Quickzips

I'll man up and admit I was wrong. Going into the season I didn't exactly have high expectations for Jake. Frankly, I thought there was a pretty good chance he would redshirt and might never see much action for us. Boy was I wrong. You can just tell he is a KD kind of guy. Tough, not afraid to mix it up and can step out and hit the 3 ball. While the present is pretty darn good, the future is definitely bright as well.

Just got home after having to miss the game (I missed the last OU game as well, starting to think I need to avoid the Q two weeks from Saturday) and am SO happy to see the Zips extended it to 19 in a row and that we did it in such dramatic fashion. On the flip side. This Saturday scares the heck out of me. Classic trap game. I hope these guys have the mental fortitude to understand that they haven't won jack yet. 30 in a row baby!

Hate to be Captain Buzzkill here, but this means very little if we crap our pants down the stretch. We haven't arrived by any stretch of the imaginzation until we close this thing out and go on a run in the NCAAs. Nice little feather in our cap at this point, but there are much bigger feathers to have your sights set on.

Why on earth is this poll even up? Is this some type of morbid joke? Do you go around kicking puppies and stealing candy from babies when you get off of Zipsnation? This is ridiculous. Can I vote for this as the stupidest poll ever produced in the middle of an 18 game winning streak?

Just a couple more points here: While Betancourt looked good, he needs to work on getting the ball in-bounds on those side out plays under the basket. More than once I was very surprised that we didn't get a 5 second call. Loved the end of the first half when we extended the defense out to about 25-30 feet and played Harney out top of it. Nick might not always be the best defender, but his length and athleticism makes him very dangerous if you put him in the right spots, and that is one of them. NDSU got VERY flustered by that. Not at all concerned by the T on Zeke after the big dunk. Frankly, he can get a couple of those a night for all I care so long as he continues to play with this new found attitude of "I'm going to score this one and if you don't get out of my way I'm throwing you through the hoop as well". Two years ago on that steal Zeke would have pulled up, handed the ball off to a guard and we would have set up in the half court. Friday that was a game changing fast break dunk. Should it have been a T? I don't know, and I don't really care. All I want to see is that aggressiveness and attitude from Zeke.

I hate to get too cocky, but I am tending towards agreeing with you on this Cap'n. My disdain for how bad the MAC is this year is well documented, but watching our game against NDSU on Friday and then watching OU against Belmont last night I am starting to believe that OU may be fools gold as well. They still scare me in that they have that ability to go unconscious from the 3 point line and run you out of the gym, but they haven't shown a lot of that this year. Heck they haven't shown it at all against any type of quality competition. The stage is all set for a historic month of March for Akron.

OU runs hot and cold. They are really very unpredictable against the good teams. If their 3 point shooting is on they can run a team out of the gym early. If not they can look VERY bad (as they did last night). For all of the good that Cooper does it has always been clear to me that he doesn't truly trust his supporting cast. You see it every time they get down a little early in a game. He goes into hero-ball mode taking LONG 3s early in the shot clock trying to get them back in the game. Occasionally it will work. More often he misses a few of them in a row, the opposing team comes back down and scores and the deficit increases. Part of the reason I would never want him on this team. You don't need guys with that kind of an ego. Said it after our first game with them, but it deserves repeating here. Ivo Baltic is quite possibly the softest 6'9" (if you believe he is really 6'9") guy in college basketball. If I were an OU fan I would be absolutely embarrassed to watch him floating around the 3 point line and NEVER mixing it up underneath. You almost get the impression that they will be better next year without him. Addition by subtraction. As for the questions at hand: 1) Major gut check time for OU. They haven't beaten any decent teams all year. This was one of their last chances to do it and the pissed all over themselves. 2) Very minimal impact on the Zips. A win by OU would have MAYBE helped our RPI by a position or two, but even that is debatable. 3) No impact at all. The MAC East is what it is. Akron, OU then a long drop off to Can't and Buffalo and another long drop off to Miami and BG. 4) It doesn't help, but OU wasn't going to be the team getting an at-large anyways.

I'll take French over the stammering sphincters that you hear on a majority of the MAC radio crews any day of the week. The guy bleeds blue and gold. So what if he gets a little caught up in it at times? If you want a robot behind the mic you might as well just turn off the radio and pull up the gametracker.

Can someone please explain to me why this is still a topic of conversation?

