Quickzips

That would be a huge loss for OU if Cooper is out for any significant length of time. Although a part of me also wonders if OU wouldn't be just fine without him. Talented as Cooper is, his tendency to play hero ball has hurt OU at times, and they do have a talented freshman in Stevie Taylor coming off of the bench at PG. In regards to the EMU matchup, this one really worries me. We haven't been the best team at times this year when teams have gone zone on us, and EMU plays exclusively zone defense. They have a 7'0" who can match up with Zeke as well. If the Zips keep with their trend of turning it on and off throughout the course of the game EMU can keep this one close and potentially steal one from us. They aren't as good a team on the road as they are at home, but they have the potential to pull some upsets. Zips need to play hard for 40 minutes. Does this group have it in them?

I would sure hope they were. KD (and most around here) have not been happy with the recent performances. Seeing as the team is winning, they need something to get motivated, and some tough love in practice is about the only thing that will do the trick when you are winning sloppy. I would imagine they haven't been sitting around the campfire singing koomba-ya.

My .02: A little immaturity between the whistles doesn't bother me too much. I could care less if Q jaws at the opposing bench a little after a foul. I don't really care if Chauncey wants to puff his chest out and pose for the crowd during a timeout. The part that bothers me is the immaturity that I see when the ball is in play. I absolutely hate seeing teams take possessions off, and this team is doing WAY too much of that right now. We play reasonably hard about 60% of the game, and against the Toledo's and Central's of the world we can come away with a double digit win. If we continue to play hard for only 60% of the game against ORU, at Ohio, at Can't, in the MAC tournament, in the NCAA's, we are going to get our shiney hinneys handed to us. Teams that have maturity play hard 100% of the time, and there aren't a whole lot of teams that can beat this group of Zips IF they play hard 100% of the time. The problem is how do you turn the after the whistle immaturity off and play hard, mature basketball when the ball is in play? I don't know as you can effectively do that. This Zips team certainly doesn't appear capable of it.

Causing turnovers isn't good defense, it is poor offense. Toledo was shooting above 50% in the first half. Not acceptable. The defense was a shell. Lots of pressure out high and gambling to try to force turnovers with nothing underneath other than hoping Zeke can clean up the mess. I give Zeke a lot of flack when he gets into foul trouble. Tonight it was not of his making. Our guys consistently put him in bad positions by gambling for steals, not moving their feet and generally playing matador defense. Pearson repeatedly walked to the hole without anyone challenging him until he got to Zeke who was left to try and clean up the mess. The young guys in particular were bad. As good as Harney is on offense (although it didn't show tonight), his lack of effort on defense is very unsettling. I don't know if he has Sasha Pavlovic syndrome or what it is. Tree at least tries on the defensive end, although his fundamentals are pretty poor. I know we just won by double digits, and we are 7-1 and leading the conference, but I am not happy with that performance. Toledo had not business being within 25 of us in that game. None at all. Any kind of effort on defense and we are watching Egner, Deji, Oldham and Peterson mop up that game for the final 5 minutes. That kind of effort is not going to cut it come March. Not even close.

A very unsatisfying win IMO. Zips are going to have to figure out how to stay interested for a full 40 minutes or they are going to get bit soon here. Toledo had no business being in that game as long as they were, and to let Pearson go off the way he did is unacceptable. Probably the worst defensive performance I've seen from the Zips under KD. We've had teams and individual players get hot on us, and I can accept that. I don't like it, but I can accept it. Tonight was just flat out laziness. Our defensive rotations were lazy, our box outs were lazy, our transition defense was lazy. That isn't going to fly come March. A win is a win, but to say I am disappointed with our effort is an understatement.

Although not in GJ's original post, it was mentioned that Cleveland State, Marshall, Midd Tenn and Creighton will all be on the schedule again next year, as well as possibly Detroit. KD did mention that this team really needs to be challenged more. It sounded very much to me like we will put together a more aggressive schedule for next year. Just the start of it with CSU, Marshall, MTSU, Creighton and a few good opponents in Puerto Rico has the makings of a schedule that would be at-large worthy. I would love to see any or all of the other teams you mentioned on the schedule.

