Quickzips

Zips are getting whistled for everything now. Three fouls on this possession alone.

The Zips can start out a little slow every night if they put together this kind of performance. Zips up 19 early in the 2nd half and have the Trojans seriously frustrated at both ends of the floor.

Abreu drains a 3 from 35 feet at the buzzer to make it a 46-31 lead going into the half. Zips are making it rain in Vegas from long range after a shaky start. Hopefully this is the start of the Zips offensive awakening.

McNees comes out of the game, Zips go on a run and take the lead. I love Steve, but with the funk he is in right now the Zips are better off with him on the bench. Hopefully he can get over the hump here at some point because we really do need him, but right now we can't afford a guy going 0-4 and turning it over twice in the first 3 minutes of a game.

i agree, let's see what Abreu can do at the point and lets see what Nitro can do at the two where he belongs. It'll free up Diggs more playing time too, he can be something special if he gets a chance. update: McNees: 0-4, 3 turnovers I want to see Abreu with either Roberts or McClanahan at the 2, Diggs at the 3, Nikola at the 4 and Zeke at C for some extended minutes here.

At what point do we sit McNees down here? I know sometimes you need to let a guy shoot himself out of a slump, but Steve is now 1-15 over the last game and a quarter and now he's starting to turn the ball over. I don't know what is going on with him right now, but it may be time to sit him for some extended time and let him watch.

McNees 0-3 from 3 point range already early in the game.

I'll take my chances that the game pops up on channelsurfing. If not, I'll just give a listen in to good ole Frenchie. Not going to spend the money on this when I have no idea the kind of quality to expect. Seen too many people get burned that way before.

Well, the Zips will look to get back on track tonight under the bright lights of Las Vegas. Their first opponent comes in the Trojans of UALR out of the Sun Belt Conference. UALR is a fairly decent team coming in with a 6-5 record and wins over Tulsa and Louisiana Tech (although in fairness they were blown out by Oral Roberts and Missouri State on the road). The Trojans look a lot like last years Zips team with only one player averaging double figures scoring, but going 10 and 11 deep in their rotation. Senior Guard Soloman Bozeman leads them in scoring at just under 13 per game. He looks to have a bit of McNees in him as he likes to bomb away from 3 where he takes nearly 50% of his shots (although he hits them at a very respectable 40% clip). Size is an issue for the Trojans as they only have two players over 6'7" (Derrick Bails and Gus Leeper both clock in at 6'9", but neither plays more than 12 minutes a night). This leads to a fairly predictable rebounding issue for the Trojans who rank 205th in the country in average rebounding and only have two players grabbing more than 4 boards per night. If the Zips stay patient pounding the ball into the post with Zeke, Nikola and McKnight they SHOULD have no problem handling the Trojans. This is a game that the Zips ought to be able to win, but with the Jekyl and Hyde nature of this team right now, nothing is for certain.

1-12 If that's "good," what's "great?" 4-16? No use arguing with some of these guys Cap'n. The way they see it Steve is the "Shooting" Guard and therefore he should lead the team in shots. You simply can't let facts about how many of his shots come from behind the arch or how he is an extremely streaky shooter get in the way of blindly breaking down shot attempts based on what position a player plays.

No surprise here, their second leading scorer is charged with felony theft and has a pending sexual assault investigation going against him and the Can't faithful take the "blame the victim" approach. http://ncaabbs.com/showthread.php?tid=470684 This is exactly why Can't continues to have problems with this sort of stuff. There is never any accountability over there. There wasn't any accountability when Josh Cribbs had his drug issues, there wasn't any accountability when Singletary was busted driving around Can't over the legal limit and punching other players on the court, and there won't be any accountability here. He will probably sit a game, MAYBE two and be back in plenty of time to have a few games under his belt prior to conference play. Dave Carducci will write another bleeding heart article about how he's really a good kid who just made a poor decision and got caught up with a woman who was looking for her 15 minutes of fame and that he deserves as many chances as necessary for him to get his life straightened out. Then 3 or 4 months from now when his name appears in the police blotter again the story will repeat itself all over.

