Diaries

When we last left off with our heroes...
DESMOND BLOCKHAM WAS IN AN ACCIDENT LAST WEEK
that may or may not have involved, well, a Twosie.  A tandem bicycle.
He was then DIAGNOSED WITH A STRANGE CONDITION which
in turn prompted him to attempt to walk on to the Michigan
football team.  Here is his tryout...

TACKLING DUMMY

(Click the Image to See Full Size Version)

Yes, we kept him in.

Today's cameos were planned well into last week and were in full pre-production when the news broke yesterday about Jake Ryan's unfortunate injury.  After going through the typical AARRGGHH PANIC like the rest of you, I was torn with what to do about it-- should I substitute him with another player, leave it be, or scratch the whole story.

In the end I posed the question on Twitter, and received an overwhelming collective response instructing me to KEEP HIM IN.  "HE'S HURT, NOT DEAD," etc.  And so here he is.  Truly heartbreaking stuff, and I hope his little Blockhamized appearance now serves as a tribute to our temporarily fallen hero.  Godspeed, Jake Ryan-- we all love watching you play, big fella.

Friday Fun will probably have something to say about basketball.  Dear Lord let it be good.

THE BLOCKHAMS™ runs (typically) every week here at MGoBlog and on its official home page.  Also, don't forget to check out the Friday Fun, my weekly single panel comic based on trending Michigan events, available on Twitter and the home page every Friday.

Follow THE BLOCKHAMS™ on Twitter at @theblockhams, and don't forget to
LIKE THE BLOCKHAMS™ on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theblockhams.

THE SEARCH FOR BALANCE IN THE BIG TEN: 2000-PRESENT

Now and again, the discussion arises about having a balanced attack on offensive, not relying too much on any one portion of the game. It dawned on me to attempt to look at how much various teams in the Big Ten have tried to balance their rushing and passing games in the recent past. Fortunately, I had most of this data, but I had never really thought about using it to answer this question before.

The first pass at this was fairly simple – for all 11 teams that have been in the Big Ten for the entire period from 2000 to now, I lined up their total passing and net rushing yards, added them, and then got some general “Percent Of Total” numbers. I was actually a little surprised by the result.

The first two rows in this table were the straight “Which is greater?” comparison,  so all those teams represented through time, nearly 75% of them achieved greater passing yardage than rushing yardage in a given year.  I had thought the slant was towards passing generally, but I actually didn’t think that the lean over time was this great.

The third row, however, contains some interesting data too. In all these teams across the studied time period, 41 of them had rushing and passing yardage within 10% of each other, which I would consider reasonably balanced. Of those, 22 of them leaned slightly to passing, and 19 of them leaning slightly to rushing. It is also worth noting that 15 of those teams actually belong to Ohio State and Wisconsin (7 and 8 respectively), although this might not surprise some.  We chime in with 7 such seasons of our own, so basically half of these “balanced” teams have in fact been three teams in this period. The next highest total belongs to Penn State, who has seen this occur 5 times in this timeframe.

Here is the average margin between passing and rushing yards for each team in this period.  As they are all positive, and I subtracted rushing from passing initially, the typical margin was in favor of passing.

Next, I looked at touchdowns by type, and here is where I was looking at something I had suspected based on memory but had never seen in numbers:

Among these same teams over time, in more than half the cases, a team scored more rushing touchdowns despite accumulating more passing yards. So, here is where I think we get some confirmation in the numbers of how the teams in the conference generally use the rushing game, I would think. Passing to set up the run is alive and well.

What I have done with this data is make tables for each team, showing the total yards and total touchdowns as well as percent of total columns. The greater number is highlighted, so you can see the different combinations as well. Further, there are charts which show you the relative balance / imbalance of passing and rushing for each team across this period. I have also provided the table which breaks it down into average yards per game. These numbers are reflective of the percentages, so when looking at the bar charts, you are looking at this data as well.

ILLINOIS –

INDIANA-

IOWA –

MICHIGAN –

MICHIGAN STATE –

MINNESOTA –

NORTHWESTERN –

OHIO STATE –

PENN STATE –

PURDUE –

WISCONSIN –

YARDS PER GAME INFORMATION:

TL;DR CONCLUSION:

Like other diaries I typically do, there is no set conclusion here. I set out to get the numbers behind a question I had. In this case, it was regarding how typically balanced between passing and rushing yardage a Big Ten offense has been in the recent past. The answer seems to be, “It depends on whose offense and when”.

BECAUSE I FORGOT IT LAST WEEK:

I'm not going to lead with a story this week. No trip down nostalgia lane, no personal anecdotes, no waxing sentimental. Instead I'm going to let the Michigan players speak for themselves via what they tweeted Saturday night after sweeping Western Michigan out of the CCHA playoffs.

