Ekpe Udoh is transferring. NIT dreams: crushed.

Good news, mostly, from wherever in the ether the OHL draft originates from. (It's a conference call.) Both Michigan recruits were picked in the third round, which is right on the border between "secret deal worked out" and "flier." The general impression I've gleaned is that both picks are strongly in the flier category.

Defense recruit Jon Merrill went to Plymouth. Plymouth's GM:

"We had Jonathon Merrill rated as a top defenseman on our list. He is committed to Michigan and the US program, but we'll wait and see. He's not going to be here this year, I don't think, but we'll talk to him and his family and kind of follow the same path we went with Beau Schmitz - just talk to the family as needed and not bother them too much."

Obviously there's no pre-existing deal with Plymouth. They reference Beau Schmitz, a former NTDP defenseman Plymouth just signed, but Schmitz's situation was quite different: he was a Ferris State commit for a while but decommitted and the WOTS is that he was never going to qualify.

OTOH, Merrill's been at just about every Michigan home game since he committed a couple years ago. Bob Miller made reference to "hearing some things" about another Jenks, -- AJ Jenks was a commit supposed to come in with Czarnik and Wohlberg, but defected -- which gives me the willies, but if Plymouth doesn't expect him to show up this year then he's got a choice between one year with the NTDP and going to a Michigan team he obviously would like to play for and the Plymouth Whalers, average attendance: 2,600 fans in a rabidly half-full Compuware Sports Arena. Weird things happen, but they would be weird.

One last bit on Merrill: in the Hockey's Future thread on the OHL draft there is a guy who works for Red Line's junior division, and he shared RLR's scouting report:

Currently rated #1 overall by Red Line Junior in our rankings for the 2008 Ontario Hockey League Priority Draft. In a class by himself as far as Red Line Junior is concerned when it comes to available defencemen his year.

Has all the tools to become a superstar-calibre pro: excellent size, effortless, fluid mobility and a good head for the game. Uses the body regularly. Makes his first pass with authority. Great point shot, and gets it low and on the net consistently. Technical skating is outstanding, with smooth pivots and excellent backward/lateral acceleration. Reads plays well defensively and deftly uses long reach and quickness to cut off available lanes. Knows when to be aggressive in his challenges.

Has already committed to next year¹s U.S. U-17 National Team.

Again, Jack Jack Jack. There will never be another JMFJ, but Merrill sounds as Jack-like as possible without the scouting report directly stating "Jackson Pollack embodied in a hockey player... is he insane or brilliant? From the chaos comes beauty, and in the edges of understanding is a serenity unknown to outsiders. Liable to kill Ryan Smyth someday."

Meanwhile, forward recruit Jared Knight also went in the third, and he went to one of the two teams you, as a fan of an NCAA hockey program, do not want to see your player drafted by: London. (Kitchener is the other.) Still, Knight was not regarded a flight risk before the draft and the Hockey's Future chatter* on his selection is universally pessimistic about his chances to report. CHL fans think everyone is going to report, so that's a good sign. Knight was apparently the #19 rated player by ISS, with Merrill coming in #6 -- obviously they're not as enamored as Red Line.

One target, Brandon Saad, is a goner:

"To go (in the) first round was an honor," Saad said. "I've had a couple of meetings with them already and I'm pretty excited about going there. I've been away a couple of times at camps, but never for very long.

"About this decision, we haven't decided whether I'm going this year or next year. My parents might hold me back to get my life in order. We've been talking to them (the Spirit) about that. I'm going to take a couple of visits up there, see how the mini-camp goes and make our decision based on that."

But, he added, he expects to eventually end up in the Saginaw playing in the OHL and not going the U.S. college-route his 17-year-old brother George Jr. will eventually take when he's finished with high school.

Tyler Toffoli also went in the first round. He is committed to his Junior A team for next year, but it's rare that a first round pick eschews the OHL. Miller regarded him a longshot to start, anyway.

Two other targets Miller called out as guys to watch fell significantly. Kevin Clare, a "very high end defenseman" according to Miller, slipped into the fourth round and went to Erie. Erie is widely regarded to be the Detroit Lions of the OHL. Michigan's top goalie target, Jack Campbell, fell to Windsor in the sixth round. Both are likely headed to college. Bob Miller's OHL draft thread has information on all these kids and more.

*(Sorry to lean so heavily on anonymous message board posters by LOL CHL Canadian teenagers, but media coverage of the OHL draft, especially as it relates to NCAA commitments, hardly exists.)

Update 5/2: Moved TX QB Shavodrick Beaver to committed. Subsequently removed all QBs except for Tate Forcier and Eugene Smith, who are downgraded to red, and SC QB Stephen Gilmore, who was moved to safety.

Linked to video of FL RB Jamaal Berry, interview of MI WR Cameron Gordon, articles on MI WR Cameron Gordon, MS S Rod Woodson($, downgrade to red), OH OL Chris Freeman, VA RB David Wilson, TX QB commit Shavodrick Beaver, note on FL WR Steadman Bailey (downgrade to gray). old articles on NJ DE Anthony Lalota.

Added LA OL Chris Faulk, WI WR Kraig Appleton, FL S Vladimir Emilien. Linked to Sam Webb article on the QBs, and free Rivals AMP piece on them.

Removed SC S Stephen Gilmore (dropped us).

A couple old things on PA WR Todd Thomas: post-sophomore hype article, POW award with fluff article.

Editorial Opinion: First, the Bryce McNeal error. I think Vijay is right when he lays out what happened like so:

This news of a commitment was disputed by the "pay sites" (Scout and Rivals), and was generally categorized by most as "untrue", "premature" or "unofficial". Those three words mean three very different things, and I suspect the middle one is the most accurate. There's a variety of statuses (stati?) recruits fall into. There's commit (said so publicly), soft commit (said so publicly but seem to be wavering or at least listening to other schools), silent commit (told the coaches but isn't ready to go public) and "lean" (they have a favorite, but aren't ready to end the process). Even thought a commitment is not binding, there's some feeling that it is official, that a public announcement carries some weight. ...

The bottom line here is this; we have two sites each reporting that multiple people told them that McNeal has decided on Michigan. It could be that they are wrong, that it's an elaborate scheme to trick Michigan bloggers or that they independently made up the same story. All those explanations seem somewhat unlikely. What's far more likely is that McNeal likes Michigan a lot, reached some kind of tipping point and got chatty about it, and that these two blogs ran with a factually correct story that simply did not use the normal catchwords of the recruitnik. If those are the facts, McNeal is either a Michigan "lean" or (if he told the coaches what he told the friends) a "silent commitment".

(That post also contains an entertaining shot at loony NDNation blog "The Rock Report" if you're in withdrawal from that sort of stuff.) I think a post was warranted but it should have been phrased more cautiously. There's nothing to do except apologize and soldier on.

Soldiering on:

Not a lot of movement this week except for the McNeal stuff. Some players added to the board who seem ticketed elsewhere, some articles that don't provide much in the way of new information, and a couple guys that seemed like longshots get downgraded or dropped. What movement there is came from the wide receivers, notably:

MI WR James Jackson. An odd source of good news for the lightning slot guy: MSU Rivals guy Jim Comparoni. He called out five instate prospects the Spartans are keeping an eye on. One of them was Jackson, and he spake thusly:

Michigan is considered the favorite to land him, but MSU and Iowa are intensely pursuing one the fastest guys in the state.

Comp: "Early indications are that MSU's not the leader; he has major speed as a slot back. But we see him as a wide receiver."

There is also this from an emailer:

My good friend at Michigan is from Grand Ledge and [knows people close to his situation]. The kid told me that James asks all the time about Michigan and how my friend likes there, etc. She tells her son that James is very interested in Michigan and she's pretty confident he'll come to Michigan. This kid was high school teammates with James.

