Quickzips

Well, now that things are back on track in Zips hoops land a little bit, time to move on to the finale of our tour through the Horizon League. Tomorow night the Zips face off against the Flames of the University of Illinois-Chicago. Of the four Horizon teams we face this season UIC should provide the easiest matchup, but the Flames have been known as a thorn in the Zips side in the past. This years squad is sort of a mixed bag. They are currently at 4-4, but two of those wins came over Toledo (not at all sure how or why they ended up playing the Rockets twice), the first being a 6 point win at Toledo and the second a 1 point nail-bitter at home. However, they also have a nice 6 point win against Rhode Island on a neutral floor. They lost by two in OT last night to Valpo. They aren't a particularly big team with 3 players over 6'9" who combined average just under 30 minutes per night. The Flames will rely on senior guard Robo Kreps who leads the team in points, assists, three pointers and minutes played as well as Senior Forward and Minnesota transfer Paul Carter who is second in points and leads the team in rebounding and blocks. Kreps is a good spot up shooter, but he has the ability to drive to the basket and finish in traffic as well. Zips will have to work to stay in front of him. Carter is a very complete offensive player who is often at his best in transition as he can either take the ball to the hoop and finish or spot up and knock down an open 3 as the trailer. The Zips will have to take care of the basketball and limit UIC's opportunities to get out on the break. UIC isn't a particularly good shooting team with only one player in their rotation shooting above 44% from the field. In the end this is a game that the Zips ought to win. If they come out with the kind of effort they showed at Detroit they will beat this team by double digits. If they come out sloppy like they did against CSU and Kreps and Carter start to heat up, they could be in for a dog-fight. I'll say Zips by 9 at this point.

The problem with the MAC is how abysml the West Division (and for this particular year apparently BGSU) is. Akron, Can't, Miami, Ohio, Buffalo have been pretty solid programs for most of the last 5+ years. But when you have teams like Toledo, NIU, Ball State and EMU who are consistently in the high 200's or worse in RPI it drags the rest of the conference down. I don't know what the problem is at some of these programs. The MAC doesn't necessarily need them to be top-100 level RPI teams in order to raise the conference profile, but it will never happen with 3, 4, 5 of our teams being rated in the bottom 50. NIU in particular is always puzzling to me. They are in the middle of such a hot bed of hoops talent you would think they could be at least competitive every year, but they aren't.

I see this possibly happening too. Who would be the third team? Hopefully they don't think it's the team we played last night. From everything you hear around the Horizon Detroit is supposed to be the third best team. If that is the case the only way the Horizon gets 3 bids is if CSU stays hot for most of the season but somehow lands Butler in the tournament semi-finals and loses. Then Butler goes on to lose in the finals to Detroit. In that case I could see Butler and MAYBE CSU getting at-large consideration. Otherwise, forget about it. Detroit is nowhere close to being an at-large team.

Quickzips, how many shots do you expect from your shooting guard? I think if McNees is efficient enough with the ball 8 or so per night would be about ideal. You have to remember where Steve's shots are coming from. He takes a higher percentage of his shots from 3 than pretty much any player in Zips history. For his career he's taken a total of 502 shots to this point, of those 451 have been 3 point attempts. To me if Steve is getting 12 shots per night that means he is forcing a 3 on about 4 or 5 of them. Those are shots we don't need in this offense. We have other guys who are capable of scoring the ball. We don't need to be a live by the three die by the three kind of team right now.

I'm willing to give Zeke a pass on last night. At least 3 of the fouls he picked up were flat out ridiculous. The only two that were legit were the first half foul where he showed on a double team and couldn't get out of the Detroit guard's way and the one with 18 seconds left where he whiffed on a block and drew contact (shouldn't be going for the block in that situation in the first place, but after only getting 17 minutes to that point due to the ridiculous foul situation I can understand wanting to try and be a little aggressive). The other three were flat out bad calls. Twice in the second half he was called simply for laying a hand on the back of Holman as he received an entry pass. If that is a foul the refs can call that 20 times a game on each team every night. No big man in the country would be able to make it out of the first half without fouling out. Bardo picked up at least one of those types of fouls as well. I'm not saying Zeke is a complete player and doesn't need to work on some things, but to blame him for his foul situation last night is unfair. That zebra crew was just flat out horrible. No other way to put it.

