Zip Watcher

I'll have more thoughts tomorrow .. been a long day. Fun to be at the barn tonight. A real throwback arena. Sat by Nick Myers tonight. Seems to be doing well. Good to see Alex and Quincy start to emerge. Alex was one of the better players on the floor tonight & Quincy demonstrated some defensive tenacity on the ball. Second chance points by the gophers were the difference in this game. Haven't seen a box score yet, but my impression @ the game was that 2nd chance points were about twice the final margin. More tomorrow. Go Zips!

The rowdies have been in great form @ the Q .. with the singing & chanting. Don't change it .. in the U@B game a couple of years ago, the Rowdies were great. Go Zips!

+1

These guys should be on parade more than the McDonald, OH Miss Corn Herbicide is. Heck they march those little girls out for every parade all year. These guys should be on a float and rolled out to bask in applause as much as they can take it, or a minimum of once a month. Got a big rifle match? It's honor the Soccer Team night! ... Big hoops game, Soccer Team honor .. give each guy on the roster their own night. Go Zips!

I should chime in here. If you're on the fence .. and you can swing it, you should ABSOLUTELY go on one of these trips. The chance to see 3 games in 3 nights and have some time away is well worth the effort. Fairbanks was awesome. Go Zips!

+1

Trips to the warm weather destinations are the easy ones! Who's joining me and my boy (6 year old Junior ISO Auditor) in traveling to Williams Arena for the Zips game on Wednesday? Our flights will permit about 8 hours of total delay on Wednesday .. hopefully the birds will be somewhat timely. Go Zips!

Barb is the standard to which all Zips fans should strive to match and which none of us actually do. Go Zips!

All right, i guess i just was impatient. I got my letter today Definitely a good move. I'm sold to renewing 2 tickets next year. You've gotta be kidding. He's not kidding .. he's a ZIPS FAN! And a good one. Not a mildly interested passer-by. A fan. Go Zips!

I will absolutely pay into a "drink the Gaucho student body into SB Rowdies" fund.

No you don't ... :lol: I've got a hard sided golf club carrier we can probably get him to fit into.

I love me some ZTV! B) Go Zips!

Done!

Force them into 3 or 4 OOC games a year with MAC teams in hoops, and I think I'd be OK with U*ASS joining up. Go Zips!

Care to elaborate?

Your lips to God's ears! Go Zips! B)

Why exactly do you need 2 free feeds?

Strong words. Good for CSU if he's even in the top 3 or 4 individual players the Zips see. Thank you .. and the same back at you. Go Zips!

I'm pumped for this game. It's going to be another good measuring stick of how the Zips are doing before they start their 4 game road swing. I feel good about the Zips chances. They've had a few days to work on the results of the YSU game, and they're going to have a big crowd. I like the Zips to win this in regulation. B) Go Zips!!

Let's recall that it is still speculation and supposition. As of now, Brett remains on the roster @ GZ.com and the department has suspended him, not removed him from the team. I keep hope alive that Brett will get things straightened out. Go Zips!

You know they could have not done it at all .. would that be better? How about some latitude for those providing all of us a free service? Go Zips!!

