Zip Watcher

Just in case people forgot .. check out the hall of fame for:This CLASSIC CK offering.

Was this really a "they don't make bricks the way they used to" post??!What are you, 90?

You're on target with most of this:- Hostile crowd in close quarters can make calling sets and calling out picks difficult for the visitors- The shooting backgrounds are different on the road, so depth perceptions may be harder on the road- Atmosphere is a lot of it. Stop by the JAR on March 9th to get a flavor.Bandbox is just a really tight space with lots of people in it .. I suppose it stems from old time theatre / vaudeville or something, but it's (I suppose) a slang term to describe an arena where the fans are right on top of the court and close by the action.Rent Hoosiers sometime if you don't own a copy. Most of the HS gyms in the movie would probably qualify as "bandboxes"The great thing about Anderson @ BG is that there is no media table on the sideline opposite the benches. The students occupy that entire side, and stand a few feet from the sideline the whole length of the court. When they are there in large numbers it is very different than the JAR where there's a media table @ midcourt, and high priced alumn seats next to it. Lately, however, the support level at BG is a bit down .. due mostly to fan fatigue surrounding the recently departed head coach.I'm not a tOSU fan at all .. but I do think they gave away the best home court advantage in the Big11 when they moved out of St. John arena. The students surrounded the court, the upper deck was tight in .. it was awesome when it rocked. The new pro-style arena they have robs their team of a little advantage that Jimmy Jackson & Clark Kellong once had.

When (IF) it's full, I find Anderson Arena to be one of the best environments for basketball left. It's the definition of a bandbox. What a tremendous home court advantage it would be if they jammed the place night in and night out. Definitely old school.

Ultimately, I thought the Austin Peay game was ok last year. It was nice to have smashed a team that played in the postseason, though it wasn't enough.If the Zips take care of business, and are sitting with 2 or less conference losses, I'm thinking they'll get a likely NCAA team in here. And that will help the resume when that team boards the bus with a loss.

A home win in conference is a minimum, no matter who it is against. The conference is won and lost by going on the road to get some wins.My opinion is that there is a hangover of sorts as it relates to the media and UA. They voted Romeo Travis the POY last year, and he's now gone. Joyce started pretty much for 4 seasons, and he is gone. So logically .. take a good team, subtract a POY and a 4 year point guard, and they should take a step back. I think that's the reasoning.The other factor here is the incessant brow beating about UA's OOC schedule. Admittedly it wasn't among the best in the MAC, according to the numbers. It may have been what's right for this team, but it isn't what Toledo or Miami did .. therefore "Akron is the reason the MAC's RPI is low" is the mantra you'll find in the media and on other boards.Really it was a great win .. and convincing. But they need to validate it with a win at UB and vs. OU at home. If they drop both OU and MU and pick up a (typically tough) roadie against the Bulls, you'll hear more. Do a search for "MAC Golf Standings" at macbbs or miamihawktalk.com and you'll find an interesting way of looking at the standings. Generally, the Zips held serve .. most would have expected Miami to take a loss @ Akron.The OU @ BG thing is another story .. that one is either TOS's usual underperformance, Louis Orr making an impact, the Bubba Walther factor, or a combination of those. That was the big surprise of the week I think. The margin and manner of UA's win was noteworthy, but not the fact that they won.Rifle, I think you'll figure this out for yourself, you're a smart guy: The teams that the media & other fans drool over each December & heading into the conference season almost NEVER end up at the top of the heap in March. Witness the fact that OU is perennially one of the favorites before their lack of discipline and depth do them in during January & February. It's almost an SI jinx of sorts .. you pretty much never want to be a unanimous conference pick .. that spells doom. Remember last year?The Zips are in the conversation, as they deserve. They'll show in the next 4 games how much they should or shouldn't be dominating that conversation.Personally, I think this thing has the potential to evolve into a two horse race in a really big hurry, but I'll discuss that later.

mollautt, Did you make the game?I have a question about Bramos. He didn't appear to be favoring an ankle, but I'm wondering how healthy he is. Any input into his current physical condition? I see over at MHT that (some) folks seem to think that he's too hurt to play.There were a few plays were he seemed to be the quickest guy out there (I can think of a nice recovery on D in the 1st half and block) .. but generally Nate kept him from catching the ball in a position to do anything with it. It was hard to really tell he was hurt. If I didn't know it before getting there, I wouldn't have picked up on it.Thanks,ZW

This is NOT the Fingerhut report. This is the commission of the related universities. His report & 10 year vision is due to be presented to the state some time this quarter I believe.

