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Baseball: Coastal Tournament Preview
[Editor's note: due to a super screw up on my part, I neglected to post this until after Michigan's first game, a 12-8 win over Ball State.]
I'm trying out a new game set for tournaments. I think I'll try and use something similar for weekend series (previous version). I'm open for suggestions on how to present the information consistently. For now, game set comes before a jump if on the front page, and details come afterward.
| Matt Miller (0-2, 4.80 ERA) | vs | Brothers (0-0, 8.64 ERA) | |||
| Stats | Audio | ||||
| Notes: 16-1 All Time Record, Last win(s) in 2009, both ends of a 7 inning double header. Also beat them at Coastal Carolina in 2008 | |||||
| Burgoon or Brosnahan | vs | Ross (0-0, 5.19 ERA) | |||
| Stats | Audio | ||||
| Notes: 0-0, first meeting | |||||
| Oaks, Burgoon, or Brosnahan | vs | Birmingham 2-0, 1.23 ERA) | |||
| Stats | Audio | ||||
| Notes: 2-1, Split a pair in a similar tournament in 2008, W 4-1 and L 11-9. This is Coastal's home field. Audio is Coastal's. | |||||
| Oaks, Burgoon, or Brosnahan | vs | TB | |||
| Stats | Audio | ||||
| Notes: That split from 2008 was on this field both games. Audio is Coastal's. | |||||
Long preview after the jump.
Ball State
Ball State enters the tournament at 3-8 on the season, with a good win over then #15 Arkansas. This will be the second weekend in a row that Ball State will play in a Coastal Carolina tournament. Last week the Cardinals went 1-3 with a win over Albany and losses to Pittsburgh and Coastal (2x). The two losses to Coastal were closely contested, both by scores of 3-2. I have no idea who will pitch for Ball State. They're starting pitching has been pretty bad and they have a pair of midweek games against quality competition on Tuesday and Wednesday. Depending on how well or poorly that may go, we could see just about anyone. At this point, I have to guess it will be starting second baseman Kolbrin Vitek. Vitek has 3 starts on the season, going an average of 4.1 innings per start. He gives up quite a few hits, and isn't much of a strikeout guy, but he's the best starter statistically on the team. The bullpen for the Cardinals isn't bad. They have a couple arms capable of keeping games close in righties Seth Hobbs and Michael Sandman, and freshman southpaw Jon Cisna. They are short their closer though, as Aaron Hammons is going to miss the rest of the season due to surgery. On offense, Vitek is also their leader. He's hitting .391 with 11 RBIs and 14 runs going into their mid-week games. He also has the team lead with 4 home runs. The College Baseball Blog has him as their #84 player in their top 100. Catcher Zach Dygert is next on the team in RBIs with 10. Michigan will re-order the rotation to save Oaks for Coastal. Ball State should be a pretty easy win for Michigan, but as they showed against Arkansas, they are capable of stealing a win from a good team. I like Miller in this spot. Not the toughest team, but he's more than capable of dominating the lineup.
Lipscomb
The Bison are currently 3-7 with a pair of wins over Canasius and one over Tennessee-Martin. They've also been swept by a weak Tulane and Murray State. They do have a couple of decent hitters in Tyler Wilson and his little brother Lee. Tyler, a senior, is the top regular starter on the team with a .386 batting average, scoring 7 runs and knocking in 2. He leads the team with 9 steals in 11 attempts. His brother, the freshman Lee, is only a part time starter, but he's got a bit more power. He leads the team in batting average at .500, but only has 22 at bats. Andrew Nickerson and Zach Messer are tied with 7 RBI for the team lead. Nickerson is hitting .344 with a .667 slugging percentage as their biggest power hitting threat. Messer had a solid weekend to boost his RBI stats, but his overall numbers (including the .325 slugging percentage) are weak. I have no idea who to expect from starter Alex Ross. The lefty has three appearances on the season including one start. He's thrown just 8.2 innings, giving up 14 hits and 4 walks while striking out 3. His lone start was a 4 inning no decision against Canasius, giving up 4 runs (3 earned) while walking and striking out two. Michigan needs to blow Lipscomb out of the water and save as much pitching as they can. I wouldn't be surprised to see our mid-week pitching crew in this game. I'm personally hoping for Brosnahan here. I'm not sure Bobby is ready for Coastal just yet, and it'd be nice to see him get a good start in for development.
