Quickzips

Are you serious with that quote that the addition of Abreu is a clear indication that they realize Steve is limited as a PG. I think its an EXTREMELY CLEAR indication that Steve is a senior and someone has to be the PG once he graduates. That comment was just silly You're new to the board, so I'm not going to rip you too much for that. Suffice it to say that Steve IS a very limited PG. This debate has been hashed to death here for most of two seasons. Yes, Steve doesn't turn the ball over much, but his assist numbers are well below what you would expect out of a D-I point and he struggles to set up the offense. Far too often you can find him still frantically dribbling near the time line when the shot clock is inside 20 seconds. As a point he is almost a liability when it comes to running a fast break. Probably his biggest liability is trying to bring the ball up against quicker defensive PG (as well as trying to defend quicker PG's himself) Steve is a good player for us, but he is not enough of a facilitator to be a full-time PG. He is a combo guard that should be playing mostly at the two and playing backup minutes at PG. If you don't believe that the addition of Abreu has anything to do with Steve's limitations you need to check out some of the comments from the Basketball Banquet about Alex starting at PG with Steve sliding over to SG. You can find them here: http://zipsnation.org/forums//index.php?showtopic=18239 So is it Steve's limitations as you put it OR was it the limitations of the team and the talent of Steve that he has been able to manage a position of such importance for the past two years? Steve has given us stability at PG, to say he is limited is not right, to say that he transitioned from his natural position to help the program is more accurate. And by the way, just because something is blogged by fans doesn't make it a valid point of reference. I absolutely agree, Steve is not a natural PG. Because of that he IS LIMITED. Steve just can't do the things that a natural PG can do because he isn't a natural PG. I don't know why everyone seems to be taking so much offense to the term limited. It isn't meant to be disparaging. Just pointing out the reality of Steve's situation. It's like saying I really like to cook but I have no formal training as a chef and am using an easy bake oven to prepare all my meals. Obviously what I cook isn't going to be as good as a dish prepared by Gordon Ramsey because I am LIMITED by my experience and the tools I have available to me. Steve is limited by the fact that he is more of a SG than a PG and therefore doesn't have a lot of experience running a team and by the fact that his skills are more suited for SG than PG. I've never said that Steve can't contribute to this team or that he shouldn't be starting or playing major minutes or anything like that. He just isn't a natural PG. Hence the reason we brought Abreu (by all accounts a natural PG) into the fold this year.

Are you serious with that quote that the addition of Abreu is a clear indication that they realize Steve is limited as a PG. I think its an EXTREMELY CLEAR indication that Steve is a senior and someone has to be the PG once he graduates. That comment was just silly You're new to the board, so I'm not going to rip you too much for that. Suffice it to say that Steve IS a very limited PG. This debate has been hashed to death here for most of two seasons. Yes, Steve doesn't turn the ball over much, but his assist numbers are well below what you would expect out of a D-I point and he struggles to set up the offense. Far too often you can find him still frantically dribbling near the time line when the shot clock is inside 20 seconds. As a point he is almost a liability when it comes to running a fast break. Probably his biggest liability is trying to bring the ball up against quicker defensive PG (as well as trying to defend quicker PG's himself) Steve is a good player for us, but he is not enough of a facilitator to be a full-time PG. He is a combo guard that should be playing mostly at the two and playing backup minutes at PG. If you don't believe that the addition of Abreu has anything to do with Steve's limitations you need to check out some of the comments from the Basketball Banquet about Alex starting at PG with Steve sliding over to SG. You can find them here: http://zipsnation.org/forums//index.php?showtopic=18239

Just to get back to the AAU circuit point in here. Seems Akron 2011 recruit Nick Harney lit it up at the King James Classic, knocking out the home King James Shooting Stars (and Mr. Everything Jakaar Sampson) with a 21 point performance over the weekend for the Ohio Basketball Club. I wish the Beacon had given this tourney more coverage. Players you'd not want to miss, when & where to see them, box scores, tourney champion, etc., etc. Outside of the major recruting services and select fanboards it can be pretty difficult finding good AAU tournament coverage. The local newspapers don't often cover the events like they do high school sports because there isn't as much of a connection for rooting for the King James Shooting Stars or All-Ohio Red as there is rooting for St.V's or Buchtel. The AAU doesn't put out a lot of information themselves. Usually the best place to get updates is at Rivals. They follow most of the big events and usually do a decent job of updating on the top performers and recruits.

