Zip Watcher

Booked my flights for that trip just the other day.

You see he had a +44 in the game?!

Hey Jupiter, Is anything more known about Coleman & Kellogg (older)? Are they with the team at all? Gone for good?

Didn't miss it at all.

Anyone happen to know Bryan Wood's HS Scoring average or shooting percentage? Love the stats, DiG .. but you have to admit that this is a little bit of a reach. Go Zips! B)

Great early season basketball game tonight by our Zips and the Flyers. Not a win, but an entertaining look into what the team looks like and what we might expect against good D1 competition. Great to have it on TV. From what I saw in the in-game thread, I'm glad I muted the FSN guys and put on Frenchy. So we're off! Another season of dreams is underway. First off, the box score, as presented by StatSheet.Com And with sincere apologies to Sergio Leone, my notes from the game ... The Good: Resiliency: It was a nice recovery to get back into the game (2x) when things appeared to be getting out of hand. I take this as a very good sign of the toughness of the club. They didn't finish the Flyers out, but the also fought to stay in it. For game 1 of the D1 slate, I think this was my key takeaway. Nitro: 21 points on 15 shots in 28 minutes. Can we please stop calling the guy a bust? He's got a ways to go in demonstrate some consistency, but the guy played a nice game on the offensive end. For much of the first half, he was the only offense. Excellent game by Brett tonight. Newcomers: I was very surprised to see Euton drop the redshirt, but not disappointed. You can see the guy knows the game, and gets himself in position to make plays, instead of counting on athleticism. This guy is a basketball player, and will help us this year. 2 for 2 on pop out threes. That's HUGE when you have a big going to work inside at the same time. Abreu was clutch also. Took good care of the ball for the most part against the press. Lost it a few times down the lane, but he seemed comfortable out there overall .. and enabled Steve to move over to the 2 spot, where he found his shot a bit. Nik: Did not shoot well from the field tonight, but 11pts, 10 rebs & 7 assts is a stat stuffing night. He kept his composure and led the team in a lot of ways. He's not going to shoot 20% .. he just isn't. When he starts hitting a more normal rate, this guy will be a load .. especially opposite some other capable bigs. Nice game by Nik tonight. Zeke changes everything: I'm really dying to see the +/- numbers from tonight, because my perception right now is that Zeke must have a pretty good + number. The feel I had was that it really altered things on both ends of the floor. His stats weren't overpowering, but he changed what Dayton did .. drew a double & triple team every time he had the ball, and did a pretty darn good job of passing out of those situations to an open shooter. If he masters that skill of sensing the double and waiting to the right moment to kick out .. our shooters will have open shots, and the number of threes the Zips hit tonight will be the norm. The Zips could very well become a "pick your poison" kind of problem for opposing coaches. Team play on offense: The Zips assisted on 18 of 22 FG's and had only 7 Turnovers against a longer, more athletic team. Read that again. That's a great sign of the state of the offensive execution. The ball is being moved around to the open shooter. There weren't too many forced shots, and they did an adequate job of protecting the possessions. The Bad: They lost: There are no good losses. The Zips got close to a good D1 team on the road. Let them get out to a double digit halftime lead, fought back to lead by a possession or 2, and then gave it back at the end. This is an early season game, but I'm sure KD joins us in wanting to see the team grow to the point where they can sustain that run in the middle of the 2nd half and put Dayton away. Scoring Droughts: CK warned about it today. Some may say jinxed the Zips .. but the droughts reared their ugly head again @ UD Arena. Frankly, with the 10 minutes or so they went without a FG in the first half, it should have been walkon time in the 2nd half. Nik's aggressiveness with the ball got him to the line, and that kept the Zips in it. If the Zips are to be successful in March, they have to find a way to get good looks