clarkwgriswold

Pleasantly surprised by Scott Walter. I had assumed he was going to be more of a practice player.

Some notes/observations from Game 1, primarily for those who could not attend. The new intro video is not great. Starters- Banks, Ivey, Riak, Jackson and Utomi. Lots of new support people. Looked like about 10 managers and 24 cheerleaders. The new scoreboard looks great. Cheese was the first sub into the game. He is not much of a shooter but was the most aggressive Zip with the ball. Jackson is very fast. He can push the ball, has a decent shot and works hard on defense. His size will be exploited by big guards. Banks looked good. Decent shot. Seems to still be finding his way. Deng has very good feet on defense, is a nice defensive presence in the middle and is reasonable on offense. Much better on offense than expected. Scott Walter played much more than expected. Very heady and works hard. Groce had Poke and Riak and Sayles and Riak on the floor together. Lucas Smith and Toles in street clothes. Kostelac was the 4th big man in. Cheese ran point with Jackson out of the game. Ugly first half. 31-29. 39 percent from field, 24% on 3 pointers. Zips never got in the bonus, a sign of how passive they were on defense. At times, the boxing out was awful. In one stretch in the second half, Cedarville got 5 offensive rebounds in one possession. All in all, a typical first game. Lots of work yet to do. Players still gelling.

Just over an hour to game time. Foam finger ready. Blue and gold body paint ready. John Groce Fathead ready. The t-shirt gun is ready and the crosshairs are ready to line up NWAkron for the first blast of the season. Welcome back to Zips basketball!

Paul Mokeski is the head coach of the Moncton Magic. 30 years ago, I was in a fantasy basketball league known as the Big White Stiff Basketball League and our divisions were the Mokeski Division and the Paultz division. Here's his trading card from his stint with the Cavs-

He had a fantastic first 4 or 5 years then it all went to *****.

Took a look at last year's stats for the Yellow Jackets and they return 6 of the top 7 scorers from last season, led by senior 6 foot guard Grant Zawadzki at 12.6 ppg. They were 13-14 overall and 8-14 in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference. They've had the same coach since 2008 and have been under .500 every season since 2013.

They were planning on faxing them today, but now the phone lines are down.

Just received an email that the ticket office phones are down. What awful news with the huge demand for tickets to the Cedarville game/scrimmage.

Good for Noah. He was one of the most mature freshmen I've ever seen. It doesn't bode well for UNLV that they're being taken to the wire by Division II Montana State-Billings.

Bad thing is, it was posted with that comment by Sam Borquin from WAKR. That's friendly fire.

Amen NW. Tic, tic, tic...

I think part of it was to get the program back up to speed as quickly as possible and I think it will drop off some, but I don't think he has the aversion to jucos and transfers KD did and will be willing to bring in whatever helps the team.

Great photos, as always.

This picture made it into Sports Illustrated Extra Mustard this morning in a tweet from Sam Borquin saying it was 7 minutes before game time. Not a good look.

I am just so damn tired of having to "live with losses like this."

The seating chart in the ticket book says a GA season ticket is $75.

It's here...

I think he meant final 4 in the MAC.

I think those days are gone to some extent. Last year and this year are volatile due to the coaching change, and it won't always be like this. That being said, I think we'll see a little more of player movement due to the fact Groce recruits jucos and transfers while KD's focus was on freshmen/4 year player types.

Tickets came today. Nice book like last year. Parking pass in there too, all for $60 a set.

I'd hate to miss out on walking from the deck in the snow, rain and cold!

Hmmm, the website still shows GA seats at $60. Curious to see if I have a parking pass in my tickets.

As Kreed pointed out, that is odd given that the GA tickets stayed at $60.

Tough call. At this juncture, we aren't even sure who's on the team or starting. Tough to gauge these kids from brief film clips in a dark high school and juco gyms. I certainly think this team will be more athletic and deep than last year's, but last year's team was pretty bad and thin. I don't think we'll see much Kostelac or Smith this year as they'll slide down the depth chart with the new additions. I think Sayles is poised to be a good big man and the best of the low post players. Poke will bring energy and effort while Riak's main contribution will be on defense and on the boards.

According to SI, our Zips are 135th in the country (3rd in the MAC)! https://www.si.com/college-basketball/2018/10/31/college-hoops-rankings-every-team-kansas-duke-kentucky This is the first step towards that AT LARGE bid!