Zip Watcher

Is Brett McKnight in the building?

I have to say that I haven't noticed a change in Tom from when I met him his first week on the job. He's still as cordial as ever, and even more passionate about moving UA Athletics forward to success. I suspect perhaps there's a mob mentality building about "he doesn't care" .. "wants the fb team to suck" .. etc. Have a conversation with him about the state of things and I believe you'll be hard pressed to find even a hit of complacency with regards to anything Zips related. This means have a conversation .. not just fire away at the guy for what you perceive his inadequacies to be. Yes, he's different from Thomas & Rhodes. I find that he's every bit as committed to our Zips as they were. My $0.02 B) Go Zips!

When I came in the line was long, so I waited until about the 12 minute timeout. Went down then and was back about a minute after play resumed coming out of the timeout.

Really? I remember that Waddell was friendly with Joe fan. Thomas, not so much. Great AD .. but not a great interacter w/ Joe Fan in my experience.

So a UD blogger asked some questions. And I answered them here. In a nutshell, I think it's a battle of tempo. Mostly predicated on the defensive glass. Zips rebound well and get out on the break a little bit, then they come away from UD Arena with a win. If they get beat badly on the defensive glass, and can't transition .. then our jumpers need to fall. There's a couple of ways the Zips can win. All require a good defensive effort. Do 3 things well: - Keep UD in the half court set as much as possible. - Rebound well (limit UD 2nd chance points) & look up floor for quick releases. - In the half court, start the ball in the post to Nik & Zeke. Patiently work to the open shooter. Take the points and the over. B) B) Go Zips!

Even as you sit on a seat you paid hard earned recession cash to reserve?

Do 80% of your sales come from 20% of your doctors? Good question. I don't think I have visibility on the data to answer with a high degree of confidence. I'm guessing that no, it's probably not that top heavy. Maybe 80% comes from 50%. WAG.

Who is the consumer? Person at home? Hospital? Nursing home? Doctors office? All of the above? The consumer is the doctor, who can generally dictate to the hospital what to buy. It's shifting, as health care cost pressures come into play, eventually the hospital purchasing guy may have a bigger say .. but thus far, it's still the docs.

Before I can comment I need clarification on a couple of things. 1. What does your client sell besides inventory? and 2. what's the difference between a price point and a price? Widgets & whatsits in the medical device arena. The model is pretty different than drywall since there's: 1. Growth in the overall industry (not great, but it's there), and 2: Manufacturing is entirely outsourced. So inventory doesn't need to be moved to clear production space, it's already on hand. Also, there's not an intermediary retailer for the stuff, it's pretty much sold right to the consumer.

Ok, just because it's the off week, and we're nearing the end of season 2 in the Info with decreasing attendance, I've been thinking about some of the comments last season about pricing, namely the great GP1's assertion that you can't lower prices to nothing and then expect to bring them back up when things turn the corner (which they will at some point). It's kindof a chicken vs. the egg question .. do the ticket prices need to be lowered, or does the value received need to be increased on a static ticket price? I've got a thing working now w/ a client where there's ample inventory with established pricing, but they're working on a new direction to improve inventory sales without unnecessarily gutting the price point. So because I'm working through something similar at work on a totally unrelated topic, I'm curious about what the die-hard Zips fans think about the following: NB: While we're all conscious of the current state of the FB team on the field, and there's myriad opinions on the topic, this isn't meant to be a referendum on that topic .. I'm more interested in these items on a general basis .. probably would have been more timely last season, but oh well. What season ticket pricing adjustments do you think should be made for 2011? What can be added to ticket packages to increase value to you, the likely purchaser? Do you generally renew these things early, or late? How can fans be incentivized to purchase and / or renew tickets early? Maybe this relates only to single game buys, but should there be a premium game among the six home games? What constitutes a premium game? Curious to know your thoughts .. maybe something useful will come out of this. Go Zips!

I'll reveal what I know. I know that we're winless with only two games to go. I know that we have a coach who the players hate and who resents his players. I know that our coordinators don't know how to call plays. I know that our position coaches have made the players at their positions worse than they were last year. I know that the athletic director doesn't care about the few hardcore fans that remain. I know that Akron will not be able to sell any football tickets next year. And I know that absolutely none of this bothers the AD or head coach. You know you believe those things. Lots of people believe their own BS .. you're not the first, and won't be the last.

We can only hope that Zeke gets the liberty with the rules of the game that Kaman got when he was @ CMU. If that happens, then it's POY time.

