Exhibition Opener

[zippy5]

On one hand, I'd say I'm not impressed with this team, but maybe the bar was set high from some people that have seen them.On the other hand, I hate judging teams on these D-3 games, since coaches would rather work on things instead of going for a big win. i.e. lob it to zeke every time and win by 50. So I'll hold my judgement until the MSU game. Gilliam is a baller.

[GoZips]

Feels good to watch the Zips playing basketball again.JCU was a scrappy, tough opponent who played to win against long odds. John Carroll is picked by the mediato finish second in their conference. That is high praise.First the good: the kids mesh well playing Dambrot's crazyquilt player match ups. The shooting percentage was in thestratosphere (58%).The not so good: hardly any assists and barely out reboundeda shorter team.The bad: free throw shooting was atrocious. (56%).The ugly: turnovers. Twenty-three or was it twenty-six?Which ever it was is unacceptable.Gilliam and Harney proving they belong on the court.Good games out of the starters.How about Kyle Peterson? Last man off the bench in mop uptime knocks in five points. And Tree's dunk rattled the rafters.

[akzipper]

Akron's new home duds!in case anyone wanted to seeCall me crazy but the numbers and letters almost look silver. Could just be the lighting? Not really happy they kept the same stripes on the shorts from last year, but the giant Z on the shorts is pretty cool. Hopefully they keep "akron" on the blues and maybe they bring back the gold alternates this year....or maybe the rumored black jerseys? would be sickthey better be selling the new Akron lebrons for this season somewhere!

[yazan07]

Akron's new home duds!in case anyone wanted to seeCall me crazy but the numbers and letters almost look silver. Could just be the lighting? Not really happy they kept the same stripes on the shorts from last year, but the giant Z on the shorts is pretty cool. Hopefully they keep "akron" on the blues and maybe they bring back the gold alternates this year....or maybe the rumored black jerseys? would be sickthey better be selling the new Akron lebrons for this season somewhere!

Not sure if you were at the game but they looked silver in person too. I don't really think I am a fan. Maybe I'm just used to the old ones.

[Pack_The_MAC]

On one hand, I'd say I'm not impressed with this team, but maybe the bar was set high from some people that have seen them.On the other hand, I hate judging teams on these D-3 games, since coaches would rather work on things instead of going for a big win. i.e. lob it to zeke every time and win by 50. So I'll hold my judgement until the MSU game. Gilliam is a baller.

I kind of wish this was the offense though.

[Dr Z]

There are two coaches that I care about what they have to say after a game. KD is my top one. I love his for style of answering questions. I learn from listening to him.KD's comment made me go back and read this thread.

[skip-zip]

I don't like to make much out of a scrimmage, but I just have a few thoughts...1) The starting lineup seems like a no brainer. KD has always seemed to love having experience on the floor when games matter. And those 5 guys are the most experienced. And we played our best basketball, by far, with those 5 guys together on the floor.2) If more up-tempo play means sloppy with more turnovers, I'm bored already. 3) Gilliam, by far, showed me the most ability to contribute among the newcomers. 4) I'm concerned about how we'll play under the basket with Zeke on the bench. I think we'll miss Bardo more than we want to admit.5) Was I the only one who noticed KD really getting on Alex last night? I'm still not a big Alex fan, but he's pretty much all we have at the point. And I didn't see anyone else doing any better. I think we'll see a lot of isolation plays featuring Diggs when we are in set offensive situations. 6) I'm embarrassed that a tremendously undersized John Carroll team pulled down 35 rebounds. 7) A few more new guys need to quickly get a grasp of what "Akron Basketball" is all about....in a hurry.

[Blue & Gold]

Akron's new home duds!in case anyone wanted to seeCall me crazy but the numbers and letters almost look silver. Could just be the lighting? Not really happy they kept the same stripes on the shorts from last year, but the giant Z on the shorts is pretty cool. Hopefully they keep "akron" on the blues and maybe they bring back the gold alternates this year....or maybe the rumored black jerseys? would be sickthey better be selling the new Akron lebrons for this season somewhere!

