Defensive Domination on National TV

After six MAC games, the Zips had the worst three-point defense in the conference. Yesterday evening, Central Michigan was held to 29.4% from beyond the arc; and hey, whaddaya know! We won 63-43!

So let's get down to it. All in all, the Zips played phenomenal basketball. They took their time on the offensive end (which is always when they're at their best) and let Alex Abreu run the show when he was on the floor. One of the strongest points of this year's team is that almost everybody on the team can sprint the floor on defense, and handle the ball well on offense.

The Great:

- Zeke Marshall. His rebounding wasn't great (only 3), but he stayed out of foul trouble and shot 5-5 from the floor and 6-8 from the line to lead the team with 16 points.

- Nikola Cvetinovic, the reason Zeke Marshall only grabbed three rebounds. The Serbian Wonder pulled in 10 rebounds along with 8 points.

- Mike Bardo; a season-high 6 rebounds in 12 minutes. I like this guy. Pure hustle when he's on the court.

The Good:

- Steve McNees. He finished with 9 points, all from threes (go figure) and led the team with 4 assists.

- Alex Abreu. He's just fun to watch. He's also going to be pretty darn good in the next few years. He finished with 6 points (2-6, 1-3 from three-point range) and 3 assists.

- Quincy Diggs played the sixth-man role perfectly, shooting 3-4 for 8 points and 4 rebounds. Unfortunately he also had 4 turnovers.

The Not So Good, But We Won So I Can't Really Call It Awful:

- Brett McKnight. I don't know what happened to him. He finished this game 1-4, 2 points, 1 rebound, a steal, and 3 fouls. I wouldn't think that missing 7 games would affect a senior this badly, especially the former Sixth Man of the Year in the MAC, but other than one 21 point game this year, he's been out of it.

That's all folks! No televised games for a while, but the Zips travel to Eastern Michigan this Wednesday for a 7pm matchup.

Roo News 1/28/11

1) The 2011 non-conference football schedule has been released. Here are the first four games of next season:

Sat, Sept. 3: @ Ohio State

Sat, Sept. 10: FIU

Sat, Sept. 17: at Cincinnati

Sat, Sept. 24: VMI

I like this. We all knew that first tune-up away game against a Big Ten team was coming. Cincinnati is a great team as well, but one that we generally play well against. That will probably be a 5-15 point loss. In terms of the home games, the rare Sun Belt/MAC matchup against FIU should be a good home opener, and as long as the FCS match against VMI doesn't turn out like last year's soul-crushing overtime loss to Gardner-Webb, we may see a 2-2 Zips team going into conference play.

2) The men's basketball team has another televised game on Sunday, so if you're not willing to pay the $15 to watch it live, tune in to ESPNU at 6pm.

3) Did anybody else watch the Knicks beat the Heat last night? Aaah, that's just good for the heart.

It's a Bird! It's a Donkey! No, It's a MAC Official!

Another incredibly disappointing televised loss for the men's basketball team yesterday. I'll just cut to the chase. The final score was 83-74. Northern Illinois shot 44.4% while the Zips shot 41.8%. But the Zips connected on 5 more three-pointers than the Huskies, while winning that percentage battle by 8.4%. So why was the score this bad with stats like that, you ask?

It could have been due to the Huskies outrebounding the Zips 43-34.

It wasn't.

It may have been because of the following statistics:

Akron was 6-12 in free throw shooting for the game. NIU's Xavier Silas was 16-20. NIU as a team shot 29-40.

Read that again. Yep. Silas had 8 more free throws than the entire Zips team. The rest of the Huskies had an additional 20.

The announcers immediately chalked it up to the lack of aggressive play from Akron. I agree...that some of it was due to a lot of jump shooting from the Zips.

Folks, it may look bad on paper; it looked a lot worse on television. At the end of the game, five Akron players had 4 fouls, including Alex Abreu, who totaled 14 minutes on the court.

Whatever the issue, the Zips are now 2-4 in the MAC and need to get themselves going. Bad officiating happens (*cough cough* every game in the MAC *cough*). It's part of the game. The Zips need to play better than the refs if they want to make it to the tournament this year.

Roo News 1/21/11

1) The men's basketball team has been doing their usual MAC-play tanking, losing their last two to Buffalo and Miami (OH). They're now 10-8 (1-3 MAC) and play 8-10 (3-1 MAC) Bowling Green Saturday. The game will be on SportsTime Ohio at 7:30pm, so tune in. So far this year, the Zips have been controlling the ball incredibly well, forcing an average of around 4 turnovers more than they give away; however, the rebounding hasn't been pretty. Unless Zeke Marshmallow steps up again, it will more of the same story against Bowling Green.

2) The lady Zips have also been losing their in-conference games and are now 8-9 (1-4 MAC). They also play Saturday, also on SportsTime Ohio, at 5pm against 12-7 (3-2 MAC) Eastern Michigan. Anybody that has a ticket for the men's game gets into the women's game for free. So go. Or face the wrath of Zippy.