I disagree .. since he was a freshman, it appeared to me that he had the highest upside on the Falcons, while everyone else was focused on Polk, Jakubowski & Nate Miller. Thomas can play. Reminds me a lot of Nate Linhart .. maybe a better shooter, and not the rebounder Nate was .. but he'd be among my first & second team all-MAC players. Go Zips! Brandon Bowdry D.J. Cooper Justin Greene Jarrod Jones Zeke Marshall Julian Mavunga Steve McNees Xavier Silas Rod Sherman DeVaughn Washington Flenard Whitfield Trey Zeigler All players I would take on my team over Scott Thomas. There are probably more. And please don't compare Scott Thomas to Nate Linhart. That is an insult to Nate. Thomas is nowhere near the player Nate was. Settle down. The reference to Linhart was in style of play and general athleticism. In otherwords .. he's more similar to Nate Linhart than he is to Fat Albert or Little John. I'd take Thomas (who's entering his 3rd season) over Washington, Sherman and at the moment Zeigler (who hasn't played a minute of MAC basketball yet). I think the kid's a solid player in a bad league. Not a POY candidate .. but a nice player. That's it. I agree with Elton on this one. Go Zips!

I disagree .. since he was a freshman, it appeared to me that he had the highest upside on the Falcons, while everyone else was focused on Polk, Jakubowski & Nate Miller. Thomas can play. Reminds me a lot of Nate Linhart .. maybe a better shooter, and not the rebounder Nate was .. but he'd be among my first & second team all-MAC players. Go Zips!

Nice post & perspective. For selfish reasons, put me in the group of people who want to see a team with Zeke, Nik, Gilliam, Walsh, Abreu, Treadwell & Harney run together. Maybe we can convince Nik to get his MS in public policy or something for another season of UA hoops. Couldn't have said it better myself. Go Zips!

Solid points, and I think you're assessment of B.McKnight is spot on. However, I'd be surprised to see him log lots of minutes at the 4. We're pretty talented there too. I look for a few things this year different from last year. First, I think we'll see an emphasis on getting outlet passes out and run more. Second, in the half court, we're going to see lots more inside out initiation of the offense, a la, when Wood was here. This means I think we dump to Nik & Zeke on the block and look to take advantage of the matchups. Zeke in a single team scenario, we're seeing the jump hook .. ditto Nik with the drop step & spin. But if the entry pass is completed and the handler gets doubled, either the weakside big, or the small forward is going to be left open. If this happens often, the 3 man ought to be seeing the ball in open space more this year than last. We know from the URI game that McKnight isn't the right guy to be initiating the inside-out with, but he could be the beneficiary of getting the ball with some room to work. Lots of ifs, buts & candy & nuts .. but there's some upside here. Go Zips!

Not sure what prompted that, but whether or not you incorrectly only use one space or not, you'll find that our particular web page software sees any consecutive spaces as single spaces. So as I type this reply, this is a space with 1 space-> and this is a space with 2-> Not much difference online. In fact, there is none. This sentence follows 7 spaces. Try it out for yourself. Go Zips!