The Zips dodged a bullet last night, and dispatched YSU in overtime, with plenty of good offensive performances to go around. First, the box score (still waiting for StatSheet to get the +/- run .. hopefully that'll be soon. Zips 91 - Penguins 84 Box Score I didn't write any notes down last night, so these are from memory the morning after. With the customary regrets to Sergio Leone, my observations from the JAR: The Good: Took a punch, landed the last one: KD is fond of this concept, and it's growing on me. It's good to know your team can take a punch and get back up and stand in. While this wasn't the toughest adversity the Zips will face this season, I thought it was a nice early season test of the Zips mettle. They never got down more than 5, but YSU didn't just go away. This is an upgrade over some other games where a 5 or 8 point run early in the 2nd half is enough to blow things open. The Zips needed to stay in this mentally the whole way, and they did that. Offense: This will be a strength of the Zips. We saw tonight what can happen when they push the ball inside to start the offense. Career highs from our 2 bigs, and our shooter. These are linked. Brett will continue to see single coverage and good space to work on the perimeter and the mid-range as long as our interior guys are playing well on Offense. This was a nice step for the Offense. Zeke and Nik are showing signs of working well together and appear to have a pretty good sense of where the other one is and what he's going to do. Great to see. The Penguins: Flat out the best Penguins mens team I've seen since a guy name Peters was coaching over there. Not just because they pushed the Zips to the brink. Slocum seems to have turned a corner of sorts. Glad to see it. Hope they go 30-1 and tear the Horizon up. And I hope we continue this series. Career highs: Nice scoring punch from 3 different guys. The inside out was working well and Zeke was good and kept things moving inside out, especially late in the game. It'd be good to see some more career highs in rebounding to go with it. The Bad: Minutes: 38 minutes from the bench is not going to be enough. Some of this is KD's rotations, but a lot of this is guys coming off the bench and contributing. These guys need to step into the void and give quality minutes and effort when out there. 7 points, 6 rebounds and 1 assist to go along with 4 turnovers is not adequate bench production for this team to be successful in the long haul. An area for improvement. The boards: Two things the Zips are doing are naturally counter to being a good rebounding team. #1, they're playing a zone with the big guy patrolling the lane. By definition, if you're in a zone, it's harder to have guys on bodies boxing out when the shot goes up. So zone teams will usually not rebound as well as strictly man teams. #2, with a shot blocker, if you're going to be aggressive in going after blocks, the shot block guy is going to be out of position for the rebound. Larry Nance was never a great guy on the boards because of this. It's going to take some experience and a retraining a bit of the team to adapt to both of these things. Giving up 15 offensive boards to a smaller opponent indicates there's some work remaining. The Rome & Wood front court was an example of a Zips team that blocked a fair amount of shots (Rome) & rebounded well (Wood). So it can be done. Shots for Steve: We all would like to see Steve moved over to the 2 more. That will happen more with Alex's development, but we need to have him involved more I think. One thing that will help our bigs inside is if every perimeter player is viewed as a legitimate outside threat. As far as Brett & Daryll go, they're taking enough shots to maintain that. Steve passing up open looks will allow teams to condense the middle a little more. So I think the Zips need Steve to be a little more aggressive with his shots. Alex developing into a 20 minute guy would help that. The Ugly: Defensive rotation: It seems like the Zips are playing no D right now, but I think it's a consequence of the process KD is going through in adjusting the team to the strength of his talent. We've not had a stud 7' shot blocker as the anchor of the defense before. The Zips have always played primarily man, with the guys who guarded their man best being the 5 on the floor when it matters. Well now, we're seeing more interest in using a 2-3 zone to leverage Zeke's ability to protect the rim. He's getting better at it, and 3 blocks will grow as the year goes on. But what will happen while this process continues, is that the rotations are a bit slow, or they get caught out of position. We saw that a bit tonight, and against Dayton. While it seems like the Zips are getting killed from outside, they're eventually going to win the battle inside the arc and force teams to shoot lights out from outside to beat the Zips. Case in point vs. YSU, the Zips outscored the Penguins 50 to 36 inside the arc. If they can push that advantage and do better on the perimeter rotations, the defense will improve. The Stripe: The Zips shot an anemic 65% from the line as a team, and still made more FT's than YSU attempted. If they shoot a more palatable number, this game is over in regulation. They're not going to shoot 90% as a team, but they need to be above 70 I think. Getting to the line that much is a good indicator of forcing the action at the rim .. but they need to convert. They did when it counted in OT, but regulation wasn't pretty. Turnovers: The Assist:Turnover ratio was better than 2:1 as I recall in the Dayton game, but against YSU, the Zips turned it over 13 times. Many of these were somewhat necessary .. so that number can be lower. I think it will be unusual for the Zips to turn the ball over more than the opposition, but it happened. Speaks to the need for stiffer D. ... And a few comments more: Zeke's higher level near the end of regulation and overtime show us what kind of upside he has. The 2 rebounds at the end were clutch, and driven by heart and effort as much as his size. I absolutely LOVE this guys instincts in these situations to look for and hit the outside guy immediately in one motion. There wasn't any thinking in that situation .. he went after the ball, and got it where it needed to be. He's starting to look for his shot more .. but the thing that I'm liking more and more is his awareness of the defense and ability to pass out of the double teams. These things will make him a monster because hitting a high percentage outside shooter will earn him some more single teams .. and there's not a guy in the league that can check a 7 footer with a soft jump hook. He seems to play pretty well angry as well .. so like Rob Preston before him, perhaps the staff should find a way to get him fired up. The Freshman bigs intrigue me, and I hope they find their groove and can contribute 10-15 minutes consistently before the end of the non-conference. I liked that play were Dakotah got the rebound in traffic and fought it back to the rim immediately without bringing it down. Egner is getting to the line, but needs to sink them. These 2 kids will help the Zips before this season is over. The Crowd was decent for an early game .. seemed lively at the end, and was treated to a good basketball game with a nice tempo and lots of offense. I have to believe a bunch of these people will be back on Wednesday to witness another of these regional rivalry games. Another win on Wednesday may go a long way to pushing the average attendance this season up over last year. They're off and running, and I'm liking what I've seen. Big game Wednesday before a big road trip to 4 solid teams. This schedule will test this team and build it up. I got 'em on .. do you? B) B) Go Zips!

