the country in rebounds per game. But the rest of the team is pretty weak. The Zips would have to play a real stinker of a game to lose this one.

Classic championship game. I really wanted FSU to end the SEC dominance, but didn't have faith they could hold off Auburn. It was close, really close.

Of course I'm talking about the overall SOS, where FSU and tOSU were very similar prior to the bowl games. FSU had a couple of tough games and a lot of really easy ones. Tonight is not so easy. Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that tOSU is as good as FSU. Not by a longshot. I'm just saying that I had questions about FSU's ability to beat Auburn based on FSU's overall weak schedule. I never bought into FSU being a big favorite tonight, and so far I'm seeing something similar to what I expected.

Speaking of tOSU running up a lot of wins with weak scheduling, what about Florida State? Their schedule was as weak or weaker than tOSU's. Tonight so far they're looking very ordinary against Auburn.

It means that the word was used so many times that the original poster can't even count that high.

South Carolina's basketball program takes a hit: Bruce Ellington to enter NFL draft, won't play basketball for USC

@Captain Kangaroo, no excuses. Using performance six times in one paragraph is unacceptable. My New Year's resolution is to KISS (keep it simple, stupid) and cut down on the excessive use of words in all of my posts (to the delight of all).

When a team's free throw shooting percentage fluctuates from season to season, it's often due to the difference in free throw shooting abilities between graduating and incoming players. Consider that the Zips lost 3 of their best free throw shooters -- Abreu (81.0%), Walsh (76.7%) and Gilliam (73.9%). Even Zeke (64.2%) averaged better than this season's team has so far. Their replacements have mostly done worse. Q was over 80% at one point, but has dropped off to 69.8%. After starting very poorly, Nyles has slowly moved up to a still unacceptable 61.5%. Pat and Big Dog, taking over Zeke's minutes, are at 56.5% and 58.3% respectively. Now that everyone is getting used to their new roles, I'd expect the team's free throw shooting to improve over the rest of the season.

Yep, tOSU doubters get another year to kick them around after they lose to a lower-ranked ACC team. Meanwhile Mizzou proves itself by taking down Okie State.

My appreciation for Mizzou looks good so far tonight -- Mizzou 17, Oklahoma State 7 at the half. Also at the half, tOSU 22, Clemson 20.

@skip-zip, I get what you're saying. When I think of an athlete having a breakout game, I think of a player finally demonstrating something close to his full potential after many lesser performances. If it only happens one time and is never repeated, then I think of it more as a perfect storm where everything came together just right for one time only. I don't think a true breakout game must necessarily result in every following game being equally as impressive. Sports are all about up and down performances. A straight line upward trend almost never exists in the real world, so you can't expect any athlete to have consistently superior performances following a breakout game. What you want to see is an upward trend in the average performance. You'd like to see more consistent excellent performances from KP16 next season, which would help validate the Michigan performance followed later by the Toledo performance.

So that would make it fair for me to pigeonhole you as a pigeonholer.

Of course it's fair to question how much of a role the Zips coaching plays in team free throw shooting percentage. The one thing I like to see in these types of discussions is more factual data rather than just "feelings." It's easy when the Zips are shooting free throws poorly to go all negative and "feel" that Zips teams under Coach Dambrot are chronically below average in free throw shooting. The important question to ask is what do the facts support? The first thing to do is to look at average free throw shooting for all teams. Over the last few decades the average college team free throw percentage has been consistently around 69 percent year after year. The Zips' percentage so far this season is the worst in the Coach Dambrot era at a terrible 61.3%. That has to improve by the end of this season. How have Coach Dambrot's teams performed over the years? 64.3% (2012-13) 69.2% (2011-12) 70.4% (2010-11) 65.7% (2009-10) 70.8% (2008-09) 70.4% (2007-08) 67.0% (2006-07) 72.0% (2005-06) 67.5% (2004-05) So in the 9 full seasons prior to this one, the Zips have shot above the 69% college average 5 seasons and below average 4 seasons. In other words, over the long haul Coach Dambrot teams have been really close to the average free throw shooting of all college teams. Average is neither great nor awful. Average is right in the middle. As fans, we want to see the Zips be above average in all aspects of the game. If the Zips lose a close game this season due to below average free throw shooting, we're all going to be upset.

Well-written story with lots of facts. Michigan State's win over Stanford in the Rose Bowl was a big deal for cold weather programs considering the population shift documented in this story.

It wasn't so long ago that we were complaining about Tree and Q not being ranked high enough in preseason MAC player of the year polls. They were expected to lead the Zips to another 22+ win season and another NCAA tournament bid. While it's true that one or two players can't carry a team in every single game, their combined performance against Marshall was downright frightening: * 42 minutes played * 5-17 from the field (29%) * 0-5 free throws (0%) * 7 rebounds * 7 turnovers * 2 assists The Zips will lose a lot of games when Tree and Q combine for those kind of stats. There's no question that the 9-game stretch was especially brutal for these two players. Coach Dambrot recently said he wanted to try to play Tree less than 30+ minutes per game during the 9-game stretch so he wouldn't burn out, but in most of the games Tree played long minutes anyway. Q lost 20 pounds of muscle in his season off, and it's pretty clear that he's still shaking off the rust and trying to get back into playing shape with the added burden of having to play some PG. The best thing about last night is that other players stepped forward to fill the void. Outrebounding Marshall 42-29 with Tree only playing 19 minutes was huge. The extra possessions from that rebounding advantage plus more steals and fewer turnovers than Marshall ultimately made the difference in the game. The Zips were lucky that Marshall was not good enough to take advantage of their miscues in the last few minutes. There will be close games in the MAC, and the Zips can't rely on the other teams choking worse than they do. I hope that Coach Dambrot isn't too tough on the team over last night's near loss. The players need a little break before the MAC season starts. They have a lot to work on in the six days before playing at Ball State. But they need to re-energize as much as they need to work on their game.

Oklahoma up 31-17 as the first half winds down. Most points scored in a half against Alabama in the Nick Saban era.

Devaugntah Williams is interesting. He's a former Canton McKinley player. He's not a pure PG, but another combo guard. He can play the point, but he's more of a scorer than a ball distributor -- similar to Nyles but taller (6-3). There was some discussion on this forum last year about Perry's Jeremiah Jackson. Devaugntah beat out Jeremiah for Federal League Player of the Year in 2011-12. He was also the Canton Rep's Stark County Player of the Year. It would be surprising if the Zips coaching staff didn't have a relationship with him and haven't been tracking his progress in junior college. If the Zips can't get a quality pure PG, Devaugntah might be the next best thing.

Who ever thought that the Zips would win this game on the performances of Melo and Big Dog. After considerable thought, I'm prepared to make a daring prediction: The Zips will not have a 19-game winning streak this season, and they will not be nationally ranked.

Hey, we beat the snot out of Marshall at the free throw line, 14-26 (53.8%) to 10-20 (50%).

Q also got hit in the face.

What the heck happened?

The dreaded prevent offense.

If someone had said before this game that with 5 minutes left the Zips would be 2-12 on 3-pointers and leading by 7 points, everyone would have laughed.

I was just about to say two sloppy teams.