when Zeke isn't in the game. They can't continue to have these stretches of no offense. Rebounding: The rebound totals were 39-25. You don't need to look at the box score to see that UD had more. The Zips were manhandled on the boards at critical times in the game. Frenchy described a few of the offensive boards as weird spin outs or odd bounces, but for the most part they were due to bad positioning, and/or the Zips guy just not putting a body on the Flyer who eventually snared the board. Exception: in 10 minutes on the floor, Dakotah had 4 boards. That's as much as our 2 centers had in 33 minutes. The Zips can not get beat on the glass by 50% and expect to beat good D1 teams. The Ugly: Foul trouble for Zeke: Gotta keep the big guy on the floor. I can't help but hope the MAC officials call fewer of the bogus freshman ticky tack stuff. His 3rd foul was a joke. It's plain to see that he alters the game. Now the Zips need to find away to keep him on the floor for more than 19 minutes. He plays more in the first half, the deficit is probably half of what it was. Nik survives first season ending injury of the 2010-11 campaign: I remember a practice 2 seasons ago where Nik stopped play rolling around on the floor, only to get back up and be on the court in 2 or 3 minutes. KD was furious at him. Good to see Nik bounce back from his first season ending injury of the year. Bardo on a poster: Let's face it, The Old Spice Guy or George Clooney wouldn't look much better on the Chris Wright poster that's getting readied for sale in the UD bookstore in the morning, let alone Mike Bardo. Mike, you've got to put him on the floor in that situation. Does 2 things: keeps you off the marketing materials for UD sports, and maybe makes the guy a little slower to drive in on you. Live & die by the 3 ball: I have no issue whatsoever with the Zips taking 36 3-balls last night. They made a bunch of them. My struggle with it is only when it starts to happen without any inside action whatsoever. Be it a dribble drive by Abreu (happened a few times) or a dump to a big guy .. the threes fall better off an inside out action. The scoring drought really took hold when there was no inside activity or success in penetrating to force the defense to address the paint. This team can shoot the rock and should shoot it .. but they need the inside out to have more open, higher percentage 3's. ... And a Few Comments More: Love the zone to man switch: French & Dunn made noise about Dayton being confused by the Zone look in the second half .. but I think they missed what KD was doing, and probably what caused UD the most trouble. The Zips have the habit of sitting in that zone for a portion of the shot clock and then quietly slipping back into man. UD never caught on. It's not something you can do all the time, but I expect to see more of it. I really like the look .. and if the Zips can pull it off without losing a man here or there, it should be pretty effective. It causes the opponent to run a different zone set offensively, but gets the Zips back into a man before the shot .. and it's always easier to rebound out of man than it is zone. Chris Wright: This guy killed the Zips. I think he might be the best player the Zips have faced under KD. I've not had a ton of time to think about it, but there's not been a guy in the MAC even close to this guy in the last 6 or 7 years. Maynor for VCU was pretty tough. Lots of athletes on URI last year .. but at the moment, Wright stands apart in my mind. I can see clearly how and why he's on the Wooden and Naismith watch lists. Team unity:In the ZTVsports post game video, a comment by KD stood out: "we get along." That was nice to see today. There didn't seem to be any conflict internally that was visible on the court. The guys seem to be on the same page. There weren't a bunch of TO's due to complete mis-communication, as we've seen in the past. I think this bodes well for the season. Can't wait to see more. My appetite for Zips hoops is officially whetted. This was a good competitive game. The offense is turned up from last year .. and now they need to get the D in line with KD's expectations. The potential is here for a really strong season, not just one waiting for the 4 horsemen to be able to join them. That's what I got. There's probably more. B) B) Get 'em on Zips fans! Go Zips!