Linhart takes Bramos out of the game. Wood & Pollitz cancel each other out. Zips guards have a big night.Zips double the cover.Zips 70Miami 62

Nope .. when Ira Newble was on Miami, he was famous for having a sweaty butt crack .. and so the OZone @ OU would call him out for it .. Hence the Redskins(hawks) became known as the "sweaters"

At the bottom right of the window, you'll see a pulldown that lets you decide how far back to go for displaying posts.It may default to 30 days. If there haven't been any topics / posts in the past 30 days, then the forum will show as empty. Pull it down to a longer range option & the posts will become visible again.ZW

I wasn't at the game yesterday, but I have been to games at UD arena in the past.Is UD arena any less hostile of an environment for a visiting team than Cameron or the Dean Dome? Seems like yesterday it was pretty intense there.

Two words: Lamar Simpson

I'm not sure I agree with you on your 80% number. Some time back (mid-90's) I spent a lot of time tinkering with Chrysler vehicles, before the Benz takeover .. and almost all fasteners on the cars were Metric / SI. Certainly on the engine and powertrain, they were SI.There's not really any reason to not keep both in this area. The real pushback against the SI units 20 or 30 years ago was that the machining industry had all its machines and indexes set to the English system. That is, the milling machines, lathes .. production processes were run on machine with only English measurements built in. This is no longer the case with the (nearly) universal adoption of digital measurement readouts (that can provide either SI or English outputs) and CNC manufacturing.Any more, at least in our dealings with conventional manufacturing companies, there is no issue using either SI or English units. We generally use dual dimensioning schemes on all of our prints. So from the manufacturing sector, there is already wide adoption / acceptance of SI units.To me, elimination of English fasteners would be silly. Case in point being that the SI series don't always have the coursest thread options. Besides, a 1/4-28 fits nicely in the sizing tree between M6 and M7. Why not have both? There's no reason. Tools exist to make / use both .. no need to scrap them. I can tell you that for us there are clear occasions where one is preferred to the other, and it isn't always SI or English. It varies.

YSU should be a permanent home & home. I like the series. I think the same about CSU, but Waters is chicken and that's the end of CSU / Akron.I've seen the penguins once each of the past 3 or 4 seasons, and last season I thought they made a big jump forward. It will be interesting to see them again this week.

I'd like to see someone do some research on Gonzaga. Pull their schedules / results from 1995 through now, and also link it up to RPI results for each year if you can find them.- RPI & SOS for each season of Gonzaga since Dan Monson became coach, or 1995, whichever is earlier. I know that Mark Few is the coach now, but Monson was the initial architect.- Their schedule & results, as well as their post-season invites & resultsI think (wild ass guess here) that Gonzaga had no luck getting a favorable schedule until AFTER they broke through and became a known team with a few NCAA berths / wins. And by favorable schedule, I mean a schedule that isn't entirely on the road, with some quality opponents at home .. etc.It might be interesting to see Butler or (pick your own) during the same time period.Maybe a student can fit this in during break between cases of the Beast or Natty Light.If it's good info, there may be a pair of lower reserved seats for an upcoming Zips game for the best research into the topic.