That reminds me of a line from Caddyshack: Upon Ted knight saying "...I mean, he's been club champion for three years running, and I'm no slouch myself," Chevy Chase replies: "Don't sell yourself short, judge. You're a tremendous slouch." YSU basketball has won absolutely nothing in the past 30 years. Looking at the Beeghly Center rafters during the Zips/Penguins game two seasons ago...well...let's just say the Zips Women's basketball history over the past 30 years puts the YSU men's program to shame. Don't sell YSU men's basketball short, D.I.G, they're a TREMENDOUS slouch. CSU men's basketball is on a whole different level than YSU. Renewal of the Zips/CSU rivalry is HUGE for local hoops fans. It is a guaranteed 4k attendance game at the JAR, and could be a sell-out if CSU starts the season hot. As a NE Ohio hoops fan, I can't wait to see Dambrot vs. Waters @ the JAR. +1 YSU excites me not. In terms of what they offer for our overall schedule they are barely a step up from Malone. They might bring a few more fans than the typical road team, but they offer little more in terms of RPI, SOS or general excitement. CSU, especially with Waters there, is a big plus for the schedule. They are a top level Horizon team, close to home with a good enough following that attendance should be higher for these games regardless of what arena they are in. They are a solid RPI and SOS booster and it is a game that should get the attention of a few more NEOhio basketball fans.

Just to get back to the AAU circuit point in here. Seems Akron 2011 recruit Nick Harney lit it up at the King James Classic, knocking out the home King James Shooting Stars (and Mr. Everything Jakaar Sampson) with a 21 point performance over the weekend for the Ohio Basketball Club.

Kind of what I'm going for with this thread. I don't have the time or the resources to do something like what mollaut does for Miamihawktalk, but I definitly think some more healthy recruiting discussion would be a positive for ZN.O.

Updated to include the verbals from Harney and Justice. I've got to say, I am liking how this class is shaping up. Even though we haven't landed the guys that were on my initial list, we are getting some really solid players and guys who fit what we are going to need. Ennis gives us another ball-handler to go with Abreu. With those two in the fold we will hopefully have two guys who are capable of setting up the offense, assuring us that we have someone on the floor at all times who can command the point. Harney gives us a big athletic wing forward. He might be a little duplicative of Egner, but that isn't a bad thing. I actually think he may come in and compliment Egner. Josh is more of a defensive specialist at this point in his career. Harney looks to be a little more of a polished offensive player that we will need to hopefully replace some of the offense we will lose from graduating Brett McKnight. Then you have Justice who looks like he will probably take over that sharpshooting wing guard role that we will lose from McNees and Roberts graduating. Of course you never really know how these kids are going to pan out. Harney especially is a question mark due to academics. Still, I like how KD is going about retooling this team.

Well thought out, researched and articulate postings from Dave and GoZips. Is the kid a sure fire NCAA star? Of course not. Is he sure to flame out and never play any meaningful minutes for the Zips because he plays D-III ball? Of course not. All I'm saying is don't dismiss the kid just because he is from a smaller high school program. Gotta give the kid a chance. I seem to remember a certain Zips Linebacker who came out of a small, obscure lower division high school who is now a Zips fan favorite and potential all-MAC linebacker. Don't knock the kid until you actually see what he can do at this level.

I love how I'm the only one who seems to do any research on these kids. This is about the only free article I can find about Justice's AAU exploits. In his return to AAU ball after a month off because of tendonitis he scores 18 in upset win for AAU team CBIZ over powerhouse All-Ohio Red (you remember them, the AAU team that features high-major recruits like Jared Sullinger, J.D. Weatherspoon, Adriean Payne, Stevie Taylor, Trey Burke and Traevon Jackson) at last years Bill Hensley's Memorial Run-n-Slam. http://www.jjhuddle.com/news/articles/2009...rial-run-n-slam I guess we shouldn't let little things like facts get in the way of blind hatred though. Oh great. Now you are telling me not only is he from Backwater, Ohio but he is also prone to injury. Didn't Zeke have some tendenitis in his knees (or some other knee problems) early in the year this year? Better get rid of him too. Can't have injury prone guys like that on our sidelines. I mean, it isn't like Basketball takes any kind of physical toll on your body now does it?