Not the prettiest W by any stretch, but a W is a W. The Zips looked like a team that is tired of being on the road. Luckily we get some home cooking for most of the remaining MAC schedule. Chalk this one up as a learning experience and move on to Toledo and a suddenly tougher than expected Eastern Michigan.

Zeke may have just saved the game for us with that offensive board. Now lets finish the and 1 big fella.

I don't know what we are doing out there right now. Central can't guard us off the dribble or in the paint, yet Abreu, Q, Walsh and Nitro are just dribbling around the 3 point line and hoisting bad shots.

Let this team hang around long enough and it is going to come back to bite us. This has been the exact opposite of all of our other MAC games. Zips came out looking strong and have played sloppy since about the under 8 timeout in the first half. I'd love to see us put together a nice little run over the next 5-6 minutes and put this thing away. Central has no business being within striking distance against us.

Deji's ideal development is as a defensive minded 2 guard. That 6'9" wingspan could make him a lock down perimeter defender. He has a long way to go to be any kind of significant offensive threat, but he could be a nice role player coming off the bench to defend the other teams best guard.

FT shooting is going to cost this team another big game before this season is over (I say another because it already cost us the VCU game). We should be up by 20 on this team if we could hit a dang free throw. As it stands Zips +12 at the half.

I'll throw my .02 in here on the Zips 2012 class: Betancourt was a must get, or at least a player like him. Abreu has already had to deal with some injury issues, and we don't have another player on the roster who can regularly handle 25-30 minutes a night at the point. We needed another pass first, floor general PG type on the roster and by all reports Melo is exactly that. He is the only guy that I will say for certain will see minutes unless he gets injured or is just a complete bust his freshman year. I don't get where the idea comes from that McAdams doesn't fit the KD2.0 recruiting philosophy. I've heard him compared favorbly to Gilliam, who is certainly within the mold of a KD2.0 recruit. All the reports say the kid is a talented athlete with a diverse offensive repitoire. Certainly sounds like a KD2.0 recruit to me. I hate to play the race card here, but I wonder if we would be having this same conversation if Reggie was a black kid from downtown Cleveland? Kretzer is a mystery to me. You look at photos of him and he is a ripped 6'7", but the reports I've heard on him say he prefers to play on the perimeter as opposed to banging inside like you would expect from the pictures of him. If I were going to make comparisons I think his ceiling would be around a Nate Linhart while his basement would be a Michael Green kind of player. I just don't know where to peg him yet.

Well, I suppose I'll be the one to take the conversation off of bracket buster speculation and the WAY too early NCAA tourney seeding discussions. In case we all forgot, there is in fact a game today up in Mt. Pleasant Michigan. Central Michigan is another of the bottom of the barrel MAC West teams. Despite having the most highly touted recruit in MAC history, they are absolutely abysml. They won their first two games in conference, and have dropped 4 straight since then. This is a team that the Zips should not have much difficulty handling. So long as we come out of the locker room ready to play this should be at least a 14-15 point win. On another note, I really don't envy Central at all. They are in a tough position. They have a great player there in Trey Zeigler, but their coach, Ernie Zeigler is an absolute joke. Only problem is, if you fire the coach, you can pretty well bet the player will be asking for his release that day. Personally, I would just go ahead and bite the bullet. Even with Trey, this team doesn't have the appearance of a team that will be capable of making any noise in the MAC over the next 2.5 years. They really just need to blow the whole thing up and start over again.

No way should Zeke even consider leaving after this year. He simply is not ready. His offensive game, though better than it was, still has a long way to go before he could be a legitimate NBA player. The other part of the equation here is the quality of this years draft class. After the uncertainty surrounding last years draft and the lockout, this year is LOADED with talent. It is supposed to be one of the deepest drafts in recent NBA history. At this point, Zeke would be lucky to be an early second rounder (which means no guaranteed contract btw) in this years draft. Stick around another year, improve that offensive game and let the talent pool thin out a bit and he could sneak into the late lottery next year.