My postgame thoughts: NDSU clearly did a poor job scouting the Zips. You come to play Akron you better know, Zeke is going to make life miserable for you on the inside. Yet the Bison didn't seem to have any sort of a game plan other than dumping it off inside and trying to attack Zeke. It never worked, and they never really made any adjustments. By the end of the game they threw up one wild shot after another (I'm pretty sure one even hit the shot clock) just hoping that anything would get over Zeke's outstretched arm. Harney came out aggressive, which was nice to see, but he fell off big time in the second half. KD said in the post-game that Nick might have injured himself. I hope it is nothing too serious. First half Harney was a lot of fun to watch. I thought McAdams more than held his own in his first start. Getting your first start on National Television all you really want from the guy is to make some contribution and you don't want to notice him for the wrong reasons (turnovers, silly fouls, missed defensive assignments). Reggie did all of that last night. The future is bright with him and Kretzer. Betancourt is slowly developing into a serviceable backup PG, and it couldn't come at a better time. Abreu needs a few less minutes in this stretch run to get ready for the post-season. If 'Melo keeps playing at the level he has been we should be able to cut back on Abreu's minutes a little bit and keep him a little healthier for the stretch run. What in gods name is going on with Tree's FT shooting. He's never been a good FT shooter, but last night was absolutely putrid. He was having trouble just getting the ball to the front of the rim. I have to say, right now it looks like it is more mental with Tree than anything. He just looks like he dreads going to the line. To some extent we are who we are. I've been waiting all year for the Zips to play 40 minutes at both ends of the floor the way they are capable of, but I just don't see it happening. These guys are going to continue to frustrate us at times by looking lackluster in spurts (sometimes long spurts), getting down early and/or letting big leads slip away. So long as we keep winning I guess it is all good, but I dread the day that it catches up with us. Probably the most disappointing thing yesterday was the body language. Not good at all. Even at the start of the game. I saw a lot of guys sulking, looking un-interested and there wasn't a lot of energy. Tree, Harney, Zeke, Chauncey, Pat F., Abreu, Betancourt. They all had very poor body language yesterday. Chauncey's was the worst. I absolutely understand why he isn't playing much despite being (apparently) recovered from the injury. He barely participated in shoot around, choosing instead to wave to his family, fraternize with the refs and try a few trick shots from the bench. Not what you want from a supposed senior leader. These next two scare the piss out of me. At OU is going to be tough, everyone knows that, but I am just as worried about at Buffalo. Regardless of the result at OU that one has the potential to be a big let-down. A win at OU and we could be in for a hangover trap game at Buffalo. A loss at OU could shake the confidence of a team that hasn't lost in nearly 3 months and could result in back to back losses.

Terrible timing for this. Going into what I expect will be our 3 toughest games on the remaining schedule is not when you want injuries. Not to mention that Walsh has been about our most consistent player the last 3 weeks. Sure hope Chauncey's knee is feeling better and his head is on straight. We need that experience on the wing. Don't want to see more of Deji. Slightly above average defender. Well below average on offense. He's a liability on the floor as you don't have to account for him in your defensive game plan. Free's up guys to slant more to Abreu or double the post on Tree and Zeke. If we are going to go to the bench crew to find more playing time it needs to be McAdams and Kretzer. Jake isn't exactly suited to play the 2 guard, but he's the better defender of the two and is still a reasonable enough threat from the offensive side to keep things rolling. Reggie is more of a 2 guard, but he doesn't defend as well as Jake. It will be interesting to see how KD approaches this. Sure hope BWalsh is back for the Bobkitties.

Just keep winning and let the rest of this stuff work itself out. Thirty in a row here we come!!!

Do I need to bust out the "Don't Feed the Troll" banner for the second time in one day? OSU is overrated right now and is not playing anything close to their best basketball heading into the last few weeks of the season. They are absolutely primed for an early round upset. Giving up 71 and losing by 22 to Wisconsin is pretty embarrasing for a top 15 team. Wisconsin likes to play their games in the 50s and 60s and they are currently 191st in the country in scoring average. Giving up 71 to them is almost like getting 85 hung on you by most other teams. Am I guaranteing a Zips win if the two teams matched up? Hardly, but to say that OSU would be a double digit favorite and would cover the spread with ease is plain assanine and doesn't mesh with the available evidence.

I always have a hard time comparing high school and JUCO stats to DI production. Can't has quite a few guys right now who put up big numbers at the JUCO level who are struggling at this level. Blake Justice was one of the leading scorers in Ohio his senior year and he can't sniff the floor for us. Time will tell what becomes of Holmes. I'm not ready to annoint him a future MAC superstar after one game, but he can play at this level.

Still not sure what you were seeing in the stats headed into the game on Holmes, but I'll take your word that it was there. I stand by my opinion that he will be, at best, a role player for BG. He can score around the basket on put backs and pick and rolls, but I didn't see anything resembling a post up game and he was unwilling to try anything from beyond about 6 feet. He's only a decent rebounder. Not quite on the level of guys like Treadwell and McCrae, but better than someone like Harney, Baltic or his own teammate Calhoun. Shot blocking is his biggest strength (obviously), but as we have seen with Zeke, shot blocking will only get you so far if you don't develop other facets of your game. He has two years to get it done. For BGs sake I hope he does, because they are a BAD team if he has already hit his ceiling.