Great early season basketball game tonight by our Zips and the Flyers. Not a win, but an entertaining look into what the team looks like and what we might expect against good D1 competition. Great to have it on TV. From what I saw in the in-game thread, I'm glad I muted the FSN guys and put on Frenchy. So we're off! Another season of dreams is underway. First off, the box score, as presented by StatSheet.Com And with sincere apologies to Sergio Leone, my notes from the game ... The Good: Resiliency: It was a nice recovery to get back into the game (2x) when things appeared to be getting out of hand. I take this as a very good sign of the toughness of the club. They didn't finish the Flyers out, but the also fought to stay in it. For game 1 of the D1 slate, I think this was my key takeaway. Nitro: 21 points on 15 shots in 28 minutes. Can we please stop calling the guy a bust? He's got a ways to go in demonstrate some consistency, but the guy played a nice game on the offensive end. For much of the first half, he was the only offense. Excellent game by Brett tonight. Newcomers: I was very surprised to see Euton drop the redshirt, but not disappointed. You can see the guy knows the game, and gets himself in position to make plays, instead of counting on athleticism. This guy is a basketball player, and will help us this year. 2 for 2 on pop out threes. That's HUGE when you have a big going to work inside at the same time. Abreu was clutch also. Took good care of the ball for the most part against the press. Lost it a few times down the lane, but he seemed comfortable out there overall .. and enabled Steve to move over to the 2 spot, where he found his shot a bit. Nik: Did not shoot well from the field tonight, but 11pts, 10 rebs & 7 assts is a stat stuffing night. He kept his composure and led the team in a lot of ways. He's not going to shoot 20% .. he just isn't. When he starts hitting a more normal rate, this guy will be a load .. especially opposite some other capable bigs. Nice game by Nik tonight. Zeke changes everything: I'm really dying to see the +/- numbers from tonight, because my perception right now is that Zeke must have a pretty good + number. The feel I had was that it really altered things on both ends of the floor. His stats weren't overpowering, but he changed what Dayton did .. drew a double & triple team every time he had the ball, and did a pretty darn good job of passing out of those situations to an open shooter. If he masters that skill of sensing the double and waiting to the right moment to kick out .. our shooters will have open shots, and the number of threes the Zips hit tonight will be the norm. The Zips could very well become a "pick your poison" kind of problem for opposing coaches. Team play on offense: The Zips assisted on 18 of 22 FG's and had only 7 Turnovers against a longer, more athletic team. Read that again. That's a great sign of the state of the offensive execution. The ball is being moved around to the open shooter. There weren't too many forced shots, and they did an adequate job of protecting the possessions. The Bad: They lost: There are no good losses. The Zips got close to a good D1 team on the road. Let them get out to a double digit halftime lead, fought back to lead by a possession or 2, and then gave it back at the end. This is an early season game, but I'm sure KD joins us in wanting to see the team grow to the point where they can sustain that run in the middle of the 2nd half and put Dayton away. Scoring Droughts: CK warned about it today. Some may say jinxed the Zips .. but the droughts reared their ugly head again @ UD Arena. Frankly, with the 10 minutes or so they went without a FG in the first half, it should have been walkon time in the 2nd half. Nik's aggressiveness with the ball got him to the line, and that kept the Zips in it. If the Zips are to be successful in March, they have to find a way to get good looks when Zeke isn't in the game. They can't continue to have these stretches of no offense. Rebounding: The rebound totals were 39-25. You don't need to look at the box score to see that UD had more. The Zips were manhandled on the boards at critical times in the game. Frenchy described a few of the offensive boards as weird spin outs or odd bounces, but for the most part they were due to bad positioning, and/or the Zips guy just not putting a body on the Flyer who eventually snared the board. Exception: in 10 minutes on the floor, Dakotah had 4 boards. That's as much as our 2 centers had in 33 minutes. The Zips can not get beat on the glass by 50% and expect to beat good D1 teams. The Ugly: Foul trouble for Zeke: Gotta keep the big guy on the floor. I can't help but hope the MAC officials call fewer of the bogus freshman ticky tack stuff. His 3rd foul was a joke. It's plain to see that he alters the game. Now the Zips need to find away to keep him on the floor for more than 19 minutes. He plays more in the first half, the deficit is probably half of what it was. Nik survives first season ending injury of the 2010-11 campaign: I remember a practice 2 seasons ago where Nik stopped play rolling around on the floor, only to get back up and be on the court in 2 or 3 minutes. KD was furious at him. Good to see Nik bounce back from his first season ending injury of the year. Bardo on a poster: Let's face it, The Old Spice Guy or George Clooney wouldn't look much better on the Chris Wright poster that's getting readied for sale in the UD bookstore in the morning, let alone Mike Bardo. Mike, you've got to put him on the floor in that situation. Does 2 things: keeps you off the marketing materials for UD sports, and maybe makes the guy a little slower to drive in on you. Live & die by the 3 ball: I have no issue whatsoever with the Zips taking 36 3-balls last night. They made a bunch of them. My struggle with it is only when it starts to happen without any inside action whatsoever. Be it a dribble drive by Abreu (happened a few times) or a dump to a big guy .. the threes fall better off an inside out action. The scoring drought really took hold when there was no inside activity or success in penetrating to force the defense to address the paint. This team can shoot the rock and should shoot it .. but they need the inside out to have more open, higher percentage 3's. ... And a Few Comments More: Love the zone to man switch: French & Dunn made noise about Dayton being confused by the Zone look in the second half .. but I think they missed what KD was doing, and probably what caused UD the most trouble. The Zips have the habit of sitting in that zone for a portion of the shot clock and then quietly slipping back into man. UD never caught on. It's not something you can do all the time, but I expect to see more of it. I really like the look .. and if the Zips can pull it off without losing a man here or there, it should be pretty effective. It causes the opponent to run a different zone set offensively, but gets the Zips back into a man before the shot .. and it's always easier to rebound out of man than it is zone. Chris Wright: This guy killed the Zips. I think he might be the best player the Zips have faced under KD. I've not had a ton of time to think about it, but there's not been a guy in the MAC even close to this guy in the last 6 or 7 years. Maynor for VCU was pretty tough. Lots of athletes on URI last year .. but at the moment, Wright stands apart in my mind. I can see clearly how and why he's on the Wooden and Naismith watch lists. Team unity:In the ZTVsports post game video, a comment by KD stood out: "we get along." That was nice to see today. There didn't seem to be any conflict internally that was visible on the court. The guys seem to be on the same page. There weren't a bunch of TO's due to complete mis-communication, as we've seen in the past. I think this bodes well for the season. Can't wait to see more. My appetite for Zips hoops is officially whetted. This was a good competitive game. The offense is turned up from last year .. and now they need to get the D in line with KD's expectations. The potential is here for a really strong season, not just one waiting for the 4 horsemen to be able to join them. That's what I got. There's probably more. B) B) Get 'em on Zips fans! Go Zips! View the full blog post here.

Finding the pony in the smelly room .. to be down only 11 after the drought they had against a good team is a positive sign. They could easily be down 20. Euton hits a big shot. Have to guess kd is not counting on b mck to be back soon if Euton has pulled off the redshirt.

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!