Few more thoughts this morning. KD mentioned in the postgame show that the decision to start Alex over Daryl stemmed from two things. First they felt it would get Alex into the flow of the game a little better and second it broke up the new guys a little bit as opposed to having them all coming off of the bench. I would say it worked out quite nicely for the Zips. I expect to see more of that starting lineup as time goes along. Kudos to Daryl for doing what was best for the team, not complaining and putting together a pretty productive night with 13 points, 3 boards, an assist and 3 steals. We still need to see one or two of the freshman forwards step up a bit. I though Diggs had a decent night as he knocked down a nice 3 in the first half and broke down the Titans D on a couple of occassions off the dribble, but he still is having problems making the correct decisions and finishing plays. Egner's night was up and down as well. He played some pretty good defense but he often looked lost on the offensive end. Even the one shot that he did hit he looked very tenative even taking it. Euton was a non-factor in the 6 minutes of action he saw. McNees was a little better last night as he took some big shots when we needed him, but I still watched him pass up at least 3 or 4 more shots that we've seen him take in the past. I don't think we need 10-12 shots per night out of him, but we can't have him passing up open looks like he continues to do. I think the most encouraging thing about the game was the defense the Zips played. They were active in cutting off the passing lanes, they swarmed to the ball and they generally made life difficult for Detroit despite the ridiculous foul situation. Most impressive to me was the way in which they handled Holman. This is a guy who was averaging nearly 70% from the field and leading the NCAA in double doubles coming into last night and the Zips held him to 3 of 10 from the field and only 9 points. They did it primarily by denying him clean entry passes. When he did get the ball he was often out of position to do much of anything with it. Our guys still need some work on keeping guys like him off of the offensive glass, but overall it was a much better effort on the defensive end. Despite the foul situation I felt Nikola kept his cool relatively well last night. He might have gotten on Egner a little too hard for blowing that dunk in the 2nd half, and he had a little bit of a mix up with McNees at one point, but I never really felt he was in danger of going into meltdown mode. I still hold my breath with him a little bit every time the refs blow the whistle. Nitro had a relatively quiet night and still managed to put up 11 points and 4 rebounds. He's come a long way. I wasn't that impressed with McCallum. You can see he has some talent at the offensive end, but his defense is a disaster. When he did put some effort in on the defensive side of the floor he usually picked up a cheap foul. He has a long way to go if he's going to play in the NBA one day. He wasn't their worst man on the floor (that distinction would probably go to Minnerath who was abused on both ends of the court by Nikola all night long) but he wasn't all that good either. Finally, it was nice to see the Zips keep the offense going for 40 minutes. I don't remember going through the patented Zips extended scoring drought at all last night. They jumped on the Titans early in both halves, and save for a 2 or 3 minute stretch late in the first half they never really gave Detroit much of a chance to get back in it. A big part of it came from playing the kind of defense they did. It allowed us to get out on the break more and set us up for some easier shots. That is the kind of team I think the Zips need to be this year. I don't know as we have the horses to grind it out in a half-court game for 40 minutes every night, but we have guys who are active in the passing lanes and that can give us a lot of cheap baskets on the offensive end if we continue to play that way. I hope KD and the gang recognizes this and looks to play that style a little more.

One last point before I log off for the night. I will never, NEVER complain about apathetic crowds at the JAR after that anemic group for Detroit. They have a pretty exciting team with a couple big time players and they barely managed more than a golf-clap when their guard had a breakaway dunk in the first half and didn't even seem like they realized there was a game going on most of the time.

Good night for the MAC. CMU gave Temple a challenge too and had the lead at the half before fading late. Little bit of redemption after a pretty ugly start to the OOC season so far.

That is an insult to Alex to be honest. In five games so far Alex has already finished on more dribble drives to the hole than Humpty did in his entire time here. Alex also looks to be a much better passer. GIve me this kid over Humpty any day of the week. He's got some things to work on, but he already looks to be a better player than Humpty. The only real similarity is their size.

Very nice win for the Zips. They took Detroit out of their game in the second half despite the ridiculous foul situation. If the Zips play like they did in the second half the rest of the way this team is going to be pretty darn good.

All the cheap touch fouls on the Zips all game and Detroit tries to send McNees to the line and they can't get the official to blow the whistle. Unreal.

Looks like a big win for the Zips here. Should be a much better mood around Zipsnation the next couple days.