Coastal Carolina
The Chanticleers are currently ranked the #10 team in the nation according to the NCBWA, but they are #1 in the current RPI. They took two from UC Irvine, a preseason top 10 team two weeks ago, as well as host wins over a couple of top100 teams in North Carolina State, Virginia Tech, and Pittsburgh. They're lone loss comes to Kentucky, who is ranked #35 in RPI. Impressive to say the least. The Big South favorites have quite the lineup, featuring Preseason Big South Player of the Year Rico Noel. Noel is a shorter center fielder capable of both high average and big power. On the season he's hitting .368 with a .547 on base percentage and .658 slugging percentage. His 11 RBI is second on the team. Leading the team in RBI is Jose Iglesias with 14. Iglesias is hitting .415 on the season with a .707 slugging percentage. His 6 doubles lead the team. He's a 6'-5" catcher batting lead off. That's ridiculous. Hitting lower in the order is Chance Gilmore. The left fielder has been on fire to start this season, batting .441 and slugging .765. His 3 homers lead the team. Gilmore hits in the 6th hole and is backed up with Noel in the 7-hole. That deep of a lineup is scary for any pitching staff. Coastal has been consistent in their pitching rotation all three weeks of the season, but they are shaking things up a bit this weekend. Laney had been their #3 starter each week previously, but it appears he's either being skipped or demoted. Laney hasn't done so well this season, averaging just over 3 innings per outing. In his 10.1 innings, he's given up 8 runs on 12 hits, 10 walks, and 11 Ks. He may still start the Sunday game. On the other side of the coin is Birmingham. He's given up his fair share of base runners, but he's also been stingy with the runs. In 14.2 innings, he's given up 10 hits and 7 walks, but he's only give up 3 runs, only 2 of those being earned. He has only struck out 9 this season, so that might be good news for Michigan as well. He doesn't seem to be an overpowering ground ball pitcher, as most outs recorded are fly outs or pop outs. The defense for Coastal has also been very good. If you have the chance, they put out some excellent highlight videos for several of their home games. Their 9-4 victory over Wake Forest on Tuesday has some very solid defensive gems, including ca catch into the wall.
Outlook
I think Michigan wins their first two, but loses their third with Coastal having a solid performance from Birmingham, and Michigan losing a bit of focus during a blowout win over Lipscomb. Sunday's game is a total wildcard. We don't really know who is going to pitch, so that limits projections greatly. I think that is probably best for Michigan, as we may get a fresh starter with little experience, or even Laney who has struggled for Coastal. I think Oaks get the game in the Saturday night cap, pitching valiantly, but with little run support. I think we'll see Burgoon Sunday, and it will be a close game depending on how much our offense has left in the tank.
So… That Happened.
Are we going to recap it? No. I'm pretty sure Tim is methodically hammering nails into anything small and fluffy he can find. We're going to dig out something that hasn't been seen around these parts in a year or two. It is the Dead To Me board. It has two new additions, the second of which is relevant.
Well played, 2009-10. Well played.
Here's a kitten:
We'll see you next week. Jesus.
Puck Preview: Michigan State, CCHA Quarters
| WHAT | Michigan @ Michigan State CCHA Second Round |
|---|---|
| WHERE | East Lansing, Michigan |
| WHEN | 7:05PM EST March 12th/13th, 2010 If necessary: 7:05 PM EST March 14th |
| THE LINE | College hockey lines, junkie? |
| TELEVISION | Friday & Saturday: Comcast Local |
Michigan State
Record. I'm pretty sure that frequent commenter Spartan Dan put together a killer weekend preview at The Only Colors simply to shame me—it's even got this site's usual "you want this WCHA series to go this way because of the marginal effect it will have on our pairwise comparisons" section—and shame me it has done. It has also done a significant amount of the legwork, though, so we'll call it even.