I love how I'm the only one who seems to do any research on these kids. This is about the only free article I can find about Justice's AAU exploits. In his return to AAU ball after a month off because of tendonitis he scores 18 in upset win for AAU team CBIZ over powerhouse All-Ohio Red (you remember them, the AAU team that features high-major recruits like Jared Sullinger, J.D. Weatherspoon, Adriean Payne, Stevie Taylor, Trey Burke and Traevon Jackson) at last years Bill Hensley's Memorial Run-n-Slam.<br /><a href="http://www.jjhuddle.com/news/articles/2009/5/5/justices-return-helps-fuel-team-cbiz-at-the-bill-hensley-memorial-run-n-slam" target="_blank">http://www.jjhuddle.com/news/articles/2009...rial-run-n-slam I guess we shouldn't let little things like facts get in the way of blind hatred though. Eaaaasy there, cowboy. "Blind hatred"?! Blind? Ok, I'll give you that. Lol. But "hatred?" Dude, way too harsh. Bottom line is that we are getting a kid who is a big-time scorer at a number of levels who is highly thought of by a lot of experts and a lot of programs and people on here are bashing him without doing any research on him other than looking at his high school. Look I wanna see Akron landing top 50 talent like Zeke every year just as much as the next guy, but the bottom line is that Zeke was a special case of a kid who was looking for something different in a college experience than the typical top 50 recruit. We got lucky with him, and hopefully it is going to lead us to a better place, but the reality is that mid-majors, MAC teams, the Zips aren't going to be landing top 50 recruits all the time. How highly touted was Jeremiah Wood when he came out of high school? Did anybody else even offer him a scholarship? Would any of you have traded him for some highly touted kid with a bad attitude who ends up never panning out? How about Cedrick Middleton? Look, any one of these kids could flame out spectacularly, or they could all end up being first team all-MAC. Give the kid a chance.

I love how I'm the only one who seems to do any research on these kids. This is about the only free article I can find about Justice's AAU exploits. In his return to AAU ball after a month off because of tendonitis he scores 18 in upset win for AAU team CBIZ over powerhouse All-Ohio Red (you remember them, the AAU team that features high-major recruits like Jared Sullinger, J.D. Weatherspoon, Adriean Payne, Stevie Taylor, Trey Burke and Traevon Jackson) at last years Bill Hensley's Memorial Run-n-Slam. http://www.jjhuddle.com/news/articles/2009...rial-run-n-slam I guess we shouldn't let little things like facts get in the way of blind hatred though.

For those of you looking for us to develop a go to scorer on the offensive end, this kid could be it. In addition to the 24PPG he scored as a sophomore he averaged 22PPG as a true freshman and late last year set the career record for scoring at Peebles High School as a junior.

If true this could be a very nice pickup for the Zips. Justice is a knock down shooter who holds pretty much all of the scoring records for Peebles High School. His listed height keeps going up and up (the ESPN information looks a little older at 6'1", last summer had him listed at 6'2", now 6'3") which could put him in the 6'4"-6'5" range by the time he gets here. That gives us the bigger 2 guard we've been looking for. Combine him with a pure PG who can create shots for others like Abreu and Ennis and you've got a real nice backcourt combination. Check out the numbers from his Sophomore season, 24PPG on 46% shooting, 39% from three as a sophomore: http://www.maxpreps.com/athletes/tGz9pVnQC...ake-justice.htm

rivals.com article indicates an offer was made at some point to 2011 PG Delbert Love from Lakewood St. Ed's. http://basketballrecruiting.rivals.com/con...asp?CID=1038521

So at this point our schedule looks like: Home: Cleveland State Youngstown State Oral Roberts VCU Away: Minnesota Temple Oakland UIC Neutral: Miami(FL) Indiana State Four dates outstanding. Is this correct?

Walk-on? Is Humpty gone? I dunno, this is really weird. It is starting to seem like we are just starting over from scratch.

Good to hear that the light is turning on for Zeke. If what you said is true he should be up to about 7'1" 240lbs which is doing pretty well. The only thing you have to worry about is the Greg Oden effect. Oden put on 25lbs. between his one year in college and going pro. His legs couldn't handle it and he's blown his knees out so bad at this point that he's talked about as probably being a total bust. You never want to see a kid put on weight that his lower body can't handle. I'm sure the Zips staff is well aware of this and will be monitoring Zeke closely. I think most presumed that Abreu would start at PG. You don't bring a kid with that much prep and international experience in when you have no true starting PG and then sit him. I think making him the starting PG and moving McNees to SG is a good move. Put Steve out there with a creative ballhandler who can get him more open looks and it makes him more effective too.

You could literally knock me over with a feather right now

This page was discussed extensively on here about a month or so ago. Not sure if Akron actually uses this service, but clearly some of our conferencemates do (OU, NIU and WMU are all up there right now). It appears to be pretty legit. Very surprised that something like this would be on the open web. You would expect that maybe a private service like this would be available through the NCAA, but not just open on the web for everyone to see.