A Day of Zero Wins

Ugh....

The Zips had won 6 of their last 7, and 4 straight home games; so it's only natural that the first game in this stretch I attended had a quite hideous result.

Ugh....

This was the worst Zips basketball game I have ever seen. In so many ways. Zeke Marshall once again countered a wonderful game with another one of his worst performances. The effort of the team in general was nowhere to be found for the first part of the first half. The officiating....oh, boy, the officiating....had the crowd leaning over the barrier, screaming at the referees just 7 minutes into the game; and it never got better. Steve McNees exchanged rather obscene words with an idiot AK Rowdie sitting one row ahead of me. The coaches and assistants (the coaches and assistants!) got into some sort of scrum just after the final whistle that involved athletic director Tom Wistrcill having to hold some people back. Nik Cvetinovic and Ohio forward DeVaughn Washington nearly attacked each other during above-mentioned scrum.

Ugh....

Oh yeah, did I mention the Zips lost to the 7-8 Ohio Bobcats 79-70 thanks to some horrible play, horrible effort, and horrible officiating?

The Great:

- The point guard matchup between Alex Abreu and middle-schooler-lookalike D.J. Cooper. Both made some serious eye-opening plays. The advantage on the night went to Cooper, who had just three turnovers. Abreu had seven, at least five of which bounced off the hands of his fellow Zips, including some behind-the-back brilliance to Zeke Marshmallow.

The Good:

- Ugh....

The Facepalm-causing Awful:

- Everybody's shooting. Let's see, 5-13, 3-9, 2-8, 2-7, 4-10...the Zips shot a tremendous 28.6% in the first half, following up with 41.5% in the second. Compare this to a Bobcat game percentage of 52.9%.

- Zeke Marshmallow's hands. Oh, and Mike Bardo's hands...and Quincy Diggs's...

- The aforementioned idiot AK Rowdie.

- Defense. Bobcats Nick Kellogg and Tommy Freeman shot 6-9 and 5-8 from beyond the arc, respectively.

- Probably anything else you can think of.

In slightly less disappointing news, the women's basketball team also lost yesterday, to the 15-1 Bowling Green Falcons. It's slightly less disappointing because there was effort involved. Four Zips finished in double digits, but nobody could handle Bowling Green's Lauren Prochaska, who shot 11-16 and finished with 28 points.

The men next travel to Buffalo for a 2pm Sunday game and the women return home for a 2pm Saturday matchup against the 9-7 Miami Redhawks.

Zip > Flash

1) Zeke Marshmallow no more! Why, oh why couldn't I have been at this game? The Zips men's basketball team pulled off a truly clutch 65-62 win over Kent State (KSUcks!).

The Great:

- Zeke Marshall and his late 8-0 scoring run to lead the Zips to the victory. He finished with 20 points, 11 rebounds, and 3 blocks.

- Brett McKnight's shooting. He was only 5/10 from the field, but 2/3 from beyond the arc and 7/9 from the line to end with 19 points.

The Mediocre:

- Everybody else aside from the three mentioned below.

The Come On, Man:

- The shooting of Steve McNees, Brett McClanahan and Nikola Cvetinovic, who combined to shoot 4/8 from the line, 3/13 from downtown, and 5/23 overall.

The next men's game is home on Wednesday against Ohio at 7pm. The Bobcats always put up a heck of a fight. I'll be there, dorkily keeping stats on the roster.

The women also won their game Saturday, downing the lady Bobcats 54-45. Rachel Tecca led the team with 19 points off of 8/18 shooting. Kara Murphy shot 6/13 for 13 points, and Taylor Ruper knocked in three treys for 9 points overall. The lady Zips face a challenge on the road against 13-1 Bowling Green on Wednesday.

Roo News 1/8/11

1) My moving is all done. Classes are starting again. Zips Sports Blog is back up and running. Oh yeah.

2) The men's basketball team has been rambling through the non-conference schedule while I've been gone. Of the last 6 games, the only loss has come to Miami (FL). The Zips now are 9-5. Their five losses have come to aforementioned Miami, #20 Minnesota, Temple, Cleveland State, and Dayton. If I (or anybody) had to pick the five games on the schedule that I would rather have the team lose, there's no doubt that those five would come to mind. Every single one of them is a tournament-quality team.

3) The women's basketball team is 7-6. They dropped their MAC opener to Buffalo, but take on 4-10 Ohio at noon today. The game can be seen on SportsTime Ohio.

4) The big game is today; so naturally I am going to miss it thanks to a poorly-timed soccer game. The men's team takes on Kent State at home later today at 7pm (Also on SportsTime Ohio). Kent State has a good team this year, similar to the team that drubbed us twice last year. Also, Dambrot doesn't do well against the Golden Flashes; his all-time record against them is 5-9. Look for tomorrow's celebratory recap.