This has been a hallmark of KD's teams. If you look at the numbers from the last few years, we rarely have anyone on the team averaging over 10-12 points per game. Usually we have 6-7 players between 7-10 points per game. It has worked pretty well for us. The Zips rarely go into a game saying that if "X" player doesn't show up tonight we have no chance of winning. On the flip side, KD also seems to understand the concept of letting another teams leading scorer have his, but shutting down the rest of the team. Case in point, Tuesday night against Ball State. Jarrod Jones is clearly the Cardinals best player. Zeke struggled with him a bit early, but KD never really started throwing double teams at Jones. Instead he sort of accepted that Jones was going to score, but didn't let his teamates get involved. The end result was a strong showing from Jones with no help from his supporting cast and a double digit Zips victory. I've seen this quite a bit from KD the past few years, and while it can be a bit frustrating watching the opponents best player score seemingly at will sometimes, we have won those types of games a good deal more than we have lost them.

Miami just lost at home to Toledo. The Rockets first road win in conference in over 3 years. The Redhawks now sit at 1-5 in the conference, 5-13 overall. Outside of Julian Mavunga, there is not a whole lot of talent on that roster, and Charlie Coles appears to have fallen completely out of favor with an ever-dwindling fan base. Sad to see what has happened to that program. They have been regressing the past couple of years and it looks as if the floor has fallen completely out from under them now. With Mavunga graduating at the end of the year I wouldn't expect things to get better any time soon.

Best measure in my mind of how good this team is right now is to get on to other teams fan forums and read the post before and after the game. The last 3-4 games our opponents fans have gone in essentially with the attitude of "if we do EVERYTHING right we might be able to sneak away a win from Akron." Post-game it is, "Akron is just clearly more talented, the better team won. We made a couple of mistakes, and you just can't do that against a team that is that talented and that deep." It isn't just the blue and gold colored glasses crowd around here that sees how good this team is. Other programs are recognizing it too.

If the Zips ever play to their full potential for 40 minutes it is going to be difficult for any team in the conference to keep it within 20 against us. Right now the Zips are playing about 70% over the course of an entire game. 50% (if that) in the first half, and about 85% in the second half. The night the Zips come out of the locker room with fire in their eyes looking to destroy an opponent and don't let up for 40 minutes it is going to get REALLY ugly.

I guess it was a nice win, but I don't feel too great about this one. One of these days these first half duldroms are going to bite us. We can't keep going into halftime with double digit turnovers and trailing. I guess the big plus is we played VERY well on the defensive end in the second half. On to Mt. Pleasant.

Not entirely true. Randy Davis is one of the top PG's in the conference and averages better than 6 assists per game. Tyrae Robinson is a pretty nice 2 guard who can knock down the 3 at a decent clip. Jesse Berry is another pretty good guard who scores better than 10 per game. Ball State will try to go 9 deep right along with the Zips. Ball States biggest problem will be matching up with the size and length of the Zips. Outside of Jones they have very little size (6'7" sophomore Kenny Kamienicki and 6'6" Aaron Adeoye play a combined 28 minutes per night, everyone else is 6'4" or under). Zips 72 Cardinals 64