The new uni's are sweeeet! The only change I'd make is printing "ZIPS" in blue, just like the name on the back of the jersey.The "Z" on the leg is perfect. Pretty cool that it's only on one side.I really want to see them bring back the alternate gold unis. They're actually my favorites, though the whites are very sharp.The new LeBrons are sweet. I almost bought a pair a few days ago. Ultimately I decided to put off the purchase till later - get a little more court time out of my current 'Brons. (They're awfully expensive - about $150 IIRC.)If they sell the Akron LeBrons I'll definitely drop the $$ on a pair.

[Blue & Gold]

First the good: the kids mesh well playing Dambrot's crazyquilt player match ups.

Huh? Could you elaborate on this?

[Blue & Gold]

My $.02 contribution:AA looked electric; quickest Zip since Jimmal Ball, IMHO.Brian Walsh looked awfully pedestrian as backup PG. Frankly, the team never looked very good while AA was on the bench.Nick Harney is going to be fantastic. Wow.What'd Zeke have, 2 points? Kinda odd.Gilliam is a true baller. Athletic, muscular, explosive 6'5 with an amazing stroke from 3. Best player on the team? (Zeke of course, with the most professional potential.)Treadwell's a physical specimen but didn't get a lot of PT. Obviously still learning/adjusting.Nic had a very sweet stroke from 3. I hope he doesn't "fall in love," with that shot - we really need him down low.Gotta love Josh Egner, but he just doesn't seem to bring a lot to the table. I say move Nic to 5 when Zeke rests.Other than that I really couldn't tell much due to the sloppy nature of the game. John Carrol was clearly overmatched athletically but were really scrappy & fought hard. But they were so overmatched our guys looked to be clowning around a little bit. They better get laser-focussed over the next 6 days in preparation for Mississippi State. Jeez, what a shock it's going to be to go from playing JC one game to MS the next. I'm sticking w/ my prediction of a slow start for this team. Too many new pieces are going to have to learn to play together & KD's going to have to use the regular season to get his rotations down. By the 2nd half of the MAC season I'd say we'll be gelling & once again win the MACC.

[Dave in Green]