The Zips dodged a bullet last night, and dispatched YSU in overtime, with plenty of good offensive performances to go around. First, the box score (still waiting for StatSheet to get the +/- run .. hopefully that'll be soon. Zips 91 - Penguins 84 Box Score I didn't write any notes down last night, so these are from memory the morning after. With the customary regrets to Sergio Leone, my observations from the JAR: The Good: Took a punch, landed the last one: KD is fond of this concept, and it's growing on me. It's good to know your team can take a punch and get back up and stand in. While this wasn't the toughest adversity the Zips will face this season, I thought it was a nice early season test of the Zips mettle. They never got down more than 5, but YSU didn't just go away. This is an upgrade over some other games where a 5 or 8 point run early in the 2nd half is enough to blow things open. The Zips needed to stay in this mentally the whole way, and they did that. Offense: This will be a strength of the Zips. We saw tonight what can happen when they push the ball inside to start the offense. Career highs from our 2 bigs, and our shooter. These are linked. Brett will continue to see single coverage and good space to work on the perimeter and the mid-range as long as our interior guys are playing well on Offense. This was a nice step for the Offense. Zeke and Nik are showing signs of working well together and appear to have a pretty good sense of where the other one is and what he's going to do. Great to see. The Penguins: Flat out the best Penguins mens team I've seen since a guy name Peters was coaching over there. Not just because they pushed the Zips to the brink. Slocum seems to have turned a corner of sorts. Glad to see it. Hope they go 30-1 and tear the Horizon up. And I hope we continue this series. Career highs: Nice scoring punch from 3 different guys. The inside out was working well and Zeke was good and kept things moving inside out, especially late in the game. It'd be good to see some more career highs in rebounding to go with it. The Bad: Minutes: 38 minutes from the bench is not going to be enough. Some of this is KD's rotations, but a lot of this is guys coming off the bench and contributing. These guys need to step into the void and give quality minutes and effort when out there. 7 points, 6 rebounds and 1 assist to go along with 4 turnovers is not adequate bench production for this team to be successful in the long haul. An area for improvement. The boards: Two things the Zips are doing are naturally counter to being a good rebounding team. #1, they're playing a zone with the big guy patrolling the lane. By definition, if you're in a zone, it's harder to have guys on bodies boxing out when the shot goes up. So zone teams will usually not rebound as well as strictly man teams. #2, with a shot blocker, if you're going to be aggressive in going after blocks, the shot block guy is going to be out of position for the rebound. Larry Nance was never a great guy on the boards because of this. It's going to take some experience and a retraining a bit of the team to adapt to both of these things. Giving up 15 offensive boards to a smaller opponent indicates there's some work remaining. The Rome & Wood front court was an example of a Zips team that blocked a fair amount of shots (Rome) & rebounded well (Wood). So it can be done. Shots for Steve: We all would like to see Steve moved over to the 2 more. That will happen more with Alex's development, but we need to have him involved more I think. One thing that will help our bigs inside is if every perimeter player is viewed as a legitimate outside threat. As far as Brett & Daryll go, they're taking enough shots to maintain that. Steve passing up open looks will allow teams to condense the middle a little more. So I think the Zips need Steve to be a little more aggressive with his shots. Alex developing into a 20 minute guy would help that. The Ugly: Defensive rotation: It seems like the Zips are playing no D right now, but I think it's a consequence of the process KD is going through in adjusting the team to the strength of his talent. We've not had a stud 7' shot blocker as the anchor of the defense before. The Zips have always played primarily man, with the guys who guarded their man best being the 5 on the floor when it matters. Well now, we're seeing more interest in using a 2-3 zone to leverage Zeke's ability to protect the rim. He's getting better at it, and 3 blocks will grow as the year goes on. But what will happen while this process continues, is that the rotations are a bit slow, or they get caught