Quickzips

This is starting to get a little frustrating. We're needing every bit of depth that we've got right now. Luckily Egner and Harney are still available in the frontcourt. Wonder if we will see any of Michael Green.

After seeing their team two years in a row I can honestly say I am not impressed with either McCallum. More so Sr. than Jr. Jr may actually have some talent, but Sr. is an absolutely horrible coach. His offensive game plan last night seemed to be, let Jr. dribble around for 25 or 30 seconds, then hope he can make something happen by forcing the ball to the basket. It didn't work much at all. The problem for Detroit is, if they can Sr., Jr. is likely gone. Central Michigan IMO is facing a similar problem with the Zeiglers. Trey is a pretty darn good player. Ernie is a piss poor excuse for a coach. But you know if Ernie is fired, Trey will be clearing out his locker too.

I'll take issue with this a little bit. I haven't seen Harney play overly aggressive yet. If you are referring to the two cheap fouls he got in quick succession last night I don't think that was a matter of Nick himself being too agressive. I've seen pretty much every big man that has come through our program pick up fould like that, especially early in their career. Zeke himself has picked up literally dozens of them. I think it is more a matter of our defensive scheme, trying to draw our big guys out away from the rim and trap hard on opposing guards. Right now Nick is second on the team in scoring despite being seventh on the team in minutes. This from a guy who had one year of organized high school ball and then sat out all of last year (including practices) to focus on grades. Pretty impressive if you ask me. Is he a team leader? I don't think so right now. Developing into a team leader takes time, but I for one am VERY excited at what this kids future holds.

Wait until next year we will have a 6'6 PG on the floor. Who happens to have been a major major top prospect. What? The other puerto rican? I believe he is referring to Reggie McAdams whom KD has already stated he plans to play on the wing.

Good question. As young as we are now, I still see Nik as the guy. Down the road, I think Brian Walsh can be that guy. Maybe Rico too, he's already been a big influence on the PR pipeline with Bentancourt and has the fire to lead. Just needs to be a bit more heady on the floor. Ideally, the point guard would be the best position to keep things settled and on point. Whatever the cause, AA hurts his credibility as a leader with the suspension. He is going to have to earn some trust back from the guys. Right now, I've been hoping that Serb would grab hold of the leadership position. He's probably the most natural leader on the team that I've seen. However, right now he seems more interested in settling into a secondary role and the need to get guys like Tree, Harney and Egner on the floor is limiting his playing time. I don't think he's too happy about that. I agree that Nitro is probably not the guy to look too. He has a lot of value to this team as a perimeter shooter on a team that can get the ball to the rim with multiple guys, but he isn't particularly a take charge kind of guy. One name not brought up yet is Q. He was a bit of a loose cannon at times last year, but seems to have settled down a bit so far this young season. It seems as if the lightbulb has gone off for him, and if he is going to have the ball in his hands more and more it will only be natural for him to take on more of a leadership role.

Zeke is slowly starting to put it all together. The big final step for him is going to be learning how to consistently stay out of foul trouble. He did it last night, but he has still fouled out of 2 of our 5 games this year. Can't grow as a player and contribute to this team when you are regularly saddled to the bench with foul trouble. He is still not the kind of player you can run an offense through, and he may never be. But you can now run plays for him and not have to worry as much that a quick double team or a little bit of physical post defense is going to result in a turnover. I also liked the way he went after the boards last night. He was fighting for interior position and using his length effectively last night, which is something we haven't seen from him a lot. I think a lot of it has to do with his frame starting to fill in. He's still pretty skinny, but the muscle definition is starting to show. It isn't going to be nearly as easy for those big wide-bodies to push him around in the post this year.

Nothing can be pre-determined this time around. We can't do this based on past relationships and back-room advice. The University cannot afford another screw up. We can't keep paying coaches 5 years of salary for 2 or 3 crummy years on the sidelines. It's fiscal suicide for the football program. There is literally no room for error. Take your time, conduct a thorough, nationwide search. Turn over every rock, interview every qualified candidate you can get your hands on and make the best decision for the University. If that ends up being Winters, or Fickell, so be it, but let's not go into this with blinders on.

Mission accomplished. McCallum was completely frustrated by Q and Deji all night long. Not exactly the greatest game all around for Q, but he certainly was up to the task of harassing young Mr. McCallum.

Just back from the game. Not a spectacular performance from the Zips, but a good way to start righting the ship. Q did a decent job filling in at PG, although you could tell he was a bit frustrated having to take more of the role of initiator and defender as opposed to attacking and looking to score all the time. Harney came up big in the second half. The chemistry he seems to already have with Tree on those interior passes is pretty impressive. I thought Zeke had another pretty solid game. He is starting to get more comfortable with the ball in his hands, and he played some good defense as well. Deji was a pleasent surprise. He made a couple of freshman plays (most notably the late TO), but he also made a couple of plays that you don't usually see a 6'3" freshman guard make (blocking an easy layup attempt late in the first half). I thought Deji and Q played great D on McCallum. For a guy who is supposed to be one of the best PG's in the country he did not look good at all. I don't even know if he was the 2nd or 3rd best player on his team. Bring on the Mountaineers.