That was a month and a half ago; since then Jackson's given those OSU recruits the impression he was ticketed for OSU. I officially don't know what to think, other than it's OSU and Michigan with everyone else trailing significantly.

MN WR Bryce McNeal. Not officially committed, but sports blue for a reason.

PA WR Todd Thomas. Another week, another PSU message board thread with people bemoaning PSU's recruiting vis a vis Michigan. A weird mix of inside information and junk in there, but the upshot is that Thomas recently announced Michigan was his leader. This take seems accurate and encouraging:

He isn't going to Pitt. He said he wants to play in front of a big crowd, not in from of hundreds. PSU is running second behind Michigan. If the coaching situation were addressed, PSU would be leading.

Chances of that are extremely slim unless Thomas waits until after the season. I've bumped him to green.

I added OK WR Tracy Moore based on this article. Given all the other targets Michigan is pursuing I think he's unlikely to get his offer unless things go seriously awry, but I did want to point this out:

Michigan is a school that has just started to turn up the heat in Oklahoma under new head coach Rich Rodriguez. They have already offered David Oku and Gabe Lynn and have started to show interest in a number of other of the state's top talents.

"Their linebacker coach came down one day and got with Coach Frid (Union Head Coach Kirk Fridrich) a little bit and got all of my information. I am just waiting to see how it plays out.

The linebacker coach is Jay Hopson, of course, and his name has come up more than any other in recruiting articles so far this year. Part of that is that we're poised to whiff on every D-I caliber prospect in Mississippi, but the guy gets out there. I wonder if we'll actually reel in any of the guy
s he's after.

In non-WR news, VA RB David Wilson is seeing his recruitment heat up:

"I got a message to call Florida today," Newell [Wilson's coach] said. "I know Tennessee is in the mix. Ohio State's coming Wednesday. Florida State's in the mix. It's going to get bigger before it gets smaller."

Michigan's had an offer out to Wilson for a while. The last four big-time prospects at Wilson's high school all went to VaTech, but three were legacies and the other just wanted to hang with Michael Vick. At least publicly, Wilson remains open:

When asked if Tech is the team to beat for Wilson, Newell says, "I'm not going to say that."

But, what if a sportswriter were to say Tech is the favorite for Wilson.

"He never has mentioned any one front-runner," Newell said.

If you want to read between the lines like whoah, "I'm not going to say that" is not exactly the same as "no."

Michigan's continued pursuit of tailbacks despite having Teric Jones and Fitzgerald Toussaint committed probably means one or both is being looked at as a potential slot receiver. Jones' speed makes him the most likely candidate.

Another week, another skill-position filled set of updates. At this point it doesn't look like there will be much movement along the lines until Michigan's summer camp, when they'll identify a set of guys they like and send out a wave of offers; hopefully a couple will turn into quick commitments. One item of interest on Trotwood-Madison OL Chris Freeman:

The 6-foot-9 and 320-pound Freeman has made a dramatic rise up the recruiting charts. He did not play football until his junior year. Even then, after joining the team at the beginning of the season, Freeman did not actually play in a game until Madison's final contest of the 2007 season.

But recruiters saw enough in that one contest, coupled with Freeman's massive size and excellent potential, to make a pitch for his services.

Freeman says he has scholarship offers from Florida, LSU, Miami, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina State and some others.

Freeman has a dozen offers, including ones from the last two national champions, based on one game! Very Michael Oher, hopefully minus the almost complete lack of schooling.

Lastly, Kevin Newsome plans on enrolling early according to this free Rivals AMP piece on the Michigan quarterback commits. It's worth checking out; the Rivals guys have a different take on Beaver than his stats suggest, saying he's more of an athlete that will need significant polish than the thrower-with-legs I guessed he was. Beaver's actually ranked as a wide receiver by Scout, FWIW. Meanwhile, GBW continues writing articles about Tate Forcier, which, like... okay. That would be weird. But good.

Brian:

You've done a great job comparing Beilein's UM recruits with his WVU recruits. [Have I? -ed] Do you have any opinion on Rodriguez's UM recruits as
compared to his WVU recruits, or is it too early to tell? It seems from much of your coverage that Rodriguez is, in large part, targeting not only the same type of recruits but also the same recruits at UM that he was targeting at WVU. Has there been any appreciable difference in the quality of his recruits (e.g., more 4-stars, more top 100 guys) at UM as compared to his recruits at WVU? One would hope so, since that is one of the advantages UM should have over WVU, but, again, maybe it's too early to tell.

Go Blue,
James

Before I answer, note that this email was sent before the recent Beaver commitment.

And on to answering: there has been a notable uptick in Rodriguez's recruiting. A third of the way into Michigan's 2009 class he's picked up three top-100 players and four players given four or five stars, and it seems highly likely Bryce McNeal will join them. His record at West Virginia (all rankings are Rivals' because their site is more navigable):

• 2008: (this is a lot of Stewart but I think it's illuminating) instate OL Josh Jenkins is a soft commit for most of the year and does end up signing with the 'Eers. There are three other four-stars, one a JUCO and one a prep school kid who signed with WVU in 2007 but did not qualify; we should not double-count him. This class hasn't gotten to campus yet so we don't know their fates.
• 2007: Noel Devine headlines. Other four stars include a JUCO and troubled LB Pat Lazear; Bradley Starks and Terrence Kerns (who would prep and re-sign in 2008) are four-star high school recruits. Starks is a real fringe four-star type with other offers from Iowa State, Temple, and Marshall. Not exactly Kevin Newsome.
• 2006: No four star players.
• 2005: A five star, but it's Jason Gwaltney, who for a lot of reasons is horrifically overrated. He fails out his first semester.
• 2004: Two four stars. Brandon Barrett is an instate wide receiver who ends up #45 in the Rivals 100; Raymond Williams is a fringe four-star back from Cleveland. Barrett was a non-qualifier who got in trouble as a sophomore and failed out before his junior year. Two months after he signs his letter of intent, Williams robs a drug dealer with a fake gun, getting one of his teammates killed when the dealer unsurprisingly has a real gun. WVU withdraws his offer.
• 2003: No four star players.
• 2002: WR Broderic Jones never gets to campus, sits out 2002, and eventually ends up at Tulsa.

Rivals doesn't go any farther back than that, but I think the point is made. During the whole of Rich Rodriguez's tenure at West Virginia, he got use out of one player given four or more stars: Noel Devine. (Lazear will start this year after special teams duty his first season; Rodriguez's teams were not particularly aided by his talents.) Every single other highly-rated player bombed out.

That doesn't surprise me. West Virginia has no instate recruiting base and had zero national cachet until the White-Slaton era. Chances are any player who was highly rated and didn't have a better option than West Virginia had grade or character issues. Or, if you're Jason Gwaltney, both.

Here's the scorecard. Seven years at West Virginia: seven four or five star recruits that made it to campus. Five months at Michigan: ten.*

Is Rodriguez recruiting the same guys he was at West Virginia? Probably. The difference is he's getting his first or second choice instead of #10.

*(Tentative numbers since WVU and Michigan obviously haven't gotten the 2008 and 2009 classes in the boat yet; Michigan's number only counts players that committed to the new staff.)

Hi Brian,

I want to know what you think of the new changes for the football program now that everything is more settled. Even though as a great a coach as RR is, I wonder if that's enough. UM for the past two decades have been putting a lot of people in the NFL, which I think is a big plus when it comes to recruiting. Under Carr, his philosophy was that as long as he could get a good passing QB, then he'd be able to attract top-flight receivers. That way of thinking has worked considering the number of QB's we have in the NFL and Rivals.com has labelled us "Quarterback U." We also have a good number of receivers in the NFL, although Braylon is the only one that's actually doing well. But the point remains -- UM, under Carr, put kids into the NFL.

Now that everything is different and RR has taken over, I'm not so sure that that is going to be the case. With his run-option spread offense, there is too little emphasis on passing. I'm afraid that not too long from now, we'll start seeing a major drop-off in the ratings of the QB's and WR's that we can recruit. In this year's NFL draft, only 3 players were picked from W. Virginia (Schmitt, Slaton, and Mundy(?!?)) vs. the 6 from Michigan. Granted Pat White is still at W. Virginia, but even if he was in the draft, I doubt he'd get picked up by anyone. He's not a good passer and even though he's a good play-maker, it won't be that easy in the NFL.

Maybe I'm just having a hard time of letting go of the memories of 4th quarter comebacks (vs. MSU '04 and '07) and LAST second TDs (vs. PSU '05). And then there are all those other spectacular pass plays against ND in 2006. All of those would not have been possible without a great QB and WR combo. I'm starting to wish we could've gotten Les Miles because then maybe things wouldn't be changing so much.

So what do you think? Are my concerns unfounded? Or am I just being a wuss about letting go?

Thanks for reading.

David

UM Class of 2005

How convenient that this question comes directly after a discussion of West Virginia's recruiting, which was obviously not conducive to being an NFL factory. Let's focus this discussion on the offense, since the defense isn't changing in any way that might damage the NFL prospects of anyone on it.

Rodriguez's lack of NFL draftees is a chicken-and-egg argument. There's a reason Pat White was not recruited as a quarterback by anyone other than Rodriguez, and that's the same reason he's going to be an NFL wide receiver: he's not much of a thrower. That's why he was the #55 "athlete" in his recruiting class, and why he was a three-star prospect. If Rodriguez could have gotten, say, a guy who anchors a winning 100-meter relay team and is listed by Rivals as a pro-style quarterback because he's that comfortable in the pocket, he would have, and West Virginia's offense wouldn't have been so run-heavy. Same goes for players like Stonum and Mathews and so forth and so on.

The thing about recruits is this: they just want to go places, really, and justify the place they want to go in a post hoc fashion. Terrelle Pryor said he wanted to play in a pro-style offense so he would be prepared for the NFL. Kevin Newsome said NFL scouts would find him no matter what sort of offense he played in. PA CB Corey Brown cited Penn State's lack of cornerbacks in the NFL when he dropped them recently, but left both Michigan and West Virginia on his list when the only DB the 'Eers have produced in recent times is legendarily troubled Pacman Jones.

Part of the reason recruits want to go places is the style of offense and NFL prospects but, IMO, it's a much smaller part than you'd think by listening to their quotes, which are often an effect of their commitment and not a cause.

As far as the ratings of
QBs we can recruit... I think the Newsome/Beaver double dip combined with heavy interest from Jason Forcier and Eugene Smith blows that up. It's true Michigan is cutting itself off from the Hennes of the world, but before they cut themselves off from the Newsomes and Pryors. There might be some cause for concern at outside wide receiver -- I assume Michigan is going to have a parade of slot guys eager to be featured at a marquee school -- but at the moment we've got guys from Houston practically begging for an offer and guys from Minnesota decking their myspace pages with more block Ms than you can shake a stick at.

Everyone assumes that West Virginia running 70% of the time (and throwing screens another 10-15% of the time) was a choice. But what would you do with a freshman/sophomore/junior Pat White and Steve Slaton? Michigan has been notoriously run-heavy (57% during Henne's healthy junior year) despite having a multitude of downfield options whenever its quarterback is anything but a senior, and WVU was using an underclassman most programs saw as a wide receiver. And they averaged six yards per carry. And they had little receiving talent outside of the slot. Under the circumstances it would have been crazy to throw more.

At Michigan, Rodriguez will have highly-rated guys who can throw and run and more receiving talent than he's ever seen. We've seen that when he has a superior talent like Chris Henry, he uses him: Henry had 1872 yards in about one and a half years at WVU, and those were his freshman and discipline-ravaged sophomore years. IMO, Rodriguez will always be run-heavy but at Michigan the percentage of runs and short passes will be more like 65% than 85%. Since Michigan has been a magnet for receiving talent despite having a similar percentage of safe stuff you'd figure they would be able to reel in a similar level of badass.

There might be a rough year or two in 2010 or 2011 if (more likely, when) whichever inexperienced quarterback ends up seizing the job struggles and numbers fall, but if I'm right and once the quarterbacks hit upperclass status and Stonum or Clemons or Hemingway or some highly rated recruit from this year blows up, that will blow over.

Honestly, I'm more concerned with the defensive side of the ball, where Jay Hopson has been recruiting the hell out of every safety and linebacker in Mississippi and environs and most of them still favor the in-state hell schools (USM not included, SMQB, since there is the prospect of something other than four years of misery there). Whatever weird gravitational pull the state has only relaxes to the south, it seems.

Hello Brian,

I am pretty sure you have received this email before, and you have probably answered it, but here it goes again... will all this BCS +1 or BCS playoff talk ever come to fruition? I really hope not. Wouldn't a playoff undermine the "every game counts" concept of college football? Let's say 2007 Michigan, who lost to Appalachian State, ended up beating OSU in the finale and became Big Ten champs. Therefore, we had the automatic bid to the Rose Bowl. If we end up winning that game, do we deserve to play for the championship? HECK NO! On the other hand, should Michigan still deserve to play in the Rose Bowl? Call me a traditionalist, but if the Big Ten and Pac-10 (or Big Nine and PCC or AAWU or Pacific 8 or whatever the heck they were) have been playing in this bowl game since the beginning of time, then why should the honor of playing in the game be taken away from them?

The point of the whole BCS championship is to pit #1 vs #2 to determine the true champion, and the only recent year the BCS championship contenders were wrong was 2004 when USC was sniped from going to the big game in favor of LSU, and even that is debatable, but college football is SUPPOSED TO BE DEBATABLE. Football is a debatable sport, and you will never find a real champion unless you have playoff series like pro basketball, baseball, and hockey. Even with an NFL style playoff, it can be iffy. Who is a better team, the Patriots or the Giants? If New England and New York played 10 games against each other, the Patriots would probably win 7 of them. Also, the Giants got lucky beating the Packers in Green Bay. So I guess you can say that the Giants did not deserve to be Super Bowl champs either. What is that you say? The NFL DOES have a playoff system? And there is STILL debate if the champions were good enough to be champions?

Even with a playoff, the teams left on the outside looking in will feel they were sniped from playing for the championship. So what is this whole playoff thing going to solve?

Thanks for your opinion,
Stephen

Oh... here we go again. Oh, well. Onward.

I am a very specific playoff advocate. I agree that preserving the tension of the regular season is important, so my proposal is a six-team playoff in which the top two teams get byes and games in the first two rounds are played at home. The final is at the Rose Bowl. The teams are selected by a committee that heavily emphasizes nonconference schedule strength; there are no autobids. The bowl system lives on in parallel, selecting any team that doesn't make the playoff (and maybe the first-round losers, since I envision those games happening in December).

This system...

Keeps tension in the regular season. There is a huge difference between finishing 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and a huge difference between 3 and 4 and 5 and 6. The big issue with a playoff, as I see it, is that it makes something like WVU losing to Pitt late a minor deal. In this system the number of bids is restricted enough (remember WVU already had one loss) that WVU might drop out altogether, and even if they stay in they've gone from a bye and a home game to a first-round roadie.

Helps de-wussify nonconference schedules. Amen.

Actually increases the number of important late-season games. If you are seventh or eighth in the pecking order, everyone above you and nine and ten want you to lose. Now if you're anywhere below fifth late in the season your games have no national title implications.