Quick doesn't usually check the general forum. Sorry for the double post, feel free to take this one down if needed.

http://www.cleveland.com/sports/college/in...pended_aft.html Surprised this news slipped through the cracks for two days around here. Great to see the flushes continuing to recruit high quality student athletes.

Because to this point it is nearly impossible to be LESS successful than Ianello.

Didn't get to see or hear Saturdays game as I had a wedding to attend Saturday afternoon, but I will chime in on the McKnight situation. I don't think it is necessarily that anyone has said Brett is a bad player or even that we are better off without him. But many of us, myself included, feel that Brett is often overated and that others expect him to be more than he is. He's been here for three years now. In that time he's never been able to average more than 21 minutes a night due to his cranky knees, his back issues, and his deficiencies on the defensive end. He's never shot better than 43% from the field, and his three point shooting has gotten worse every year, ending in a "why do we even let him take 3's anymore" 27% last season. Even in his sophmore year when he played the most minutes of his career and shot his highest percentage from the field only put up 11 points per game. Yet people talk about him like he is an offensive juggernaut, a MAC POTY candidate and a guy who can be relied upon to play heavy minutes every night. That simply isn't the Brett McKnight I've seen based on his body of work to this point. It isn't like Brett has seen his minutes curtailed and been jerked in and out of the lineup like a Conyers or a McClanahan. He's been given all the minutes that his body can handle (save for the times he's been suspended based on his own conduct), and any reasonable basketball fan looking at the production we've seen from him over the course of his time here would come to the conclusion that he is an average to slightly above average role-player. I am not saying this as an insult to Brett, it is simply meant to bring people a little dose of reality as to what can be expected from Brett over the course of the remainder of this season.

If there is one area that I hope Brett can come in and contribute to right away it would be helping our rebounding issues. He's shown the ability at times in his career to be a solid rebounder, and the Zips have been woefully bad on the glass all year. If he can come in and by the time we get to MAC play be able to give us 15-20 minutes a night off the bench and score 8-12 points with solid rebounding it will go a long way towards getting the Zips to a more successful season. More than anything I hope that Brett has his head on straight and is ready to work hard and accept whatever role this team needs him to be in. We're in a bit of a fragile place right now as a team, and adding a guy to the mix whose head isn't in the right place could make for a long season.

He came off the bench before the suspension, no reason to think he would be a starter now. I could see him moving him into the starting lineup in place of Nitro at some point. It will depend on his attitude and his physical condition when he comes back, but if Nitro continues to struggle like he did last night I could see it happening. He came off the bench against Milliken largely because he hadn't practiced with the team for the entire offseason. I don't think that is necessarily the role KD envisioned for him. If you recall, most on here were talking about him as the starter at SF before all the suspensions came anyways. While I agree that he is probably best served coming off the bench as an instant offense kind of guy, I can also see him getting a starting role before it is all said and done. Most on here may have been, but not the coach. I don't think Brett gives enough on Defense to get the start. He was key to our offense last year as well, but he didn't start. Actually, Brett started 13 games last season spanning from the Texas A&M game through the first Can't State game. We were also much deeper and more experienced at the forward positions last year than we are right now with Chris McKnight, Conyers, Brett and Nikola. As to skip's comments about the qualities Brett brings to this team. I will give you experience and competitiveness, leadership, no. Team leaders don't get themselves suspended for the first 1/3 of the season for violating team rules. Brett isn't a team leader at this point. Right now he is going to be in the same spot he was when he came in in the middle of his freshman year. The rest of these guys have been on the road together playing a tough schedule without him there. McNees, Nikola, Roberts, these are the guys that are team leaders. If Brett is going to come back and contribute here he is going to have to accept that he is a role player at this point in the season.