Anyway: 19-11-6, 14-8-6 CCHA. Second place. Goal differential of +0.67 per game overall and +0.32 in conference. Bizarrely, Michigan's goal differential is considerably better in both instances (+0.85 and +0.5, respectively) despite being the seventh seed here. What's going on? Dan has a great chart that helps explain things:
Right away you can see more spread in Michigan's goal results. State scores three a lot, zero almost never, and six relatively rarely. Their goal curve somewhat approximates a normal distribution. Michigan has nights of wild success and nights like… well, you could name a dozen at this point. This dovetails nicely with a post I threw on mgolicious recently about a new method for reducing the error in baseball's Pythagoran prediction schemes*. It's kind of obvious:
Your actual win total doesn't just depend on runs scored and allowed -- it also depends on the consistency of each. If your scoring is less consistent than average, you should outperform [ed: I don't think this is good phrasing.] Pythagoras in terms of wins. For instance, if you score exactly the same number of runs as you allow, you should wind up a .500 team. But if you win more blowouts than average -- by scores of 15-2 and 16-6, for instance -- you'll finish at less than .500, because you've "wasted" your runs when you don't need them. And if you *lose* more blowouts than average, you'll win *more* games than 50 percent, because your opponents are "wasting" their runs.
A team that scores zero goals half the time and eight goals the rest of the time is going have the best goal differential in the world and be .500.
it's a little tough to parse this pattern out, but try to just consider the TUC games (blue and green). There the pattern is even more stark: State still scores three a ton, with one the next most popular and some other scattered numbers. Michigan's mode is two—ick—and the goal scoring is much more distributed. TUC teams are the top half of the schedule and more likely to score goals against you: here is the gap between Michigan's goal differential and its record.
Is this luck or something wrong with the team? Dan makes a case for the latter based on Michigan's style of offense this year ("chuck it at the net and see what happens") and I agree with him. The posterboy for this effect is Louie Caporusso, who has been on a tear of late against iffy goaltending and poor defensive teams but was totally stymied against the meat of the schedule. Michigan as a whole seems like TJ Hensick trying to make it in pro hockey: too good for the AHL (usually) but not good enough for the show.
This is a long and complicated way of saying that I wouldn't put as much into the goal differential as you might otherwise. I think it bodes well for Michigan next year, but maybe not this weekend.
*(For those less likely to have a collection of German board games: Bill James took a look at the numbers and found out that run differential was a better predictor of next year's record than last year's record. This finding is generally applicable and definitely applies to hockey. It's a major reason I think the hockey team will bounce back to its usual terrifying self next year. There's no place like home… no place like home… no place…)
Dangermen. Insert default complaint about Corey Tropp… no, insert a new one: it is totally ridiculous that the only punishment Corey Tropp received was missing the remainder of a season in which State had already checked out for good anyway. Michigan State had such deep respect for the idea that Corey Tropp should sit out games that they tried to stash him in the USHL so he wouldn't get rusty and only backed off that plan when someone in compliance said it would affect his eligibility. Rick Comley has permanently lost my respect, and the way this incident has played out makes me long for the day when Michigan can tell the league to GTFO and join a Big Ten hockey conference.
But anyway. Karma is busy with the Spartan football team at the moment and has ignored the above, so Tropp is Michigan State's leading scorer with a 20-22-42 line. Derek Grant has 11-18-31 and Andrew Rowe a 15-11-26, from there there's a significant dropoff. Expect Hagelin to get the Tropp line whenever they can manage it.
Defense and goalie and whatnot. Drew Palmisano has developed into one of the country's best goalies—something you could see coming as he split time with Jeff Lerg last year—and has a .922 save percentage.
Earlier in the year I suggested that Michigan State's extremely young defensive corps might be an exploitable achilles heel, but I just looked at the year next to their name and not their birthdates. None of these guys is straight out of high school and some of them can already drink. (Drink legally, that is. These are hockey players.) "Freshman" Zach Josepher is a few months away from turning 22! So nevermind on that.
