I know you're all busy sticking needles into your Coach K voodoo dolls—for safety's sake make sure your doll is not actually Coach K before inserting—but about an hour ago Michigan's hockey fate was determined. Drumroll, please:

St. Louis

1. Boston College
4. Colorado College

2. Michigan
3. Nebraska-Omaha

Michigan plays at 5:30 on Friday on ESPN3, with ESPNU replaying the game at 11:30.

Yeah, so to get to a hypothetical final Michigan probably has to beat Boston College and North Dakota, but that's why you show up on Friday against Western Michigan instead of whatever that was. Michigan split with UNO at Yost earlier this year, losing 4-2 on Friday and winning 6-1 the next night. Shots were 35-25 Michigan on Friday and about even Saturday.

Let me take this opportunity to urge anyone considering going: don't. You'll notice that the CCHA is the only conference not to have a region, you know, within hundreds of miles of it. A couple years ago there were regionals in Wisconsin and Colorado. The CCHA is the only conference to get so regularly screwed. I don't think the committee actually cares—if they did we'd have home regionals for top seeds—but on the off chance a St. Louis regional featuring 50 people in an NHL building is the hockey equivalent of Houston Nutt signing 37 kids you should save your money.

You may resume poking K right in the eye.

PERICLES/ATHENIAN HEROES

Dear Diary,

So I'm back from my honeymoon in Greece, and rollin' a 101 degree fever (much appreciated Delta passenger in Seat 12A). Getting the bed sentence for an American male this week basically means lots of college basketball that you can't really follow because you keep drifting off then waking up to either a.) Charles Barkley talking, b.) a guy who looks like your ex-girlfriend's father screaming at you to buy $1,000 TVs, or c.) a radically different score.

At one point Friday afternoon, after a close half where Michigan's best two players ate bench for early foul trouble, I drifted off again and had a fever dream in which Beilein went to his backups and found only ghosts. These apparitions, though by rights having no call to be influencing the corporeal plane, floated onto the court and proceeded to shut down Tobias Harris (who in my dream is 8 feet tall and can't spell "cat") and nail 3-pointers; Michigan won by 30.

Somewhere on my DVR remains a record of what really happened but I'm a man in a room full of used kleenex and the last time I looked on the internet it said hockey lost to Western Michigan 5-2, so until someone tells me different I'm going with the fever dream.

If the dream were true Michigan faces Duke this afternoon at 2:30. You'll get a full preview (update: scroll down to Tim's preview below), but the gist is that Michigan is baby Duke. The Devils' point differential scares the living hell out of me. Then again, I literally need to get some living hell out of me so let's ball.

Diaries: Hoops Edition

Melanie Maxwell/AnnArbor.com, MGoBlue.com, Kevin Cox/Getty Images

It was late January and a 10-2 non-conference schedule against nobodies became a brutal 1-7 mark against the league's toughest conference. The turning point came against little brother, who in basketball has spent the bulk of two decades as a national power. That team which aneurism-ed in Breslin wasn't the same that dominated a first-round 8-9 game in the NCAA Tournament. The squad in January was but an upset special, something that might pull off a miracle using guts and bloody white guys. When Michigan faced that same MSU team again – in Ann Arbor – it had become the Tim Hardaway show, and a ho-hum victory for the better team. The Wolverines finished fourth in the Big Ten, behind only the consensus No. 1 team in the nation and two popular Final Four picks.

How did we come so far? Leave it to bronxblue to tell it as it only can be told, with basketball movie posters:

This was still a dangerously-shallow crew, but it played like a team and bought into Beilein’s system in a way no other team had.  And nobody grew more as a player than Hardaway, who scored in double figures in every game and was the catalyst for wins over Iowa, Indiana, and Minnesota, playing and being absolutely unconscious at times from beyond the arc.

In a confluence of events that has left dozens of columnists misusing the word "ironic," ESPN aired its Fab Five documentary just as Michigan was sealing its most astounding in-season turnaround in memory. The documentary led to long threads hashing over Michigan basketball's gilded age, but also this fan perspective from Coach Schiano of the '93 Finals run.