I have absolutely no clue why we are discussing this in the middle of the conference season while we are leading the East division and looking as strong as we are, but here goes. We lose 2 players at the end of the season. Nikola and Nitro. We bring in three new guys. Betancourt, Kretzer and McAdams. Question 1: Who replaces Nik's minutes? The obvious answer is Tree. He is built more like a PF than Harney who is more of a combo forward and quite frankly he is more talented than Egner. I wouldn't be at all surprised however to see KD start Egner but give Harney and Tree the majority of the minutes off of the bench in an attempt to keep the bench brigade that we have going this year together. Question 2: Who replaces Nitro's minutes? There are at least three answers here. Deji, Justice and McAdams are the obvious choices. Deji has the tools to be a lock down defender on the perimeter, and will be the only one of the three who has seen minutes at the D-I level. Justice's skill set probably most closely mirrors that of McClanahan in that he can knock down the 3, plus he will at least have had a year in the program. McAdams is the wild card. By all accounts he has a lot of talent, can hit the three and he has a size advantage over the other two, but we have no idea how any of that will translate to the D-I level. For now pencil me in for Deji because of his experience (albeit limited) and because we all know how much KD loves guys who can defend. Question 3: Who do we redshirt? In my mind you have to play Betancourt if he is at all capable of handling minutes at this level. Q has done a nice job of handling the point when Alex is out, but I feel like it keeps him handcuffed a bit. If Betancourt is ready KD really needs to do everything he can to carve out 10-14 minutes per night for him. Kretzer in my mind is an easy call. We have plenty of 6'5" - 6'7" wing forwards who can step out and shoot the 3 on this years roster. Unless his performance in practices just absolutely demands that he see playing time you redshirt him. McAdams is the toughest call for me. Again, by all accounts he has the talent to play from day one, but whose minutes do you cut to make room for him? Diggs? Gilliam? Walsh? Harney? Unless he takes control of the minutes vacated by Nitro, I think you have to at least consider putting the redshirt on him. My prediction is a 10 man rotation: Starters: PG - Abreu SG - Walsh SF - Gilliam PF - Egner C - Zeke Rotation: PG - Betancourt SG - Deji SG/SF - Diggs SF/PF - Harney PF - Tree Redshirts: Kretzer McAdams

Ball State and Western on the road are the only two games I am remotely worried about. Ball State more so than the Broncos, but Western is undefeated at home this year. Central on the road does not scare me much at all. Eastern, NIU and Toledo at home should all be blowouts. 4-2 is an absolute minimum for us through the West. If this team is as legit as they looked in the second half last night 5-1 or 6-0 is not out of the question.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. My opinions on OU are pretty well documented around here, so I won't go into too much detail again. Needless to say, I think Buffalo is the better team right now. The days of the MAC being a league dominated by guards are over with. It is a new era for the MAC, and the headliners are now big guys who can run the floor, finish at the rim, post up, block shots and get opponents in foul trouble. OU may have the best backcourt in the league, but I'll take Buffalo over the Bobcats because they are better adapted for this new era of MAC hoops.

Few additional thoughts from last night: Someone mentioned it earlier, but it bears repeating. When the Zips started cutting down on the turnovers they started to make the big run. No coincidence that you are going to be behind when you turn it over 13 times in the first 25 minutes. Also not a coincidence that we blew Can't out of the gym when we only had 2 the last 15 minutes of the game. I have no problem with KD's postgame comments about wanting his guys to practice harder, and I do not see it at all a him setting up an excuse for the next loss. KD is a brutally honest coach. Always has been and always will be. It is one of the qualities that makes him successful. Quite frankly, Harney, Tree and Co. should all WANT to practice harder. As Dave put it earlier, you could tell the youngsters were gassed out there towards the end of that run. Practice a little harder and maybe they can handle more minutes. You have to go back and watch the alley oop dunk Harney had from Q a couple more times to truly appreciate the kind of talent Nick is. That pass was low. Nick caught it around his knees and was already in mid-air. Nick not only caught the ball around his knees, he swept it up over his head and threw it down in one majestic motion. It was a play with an extremely high degree of difficulty and Nick made it look absolutely effortless. He is such a cerebral offensive talent that it almost doesn't look like he is trying out there at times. I believe Dave said it after the OU game. With this team you never truly get worried about them being completely out of a game. Unlike in the past where if we got down 10+ midway through the second you were really worried, this team has the offensive firepower to mount huge comebacks in very short periods of time. A lot of fun to watch this team play. I only hope that all the casual fans at the JAR last night realize that and keep coming back. For the first time since I came to Akron in '03 I can honestly say that the Zips had better athletes on the floor than Can't. Honestly, it wasn't really close. Down the stretch Can't just didn't have anyone who could match up with the athleticism of Q, Harney, Tree, Gilliam, etc. A sight for sore eyes.