A season that started with so much optimism has quickly found itself on shaky ground. It looks like from the article that Q will be moving over to PG for tonight at least, with Deji as his backup. I would expect either Chauncey are Harney to start at SF. It is really unfortunate, as PG is the one area where the Zips didn't come into the season with much depth this year. I suspect that tonight will tell us a lot more about this team though. Will we use this as an opportunity to rally the troops and knock off a couple of good wins, or will we find ourselves shaken by this recent turn of events. I'm hopefully that KD can pull the guys together one more time and make something good from a bad situation.

I can't find one reasonable argument for keeping Ianello after this nightmare of a season. The guy is just clearly so far in over his head. The money shouldn't even be an issue at this point. As another poster said, it is either fire Ianello, or just fold up the football program all together. You can't let this guy continue to "coach" this program. Even the most loyal and die-hard fans amongst us will stop attending if the product on the field is going to be that quality. If Rob Ianello still has a job come Monday morning I will be completely and utterly shocked.

++++ Infinity That's funny! Reminds me of another quote from years past - "Why's everybody talkin bout Joe Frazier" In all seriousness though, any of the guys in this poll, and especially Jim Tressel, would be a HUGE upgrade over what we have now. A brain damaged chimpanzee would be an upgrade over what we have now. Heck, I'd take a Jim Tressel bobblehead doll over what we have now.

Ballgame.

This one flat comes down to FT's. Zips have worn a path to the line and hit every part of the rim but the portion that counts.

Much better second half so far, but the Zips still down 3. Has anyone on this team ever so much as taken a FT? 9-19 from the line is absolutely putrid. Even a decent % from the line and the Zips are leading this by 2 possessions.

This radio guy sucks just about as much as the Zips are right now. Guess we shouldn't have got as excited as we did after MSU. 14 turnovers in the first half? Yikes. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to listen to the second half of this. Without video listening to this announcer is painful. God I miss Frenchie calling hoops.

This one falls on KD every bit as much as it does the refs. I've not seen him coach a worse last 5 minutes in his career here. 5 point lead with 5 minutes to go and we are trying to take the air out of the ball? What is that about? Then we have two looks out of TO's. They haven't been able to stop the dribble penetration from Alex or Q all night so what do we do? Run some ball screens for Nitro the first time and have him take an off balance shot in the lane. Second time we come with Q taking a long contested J. That is just flat out poor coaching on KD's part. Our guys on the floor didn't do a much better job all night, and don't even get me started on the refs, but the game was still there for the taking, and KD blew it for us.

Terrible coaching. Terrible shot selection. Two good looks out of timeouts and we get an off balance runner in the lane from Nitro and a long hoist from Diggs. Terrible. Just terrible. So much for the at large bid.

If I'm KD I'm laying into our guys right now. Play D the way we came to play D and don't worry about the foul situation. We'll play the walkons to end the game if we have to, but we can't keep playing this type of D. Valpo is on a 19-2 run going back to the first half. This is ridiculously bad.

2 quick fouls on Zeke. So much for our at-large chances. This one is basically over if the whistles keep going like this.

Looks like KD kept him out on purpose so he can ride him through the 2nd half. Lets hope the refs allow Akron to play a little more physically. all those foul shots :zzz: :zzz: :zzz: :zzz: :zzz: Something tells me we had a similar problem with the refs the last time we visited Valpo.

They are Horizon refs, the outcome of the Akron vs Duq game is irrelevant to them. By they will hand Valpo this one. HAD to mute these squeaky voiced idiots "ahh we knew Valpo would keep this one close" yeah right... The only way Valpo is keeping this one tight is because of the foul trouble. Zeke didn't play the last 12 minutes, Nik the last 10. Diggs didn't play for about the last 5 or 6. We had our diaper dandies in there for most of the half, and it showed. If we were able to play our normal rotation this is a 15+ point game, but the refs aren't going to allow it. Not that our guys haven't made some bad fouls, but some of those whistles were just plain ridiculous. And the game isn't being called even. Valpo was flat mugging Zeke when he was in and had the ball. No call.

TERRIBLE first half for the Zips. It doesn't help when your playing 8 on 5. I'm honestly shocked that we still have the lead at the half. Just shows you how truely bad Valpo is. If they weren't getting to the free throw line every time the Zips sneeze this would be a 15+ point lead. If this whistle happy crap keeps up in the second half look for KD to go after the refs and pick up a T. I hope to god this crew isn't calling Duquesne game.

I'd rather not talk about the post Zeke era Fear not. The coaching staff is diligently recruiting a pair of big men. I don't suppose you can shed any light on who? I haven't seen anything on the recruiting services. Also great news about Tree. I know a lot of us (myself being a big culprit) worry about what we will do when Zeke graduates, but probably an even more immediate concern is what happens when Nik graduates. If Tree is already starting to develop as the heir apparent that is a good thing. The idea of him and Harney manning the forwards spots for the next 3-4 years is awful enticing.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. ESPN will pick the date and time for us later on in the season. It's a bit of strange to look at on the schedule. Really ought to be date TBA.