The team didn't seem to have their legs that infamous Monday night against UNC. I think Kentucky took a lot out of them. Watching UNC breeze by a lousy Kansas team on Saturday, I was convinced we had the tougher road, and during the last game it showed.

As for the man whose star-birth turned Michigan from plucky guys who might beat the worst MSU team in recent memory to potential bracket busters, Blazefire does a comparison of Tim Hardaway Jr.'s freshman season against his father's four years at UTEP. The younger Hardaway isn't quite the shooter or setup man but otherwise stacks up well against his dad…as a junior.

I also bumped lfj75's Historical Performance of NCAA Seeds to a diary – it basically says 8-seeds don't often win NCAA tourneys. Then again 8-seeds don't usually blow out 9-seeds using spectral bench players.

And though it's now moot, credit jamiemac (of Just Cover Blog) for his Feb 28 bracket matrix, which did a better job explaining which chalk to trust in seeding (and in building a bracket) than about anywhere on the internet.

Diaries: Football Edition

It's official spring tomorrow but it's been football spring for a few weeks. With two other big money sports to hold blue attentions the football information flow has slowed to a trickle. However, lurking user FlyRy4 managed to get us some inside dope from Mattison while attending the Nike Coach of the Year Clinic, and DamnYankee performed a great service by reposting as a diary. FlyRy has received an admin points bump so he can bring things like this to us again. Bullets:

• 4-3 under defense that will look like a 5-2 to some – similar to what they ran in Baltimore.
• Mike Martin supposedly will get single-teams and chances to disrupt.
• Big Will is is winning the group competitions at 3-tech (over Q-Wash, Talbott, Ash et al.)
• Cam Gordon's an SLB, not a safety.
• "Inability of players to watch film correctly." Don't quite know what this means, but I'm all for proper video watching.

There's more in there from Mattison, so click.

The Rivals 250 is out, and Bodogblog broke them down by regions. Unsurprisingly there's a lot more talent in the SEC footprint than anywhere else. I'd like to see somebody do a comparison by year of Rivals 250 versus who gets drafted by the NFL; I have a feeling you'd find suggestive evidence that players in the South are more likely to get a 4-star.

And that maniacal laughter you hear in the background is THE_KNOWLEDGE, who points out the Tressel thing is something even the trolliest troll wouldn't dare dream up.

Diaries: Hockey Edition

As I'm writing this (11:30 a.m. Sunday) I'm watching the tournament announcement show, but if there's few surprises it's thanks to the excellent work of mfan_in_ohio, who has been keeping us updated with the pairwisii. You can go back to the March 13 and March 6 updates to feel out the whole process. Denver lost a nailbiter last night to North Dakota and ended up the 2 seed in that bracket, but mfan says Miami (NTM)'s CCHA championship will give them the last 1-seed, putting Mich in St. Louis with BC, CC and Nebraska-Omaha. And lo and behold, he's right. Michigan will play Nebraska-Omaha then face the winner of Boston College and Colorado College in St. Louis.

For his tireless effort and The_Knowledge-like prognosticative powers, this is your Diarist of the Week.

Diaries: Wrestling Edition

Michigan wrestling is synonymous with verbosity, thanks to AceUofMer, who gave us a preview and then broke down the final results for the Big Ten Tournament.

Enfin, I just wanted to share a little love for the all the Greco-Michigan fans I met. Yes, I can be the kind of tourist douche who wears Michigan gear when in Europe, but apparently there are a lot of Greeks who know the block M. Greek Michigan fans, we salute you, and not just because you built the Parthenon just to rub in a victory over Spartans.

The Essentials

"More like Puke." "More like White Devils." etc.

Shock the World.

Tempo-Free Breakdown

If you need an explanation of the stats, check out Ken Pomeroy:

Difference of more than 10 places in the national rankings get a 1-letter advantage, more than 100 gets a 2-letter advantage, more than 200 gets a 3-letter advantage, etc.

Have I made the "hide ya kids, hide ya wife" joke too many times yet? Yes? Darn. Well anyway, Duke is really good at the basket-ed ball.

