I understand where people here are coming from on Zach and in the interest of my own biases and full disclosure, I am personal friends with him. First off, the info he passes along comes from strong sources. With that said, in my own mind and based off of basic common sense, there is zero doubt that these sources are full of $hit and at best have been providing half-turths and misleading info. I do not blame Zach one bit for publishing the info given to him however I do agree with an above poster that its gotten to the post where he needs to include in those tweets/articles a disclaimer that the staff has been wrong repeatedly on these injuries and absences. If I was Zach I would be absolutely livid at this staff for making me look bad.
To me, I lay the blame at the feet of the staff/athletic department for this, and overall I think this staff has done a good job. To repeatedly push out info that is misleading and defies common sense on what actually is happening is awful PR strategy. All they are doing is discrediting themselves and losing some aspect of trust with a fairly large portion of the fanbase. They could easily just say a player is injured and is out for an undetermined period of time with an injury instead of saying he was "hopeful" or "likely" for stretches of games over with Lovett or "likely" with Ponds for Seton Hall.
Just look at what happened yesterday: Lovett and Ponds both didn't participate in a basic workout where the team was simply putting up shots. How do I know this? Because they were both dicking around streaming live on Instagram last night as the team was at the arena. Lovett was streaming live from the arena and Ponds was at the hotel, which means he wasn't even with the team. Now, just a few weeks ago Mullin was saying that Lovett was doing "basketball related things" and even last week or so said he was starting to shoot. And yet yesterday when all the team was doing was putting up shots, he wasn't participating. Do you think Tom Izzo would allow a "day to day" injured player to travel with the team but stay back at hotel to stream live on social media while the rest of the team was practicing? What about Jay Wright, think that would fly with him? Coach Cal or Coach K?? This is becoming somewhat of a circus and Lavin'esque. Not a good look.