The key guy on the Spartan D is Jeff Petry, a second-round pick of the Oilers who had a terrible year last year beyond just having crappy teammates but has bounced back to be both the Spartans' best offensive defenseman—22 assists—and most reliable defender. Josepher and fellow freshman-type object Torey Krug (actually younger than 20) are the next two guys on the depth chart. Krug is a smallish puck mover, Josepher more of a defensive sort.
Michigan, meanwhile, is still rolling out pint-sized walk-on Shawn Hunwick. This is good for the profile-seeking newspaper writers of Southeastern Michigan, but maybe not so good for Michigan's chances this weekend. Both of the goals Lake State scored on Friday were super soft and I'm sure everyone else is as creeped out by how often he jumps at pucks as I am. On the other hand, the two Friday goals were the only on the weekend and Hunwick did make a couple of grade A stops on Saturday to preserve his shutout.
While it's not a foregone conclusion that Hunwick is outperformed, it's pretty likely.
As a bonus, senior captain Chris Summers is out. Lee Moffie draws into the lineup, and this might mean bad things defensively. It just goes to show that I don't know everything (or even much) about hockey that I thought he was killing it when this was going down:
But after he dressed in 13 consecutive games, Moffie was pulled for his defensive lapses. In the final five games of that stretch in late January, Moffie had a plus/minus rating of minus-five. He has played in just four of the last ten games.
“I’ve known from the start that the defense is my thing that will keep me out of the lineup, they made that pretty clear,” Moffie said. “I’m an offensive defenseman, if I’m not producing and I’m out there for goals, I’m not really worth a lot to this team.”
His defensive issues must be a lot more subtle than Llewellyn's tendency to pick up dumb penalties and get caught up ice.
Special teams. Your power plays per game stat:
| MSU | Michigan | |
|---|---|---|
| PP For / G | 5.6 | 5.7 |
| PP Ag / G | 5.1 | 5.4 |
Michigan's specialty units are more effective than State's. Michigan's penalty kill is borking along at a 87.6 rate. Michigan State is in the middle of the pack (20th) at 83.2. On the flip side, neither team is much good on the powerplay. Michigan is 29th, State 34th. That's basically a wash.
Since Michigan State has a better ratio of PPs for and against, this section is basically even.
Michigan Vs Those Guys
Play like an underdog. Michigan's been playing a tighter, simpler game with Hunwick in net and the results have been fewer scary turnovers and few grade A opportunities. Michigan State is a step up from Hunwick's first four games, which were against 9th place Notre Dame and 10th place Lake State and will actually be able to generate scoring chances of their own. Michigan should play a conservative game in the hopes of protecting Hunwick.
Clone Carl Hagelin and put him on three lines.
Figure out why you are so inconsistent, especially against TUC opponents, and fix that season-long issue in a week. What? It could happen.
The Big Picture
The Pairwise still doesn't matter for Michigan. They're 25th right now: it's CCHA championship or bust. That requires winning this weekend and against Miami unless Ohio State pulls off the upset of the year in the CCHA, with Ferris State or Alaska or someone else the last hurdle. The pulse still remains faint.
On the other hand, the Pairwise implications of this series are huge for Michigan State. They sit 12th. With Bemidji State comfortably in the top eight, there is only one auto-bid that is definitely getting handed out. You could get in with a PWR as low as 15, but to be safe you'd like to get to 14 or, better, 13. If Michigan State loses this series they will take two TUC losses against zero or one wins. Depending on the results of other series, this could knock them out of the tournament entirely.
Michigan's playing for its life in this series and doesn't need anything else to motivate, but that's a nice little bonus.
On To The Next One

Michigan 59 Iowa 52, 2nd Round Big Ten Tournament
Michigan's game-to-game inconsistency has been the story of the season, and we got it gleefully wrapped into one package against Iowa. Of course, to truly represent the 2009-10 Michigan Wolverines it would have ended with a loss, so we're comin' out ahead already, baby. Michigan completely dominated at times, led by DeShawn Sims and Manny Harris. At other times, Cully Payne and Aaron Fuller made Wolverine fans tear their hair out by leading the Hawkeyes on runs to stay in the game. Still, past the first couple minutes, the outcome was rarely in doubt.