Guard Nolan Smith has been their most-frequently deployed player this year, but with the return of the nation's #2 freshman (as a recruit) Kyrie Irving, the guard play may be less of a Smith monopoly. He's an efficient shooter and a very good assist man.

In the frontcourt, Kyle Singler and the Plumlees are all over 6-8, and they're the main reason Duke is 6th in the nation in effective height. Despite that height, Duke is a good-not-great rebounding team. Deploy the VOGRIT.

Unlike Tennessee, Duke has no obvious weaknesses. Which, duh, that's why they're a 1-seed instead of the worst 9-seed in history. Michigan is going to have to shoot the lights out, and hope Duke doesn't do a great job of same. Without playing a near-perfect defensive game (and getting a bit of luck), Michigan probably can't win.

Elsewhere

Dylan has been rockin' it all week at UMHoops. Press conference video and transcript, more video, and of course The Preview. Very in-depth, so check it out. GBMW previews.

Hardaway faces.

Predictions

Michigan is as hot as any team in the country, but Duke is Duke. As noted above, this is going to require a near-perfect performance or a very healthy dose of luck for the Wolverines to emerge victorious. I think Matt Vogrich plays double-digit minutes and gets a fair number of MANBOUNDs, and that Darius Morris finishes with a more impressive statistical day than either of Duke's star guards. HOWEVA, Michigan's bigs have trouble staying out of foul... uh... trouble, and Duke pulls away late in the game. The Blue Devils win it, 75-62.

Prove me wrong, Blue.

Michigan Hockey Net catches up with the Honeybaked coach. He makes latest commit Evan Allen sound like Andy Hilbert, but compares him to Kevin Porter.

I probably could have posted this with eight minutes left but I didn't want to tempt the jinx gods. That was awesome from the instant Michigan started going zone. Big ups to Matt Vogrich—the Vogrinch saved Christmas—CAM TATUM(!!!), Zack Novak, and… uh… everyone. Even Blake McLimans played well.

Muppets? Muppets.

And you can't have one without the other…

We just threw a team into a volcano in the NCAA tournament. A volcano is what Tennessee is in.

The Essentials

Do I need to explain the stakes? The winner gets to continue working toward a national championship (probably against Duke), while the loser fires Bruce Pearl.

Let's get it.

Tempo-Free Breakdown

If you need an explanation of the stats, check out Ken Pomeroy:

Difference of more than 10 places in the national rankings get a 1-letter advantage, more than 100 gets a 2-letter advantage, more than 200 gets a 3-letter advantage, etc.

This is by FAR the least skewed matchup against Michigan in a long time. Considering Michigan has won most of those games despite their faults, that is a good thing, and the upward trend Michigan has been showing late in the season is no reason to doubt it. That said, there are still some areas in which Tennessee has a serious advantage.

I think of most SEC basketball teams as horrifically unskilled but very athletic squads. This means bad at shooting, but great at both types of rebounding. Tennessee fits the stereotype to a T. They are a great offensive rebounding team, a decent defensive team, but awful, awful, awful at shooting the ball (and not great at defending shots). Michigan must take advantage of this while simultaneously preventing Tennessee from capitalizing on their rebounding advantage. Fortunately rebounding can be improved with effort, whereas a team does or does not have good shooters.

Considering most of Tennessee's success was against the poor SEC (Michigan would be the second best defensive rebounding team in the conference!), maybe the Volunteers are good-not-great even in their strongest categories.

Keys for Michigan will include good defense on Scotty Hopson all over the court, and crashing the defensive boards to neutralize a lot of the Volunteers' other opportunities. Of course the age-old "big men stay out of foul trouble" rule applies.

Elsewhere

All sorts of stuff for NCAA Tournament game #1, most of it from UMHoops. Tennessee's players react to finding out Michigan is the opponent. Scouting report of the Volunteers, and Dylan's preview of the game.

Predictions

Barring crazy circumstances, this doesn't seem like a bad matchup for Michigan. The Volunteers are like a version of Michigan State or Minnesota that absolutely can't shoot the ball, which tips the court heavily in Michigan's favor. Darius Morris recordss a double-double as Tim Hardaway scores more than 25 points in a 68-61 Michigan win.