out of position. We saw that a bit tonight, and against Dayton. While it seems like the Zips are getting killed from outside, they're eventually going to win the battle inside the arc and force teams to shoot lights out from outside to beat the Zips. Case in point vs. YSU, the Zips outscored the Penguins 50 to 36 inside the arc. If they can push that advantage and do better on the perimeter rotations, the defense will improve. The Stripe: The Zips shot an anemic 65% from the line as a team, and still made more FT's than YSU attempted. If they shoot a more palatable number, this game is over in regulation. They're not going to shoot 90% as a team, but they need to be above 70 I think. Getting to the line that much is a good indicator of forcing the action at the rim .. but they need to convert. They did when it counted in OT, but regulation wasn't pretty. Turnovers: The Assist:Turnover ratio was better than 2:1 as I recall in the Dayton game, but against YSU, the Zips turned it over 13 times. Many of these were somewhat necessary .. so that number can be lower. I think it will be unusual for the Zips to turn the ball over more than the opposition, but it happened. Speaks to the need for stiffer D. ... And a few comments more: Zeke's higher level near the end of regulation and overtime show us what kind of upside he has. The 2 rebounds at the end were clutch, and driven by heart and effort as much as his size. I absolutely LOVE this guys instincts in these situations to look for and hit the outside guy immediately in one motion. There wasn't any thinking in that situation .. he went after the ball, and got it where it needed to be. He's starting to look for his shot more .. but the thing that I'm liking more and more is his awareness of the defense and ability to pass out of the double teams. These things will make him a monster because hitting a high percentage outside shooter will earn him some more single teams .. and there's not a guy in the league that can check a 7 footer with a soft jump hook. He seems to play pretty well angry as well .. so like Rob Preston before him, perhaps the staff should find a way to get him fired up. The Freshman bigs intrigue me, and I hope they find their groove and can contribute 10-15 minutes consistently before the end of the non-conference. I liked that play were Dakotah got the rebound in traffic and fought it back to the rim immediately without bringing it down. Egner is getting to the line, but needs to sink them. These 2 kids will help the Zips before this season is over. The Crowd was decent for an early game .. seemed lively at the end, and was treated to a good basketball game with a nice tempo and lots of offense. I have to believe a bunch of these people will be back on Wednesday to witness another of these regional rivalry games. Another win on Wednesday may go a long way to pushing the average attendance this season up over last year. They're off and running, and I'm liking what I've seen. Big game Wednesday before a big road trip to 4 solid teams. This schedule will test this team and build it up. I got 'em on .. do you? B) B) Go Zips! View the full blog post here.

I'm going to allow RFR44 this ZachTheZip moment in posting. He's owed some latitude due to his excellent work over at the ASN site. Linhart played 19, 21, 29 and 29 minutes per game each year he was hear (from Fresh to Senior). By the end of his Freshman season he was logging 25+ minutes for several games. The end of the year he lost some time due to the injury / concussion late in the season. There's not really any definition I can come up with which validates any notion that Linhart was under utilized. He burst his way into the heart of the lineup as a Freshman .. and he never came out. And I don't recall him even ever having a short leash. There was a tremendous amount of trust w/ Linhart .. between the team and coaches both. So I say .. ERRONEOUS. Go Zips!!

Game thoughts a little bit later, but from my seat, having the band on the opposite end from the more involved / organized rowdies seems to me to be a better arrangement. I'm not commenting on the back struggle that appears to be concerning people, but just from a noise and activity perspective, the band and the south rowdies are active and engaged perhaps just by their numbers. So it was a noticeable change to have loud activity on both ends. I understand that having the band at the Zips end might not be ideal for the Zips themselves. I also figure that the some of the active rowdies are better off near the opposing bench. Just saying it was cool to have both endzones packed with loud fans. Go Zips.