I got a couple requests in the inbox for a take on Big Ten expansion after Barry Alvarez made a comment the other day about the Big Ten adding that elusive twelfth team. On the assumption that Alvarez was just making an idle statement and expansion was a distant possibility at best, I was going to dig up the post I made two years ago detailing pros and cons of various candidate schools and leave it at that.

But it appears that Alvarez was not just idly speculating:

It has been 19 years since the Big Ten expanded to 11 teams, and it appears the conference is ready to seriously explore moving to an even dozen.

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany was expected to release a statement later Tuesday to say the conference is ready to consider the addition of a 12th team.

That would be in about half an hour. It's time to update the above list, which I am in the process of doing right now.

If you can help out finding articles on any of the commits, e-mail me, and I'll try to include your contribution. This should be one of the last couple updates, since every current commit's season has now finished.

LA Slot WR Drew Dileo

Last week: Pregame fluff. #2. Parkview loses to Notre Dame 14-7 in the State Championship game.

But on first-and-down from the Notre Dame 29, Dileo was hit on a short run, lost the football and Luke Bourgeois recovered. “We killed ourselves in the first half,” said Dileo, a Michigan commitment. “Just little things. We preach every week about the little things.”

But four plays later, on fourth-and-2, Dileo — the holder for what appeared to be a 33-yard field goal try — kept on a fake and was greeted by a wall of defenders for a 1-yard loss.

Oopppppppps. Article #2:

Michigan commitment Drew Dileo was limited to five carries for five yards and five receptions for 30 yards.

This week: Parkview Baptist (12-2) has finished its season as the state Runner-up. The chart below is a little messy, but the Total numbers in the last row are correct season totals.

LA S Carvin Johnson

Last week: Pregame fluff:

Johnson, who is bound for Michigan, said he welcomes the week-to-week burden of a defense that ofttimes has to produce points and a short field for a struggling offense. “I would do it all over again,” Johnson said. “I don’t mind. We have understood our role since the beginning of the season.”

Preview fluff #2:

The heart and soul of the Rummel team is senior safety Carvin Johnson, a commitment to Michigan. Johnson has seven interceptions and two punt returns for touchdowns. “Carvin Johnson has been terrific. He is hardly coming off the field, playing safety, wide receiver, returning punts and returning kickoffs. We have done it in the past with guys like Craig Steltz, Terrance Dunbar, Nick Child in the playoffs, using our best athletes on both sides of the football,” Roth said.

Rummel falls to West Monroe 30-0 in the State Championship game. Johnson had 1 carry for -6 yards. Postgame coach reaction.

This week: Rummel (14-1) Finishes as State Runners-up.

Seasons Complete

MI WR Jeremy Jackson

Jackson participated in the Hawaii-Mainland bowl, with the Mainland coming away the 26-6 victors. Jackson had 1 reception for 38 yards.

PA DE Kenny Wilkins

His high school's coach was fired after the poor season.

OH S Ray Vinopal

Cardinal Mooney went undefeated and won the state championship. Vinopal's season stats, via Mooneyfootball.com:

PA CB Cullen Christian

Cullen was 1st-team All-conference at defensive back, and an honorable mention at receiver.

WI P Will Hagerup

Whitefish Bay (5-5) has completed its season after a first-round playoff loss. Bob Parker hooked me up with season stats for Will, who was 1st-team All-State as a punter:

Hey. Remember last April Fool's Day when the banner on this site mysteriously changed to this guy?

Toby Hopp is the guy who sent that banner in. So you owe him. He's a grad student at SDSU studying user-generated content and he's got a survey for you. You should take it, because it will help him out.

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My name is Toby Hopp and I’m a longtime college sports blogger/blog reader. I’m also a graduate communications student at San Diego State University who is interested in studying how and why Internet users generate content online. What precisely, you may be asking, is “user-generated content?” Well, “user-generated content” includes comment sections at the end of news/blog articles, messageboards, diaries, polls, and the like.