Has a semblance of tradition. It might be a bit hypocritical to make the Rose Bowl a permanent host and then rail against the Plus One, as I'm about to do, but it's either that or rotating the game between the epicenter of college football tradition and, like, the Superdome. Duh.

Mostly preserves the bowl season. Hey, everyone likes random college football games.

Now, the BCS:

Even if college football is supposed to be debatable, the BCS has killed that debate by instituting a two-team playoff. One team wins and is given an NCAA-approved crystal football, and everyone else can pound sand. Now that the BCS has adopted an overwhelmingly poll-driven ranking system, the events that led to a split national title a few years ago are exceedingly unlikely to happen again, so you get what you get "#1" versus "#2" for "the national title." In the days before the BCS, national championships truly were mythical and were as such acceptable topics for debate. Now our only debate is which team would have put up a better fight than Ohio State. It is truly the worst of both worlds: a playoff that settles nothing.

Virtually anything would be better than it. A return to the ante-bellum bowl system? Check. A true "Plus One" that restores traditional bowl ties and has a national title game a week after? Check? A reasonably sized playoff? Check.

It's depressing that the only thing worse -- a seeded Plus One that almost entirely obliterates traditional bowl ties and imposes ridiculously unfair travel constraints on teams outside of California and the south -- is the thing that actually got proposed at the BCS
meetings. I reject every anti-playoff argument except this one: any group of people that could oversee the majesty that was ten years of the BCS would undoubtedly screw it up.

Shouldn't this check be bigger? I thought it was an iron-clad rule that any check made out for more than $9,999 had to be at least three feet long. Apparently not:

And you thought paying your taxes was painful.

The OHL Draft is coming up this weekend, which is of relevance to Michigan fans because it will clarify where various college-interested recruits stand. First rounders are not likely to end up in college; talented players who slip significantly are. There are a bunch of targets out there but the main guys to keep an eye on are the two draft-eligible commitments, center Jared Knight and defenseman Jon Merrill.

The OHL Prospects magazine has a semi-useful scouting report on Knight:

JARED KNIGHT RC
Ht: 5.09 Wt: 170 lbs 1/16/1992 Home: Battle Creek, MI
Detroit Compuware U16

Scouting Report: Knight is a highly skilled forward who has shown a consistent willingness to play in both ends of the ice. He plays the game a lot bigger than his actual size, competing at a high level game in and game out. He always shows up to play, no matter the situation or the score. He is an excellent skater that possesses speed and quickness. He has that elusive extra gear that he can utilize too.

"Always shows up" is not particularly useful information, but FWIW.

Merrill:

Ht: 6.02 Wt: 175 lbs 2/3/1992 Home: Brighton, MI
Detroit Little Caesars
GP G A PTS PIM
- - - - -
Scouting Report: Merrill is an extremely talented offensive minded defensemen who plays a very high risk, high reward style of game. He is an excellent skater, possessing great mobility and a very smooth and effortless stride. He displays speed and quickness while showing the ability to move in all four directions equally well. His speed and quickness allows him to take away time and space in a heartbeat and his lateral mobility is outstanding.

Sounds like a non-Godzilla version of Jack Johnson.

Bob Miller's latest article on Michigan's recruiting says the current plan for both Merrill and Knight, along with uber-commit Luke Moffatt, a 2007 first-round pick of Kelowna, is to play for the NTDP the next two years, then hit Yost. Both eligible players would be obvious first round selections if not for their plans to go to Michigan. Merrill is ranked the #2 player available by ISS, while Miller says four separate OHL teams guaranteed Knight a first round slot if he would commit to playing for them.

Four Michigan targets are also draft-eligible; I'll relate what goes down with them next week.

From (Michigan Junior Hockey via WCH)

A little of the old in and out. Ekpe Udoh remains at large, maybe transferring, maybe not transferring. Meanwhile, Beilein -- get this -- might be tracking down a top-100, four star point guard from California:

Darius Morris is a basketball player recruiting services such as Rivals.com and Scout.com are enamored with, ranking the junior from Windward among the top 100 prospects in the country and one of the top 15 point guards in the nation. The recognition is warranted too.