Michigan's ability to force turnovers was a big key, though they did get sloppy and commit some turnovers themselves. Giving it up eight times doesn't seem like too much, but considering they didn't turn it over once in the first 14 minutes, and it's clear play got a little sloppy.
Though nobody other than Manny (22 points) and Peedi (14 points) scored in double figures, Michigan got a little scoring from a few other guys, though the shooting woes of Zack Novak and Stu Douglass continued. Douglass and LLP showed a willingness to drive the ball a little bit, and if that had been available all year, this team might have been a little less disappointing. Speaking of disappointing, Darius Morris was practically invisible, and still has work to do before he can put together impressive performances every game.
And with the win, it's on to...
Ohio State
| WHAT | Michigan v. Ohio State |
|---|---|
| WHERE | Indianapolis, IN |
| WHEN | 12:00PM EST March 12th 2010 |
| THE LINE | Michigan +9* |
| TELEVISION | ESPN |
*Line provided by online sports betting site Sportsbetting.com.
When Last We Met
Ohio State controlled the game by owning the second half in Value City Arena just a week ago, eventually emerging with a 66-55 victory. No recap since I didn't get a chance to catch the game, but all five of Michigan's starters scored in double figures, and William Buford paced the Buckeyes with 24 points. Michigan won the turnover battle, like usual, but the shooting went cold in the second half, and Ohio State managed to capitalize for the victory.
Previously, Michigan upset the Buckeyes in Crisler Arena to kick off the New Year. Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims scored 52 of Michigan's 73 points. The game also brought us the beginning of VOGRIT, as the freshman led the team in offensive rebounding and made a big block in the paint. I'm skirting around a key fact here though, which is that Evan Turner - winner of several player of the year awards - missed the game with broken vertebrae (spinal injuries what what). With Turner in the lineup, Ohio State has been dominant, sharing the Big Ten crown with Purdue and Michigan State.
Tempo-Free Breakdown
If you need an explanation of the stats, check out Ken Pomeroy. Also, you'd better hide the women and children before they catch a glimpse of this chart.
| Michigan v. Ohio State: National Ranks | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Michigan Rank | Ohio State Rank | Advantage |
| Mich eFG% v. OSU Def eFG% | 247 | 88 | OO |
| Mich Def eFG% v. OSU eFG% | 211 | 4 | OOO |
| Mich TO% v. OSU Def TO% | 12 | 78 | M |
| Mich Def TO% v. OSU TO% | 34 | 31 | - |
| Mich OReb% v. OSU DReb% | 290 | 27 | OOO |
| Mich DReb% v. OSU OReb% | 270 | 273 | - |
| Mich FTR v. OSU Opp FTR | 330 | 11 | OOOO |
| Mich Opp FTR v. OSU FTR | 7 | 205 | MM |
| Mich AdjO v. OSU AdjD | 107 | 19 | O |
| Mich AdjD v. OSU AdjO | 46 | 12 | O |
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.
So, uh, thanks for the entertaining season, guys. Ohio State is clearly the superior team in nearly every category, and Michigan is going to be hard-pressed to find a way to beat the Buckeyes when they have Evan Turner in the lineup.
Michigan's defensive improvement over the course of the season is something of a silver lining, but this Ohio State team is on track for a 1- or 2-seed in the NCAA tournament for a reason. Michigan also has a bit more to play for, as Ohio State's season will carry into the NCAA tournament regardless of the outcome, and the Wolverines are in a win-or-go-home situation for the rest of the year.
Kenpom likes Ohio State by 8, and Vegas makes the Buckeyes 9-point favorites. I think Michigan's sense of urgency might keep the game a little bit closer than the experts think. Still it's hard to pick against a squad that's rolling like the Buckeyes are.