If you haven't already embraced this team I'd recommend doing so right about now.

Friday, March 15, 2013- Game 1

 

1st Period

 

08:43 Michigan 1 Western Michigan 0: Phil Di Giuseppe (9) from Kevin Lynch (14) & Brennan Serville (1)

PDG and Lynch work a give-and-go in the neutral zone, with Lynch passing to PDG and then PDG going back to Lynch. Note that this happens because Lynch has a step on his defender, creating a 2-on-1 odd-man rush for UM.

Lynch's defender manages to slide over and tries to get his stick in the passing lane, which is exactly what the other defenseman is doing. Lynch threads the needle between the two sticks and puts the puck on PDG's stick. Take a look at Slubowski here; he's square to Lynch, but he's going to have to slide a long way laterally to get square with PDG.

PDG roofs a shot over Slubowski's shoulder. The only reason that the shot is available (and that he doesn't have to try and pick a corner) is that Slubowski seemed to commit to Lynch and, as I mentioned above, had to move laterally to recover. This requires hitting the ice, which opens up the top portion of the net.

 

18:00 Michigan 2 Western Michigan 0: Justin Selman (4) from Mac Bennett (12)

Seth wrote in this week's "Dear Diary..." post that he noticed an increase in puck movement during the Northern series. If that was the theme last weekend, then what's the theme this weekend? Odd-man rushes! Count 'em up; three guys behind the play and one scrambling and praying to all that's holy to try and get back.

Selman has two options; he can shoot it or he can pass to Bennett. The positioning of the defenseman, coupled with the fact that he's already on his knee, makes both options equally viable for Selman. He chooses to shoot, but his shot is stopped...

...but not without a sugary sweet rebound popping out in front. All Selman has to do is keep skating (which duh, he did) and the puck is his to backhand over the sprawled Slubowski.

 

2nd Period

 

03:30 Michigan 2 Western Michigan 1: Chase Balisy (11) from Dane Walters (13) & Garrett Haar (5)

Michigan has a chance to clear but can't, as DeBlois is unable to hang on to the puck. Haar holds it in at the blueline for Western and immediately sends a pass to Walters in the faceoff circle. Check out the uneven distribution of Michigan defenders and the player who's now all alone behind the Michigan defense, Bailsy (circled above).

Walters fires a pass to Bailsy. Again, all of Michigan's defenders are clumped together. Walters doesn't even have to think here; Bailsy's that open.

Bailsy has to settle the puck before loading his shot, and even then he doesn't seem to get much on it. The puck flutters over Racine and in. Racine got hung out to dry but he also had a second to prepare for the shot. I wouldn't blame solely him, but I am a little surprised he didn't stop this one.

 

04:32 Michigan 2 Western Michigan 2: Colton Hargrove (8) from Ben Warda (9) 

He's off camera now, but Bennett starts the play with an outlet pass up the boards to Treais. 

Just as the puck's about to arrive a Western defender closes on Treais and it bounces off of him and towards center ice. The puck takes another bounce, this time off of Moffatt's stick and back towards the Michigan blueline. Moffat turns and tries to chase it down.

Moffatt never recovers the puck, but Western's Colton Hargrove does. He snipes one past Racine and it looks like the floodgates might oh-so-familiarly open.

 

07:13 Michigan 3 Western Michigan 2: Jacob Trouba (11) from Alex Guptill (18) & Mac Bennett (13)

If there was any doubt about whether he had earned the JMFT moniker that should be put to rest after this play. Trouba splits two defenders to continue his own rush through the neutral zone.

Trouba carries the puck into the offensive zone and looks like he's about to unleash one of his signature spark-meets-gunpowder slapshots.

But then he doesn't. No, Trouba instead slows his slapshot down and wrists one past Slubowski. The slowing of the shot freezes Slubowski and the defenseman, hence the statuesque squares around them in the above screencap. He's not just JMFT, he's JmfT. More subtle, yet equally effective

 

10:19 Michigan 3 Western Michigan 3: Josh Pitt (3) from Kenney Morrison (13) & Colton Hargrove (2)

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this one because it's about as close to an unpreventable goal as you're going to get in a playoff series. Western takes a shot from the blueline that hits two of their players on the way to the net, one of whom is screening Racine.

 

3rd Period

 

09:15 Michigan 4 Western Michigan 3: PPG Jacob Trouba (12) from A.J. Treais (16) & Alex Guptill (19) 

Treais has the puck at the point and passes to Trouba. This draws one of the penalty-killers closer to the blueline and essneitally gets two guys bunched together, as they're now lined up with each other as opposed to covering the top two corners of the PK box.