My early evaluation of this season's edition of the Zips lies somewhere between GoZips' and akzipper's. My first observation of last night's game is that KD is one smart coach. JCU was the perfect team to schedule for the season-opening exhibition game. True to what KD told us after one of the practices, JCU played the kind of swarming defense he wanted to test his players against. The JCU players came in fresh waves with five subs at a time, and they played their guts out every second they were on the floor. If a team with taller, more talented players played like JCU, they'd run most teams off the floor. The fact that they are neither tall nor have D1 talent allowed the Zips to be tested without great fear of losing the game. But it sure looked ugly at times. I hope the Zips learned something about hustle from seeing what the JCU players accomplished.I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned the key stat from last night: Rico played only 15 minutes, by far the least of any of the starters. That tells me that KD is desperately looking for one of the other guards to step up and claim the backup PG position. KD said in the post-game interview that the Zips are missing the presence of the freshman, so he's continuing with the theme that Ibitayo was close to winning the backup PG minutes. I'm not sure if that's 100% accurate, or if he's using that to try to motivate one of the more seasoned guards to elevate their PG performance. But whatever the answer, backup PG is looking more and more to be a critical area of the Zips' team performance this season. KD was pretty hard on Rico, probably because he knows the team is going to be relying so much on Rico's play until a backup is established.Walsh seemed to be a little uncomfortable handling the ball under the relentless JCU pressure. From what I had seen in practice, I had expected him to play more like a veteran. But PG is not his natural position, so I think we'll have to see how he adjusts. If Walsh doesn't step up at PG, Q would be the next logical player to fill that role. But that would require Harney to step up and fill more of Q's PT at wing forward. Harney is definitely talented, but still fairly raw. He needs to spend extra time after practice shooting free throws, because his style of play is going to draw lots of fouls. Right now he looks like a 50% free throw shooter.The next biggest challenge after backup PG, which KD also mentioned after one of the practices, is replacing Bardo. The Zips desperately need one or more big men beyond Zeke and the Serb who can bang under the basket, grab rebounds and play tough D. Egner continues to show flashes. His athleticism is obvious, but he needs to focus on beng smart and consistent. Tree also showed flashes in his 10 minutes of play. I was a little suprised at how quick Tree is on his feet. He moves more like a wing forward than a power forward. He's not only quick on his feet, but he can jump. He showed a lot of intensity while on court, and is obviously trying hard. He appears to be a little more raw than Harney. If Tree and Harney both take well to KD's coaching and develop quickly, overall team performance would shoot up dramatically.One thing that emerged from this game is that Gilliam's performance in Canada was no fluke. He is definitely the leading candidate to replace B. McKnight as the Zips' go-to scorer. Already his outside shot looks better than McKnight's, plus he can drive and score or dish. Gilliam is an exciting player like Q who makes things happen. He's going to be a fan favorite.Another positive was having Nitro at wing guard rather than wing forward, as wing guard appears to be his natural position. Even though Nitro's shooting was off, he played hard at both ends of the court and earned the most PT (27 minutes) of any Zip.It was pretty obvious that the Zips were not relying on Zeke to score lots of points over the much shorter opposition, but were calling more plays to see what the other players could do on offense. The one thing that concerned me about Zeke is that after a couple of balls bounced off of him and out of bounds, he made big displays of that old frustration with himself that we've seen the last two seasons. I really want to see a completely new Zeke out there who is so confident in his overall play that he shakes off the little things and focuses more on the big picture. I expect a lot more out of Zeke in the Mississippi State game. He does tend to play his best in the biggest games, and it had to be hard for him to get up for playing little JCU.Q played under control with no signs of the wild side we saw last season. He seemed to be content playing a secondary role in this game, but I have no doubt that he could take control of a game if the need arose. Q looks solid.Same with the Serb. He was cool, calm and collected the whole game. His extra long-range shooting practice showed up when he nailed his only 3-point attempt. I expect lots of good things from the Serb this season.One thing's for sure. The era of Steve McNees dribbling the ball outside the 3-point arc is officially over. There was much more passing and ball movement by the Zips. Overall, the team looked a little ragged, as might be expected. But at least the final results were better than what Arizona and Butler experienced in their exhibition games. More different lineups were tried than I could count. So most of the time there were combinations of players on the court who didn't have much game experience with each other. We all know they will get better. It's way too early to know how much better or how quickly.

[Blue & Gold]

The one thing that concerned me about Zeke is that after a couple of balls bounced off of him and out of bounds, he made big displays of that old frustration with himself that we've seen the last two seasons. I really want to see a completely new Zeke out there who is so confident in his overall play that he shakes off the little things and focuses more on the big picture...

If there is one thing that may keep Zeke out of the NBA, this is it. He's too hard on himself. I can relate - this is exactly how I was when I played - for my teams' sake I was always pretty afraid of failure. Great athletes aren't like that (not to mention it takes all the fun out of the game). Zeke may be too critical/introspective/sensitive for his own good. Let it go, big fella.

[plowerman78]

Gillum reminded me alot of Jimmy Conyers in his senior year. Has the body to drive, but can stretch the court with his shot. just my thought take it or leave it ha.

[Dave in Green]

As concerned as KD might feel about the Zips' play in their exhibition game, imagine how Bob Huggins feels right now.D-II N. Kentucky beats W. Virginia 77-74 in exhibition

[Blue & Gold]

As concerned as KD might feel about the Zips' play in their exhibition game, imagine how Bob Huggins feels right now.D-II N. Kentucky beats W. Virginia 77-74 in exhibition

And as our women's team more than doubled-up on poor Ohio Dominican.