He came off the bench before the suspension, no reason to think he would be a starter now. I could see him moving him into the starting lineup in place of Nitro at some point. It will depend on his attitude and his physical condition when he comes back, but if Nitro continues to struggle like he did last night I could see it happening. He came off the bench against Milliken largely because he hadn't practiced with the team for the entire offseason. I don't think that is necessarily the role KD envisioned for him. If you recall, most on here were talking about him as the starter at SF before all the suspensions came anyways. While I agree that he is probably best served coming off the bench as an instant offense kind of guy, I can also see him getting a starting role before it is all said and done.

It seems to me that a mid-major generally needs to knock down a few outside shots to pull off the bigger upsets. Where is the threat of an outside scorer in this starting five? Your absolutely right on that johnny. The vast majority of the time a mid-major team beats a top-25 program things will be centered around good 3 point shooting. Abreu, Diggs, Egner, Nikola and Zeke is probably our worst lineup in terms of outside shooting. I personally think if we are looking to beat the big boys our lineup will need to be Alex and McClanahan at the guards, Diggs on the wing with Nikola and Zeke down low. Then bring the senior guards off the bench with Egner and Euton/McKnight. I think we need to shorten the rotation a bit (which we did last night to some degree) and stick with 8, maybe 9 guys. The talent on our bench isn't going to be as deep as a team like Minnesota or Temple. Guys like Bardo just have no business being on the floor for significant minutes in a game like that. Shorten up the bench, keep at least one good outside shooter on the floor at all times and don't go into those 8 minute scoring droughts.

IMNHO, what Akron lacks, and has lacked for as long as I can remember, is a guy you can bring off the bench and he is automatic offense. Maybe there were some, but I just can't remember. When you put a guy like this in the game, you have to accept he is going to play defense poorly so you have to figure out a way to keep him from being too big of a liability on defense. KD won't put up with a guy who plays defense poorly so he doesn't have guys like this on his team. I think a guy like this is needed for the times when everyone else is having difficulty putting the ball in the basket, because you have to keep pace with the point pace of good teams until you figure out what adjustments you want to make. Your right that we haven't had that offensive sparkplug off of the bench in recent years. Probably the closest thing we had to it was Cedrick Middleton in his sophomore and junior years. Right now you look at the bench and there isn't anyone there who has the skills and mentality to be that guy IMO. Roberts is a nice role player who probably has the skills to do it, but he doesn't have that scorers mentality and often is content settling into the corner and waiting for his shots. Diggs may have that ability one day, but at this point it is way to early to tell. Egner is more defensive specialist than he is offensive sparkplug. Euton looks like a role-player at this point in his career. We all know that Bardo for sure isn't capable of taking on that role. Maybe with the news of Brett McKnight returning to the team he can take on that role, but as I've argued here before, I think Brett's offensive game is often vastly over-rated.

This certainly would be interesting. I, like most others on here, assumed we had seen the last of Brett in a Zips uniform. Hopefully Brett has used this experience as a motivator and comes out for the second half of his senior season and lights it up for the Zips. It does raise a lot of questions though. Is he in basketball shape? Will he be plugged right back into the lineup or will KD make him earn his minutes all over again? If he's back in the lineup, then who will he be taking minutes from? Will he start or come off the bench? Luckily the Zips have a nice home cupcake on the schedule for Saturday to hopefully start and answer a few of these questions before heading out to Vegas.

Personally I think this move will end up being a disaster for Pitt. Haywood is a flush in the pan kind of coach whose on the field track record is shaky at best. These kinds of situations very rarely work out well. Best of luck to them, but I can't see this one going to well. As far as Ianello goes, let's just say I don't expect BCS programs to be knocking on his door to take over their head coaching position at this time next year.