Here's my 10 man rotation: #1 Double stacked bigs almost all game long. Ideally, there are few if any minutes where both Nik and Zeke are on the bench. I'd hope to have at least one of them on the floor at all times, and see about 20-25 minutes where they're out there together. Other than that, look to get 10+ minutes each from Bardo and Euton. And both of those guys are playing the 5 on defense when they're out there. The Bigs: Cvetinovic Marshall Bardo Euton #2 Start Alex off lightly and see how much he can handle. McNees & Roberts were the starting backcourt for the MAC title team .. so they've got some experience. More and more Alex would keep McNees fresher, and get him more open looks. I'd expect a break down of 30, 25, 25 (Steve, Daryl, Alex) by MAC season. There's clearly an opportunity to run Diggs / McClanahan in spots at the 2 .. but it seems that's probably the exception. The Littles: McNees Roberts Abreu #3 For the 3 hole, we've got 3 guys to use to get 40 productive minutes, hoping for at least 18 ppg & 8 rpg from the position .. with potential to go MUCH higher if McClanahan and/or Diggs can offer some scoring. I'd expect McKnight to play at least half of these 40 minutes, but I can see him starting out slower than that. Ultimately, with 3 guys battling for the minutes at the 3, we're going to get production out of the position, since one will rise above the others. The Middles: McKnight McClanahan Diggs Now if / when they go small, you can see McKnight swinging down to the 4 hole, similar to when they go big, McClanahan and/or Diggs can be a 2. It depends on the matchups. I anticipate that in league play, the Zips will force the issue Big, due to the relative quickness of Nik and Zeke, and the difficulty that size will pose for most conference opponents. In general, I like the versatility that KD has with this roster. He's got 7 guys returning with significant playing time under their belts, as well as 1 D1 transfer, and 2 pretty well traveled freshman. I'm not sure the benefit of playing Egner in the midst of this roster, unless he's dominating guys defensively in practice. Another consideration is the scholi breakdown, which off the top of my head is the following: 4 Seniors (McNees, Roberts, McKnight, Bardo) 2 Juniors (McClanahan, Cvetinovic) 4 Sophomores (Marshall, Diggs, Walsh, Gilliam) 6 Freshmen (Euton, Abreu, Egner, Green, Haney, Treadwell) Now if Haney & Treadwell go the Conyers route, they're sort of not Freshman .. they'd be Frosh in 11-12 .. but let's consider them Frosh now. We've got 6 guys who will be Sophomores next season. I'd expect that to be either 4 or 5 when we get there. Generally, you'd look to have a breakdown of 3, 3, 3, 4 for the 13 scholarships. So redshirting 2 would not surprise me, since it would balance things out for next year .. leaving 2, 4, 4, 4 (allowing that there's an extra in the mix at the moment). Any freshmen playing in this system would need to be playing lights out at least in one aspect of the game in order to crack the rotation. Or, as in the case of Euton and Abreu, provide needed depth in a particular size or skill set. Green and Egner are tweeners who are unfortunately behind a lot of bodies. The logjam opens up next year with the departures of Bardo, McKnight, and potentially Nik). Good roster .. could go lots of ways. Lets hope it goes to the top of the league. B) B) Go Zips!

The box score should reveal the redshirt decisions for the year.

So it took about 4 hours to go from .. "Hey, this is a nice new thing being offered by GoZips.Com." ... to ... "They're doing it the stupid way just to tick us off. They suck." Impressive. Go Zips!

... and thus begins another winter of my content. - Great to be back at the JAR for some Zips hoops last night. Most of the comments above captured my first half observations. Had to leave at the half to get the kids home, but I loved what I saw in 20 minutes. - Saw Zeke's parents outside before the game. Great to see them again. Optimism abounds for a great Zeke sophomore stint, with good reason. I was able to catch a practice about a week ago, and in the practice you could really sense his comfort and confidence within the offense. The ball can and will go through Zeke a bunch this year. - Guards looked good. I'm certainly intrigued by AA. And it was awesome to see Steve able to spot up on the angle a few times and let fly. - The Zips can be BIG if they want to. I hope they want to. They can probably force most conference teams into jumpshooting teams with the inside strength and numbers. I for one like the double stacked bigs we saw: any 2 of Cvitenovic, Marshall, Bardo and Euton at all times. Should help us on the glass, and force teams to hit shots. - That has to start a bit with some good on the ball defense at the perimeter .. a little less ole on the drive, and this team could be on its way to an extremely strong defense. - The new guys seemed to fit in and be comfortable (disclaimer: I left before Egner and Green saw action). Almost all of them through up an airball first shot out, but that's adrenaline and nerves .. can't fault them for that. My big takeaway last night, and it seems to be echoed here on the boards is that no one looked lost, out of place, or appeared to not belong on the floor with the Zips. - Great start to a season. Exhibition, I know .. but getting out there, getting after it and putting away a team early. - As for the athleticism, and also to get the Rowdies and the video guy started on this years chants / motivators, I humbly ask the Nation: It's great to be back at the JAR! B) B) Go Zips!!

Anyone know if the freshman can play the exhibition and still be redshirted?

Can't was better. OU was in general NOT better than the Zips. The Zips beat them twice in the regular season, and OU finished well back of the leaders in the regular season, needing to go on the road to earn their way to the Q. OU then had the best March by a MAC team in some time.

Nice! Jimmy in Erie. Me and the boy will drive up for that. Make the team Jimmy! B) Go Zips!

Indeed it was. For years, we've been grandfathered on an old hosting package that provided 25GB of monthly bandwidth. We've never exceeded it. Until now. Sometime about 3:30 or 4PM yesterday, we went over for the first time. I checked the logs and it appears we had close calls in August and September. We're now upgraded to a 100GB monthly transfer limit. If there's one thing the Zips don't have, it's an apathetic fan base. I think that's a good sign for the Zips and the Nation. Go Zips!