skip-zip

All week, I felt like we would get 2 wins, and had a chance to get 3, but I have been referring to this Buffalo game as the "Brick Wall" of this tournament. Lets hope that my Game 4 vision is a serious miscalculation. I just have no idea how we'll get this done tonight. I'm just happy to be spending another Friday in Cleveland partying in March.

Love the picture of the Ken+ State player crying. That's almost as good as that old picture of the Ken+ State Cheerleader crying. Is that picture still around anywhere? This would be a good time to re-post it.

I can't help but to look back at these two Keys To The Game that I posted yesterday. 1) We have to get some good minutes out of Forsythe, even if it's ONLY for his play on the defensive end. Ken+ has a lot of guys who can get to the basket. We won't get past them with a tired team without some rim protection. 3) Fewer than 10 turnovers, please. But...HOLY COW!! How did we ever get that done shooting 5 of 24 from long range? And 2 of them were BANKED. Guts, and being a part of a program that knows how to win games. I have no other explanation.

It was actually an Alley-Oop style dunk on a backside cut, not a dribble to the hole like he did last night. Yes, that was right before the drought.

When that WMU player came over and slapped at the ball, I said "he's asking to get punched". That move was so meaningless in terms of the game's outcome. It was the reaction of a loser wanting to be a d*ck. In my opinion, Kwan showed GREAT restraint. But, waving goodbye after the incident was already over proved nothing either.

So, where's the big party in town tonight for those who can't make it to Cleveland?

I get it. You're convinced. Nothing more I can say than what I posted in #133.

I like how your response to Dave's post escalates rather quickly from speculation and uncertainty to insisting that you are certain that you know the intensions of an official who you don't even know. You're dead wrong if you think certain officials don't have a problem with certain coaches, players, or teams. The extent to which any of them allow those feelings to influence their decision making is the only question.

WOW!! Can't believe I didn't notice that. Their poor shooting certainly limits assists. But, that's an unbelievable number! They just couldn't execute anything against us. They finally tried to utilize the Miami strategy and just started letting their quick lanky guard just go one-on-one to the basket.

Here's a few early keys for tomorrow night. 1) We have to get some good minutes out of Forsythe, even if it's ONLY for his play on the defensive end. Ken+ has a lot of guys who can get to the basket. We won't get past them with a tired team without some rim protection. 2) If we're not going to get points from passes into the post, we are going to need some of our perimeter guys to dribble to the basket. We did it a few times against WMU. The opportunity may be there if Ken+ comes out to guard the 3-balls. 3) Fewer than 10 turnovers, please. 4) How much juice will we have on defense playing against a rested team, and playing our 3rd game in 4 days?

To wrap up this game... 1) Defense 2) Defense 3) Defense 4) Some timely 3-point buckets. There isn't much else that can be said about this one. This WMU team just can't score against us. I actually think we're far more athletic, and we can't say that about many MAC teams. Absolutely amazing that David Brown had ONE field goal in this game.

Dave.....I can't believe you've used your association with ZipsNation to catapult yourself to stardom. Congratulations. Seriously though, I really think that some of the recent discussions about using our avid group of fans to influence more and more support for Zips Athletics has potential. I hope we continue to discuss these sorts of things. I think this article could be just the beginning of "getting noticed" as a formidable force outside of our own relatively small circle.

During the first matchup at the JAR, I felt like we were really a matchup nightmare for them. On the return visit to Kalamazoo, they had Brown back, but we played without Forsythe and Kretzer and still won. I think some people forget about that. And we were a pretty bad road team this year. So, David Brown's comments would seem pretty delusional based on what transpired in the two games.

We finally ditched The Clevelander? I have no idea why we ever chose a place like that to begin with.

With the way she finished her career, I still have to imagine what might have happened had she gotten to play with last year's team. We got so out-muscled against Purdue in that NCAA tournament game, I think she could have been the difference maker. I'm sure she would have also won us a few more games during the year. Having missed out on that run was probably devastating for her. So, both emotionally and physically, the drive she had to come back and perform this year was unbelievable. I'm so proud to have someone of that character representing my alma mater, and achieving such a great feat for herself in the process.

And for God's sake, it was on the same night as The Bachelor finale !!! I'll say this....For a small crowd, I actually felt a lot of involvement from the fans. There is something to be said for the fact that we should judge crowds by quality and not quantity. When there is 5,000 people in the place, and only 1,000 of them are interested in the game, that tends to stick out. I wonder how many people were really there last night, when you know that ALL season tickets were automatically counted as attendance.

I totally understand some growth in the optimism following the performance last night. I've seen some things that indicate that this team is truly have some life left. But, I'm absolutely amazed that some people appear to be predicting future success around the premise that we can just continue to nail half of our 3-pointers every night. At the same time, I think we have no choice but to keep firing away if we want a chance to advance far in this tournament. So, for those of you who've spent the entire season clamoring about how we "live and die by the 3" .....I think you about to watch it come to fruition.

I'll continue on a thought I had about this in another thread. I feel like WMU is not a team you have to "chase" around the floor. There's not much of a speed or athletic element there. It's the best opponent we can possibly play in a long stretch of consecutive games.

True. But I also like the idea of sending WMU home from Cleveland, after they ended our streak of championship games last year with an improbable 2nd half comeback. Plus, like I said, I'm much happier about battling with the limited WMU fans who will be in the arena on Wednesday, rather than the OU fans. The closer we can get to having Cleveland feel like our home court, the better our chances of survival. It's just too bad we won't get to face OU's mysterious "Willie Alvarez" on Wednesday.

And the 4 days of rest before that Round #1 game would feel like an eternity. But for right now, the key is that we got through the Monday game with limited physical....AND MENTAL...fatigue. Being able to "shut it down" in the 2nd half on both fronts, and be able to relax a bit, was vitally important. I'll still stick with my previous posts about thinking there's a great chance we can still make it to Thursday. And we'd have a fighting chance against Ken+. I like the way we are producing points the last couple of games, and Keith indicated last night that we are going to take a "turn it loose" mentality. Plus, having Forsythe, even if it's primarily for some defense and rebounding, would be something we missed at Ken+ last week. Like Zippy5 just said, I think many of us have commented about how Friday would likely be the brick wall.

I feel like WMU is the better matchup for us. I feel like the very athletic teams will cause us the most problem right now, and they aren't that kind of team. I also feel like I know what I'm getting with WMU. They should be easier to game-plan against. OU is far more unpredictable. And we can certainly count on far less fan support for WMU on a Wednesday night in Cleveland.

I think he's the one who's been determined to discredit Jake. I don't think it has anything to do with complaining about the Zips' performance.

Obviously, he has the Green Light on 3-pointers. But right now, without Pat in the lineup, his inside play on both ends and rebounding are really needed right now. He had 9 rebounds at Ken+. Perfect. He also had NINE 3-point attempts. That's way too many, in my opinion. I'd rather see several other guys shooting a few of those. I'll be happy with a couple more rebounds and a couple fewer 3-point attempts the rest of this year. We need him in the paint.

I think we're sort of on the same page here. I understand making this thing beneficial to the teams that performed best during the regular season, but I think it's totally unfair that the #4 Seed plays 3 games, and the #5 seed plays 5 games. I don't know how they can get around that, but it's a huge difference.

Yep, it would be. Like I said, we had a similar timeline (midseason ACL) with a key player 10 years ago, and unfortunately we had to play without him for a season.