Trouba slides across the blueline and Treais moves behind him. This causes the penalty-killers to flinch, with the low man especially confused about who to cover. He starts to skate towards Treais while the high man moves towards Trouba.

The circled Western player then decides to call Treais as his man, leaving the low man to try and cover the open ice between himself and Trouba. There's no way he can recover and Trouba takes full advantage, actually unleashing the whole spark-meets-gunpowder slapshot this time and converting.

Let's troll

 

Saturday, March 16, 2013- Game 2

 

I used the CCHA's highlight video for the screencaps but discovered after writing everything that Center Ice posted a better quality video. Check it out, especially to watch Guptill chirp angry-Western-guy at the end.

 

1st Period

 

01:08 Michigan 1 Western Michigan 0: Kevin Lynch (10) from Lee Moffie (9) & Jon Merrill (7)

Moffie has the puck in the defensive zone and sees a gap up the middle of the ice that he can launch a pass through to start the breakout.

Outlet passes don't get much better than this one, as Moffie stretches the ice and puts the puck perfectly on the tape of Kevin Lynch's stick.

Lynch shoots almost immediately and just straight up beats Slubowski to put Michigan on the board first.

 

16:36 Michigan 1 Western Michigan 1: Garrett Haar (4) from Nolan LaPorte (3) & Josh Pitt (6)

Western rims the puck around the boards to the blueline. The Michigan defender who's supposed to be covering that area of the ice (circled above) runs into a Western player, which frees Haar to carry the puck across the blueline undefended.

Haar is going to have a shot available to him because Selman is stuck trying to make a choice; he has to guess whether Haar will pass to Brown or whether he will take the shot himself. By the time Selman can read the play Haar's ready to shoot, and he uses a snapshot to get the puck through quicker. If he winds up for a slapshot Selman would likely be able to move up and cover.

Racine has four guys in front of him and doesn't have much of a chance to stop this one. The disclaimer that goes with this goal, however, is that there's only one camera angle of it. It looks to me like the four guys are in Racine's line of sight and impacting his ability to track the puck, but that may not necessarily be the case.

 

2nd Period

 

02:53 Michigan 2 Western Michigan 1: Andrew Sinelli (3) from A.J. Treais (17) & Luke Moffatt (11)

Treais beats his defender and is able to get a shot on net that a sliding Slubowski stops (aliteration FTW). 

Slubowski's best Dominik Hasek impression causes him to send the puck itno the corner, where Treais digs it out and centers it.

Is it Slubowski or Hasek? I can't even tell!

Sinelli shoots through the defender's legs and hits the half-open net behind him.

 

10:09 Michigan 3 Western Michigan 1: PPG Alex Guptill (13) from Andrew Copp (10) & Luke Moffatt (12)

Moffatt carries the puck down low with speed and sees Copp on the other side of the net. There's a defender draped all over him and another in the slot, so he holds the puck for an extra second before trying to center it. By now Copp has crashed the net and the puck never gets to him, instead getting lost in a scramble in front of the net.

It's hard to tell whether Slubowski got a piece of the puck or whether this is the work of someone else, but somehow the puck slides backwards into the high slot. Guptill is in perfect position to pick it up 

Guptill gathers the puck and makes a perfect read. The defeneseman in front of the net dives to stop what he assumes will be a backhanded shot so Guptill spins. This opens up a scoring chance, because Slubowski is already on the ice and now so too is the defenseman in front of the net. Guptill roofs a shot over the mass carnage in front and scores.

 

10:58 Michigan 4 Western Michigan 1: Derek DeBlois (10) from Phil Di Giuseppe (19)

PDG carries the puck into the offensive zone with a ton of speed, but he gets penned in by thee Western defenders.

OR DOES HE?. He shows flashes of Datsyuk as he slides the puck under the defeder's stick and picks it up on the backhand on the other side. PDG throws the puck on net and Slubowski kinda stops it, but also causes it to flutter through the air.

The puck lands in the crease and just happens to land directly in front of a Western defender. Doesn't matter though, because DeBlois charges hard and wins the game of whack-a-puck.

 

19:42 Michigan 5 Western Michigan 1: Alex Guptill (14) from Luke Moffatt (13) & A.J. Treais (18)

Moffatt looks like God's gift to stickhandling on this play. He stops on a dime and starts to turn his body as if he's going to spin and carry the puck down the boards. This freezes one defender and draws another over.

He instead pulls the puck back across his body to the forehand and passes to Guptill, who's wide open and has just one defender to beat.

Guptill skates across the crease and nets his second of the night. Nail, meet coffin. Broom, meet Bronco.