After sleeping on that one I don't feel horrible, but I don't feel great either. I'm somewhere in the middle to be quite honest. It was a very puzzling game in some respects and a very predictable game in others. You could pretty well predict at halftime what was going to happen. The Zips would come out and hang around for another 3 or 4 minutes, then Minnesota would start finding the basket, Zeke would pick up another ticky-tack foul or two, we would start looking like a team that needs a road map to find the basket, we'd turn the ball over once or twice and end up losing by 8 or more. We've all seen it over and over and over and over again. What is probably the most frustrating is that we continue to have these looooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggg scoring droughts, usually late in the first half or early in the second half. I have absolutely no idea what the issue is there but KD is going to have to figure it out or there will be people that are going to start questioning if he is the right coach to get us to the next level. We've seen this for seemingly the last 3 or 4 years now. Time for something to change. As far as individual performances, I too was impressed with Abreu and Diggs. They were two of the few players we had on the floor last night that didn't look outmatched in terms of talent and athleticism. Alex still has a little more work to do on the defensive end, but he's come quite a long way in only 8 games. The offense certainly seems to run smoother when he is on the floor, although I think there are still guys out there who aren't used to some of the opportunities he sets them up with. Three or four times again last night we had turnovers off of situations where Alex made a beautiful pass and the man he was throwing it to was simply not expecting it. When he's on the floor you have to expect that the ball is going to find you and you have to be ready for it at any moment. As far as Quincy goes, the light seems to be coming on a little bit. He wasn't forcing the issue as much last night and getting himself in trouble by trying to do too much with the basketball. It allowed him to find a few good shots. He also played some very nice defense and was one of the few bright spots for the Zips on the boards. More of that out of him please. Speaking of boards, I also though Daryl Roberts had a nice night on the glass as he was aggressively crashing the boards and often came up with rebounds in traffic despite being the smallest guy on the floor. He had a very solid night all around. Steve McNees has apparently regressed all the way back to his freshman year. I have no idea what is going on with him right now, but he can't hit the broad side of a barn. He gave me a glimmer of hope in the first half when he knocked down back to back triples after airballing his first attempt, but he bricked every other jumper he took the rest of the night. Many weren't even close. Sometimes shooters go through slumps, and we know Steve is a streaky kind of guy, but we need our senior leader to break out of this soon. Speaking of disappearing acts, if anyone has seen the Brett McClanahan that was around for the first couple games of the year could you direct him back to the JAR? Seems teams have become wise to him being an offensive threat now. They are paying more attention to him and he hasn't been able to adjust. We are going to need Nitro back before this season is over. I am at a loss for words as to why this team gets pounded as bad as we do inside. This is the biggest team KD has ever had and yet it is the absolute, hands down worst rebounding squad in his tenure. I don't think all of it can be blamed on Zeke trying to block so many shots, but that is part of it. I've said it in other threads before, at some point in time it will come down to simply wanting it more than the other guys. Our bigs are going to have to take some more pride in their performance out there. There is nothing to be proud about when you give a team five offensive rebounds in one possession like we did in the first half. It's high time for some of these guys to look in the mirror, dig down deep and take a little pride in mixing it up down there. Now as far as Zeke goes, well...I can tell you we need him on the floor. It was painfully obvious that we were good enough to beat Minnesota when he was on the floor and we were bad enough to get blown out by 20 when he was on the bench. Unfortunatly the foul trouble continues to plague him. I can't even blame that one on the officials because every one of Zeke's fouls were legit from my perspective last night. I don't know if it is an age thing or if it comes with the territory of being a big-time shot blocker or what, but if the foul situation doesn't improve itself the big fella is never going to be able to maximize his talent. On the plus side, after a really tough OOC schedule to this point the Zips can now come back to the friendly confines of the JAR and take on a cupcake in Bethune-Cookman that just lost by like 40 points to Baylor last night.

Anyone who still wants McNees to have the green light to put up 12+ shots a night every night needs to watch his performance in this one. His shot has been WAY off tonight. He's airballed one and clanked a bunch more very badly.

Well we've all seen this movie before. Zips play a scrappy first half, go into the half with an opportunity than crap the bed down the stretch. All too familiar around here. I suppose it's a better result than the Temple game, but nothing to get excited about either.