Quickzips

Have to keep pressuring Toledo. The only time they have struggled all game is when we've thrown pressure at them. Don't back off of it these last 8 minutes and we MIGHT have a chance at a comeback.

Any time we want to stop standing around and watching Juice Brown practice his 3 point shooting would be good.

Let me answer that for you. No. People need to start to realize that we are about half way into the season right now. This team is what it is. We are flawed in a lot of ways. Everyone knows that. Our ball-handling is shaky on a good day, we struggle to finish games from the foul line and our 3 point shooting comes and goes. Despite all of that we are undefeated in the conference and currently sitting at 11-5 overall. This isn't necessarily a bad team, but we are going to have to continue winning in spite of our flaws. There isn't a miracle cure that is going to come walking through the door tomorrow that will stop our ball-handlers from turning it over, improve our 3 point shooting and suddenly transform a bunch of sub-65% FT shooters into reliable closers. It isn't happening, and you guys who seem to think that it is need to stop it. Accept it for what it is and enjoy what is still a very entertaining season.

Damn. Had to miss this one due to work obligations. Sounds like I missed a classic. Hopefully I'll be able to find a replay somewhere some how. 2-0 in the MAC with both wins coming on the road. I think it is time that some people come down off of the ledge a little.

Its funny. Just a few years ago all the talk on here was about how we put too much emphasis on basketball IQ and we don't have enough athletes on the team. Now we have more athletes on the team, but we don't have enough basketball IQ. So tough to find the happy medium at this level.

Reports of Toledo's greatness have been greatly exaggerated.

Not disagreeing with you, but that wasn't your original point. Knocking a guy who has played great defense and scored 19 points for you because he hasn't hit a 3 is pretty ridiculous.

I couldn't give two craps if he's 0-fer from 3. He's scored 19 points. Some of you need to stop living and dying by 3 point shooting.

Thank god Diggs showed up tonight.

Zips have no chance at winning this FT contest.

You play defense with your feet, not with your hands guys.

The other thing you have to take into account when it comes to FT shooting is who is taking the FTs. By and large bigs struggle from the line more than guards and wings do. KDs system is designed in a manner where the guards and wings don't get as many FT attempts as the bigs. We tend to play a lot of low to mid-post dump downs to our bigs which puts them in a good position to get fouled and go to the line. On the flip side our guards and wings are primarily jump shooters who rarely look to take their man off the dribble (with the only exception to this being Quincy and maybe Abreu when he was here). Most teams don't foul jump shooters very often. Teams that get a lot of FTs for their guards and wings tend to be teams where the guards and wings are involved in a lot of pick and roll action and take their man to the rim.

Not just at the line. The last 3 minutes we turned the ball over 5 times and didn't hit a single shot (including FTs). Marshall had every opportunity to win that one. Any kind of a decent team would have grabbed that one away from us tonight.

Pure luck that we got out of this one with a win.

And Diggs boinks both FTs. If Marshall doesn't beat us right here they have no business being a DI program. We've given them every opportunity.

Harney down and all kinds of blood on the floor. Looks like he took a hard shot to the face.

We're shitting our pants right now. 4 turnovers in the last 5 possessions. Too much dribbling around in the backcourt trying to run clock.

Sometimes you just gotta grind one out. This is one of those nights. Get through this one and get a week off to prepare for MAC play.

I'm not sure either team really WANTS to win this game. Just a lot of slop all over the place. Not pretty at all.

Anybody else get a weird feeling that we are playing ourselves right now? Marshall turns the ball over a lot. They aren't getting good PG play. They don't hit their FTs. If they jacked up a few more awful 3's they would look just like us.

I hate to say it, but our ball movement looks MUCH better right now without Tree in there. We aren't just trying to either force feed Tree or force a 3 if he isn't open.

3 early fouls on Tree. Not a good sign. Going to need Harney, Cheatham, Forsythe and Johnson to step up big time. Zips can't hit the broad side of a barn right now.

After crossing the car up about 3 or 4 times on the way home I'm doing the same. Love me some Zips basketball, and would have loved to have been there tonight, but sometimes you have to know when to say uncle.

If you aren't seeing the implication that some people believe Dambrot to be the problem (aka we need a new coach) then I can't help you. It is all over about the last 3 pages of this thread.

Now that the dust is starting to settle a little I'll weigh in here with my two cents. To me there are two overarching problems that this team has had so far this year. Both are somewhat self inflicted. First is the schedule. Whoever put this thing together should be drug out back and shot. In a year where our style of play by necessity has to change due to the loss of Abreu and Zeke's graduation this was about the worst possible schedule they could have put together. It isn't necessarily the quality of opponents that was the problem, but the timing and travel was horrendous. Two trips out to the west coast to play quality competition I don't mind, but the quick turnaround back to the east coast for tough road games was unnecessary and the three week layoff in the middle of the OOC season was really bizarre. I don't feel like this team has had the opportunity to develop the chemistry that past Zips teams have had because of this ridiculous schedule. The second problem really falls on the players themselves. When I watch this team play it is pretty clear that a lot of these guys are still waiting for Abreu and Zeke to walk back out on the court so that they can play the way they have the last few years. We give up all kinds of back door baskets on the defensive end because we are too used to Zeke being there to protect the rim from the week side. Our movement off the ball on the offensive end looks very lazy because we are used to Abreu being there with a nifty pass to get us a clean look. Guess what guys. Zeke isn't coming back. Alex isn't coming back. You have to play tight defense on your man and not just leave it to chance that there is going to be help coming at the rim if he gets by you. You have to work for position, set solid screens, roll hard to the basket and do all of the other things that good teams do to create easy scoring opportunities. As far as the coaching situation, to imply that Dambrot and his staff should be released (as the general tone of this thread has) is one of the most asinine things I've ever read on here. It is no wonder some of the players consider this forum to be a huge joke. It is the same kind of short-sighted thinking that leads the Browns to fire head coaches and change QB's year after year after year (how well is that working out for them). I don't by any means agree with everything Dambrot has done in his tenure here. There are plenty of things I would like to see done differently (shorten the rotation a bit, bring in someone who can coach players on shooting FTs, less emphasis on 3 point shooting), but the overwhelming evidence shows that the past 5-7 years have been the absolute best era in Zips basketball history (at least since they entered DI). The guy has won a ton of games, won championships, gotten us to the NCAA tournament and by and large has brought more good publicity to this program than any coach since Bob Huggins. Unless he screws up big-time on or off the court (I'm talking some kind of criminal level activity) Dambrot has earned the right to stay until he is ready to retire.