 

H/T to the Daily's Zach Helfand and Paul Sherman for the Trouba photo

So now that the brackets are out and Michigan has drawn a 4 seed in the South Region, I thought I'd take a look at how 4 seeds have fared in tournaments past, going back to when the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.  Surprisingly, Googling "Historical Performance of Seeds in NCAA Tournament" yields a plethora of data that just begs to be analyzed statistically and have conclusions drawn over which one can agonize.  I wish the news were better.

The News Is Bad?  How Bad?

In the 28 years since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams, squads seeded fourth have won grand total of 167 games for a per tournament average of 5.96 wins, give or take 2.06 wins.  Essentially this falls in line with confirming chalk.  If you're a 4 seed, you're a great bet to win your first game, a 50/50ish bet to win your 2nd, and then you're probably ewww.  This probably doesn't come as a surprise, since if you're a 4 seed coming out of the first weekend, you're probably facing the 1 seed, and beating a one seed is hard.

So It's Hopeless Then?

Well no, it's not hopeless.  Being a 4 seed is definately better than being a 5 or higher;  as the numbers show that fortunes for teams not seeded in the Top 16 of the tourney fall precipitiously.  For all the romance that media-types assign to "Cinderellas" in the tounament; runs like George Mason or Villanova are very much the exception. 

Since 1985, 11 four seeds have advanced to the Final Four in 10 separate NCAA Tournaments (The 1990 Tournament saw 4 seeds Georgia Tech and Arkansas both advance to the Final Four).  Of those 11 teams that managed to make it the Final Four, 2 of them advanced to the Finals (Syracuse 1996, Arizona 1997), with only Lute Olsen's 1997 Arizona Wildcats having the stuff to find themselves hoisting the championship trophy.

The only precedent we have to lean on, but there is a precedent

Only One Champion In 28 Seasons?  That Sounds Pretty Hopeless.

Well, it does occur to me that this only has any real meaning if there is something to compare it against, say the 1 - 3 seeds.  This sounds like a perfect opportunity for a...

Chart?  Chart

Lest we forget, one of those four 3 seeds is 1989 Michigan, woo!

So yeah, big surprise here.  One and two seeds make up 2/3rds of all the teams that have appeared in the Final Four and have won 75% of all the titles since 1985.  This can mean one of two things.  One, that the Selection Committee is very good at seeding teams based on their relative strength or two, the path of the one and two seeds is conducive for advancing.  Personally, I tend to think it's more Door #2 than Door #1.  The real takeaway from this with regards to Michigan 2013 is that the distinction between a 3 and 4 seed seems to be pretty small.

[EDIT:  I would like to point out the anomaly that while 2 seeds appear in the Final Four about half the rate of 1 seeds and twice the rate of 3 and 4 seeds, they only come away with a quarter of the titles, a disproportionately low number.  Y U no pull your weight in the Finals two seeds?]

So What Does This All Mean For Our Guys?

Well, I'd rather see us as a 3 seed personally, and was a bit miffed to find us slide from a predicted 2 seed to a 4 based upon one loss to Wisconsin (F#*k, Wisconsin), but then I think the Selection Committee has undervalued the competitiveness of the B1G in general with the brackets.  I am looking forward to seeing  Michigan play some non-Big Ten competition.  I think we'll be pleasantly surprised at how good we suddenly look again, assuming the guys haven't completely lost their confidence.

Still, Michigan has it's work cut out for it as the four seeds have historically had tough sledding in the NCAA Tournament.  I do take some comfort in the words of my old Econ professor who liked to remind his class that, "past performance is no guarantee of future earnings".  Here's to a deep, entertaining, and trend-bucking tournament run from the 2013 Wolverines.  Go Blue!

Short post because I'm exhausted.  I like the matchup.  Enjoy the desktop. GO BLUE!

Desktop (16:9)

- JonValk

For those of you that missed it...
DESMOND BLOCKHAM WAS IN AN ACCIDENT YESTERDAY
that may or may not have involved, well, a Twosie.  A tandem bicycle.
Be sure to read yesterday's strip in the link above before moving on to...

THE DIAGNOSIS

(Click the Image to See Full Size Version)

Yes, that's right, next week the Blockhams will go to the practice field.
And it will not be pretty.  You have been warned.

Friday Fun will highlight today's Senior Pro Day.

THE BLOCKHAMS™ runs (typically) every week here at MGoBlog and on its official home page.  Also, don't forget to check out the Friday Fun, my weekly single panel comic based on trending Michigan events, available on Twitter and the home page every Friday.

Follow THE BLOCKHAMS™ on Twitter at @theblockhams, and don't forget to
LIKE THE BLOCKHAMS™ on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theblockhams.