And wouldn't ya know it as soon as I say that Alex turns it over and gives up an and 1. I thought the foul was well before the shot. What are these NBA refs? It's been a questionably called game to say the least. That call probably doesn't even rank in the top 5 of questionable calls so far. The Zips wasted a possession right there without really getting anything close to a good shot. They can't turn it off now, still plenty of time left for Detroit to mount a comeback.

And wouldn't ya know it as soon as I say that Alex turns it over and gives up an and 1.

Very impressed with Abreu tonight. He's played some very nice D on McCallum and he's been a nightmare for the Titans driving to the hole. Hopefully I don't jinx him here. Zips up 11.

Zips up 9 and have been more or less dominating the 2nd half. Detroit looks frustrated on offense despite the fact that the refs are blowing every little sniffle the Zips defenders make towards the Titans. Bad news for the Zips, Bardo and Zeke with 4 fouls. The two on Zeke were....well....questionable at best. I'm not exactly sure what the big guy is supposed to do to avoid those two. You pretty much can't get within 3 feet of Holman without getting a whistle right now.

MUCH better defense for the Zips in the second so far. Save letting one of their bigs get lost on an inbounds play the Zips have been all over Detroit and they are getting some easy looks on the offensive end from all that pressure. Keep it up Zips!

Zips get it back to one going into the half off a breakaway flush by Nikola and a nice little layup by Roberts. All in all a pretty good first half for the Zips. Very fortunate to be able to bring Zeke and McNees back in for a few good minutes after each picked up two cheap fouls early and not see either pick up their third. KD can't be happy with the foul disparity as the Zips are getting called for a lot of touchy stuff and those whistles aren't coming on the other end. Zips doing a little better job on the boards tonight, although they've given up a few bad ones when they go zone again. Nikola has been the sparkplug tonight as he has 10, has been pretty good on the boards and has a few assists and at least one steal for good measure. Zips will need to come out in the second half and keep scoring and tighten up the defense a little bit and they can get out of this one with a W to start this extended road trip.

Detroit puts together a little run and goes up 5 with a minute and a half left forcing KD to call at TO. Had a couple good looks at the basket and they just aren't falling. The Zips cannot afford to go into that extended scoring drought that we are all too familiar with.

Zips went to Detroit for a basketball game and a track meet broke out. Both teams getting up and down the floor. Foster has gotten hot for the Titans who now have a one point edge with Quincy Diggs going to the line after the under 8:00 timeout (incidentally I believe it is on Detroit's first foul of the game).

So far this Zips team looks much better than the one we saw last week. Nikola and Nitro with 6 a piece, McNees has an early 3, playing some pretty good defense. Going to have to keep it up.

Very interesting with Abreu starting over Roberts. KD is going to have to stick with him for a lot of this game as McNees already has 2 early fouls. For that matter Zeke picked up two cheap early fouls as well. The youngsters are going to have to step up tonight as foul trouble is piling up early. Zips up 15-12.

Seems like the only way for this to make sense from both sides is for UMass to join for football only with an agreement for their basketball team and other programs to schedule a set number of games each year with MAC opponents. Similar to what Temple did. That said, this only makes sense if Temple sticks around. If Temple leaves the conference in the coming years adding UMass makes little to no sense. We would be right back in the same boat we are in now with unbalanced divisions and an outlier East-Coast school playing in football only. At that point we would pretty much have to find another East-Coast school to join up with UMass and that may be easier said than done. In the long run the best case scenario for the MAC in all of this is Temple staying put and adding UMass for football only. Then the MAC needs to get serious about adding two more schools for all sports that can bring strong enough basketball programs that Temple and UMass could be tempted down the road to make the make the move for all sports creating a 16 team conference. Western Kentucky would make a lot of sense in this scenario, possibly Middle Tennessee. If we are looking to strengthen football more than hoops James Madison, Delaware or Southern Illinois would be decent options. Something like this would be a very nice long term goal for the MAC. East: Akron Buffalo James Madison Can't State Miami Ohio Temple UMass West: Ball State Bowling Green Central Mich. Eastern Mich. Northern Illinois Toledo Western Kentucky Western Mich.

According to this article we won't be seeing much of UMass as they will be heading to the Mid Atlantic Conference to face off with the likes of Temple and Miami(Ohio).

Bad move if it is football only. If they bring men's soccer and/or men's hoops along with them very good move. If they go football only with a significant scheduling agreement for soccer and hoops ok move.