To me, one of the great parts of the blogosphere is the interaction it enables between readers. As a community, we’re able to provide feedback and discuss issues in real time. However, the concept of “user-generated content” and its subsequent social applications has not, at this point, been thoroughly studied by communications researchers and is, in my estimation, completely misunderstood by the mass media.

So, if you have 10-15 minutes to spare and support empirical media research (and the social sciences in general), please click the survey link below. Even if you NEVER create/read content on blog or newspaper websites, PLEASE consider taking the survey as your answers are as important to me as the answers supplied by individuals who DO regularly create content. Rest assured that all answers and provided information will be strictly anonymous and kept totally confidential.

Survey Link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2

For those of you interested in statistics, all collected information will be scientifically analyzed and utilized to create an inherently unique structural equation model. To that end, I’ll send a report out to each participating blog which details general trends and reader utilization issues of note.

Again, please consider taking this survey (Survey Link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2) whether or not you ever create or read “user –generated content” on blogs or newspaper sites. The survey itself will take 10 – 15 minutes and, I promise, will be quite painless. As stated above, research on the topic of “user-generated content” is incredibly sparse and your participation will go a long way in understanding the environmental factors that encourage meaningful intra-community participation. And, of course, you’ll be doing me a great and immeasurable favor.

The survey will be active from Monday, December 14 through Friday, December 18. Please feel free to e-mail me at thopp@mail.sdsu.edu if you have any questions relating to the survey or my over-arching methodology/conceptual framework (obviously, there’s a lot more to the study that can be reasonably described here).

Thank you for your time and please know that your participation really does mean a great deal to me on both a professional and personal level.

Survey Link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2

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Survey!

12/11/2009 – Michigan 4, Notre Dame 1 – 9-8, 5-6 CCHA
12/13/2009 – Michigan 0, Notre Dame 2 – 9-9, 5-7 CCHA

It's a sign of the raging apathy I've got going over here that the first I heard about Notre Dame's struggles to date—they, like Michigan, are a hugely disappointing .500—was in a game preview on Friday. I haven't looked at the CCHA standings all year. It turns out that Ferris State is really good (13-3-2) this year and Michigan is in 10th place. Hurrah. (They do have two games in hand, but those games in hand are against Ferris.)

Even so, it was a surprise to see the team totally dominate the Irish en route to a 4-1 victory that was probably their best game of the year. And then it was not a surprise when Michigan fell limply on Sunday, losing 2-0 despite outshooting the opponent 38-20.

Sunday was the seventh game this season in which Michigan has had close to a 2-1 advantage in shots but lost anyway because they can't put the puck in the net:

• Michigan outshot Alaska 23-13 in the opener and lost 2-0.
• They outshot BU 35-22, losing because Hogan wandered out of his net and gave the other team an Osgood-type goal.
• They outshot Miami 28-13 in one of the most frustrating games I've ever seen at Yost, losing 3-1.
• They outshot Michigan State 31-19 in a 2-0 loss at Munn.
• They outshot Bowling Green 31-21 in a 4-2 loss.
• And most spectacularly, Michigan lost to OSU 5-3 despite putting 45 shots on Cal Heeter and facing just 19.

That's seven of their nine losses. They only trailed in shots in the second game against Miami and the first against Michigan State. The Daily says Michigan was "unlucky" on Sunday, but it's hard to look at that pattern and not find something systemic.

If the games had gone according to script, this would be a freakin' awesome team. It's not, obviously, for reasons that remain mysterious to me. Some guesses:

There is an obvious deficiency in top-tier offensive talent. Caporusso occasionally does something reminiscent of Michigan's traditional magic midgets, but he's a far cry from Comrie or Camalleri or Tambellini or Hensick or Cogliano. Mostly he just ends up giving the puck away because he's trying to go 1-on-3. And the rest of the team is not there. Wohlberg's regressed (two goals), Czarnik left, Langlais and Burlon and Kampfer haven't provided the offensive pop they were expected to, and there's no one on the team who is a lock for a long NHL career despite not being able to go on all the rides at Cedar Point.