Michigan knows this all too well, having kept in constant contact with Morris for quite sometime now, even offering him a scholarship along the way. Not surprisingly, the Wolverines are considered the early front-runner to win his services, according to these quotes.

The "quotes" link goes to a premium Rivals story; suffice it to say that this LA Times blog post ends "it appears as if everyone is trailing Michigan at this point." If Beilein can reel the kid in Morris would be his highest-rated recruit ever.

Eeee! Barwis:

(For some reason the embedding on these MGoBlue videos doesn't seem to work on the site sometimes; if you can't see anything above, here's a direct link.)

Speaking of Michigan S&
C, a couple readers forwarded along this remarkable passage from the Sports Illustrated vault:

O.K., Mel. Let's give it a try. How about...Greg Skrepenak, enormous offensive tackle, University of Michigan? "The bottom line on Greg Skrepenak, in my opinion, is that he wasn't the true dominant lineman he should have been," says Kiper. "He's not a strong lineman; he's 315 pounds. 320. but he's not doing the 25 reps |he's not bench-pressing 225 pounds the requisite 25 times], he's not attacking and burying people at the line of scrimmage. He only did 16 reps at the scouting-combine workouts, but the problem is at the strength program at Michigan, where they do a lot of machine lifting instead of free weights.... I think Skrepenak will be better once he gets in the NFL than he appears now, which means that someone like the Bears, picking in the latter part of Round One, could be interested in bringing in a guy like that."

Here, Mel was right on: Skrepenak went at the top of the second and took a while before breaking into the Raiders' starting lineup. (He's now the chairman of the Luzerne County board of commissioners, BTW... another life sadly wrecked by the Michigan football program's callous disregard for its players.)

It is always so. Most criticisms of drafting and recruiting rankings boil down to -- as SMQB eloquently puts it -- "Experts suck because Tom Brady," using anecdotes in place of research because research is hard and yammering away is easy. But, like... research:

I've seen versions of these graphs for anything that has a draft -- there was an especially good one for the NHL that I, regretfully, cannot locate -- and they all look remarkably similar: a logarithmic dropoff from a super-high starting point.

Hey... Buzz Bissinger! That was pretty crazy, huh? I've read a lot of stuff about it, but I'm really waiting for Rock M Nation's opinion.

Etc.: 1934... eh... not so good. BON collects the records after ten years of the BCS; the Big Ten is 8-9.

Update: Recruiting sites are reporting otherwise on this.

Sometime today, Bryce McNeal's myspace page went from Cardinal-themed (Arizona or Louisville wasn't clear) to this:

So, hey, that seems... good and stuff. A couple readers now pass along that they've messaged McNeal on various social media sites and he has indeed committed to Michigan. Straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. (The chosen mascot of McNeal's high school is the Broncos.)

McNeal, a 6'2", 175 pound receiver from Breck high school in Minnesota, is #70 in the most recent Rivals 100 and the #11 receiver. Scout is considerably less enthused, giving him three stars and ranking him #40 positionally. ESPN has them on their top 150 watch list but has not evaluated him yet. As noted in the most recent edition of Monday Recruiting, he was on the all-combine team at the Army All-American junior combine:

McNeal showed why he's already picked up some major scholarship offers with a strong showing throughout the entire combine. He was extremely effective in the one-on-one battles, and his combination between speed and hands make him a deadly target.

Highlights (low quality, usual NSFW backing track):

Interview from about a month ago:

Slightly more personable than Manningham.

The larger picture: McNeal is the first outside receiver in this class and will probably be joined by another guy at his position (Texas's Josh Gordon?) and one or two more slot guys depending on where Teric Jones ends up. He's Michigan's fourth Rivals 100 recruit this year.