Really? He (Moore) was on the roster for the CMU game.See Page 17

Exactly who is expecting that much here? Ball's freshman year was one of the worst seasons in Zips history .. he had to take every shot. McLaughlin was on a good team .. and has his number retired (finally).I don't see folks here saying these 3 guys are going to play 30 minutes each and supplant CM or ND as the stars of the team. What we're all hoping for is DEPTH .. especially at the guard spot. Even 10 minutes from DR will make an impact on the fortunes of the team. Not an impact because he's going to score 20 .. an impact because he spells CM & ND and allows the Zips to press more and with more energy. And better defense at the point will make the half court defense better.This isn't about going from 2-8 to go win the MAC. This is adding some bodies and athleticism to an already good team .. helping the team get more rested & get down to what it does best .. defend defend defend .. and shut people down. Amen .. isn't that what everyone is doing?

Yep .. no room for improvement or added depth on this team. And some backcourt depth here wouldn't help our shooting percentage. Whatever.It is entirely feasible that one or more of these guys can make an impact on the outcome of the season for this team. No one here is saying any of these guys are coming in here to average a triple double. We're seeing weaknesses on the team surrounding numbers & rest in the backcourt .. and specifically having to play guys (Dials) out of position, which affects their normal output.Besides, if I listen to some of you guys, we've NEVER had a freshman make an impact on the team. Not Peterson, not Joyce, not Travis or Wood. And thats the past 6 years.I for one look for a little infusion of energy from the new guys .. and some better substitution numbers.Go Zips!

I'm confused. I thought you said the other day that these games aren't enough to help elevate the program. Now which is it? Agreed .. all the games matter. This one was a loss. And it was one loss from which there is much to learn.

That HAS to be a good sign.

GP1, can you confirm this?

Thanks for the notes from on site .. I appreciate them. To be fair .. you saw one of UA's worst shooting nights of the year .. at the end of the year, I suspect it will be in the bottom 3 percentage wise. After 35 minutes, an average Akron night had them up 10. I suspect that if Akron plays to their potential in this game .. they could have won by 20 .. seems to me the teams were a pretty good matchup. I think this relates to the calvalry that we hope arrives in 2 weeks time. Certainly the case tonight .. wasn't so in the past 3 games. A work in progress? This is why it's a good thing this is game 7 & not game 33. Here again, this was absolutely the case tonight .. but on the whole of 7 games this season, it's an outlier .. recently (games 4-6), they have been extremely efficient on the inside out game. I think if you can make it to a couple more games later in the year, you'll find this to be a strength of the team. Against Wyoming .. you don't get 80 points out of 4 guys if you're not moving it around to the open player.Nice notes .. thanks again for reporting in.ZWStill ...

Since you've stated this, or similar a few times now ... Here's probably where our fundamental difference of opinion lies. You're looking at this as 30 (really it's 21) years of frustration since the last NCAA birth .. or maybe you're looking back to the last deep run in the College Division. Understandable .. if I had seen Wyatt Webb's teams play .. I might feel the same long term pressure .. but I've only got about 25 years of Zips watching.My view is this: This is not the same as 18 years ago .. it's not the same as 10 years ago .. and it's not the same as 5 years ago. We can NOT consider this year 21 of the rebuilding process .. or year 30 .. or whatever. I think we can only look at the program in it's current form: KD as head coach. This is year 4 of a program build under KD. He wasn't head coach in 1993, or 2003 .. he's the head coach now, and I think the program now is what we have to look at:2004-05: 19-10 overall, 11-7 in Conference, First Conf. Tourney win2005-06: 23-10 overall, 14-4 in Conference, Reached Conf Semis, 1-1 in the NIT2006-07: 25-7 Overall, 13-3 in Conference, Reached Conf. Tourney Finals.2007-08: 5-1 record thus far.I choose to consider the program's progress on these items alone .. not the 19 years of futility that preceded them. We're not going to wake up tomorrow and be a top 15 team that can demand reasonable game terms from other elite teams. But if we're patient, and support the team, coaches & program adequately, we WILL wake up a few years from now in that situation.This is going to take a little bit. We have to have some continuous improvement and the program will eventually be able to win year after year. JWood is the last player that remembers what it was like before .. and it either motivates him, or he's left it behind. Either way .. only now can you really say that every aspect of the program has KD's mark.I for one am good with what I see ..

My favorite part of the story: