Blue & Gold

My hand's not raised. I'm thrilled with how our freshmen are playing. I forget how many times I noticed last night we were playing with 3 freshmen and a sophomore complementing either Ivey or DuVivier. I haven't seen a player as legit as Utomi in a Zips' uniform in I don't know how long. I don't want to be a prisoner of the moment & say "ever." But... Sayles is a full grown man. The foul should have been called on his dunk attempt (with under a minute left, I believe?) He went up strong and deserved that call. As LittleRooDude pointed out, I love that our big men go up strong. It's refreshing & why people buy tickets to watch b-ball at this level. Go up strong & dunk the ball or force the official to call the foul. E-Man's confidence has quadrupled this season. He wants the ball down low. Even hit a short-mid-range jump shot last night! At the end of the day, however, I think our season is going to go as DuVivier goes. Which makes sense; he's the starting PG & our only senior. It seems as if when DuVivier has his jump shot we win; when he doesn't have his J we lose. Of course, DuVivier having/not having his jump shot also presently correlates with our home/away games thus far. So we'll see. DuVivier/Utomi/Ivey is an outstanding 3-man combo & should give the MAC fits. If all three are on... forget about it.

So... has Stanford given college soccer a blueprint for how to beat the Zips? Not being educated in the game, I'm still a bit perplexed at how thoroughly we were handled last night. In the past I've wondered why teams didn't press us more on defense & make our ball handlers uncomfortable. My thought was that it must be physically impossible to keep up pressure like that for two 45-minute halves. But Stanford did.

ABJ: Zips bounce back after loss with 83-79 win over Fort Wayne

+1. UA should be flooding social media with that picture of the b-ball team in the weight room. It's sick! Definitely looks like a football team. Basketball players didn't used to look like that.

GREAT article!!

I thought Daniel probably deserved his own thread as we'll probably be talking about him a lot over the next 3 years. Here is a really good human-interest article from GT on Dan & how Groce has whipped him into better physical shape (Danie's gone from 19% to under 10% body fat). Sophomore Daniel Utomi trims the fat, takes lead role with Zips

Which may be part of the puzzle? They may not give out full rides for wrestling? Idk, just a thought. He did state in the article he enjoys football more than wrestling (paraphrased). I don't blame him - wrestling is brutal; football is a blast!

STVM OT 6'4" 270

119 of 124

Back when men were men.

ABJ: Zips will play Florida Atlantic in Boca Raton Bowl

Great article about two local products, Copley's Skye Harter and Hoban's Shane Weidt, and what it means for them to play for the Zippers. ABJ: Local high school stars Skye Harter, Shane Wiedt thrilled to be contributing as hometown Zips prepare for College Cup

^^Scratch that about Matt Salopek. Appears to be bad information. Over the last couple days he's gotten his first offers from WMU & UT.

Didn't know he had de-committed from Virginia. I'm interested! He must have at least one solid offer to de-commit, no?

Any news on Alvin Davis? He was helped off the field & wasn't putting any weight on his ankle.

Actually, the MAC was 6-3 on Saturday. Not that bad. L Akron 64, Marshall 86 L Buffalo 62, St. Bonaventure 73 L WMU 73, Oakland 78 W Ball Sweat 83, IUPUI 64 W NIU 95, Chicago State 77 W BUGS 92, Norfolk State 77 W KSUcks 72, Cleveland State 62 W Toledo 71, Texas Southern 69 W Miami 76, Western Illinois 73

Honestly, I'm excited about seeing Alex Ramart in the spring!

Poke just made a basketball move. Nice up-&-under for a basket. First time I've seen that in-game.

Well, we're playing like ?

Z!!!!

I love Moutinho. Exciting match! Love beating Lolla

Here is an article from the Ravenna Record Courier. It talks about 3 players that play for Hoban from K.ent and 2 from Ravenna. It states that Hoban S/WR Matt Salopek (6-2, 190) has verballed to Akron. That'd be a huge get. He's only a junior, so would be included in the 2019 recruiting class. Matt, as a junior, is a 2-year starter for Hoban at S, and was named 1st-Team All-Ohio D-II. Admittedly, this is the only place I've seen it published that Matt has verballed to UA. It's not on his twitter feed.