This was the case last year to some extent, too, but Wohlberg and Caporusso were scoring like mad. The two combined for 39 goals last year without much help from Aaron Palushaj, who spent almost the entire year playing on other lines. This year they have seven between them. They're on pace to score well less than half of last season's output, which is a drop in production you can't weather when your freshmen are anything less than epic.

The defense has been sloppy. The thing about some of those games, primarily that Miami game, is that even though Hogan didn't face a whole lot of shots I don't know if there was anything he could have done to stop the goals he let in, which resulted from massive defensive breakdowns that left Miami players totally uncovered in dangerous scoring areas.

It's not that they've been bad, necessarily, it's that they don't do a good job covering high-value areas of the ice and too often leave guys wide open in bad spots.

Hogan: meh. Bryan Hogan's save percentage is .905, which is 44th nationally. It's not far away from 30th, and given the weird tendency of Michigan to give up small numbers of high-quality shots it's harsh on him. But it's about right, right? Hogan has been basically average. He hasn't given up many (any?) really soft goals, but he's given up some questionable ones and rarely makes a "wow" save.

Other Items

Results? Another weird item from the year's first foray into accumulated statistics: AJ Treais has only three points. Treais certainly looks like he's doing stuff right out there. His dangles are increasingly dirty as the season goes along and he gets more comfortable trying stuff against college competition. He certainly seems like a more effective offensive player than Luke Glendening or Brian Lebler, but the numbers aren't there for him. And he's playing on a line with Caporusso, so it's not like they've put him there to die with the grinders. He didn't have much in the way of points with the national team, either. Hopefully this is just a slow burn to effectiveness like an Andrew Ebbett or John Shouneyia.

Next time just punch the ref, please. Berenson did end up yanking senior defenseman Tristin Llewellyn for a couple games after his now-usual assortment of stupid roughing penalties and irresponsible defensive play, but he returned for the Notre Dame series, where he proved he'd learned his lesson by taking the world's dumbest crosschecking call on Friday.

I mean, I get that he's not that fast and sometimes he's going to get spectacularly walked by Drew Palmisano. That's life sometimes. It's the incessant penalties that get me. Llewellyn has five more than anyone on the team despite missing two games and most of them are boarding, slashing, roughing, that sort of thing. The penalties aren't from excessive defensive zeal, they're unnecessary, potentially dangerous plays that don't do anything except put Michigan a man down. This is not a new trend: Llewellyn lead the team in penalties last year with 25, five more than Travis Turnbull.

With Lee Moffie playing very well, I'd scratch Llewellyn again.

Tourney. Unlikely at this point unless Michigan goes on a rampage. Michigan did have the good fortune to do well in the nonconference portion of the schedule (4-1 against teams outside the CCHA, with a nonconference loss to Alaska), which will be disproportionately helpful at the end of the year, but they are currently 28th in RPI—not even a team under consideration—and going 12-6 the rest of the way only gets them to around 20th.

They'll have to win something like 13-15 of their final 18 games to be on the bubble when the conference tourney rolls around. That's probably not going to happen.

Michigan 75, Detroit 64. Michigan 5-4 (0-0 Big Ten)

At halftime, this game was looking like it might be just the latest in a series of disappointments in this young basketball season. Detroit led the Wolverines 36-33, and Michigan couldn't make a defensive stop to save their lives. If you had told me that it would be Michigan's defense that would carry the second half, I would have laughed in your face. The team put in a great defensive effort in the second half though, and the Wolverines were able to capitalize and get the 11-point victory.

Zack Novak, despite a poor day offensively, came away with a huge block on a transition play for the Titans. Manny Harris and Deshawn Sims carried the offensive torch for Michigan, and it was the first game in a while that they were both able to really get going at once. Manny finished with 27 points, and was a single rebound away from the double-double.

The outside shooting is still not where it should be, but 33% from behind the arc was a definite improvement over the past few weeks. If the defensive intensity can continue over the rest of the season, Michigan may have turned an important corner today. When opponents don't score, Michigan can keep games close and the shooting will come around eventually.

BULLETS

• Deshawn Sims was spectacular today. He scored 23 points on just 12 shots. Defensively, he was a little weak in the first half, but he was one of the guys who really turned it on after halftime.
• Rough day for freshmen. Darius Morris and Matt Vogrich both get very little run. Vogrich was in for just a minute, and still managed to commit a turnover. Eso Akunne was the best freshman on the court.
• The rotation was really small today. 5 players played 30 minutes or more, and only two other guys (Morris and Zack Gibson) had double-digit minutes.
• As mentioned above, the shooting was much better than it has been lately, but there's still some room for improvement. Stu Douglass and Zack Novak are just going to tear up the nets at some point.
• Michigan outrebounded the opponent(!) but didn't force too many turnovers (7). Bizarre day, given the style that the Wolverines usually play.
• How in the world did Detroit land two transfers from Indiana? That should be a pretty good team in the near future.

Postgame Quotes

"He knows we need him. That's something we talked about, and he just picked it up." Manny Harris, on Deshawn Sims's defensive effort in the second half.

"I think we're just a step slow right now... We've gotta be a little bit quicker." Zack Novak, on the team's defensive struggles this season.

"I just timed it up. You didn't know I could do that, I bet." Zack Novak, on his shot block in the second half.

"We've kinda been trying to play out of what we're capable of. Just stay solid. Stay solid on defense, don't gamble, run the offense. Just do what we've been practicing for the last 2 months." Stu Douglass, on how the team can improve its play.

"I just don't wanna be part of the losing side of that conversation." Deshawn Sims, on playing in-state opponents.

"Down three at the half, I think the guys felt a sense of urgency." John Beilein, on the defensive renaissance in the second half.

"Usually the last thing that comes to young players is defense, not just individually, but also off the ball." John Beilein, on giving freshmen onl limited playing time.

Up Next

The Wolverines have this week off to take their exams, and then have a date with Kansas on Saturday. The Jayhawks are the consensus #1 team in the nation, and Michigan will need a small miracle to come home from Lawrence with a win.

The Essentials

*Line provided by online sports betting site Sportsbetting.com.

Michigan

We're all-too-familiar with the Wolverines' deficiencies by now: They can't shoot and can't rebound. That has led to a lot of trouble, mostly against teams with very athletic guards (Marquette) or good size inside (Boston College, Utah).

Can the team finally snap out of the shooting slump at home against Detroit? They'd better hope so, because the problems have to be worked out in a hurry for the team to even have a chance to keep it respectable against the Jayhawks of Kansas next weekend.

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 what it has come to? Michigan appears to be at a definite statistical disadvantage to... University of Detroit? The only areas in which Michigan appears to be better are holding onto the ball and getting opponents to give it away. HOWEVA, there's something to be said for strength of schedule (Detroit's has been crap so far, outside of a game at Cal). Michigan hasn't put away any teams that are remotely as talented, or those that have looked nearly as good statistically, but Detroit's rankings are something of a scam so far.

The Titans are far better at rebounding, which is something Michigan fans have gotten used to and have no reason to believe will change ever this year. They also draw a good number of fouls, which is a product of playing teams that have no chance of stacking up in the paint. Michigan should be (a little) more able to do that without fouling.

It's hard to tell exactly how good the Titans are, due to their schedule, but it skews toward quite bad, with a loss to Kenpom's #280 team, Tennessee State. Michigan hasn't convinced anyone that they're actually good this year, but being not bad should be enough to put away Detroit i the second half.