People praise them when they do something worthy of praise. There was plenty of praise of Baskin going around earlier this season, especially after the Princeton game. Keogh has clearly improved this year (I was one of the people who expected a leap from him this year). Lots of talk about Smith's finishing ability, particularly in the Michigan game. But if we're talking about the Rutgers game—no, none of them did much especially worthy of "praise."
Offensive middies making mistakes on defense happen in every single game. All of the players listed above have made mistakes on defense. One of them has gotten totally burned more than once. But it's silly to pick on them, because they're not defensive players. That they're getting trapped on defense so often is a failure of coaching, not playmaking. Again—why doesn't this happen to other teams nearly as often?
Zinn also has more caused turnovers than all the other middies combined, but haven't seen too many mentions of that.
You think his defense is an issue—fine—but I think the fact that he outscored nearly the entire rest of the midfield combined is a much bigger problem, and one that has a far greater impact on this team and the reason it has underperformed on the whole this season.
As far as "giving up on the season" goes, count me out on that.