Nice find Cap'n This is the kind of add we need on the schedule. Not an unreasonably difficult game, but a game that challenges us and will look good on the resume if we can pull out the win. Looking forward to seeing another game or two like this hit the schedule. Looking at the old post regarding the rest of the 2010-11 Schedule I guess we have this at the moment: Home: Cleveland State Oral Roberts Wyoming VCU Away: Minnesota Oakland Temple UIC Niagra Neutral: Miami(FL) Indiana State With three dates to fill. Those three spots really need to be filled wisely. Can't fill them out with UNC Greensboro and Arkansas Pine Bluff and Malone. The base is there for a nice schedule that won't have the rest of the MAC beamoaning our weak scheduling. Fill this thing in with cupcakes and it is more of the same. With the changes in recruiting philosophy this offseason needs to come a change in scheduling philosophy. Hopefully this is the beginning of that.

The more I think about this, the more I expect our starting lineup to look something like this: PG-Abreu SG-McNees SF-Diggs PF-McKnight C-Marshall I think the comment about Diggs giving us a true SF tells us as just as much about what the coaching staff thinks of Brett McKnight as it does what they think of Diggs. I think they really want to keep Brett at PF as opposed to trying to make him switch to SF. I still think the coaching staff likes Steve too much to fully take him out of the starting lineup, but the recruitment of Abreu is a clear indication that they realize Steve is limited as a PG. Zeke is probably the only obvious starter. Your backups would then look as such: PG-Hitchens/McNees SG-Roberts/Hitchens SF-Egner/McClanahan PF-Cvetinovic/Egner/Euton C-Cvetinovic/Euton/Bardo

The problem, as I see it, with Marketing the University right now is that we are at a point where we really don't know what we are anymore. We don't exactly fit the mold of a commuter school/quasi-glorified community college. Thankfully those days are gone (though you wouldn't know it by talking to a certain population of the Akron Community). The problem is that we aren't exactly a residential high level University yet either. If you don't really know what kind of a University you are, it makes it very difficult to figure out what your target audience is. Are you trying to target students who live on campus? If so, there may or may not be enough of them yet to make a substantial impact at sporting events. Are you going after the crowd of commuters who live within walking distance of the University? If so you may need to come up with a different message for this group to attract them to games than what you need to attract the residential crowd. You would need an entirely different message if you are looking to attract those students who drive in from the outer regions of Akron and the surrounding suburbs. You would probably need yet another program to attract the community (non-students) at large. These are all issues that a good, focused marketing department SHOULD be able to deal with, but you have to admit, it makes it more difficult. A school like an Ohio State or even an OU doesn't exactly have this problem. They know what they are, how to market to their students and the surrounding community and they have done it for a long time. Being in this transition period as a campus only increases the difficulty for our marketing department.

I don't know what Bardo you were watching, but it wasn't the same one I saw. By the end of the championship seasons his minutes had been cut back (from high teens to low 20's to start the season to barely getting 10 minutes a lot of nights in the stretch run) and Cvetinovic was our primary C. I don't know why we have to keep going over the Bardo situation on here so much. He is who he is. He can give you 5-10 minutes here and there where all he does is eat up space on the interior and dish out some hard fouls. Nothing more, nothing less. He is the classic example of a guy who is big, but lacks anything close to solid basketball skills. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a place on this team, but to say that we need to have him on the court any time Zeke isn't is an overstatement. If we can get more than just some hard fouls and taking up space inside out of moving a guy like Cvetinovic or Euton over to the C spot when Zeke needs a blow then Mike won't be seeing a lot of playing time.

Just thought I would throw out a few updates on this thread after all that went down last week. http://georgiatech.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1073478 It appears from that article that at this point that the leader in the clubhouse for Jakarr Sampson is Xavier with a number of high-majors in close contention. At this point I really don't think we have much of a chance with this kid. Too bad, it would have been nice to get back into the St.V pipeline. Also some good info in there on PG Stevie Taylor. Not sure if he is on our radar too much anymore with Abreu coming in this year and Ennis waiting in the wings next year. Seems like that would be too many PG's and not enough playing time to go around. Have to admit though, that the diminutive one has been leading some pretty impressive upsets for both his high school and AAU teams. http://www.jjhuddle.com/blog/post-detail.php?p=4451 Pierri-a Henry was named tournament MVP for the 2010 All-Ohio NIKE Cup AAU tournament. Love the quote in here that Henry scored and rebounded at will whenever he needed to. Certainly has to be high on our list of potential 2011 recruits considering our continued need for bigger, more athletic SG's.