Very strange game. Zips were in control pretty much the whole way (they never trailed) but somehow it didn't always feel like it. French and Dunn mentioned it with KD in the postgame, but it bears repeating. Lost in all of the celebration over the winning streak and the hand-wringing over not blowing teams out is the fact that the Zips are playing some very good defensive basketball. As bad as we were offensively to start the game, that first 8 minutes was as good as I've seen the Zips play defense in a long time. BG just couldn't get anything close to a decent look at the basket. I know we all want to see the Zips putting up 80 a night and blowing teams out, but maybe that just isn't in our makeup right now. Maybe we ARE a grind it out defensive team that can win by holding our opponent in the 50s. Really, as long as we keep winning, does it matter that much? Very refreshing to see the Zips close out a game at the line. I've been saying all year that the Zips poor free throw shooting would cost us a game eventually. Tonight COULD have been that night, but it wasn't. When we needed them Zeke, Abreu and Walsh stepped to the line and calmly knocked down toss after toss after toss. I sure hope that is a sign of things to come. There was a time not too long ago that if the Zips only hit 2 threes for a game they would have lost by 17. Tonight they hit 2 threes for the game and won by 17. As much as I'd like to see a few more threes from the Zips, I can't complain about this trend. Give me the higher percentage shots all day. Speaking of threes, I would kind of like to see Harney take the three ball out of his game for a while. He needs to work on that shot a lot more over the offseason if he wants to be taking them consistently in games. Lucky for us he only tries one or two here and there. On the subject of Harney, I thought he had a very nice game (bad threes aside) tonight. The Zips seemed to recognize the mismatch he had against Luke Kraus, and went to him frequently. He did a nice job working that advantage. I also thought he played some of his best D since the OU game. Very nice game for Melo tonight. He still has a lot of holes in his game, but when he's given an opportunity to come in and push tempo he is an above average backup PG. We really need more of that from him, as it looks like Abreu is wearing down a little bit. Alex had a better game tonight than the last two, but he still isn't playing at the level we've all grown accustomed too. While I'm on the topic of our PGs, 7 turnovers tonight. MUCH better than the 20 we had against EMU. And just to show that I'm not a complete sore loser, Dave, I was fairly impressed with Holmes tonight. He kept BG in the game at times. Still, the rest of that roster is a mess. When Calhoun and Crawford aren't on (which Crawford at least wasn't tonight, and Calhoun was rather pedestrian) they don't stand much of a chance.

Holmes has two games in double digit scoring this year (11 @NIU and 10 @NDSU). He has more games scoring 1 or less times from the field (7) than he does double digit scoring performances. You'll excuse me if I have a difficult time seeing him becoming a leading scorer. From where I sit he has "role player" written all over him. He could be a nice third or forth option on a decent team, but if BG is going to be counting on him to be their go to guy they have trouble. Maybe he flourishes next year without Calhoun, maybe not. Beyond that you look at the rest of their roster and it is really scary. Chauncey Orr averages 7.5 per game, but if his Dad gets canned (as is suspected) do you really think he will stick around? Anthony Henderson averages 4 per game and is shooting a blazing 32% from the field. He looks like a knock down shooter compared to Jehvon Clarke (27% from the field). Cameron Black in his third year is playing almost 20 minutes a night and averaging 3 points per game. Heck, these guys are going to return 4 players that all shoot below 30% from the three line. The future is most definitely not bright for the Falcons.

While it would have been nice to have a cushion on OU, at the same time an OU loss pretty much would have put the nail in the coffin for the MAC getting 2 bids this year. Zips need to take care of their own business tonight and then go down and whip up on the Bobkitties.

One shot blocker isn't going to carry a team. The cupboard is pretty bare at Bowling Green. There is a reason that most of their fanbase is calling for Louis Orr's head.

OT in Athens. Javon McCrae is about the only big in the conference who I can say with confidence would see playing time for the Zips. Henninger isn't even close. The only other guys who MIGHT have a shot are Calhoun from BG, Kelley from OU and Whittington from Western.

Ohio State does NOT want to play the Zips in the tournament. It would be a nightmare matchup for them. Especially in the first round. The Zips would have a very good chance in that one, and a first round loss to a MAC team from Ohio would be a disaster for them.

Tied up at 62 with under 5 to go. Who do you root for in this one? A Can't win gives us a 2 game cushion on OU presuming we can handle the Falcons tonight. On the other hand rooting for Can't makes me want to go shower with ammonia.

More worried about the Zips performance in this one than I am anything the Falcons might throw at us. The Zips need to get healthy tonight heading into 3 pretty tough games in a row (Bracketbuster, @OU, @Buffalo). I am particularly interested in Abreu's performance as he's turned in two of his worst games ever as a Zip @Miami and @EMU. Not sure what is going on with him, but we need him to get out of this recent funk. For BG everyone pretty well knows the story. Shut down Crawford and/or Calhoun and it is pretty much all she wrote. We found out the last time against these guys that noone else on their team has the ability to beat you. I really wouldn't want to be a BG fan right now, because both those guys are seniors and they don't look like they will be returning anyone who is a legit D-I player. 2013-14 could be an epic bad year for the Falcons. I'm talking sub-300 RPI bad. Bold prediction, Zips 77 Falcons 61 in front of a nearly packed house of 5,050.

Without Brian Walsh right now the Zips are getting ready to talk about a 2 game losing streak, not potentially a 16 game winning streak. He's been huge the last two games.