100% pure colombian awesome

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And you can't have one without the other…

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

Muppets? Muppets.

And you can't have one without the other…

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

Just like Haloi Ngata. Tom points out that Jake Ryan's twitter photo displays the first fruits of hiring Greg Mattison—redshirt freshman Richard Ash's levitating hair:

So we've got that going for us.

Too awesome to don't click here. Irrelevant, but here's three of my favorite things in one thing:

Further position clarification. Just to highlight something from Tim's post:

Cameron Gordon will play outside linebacker, because they want to get the guys into the best position they can to make plays. "And then what's the most upside." He has great ability to grow, and has that upside at OLB. "As compared to being a safety, I think he can do that too, but we have other guys that can do that."

Specifically, Gordon will be the SAM linebacker, which is a spot fairly similar to the "spur" Michigan used last year in their disaster of a 3-3-5. This answers one of the main questions from the Hello Old 4-3 posts. It seems like your starting front seven next year will be:

DL: Van Bergen-Campbell/other three tech-Martin-Roh
LB: C. Gordon/Demens/Winner of massive WLB free for all

Only the WLB spot and three-tech are up in the air.

SPARKZZZZ. A Daily article on Sparks does seem to confirm the only possible reason Lindsay Sparks would mostly hang out in the press box on a team decidedly lacking in… well… spark:

By the time Michigan headed into the stretch run, the offensively-skilled forward had played in just 10 of his team’s 34 games, mainly due to concerns about his defense. … According to Michigan coach Red Berenson, Sparks took his game to another level in practice in recent weeks. It paid off. He took the ice in both games of the final regular-season series.

Sparks picked up an effort-y assist against Northern and flashed near-Hagelin speed against Western. Surely he's a regular next year with all the departures. Prepare for me to badly overrate him.

SNUBZZZZ. Michigan didn't have a whole lot of individual stars this year but it's a somewhere between disappointing an enraging that Shawn Hunwick didn't get even a single vote for All CCHA. Spath has numbers:

Hunwick went 14-6-1 in 21 CCHA games - the coaches are only supposed to consider conference statistics - ranking second in winning percentage (.690) to Notre Dame's Mike Johnson … Hunwick also ranked second in save percentage (.931) and second in goals against average (1.95). He was the lone netminder in the CCHA to rank in the top two in winning percentage, save percentage and goals against. …

Nagle went 12-12-4 for the Bulldogs, ranking seventh in winning percentage (.500) while his .920 save percentage also ranked seventh among conference netminders and his 2.11 goals against average left him fifth. Greenham …. ranked sixth in save percentage (.921) and seventh in goals against average (2.19).

And Hunwick has the CCHA's most entertaining twitter feed. Watch him talk smack to Steve Kampfer:

@SteveKampfer47 If I was in the NHL and playing in boston, I wouldn't be still flying girls in from Ann Arbor. #boom

.010 in save percentage + twitter should be a slam dunk for All CCHA, especially since the team that, you know, won the league only scored two of 12 players. I guess people are still hung up on the fact that he's just two cells pasted together.

Q: what was the last time Michigan had a goalie as good as Hunwick was this year? If you go by the stats, Billy Sauer's junior year is the recent best by a Michigan goalie. (The online database appears to start midway through the Tuco years.) He put up a .924  before his spectacular Frozen Four meltdown. Hunwick's .920 in 27 games is the next approximately qualifying season—if you want to roll his junior year in to get to 38 games that hardly changes the number—and then it's Montoya, Hogan, Montoya, Turco, and Josh Blackburn's four identical .905s.

If you think Sauer's meltdown poisons his whole year this is Michigan's best goaltending since Al Montoya was a sophomore who gave a crap.

Fab Five preview. Dylan got his hands on a promotional copy of Sunday's Fab Five documentary and provides first thoughts:

The brash exuberance of the Fab Five is not just captured through the clips on the court, which are obviously entertaining. A majority of the interviews do a great job of portraying the same energy. Whether it’s listening to the Fab Five describe their feelings on Duke and Christian Laettner – using words like “Uncle Toms” and “soft bitch” – or one of the many hip hop icons of the time explaining their cultural influence.

This is a no punches pulled documentary even without the presence of Chris Webber:

The range of topics discussed spans just about everything that you would expect to see. There are pictures of Jalen chugging beer out of a 40 and he discusses his drug house incident. There are also other ugly sides, such as shots of all of the racial hate mail from Michigan alumni and the inevitable discussion of the NCAA sanctions.

As I said, prepare to be massively conflicted. Sounds like it will be appointment television: 9PM, Sunday, ESPN.

Back to being an insufferable thing. Now that Jim Harbaugh is just another fish in the sea instead of the Chosen One we can resume thinking of him as kind of an asshat. This won't come as a surprise to anyone who perused the Stanford roster in the aftermath of Harbaugh's comments about Michigan funneling kids into easy classes, but—surprise—Stanford funnels its players into easy classes.

Not news, but this is a quote from the quote gods, one every Cal undergrad will be wearing next year:

"(Stanford) accommodates athletes in the manner that they accommodate students with disabilities."

Etc.: Bruce Ciskie has a good take on the brutal hit Max Pacioretty took from Zdeno Chara a couple days ago. UMHoops previews the BTT.

2/18/2011 – Michigan 6, Western Michigan 3 – 20-9-4, 17-7-1 CCHA
2/21/2011 – Michigan 5, Western Michigan 4 (OT) – 21-9-4, 18-7-1 CCHA

Sometimes being at a hockey game is an exercise in wishing you were watching the thing on TV where the camera angle is consistent and the replays are repeated ad nauseum. This is especially true at Yost, where events just happen and evaporate without the benefit of video replay.

An example: at the end of the first period the puck was behind the net and suddenly the ref was feverishly pointing at the puck in the net without the thing seemingly ever reaching a spot where that was physically possible. The ref went to check it out. A few moments later the part of Yost directly behind the penalty boxes stood up and craned their collective neck to see the review as I plotted to relocate there next year, and a few moments after that he waved the thing off.

Last year I would have had to trudge through the deep, useless recesses of the USCHO board to find out what happened. Five years ago a Saturday game against Western probably wasn't televised at all and no one would really ever know. Since it's 2011 I just pulled out my phone, tweeted at the Daily's hockey beat writer*, and found out within ten minutes that the puck had indeed gone into the net from behind the goal.

I didn't see it, though, and that's kind of the point of being a spectator.

--------------------------------------

Sometimes hockey collapses itself into a universe just for you. You have to be sitting along the sideline between the blue lines for this to happen. If you are, at certain points you can draw a perfectly straight line from you to the guy shooting the puck to the goal.

An example: when Michigan came back against Denver in the NCAA tournament I sat right behind the Michigan bench and watched Eric Werner plunge into the slot to flick a puck over Wade Dubielewicz** to tie the game. I saw it the whole way and my mind blew up.

I shelled out for old fogey seats this year so when Lee Moffie entered the zone I saw Hagelin behind him and thought Moffie should drop it, and he did, and there were two seconds left so there's only one thing for Hagelin to do, and as he let the shot go and I drew a straight line from me to him to the net as the puck slid past the defenseman clean and rose. I could see where it was heading, see the goalie throw his glove at it but not get there in time, see the puck ricochet the right way as the great clank filled the building. It was one of those moments where the angel comes down from heaven and says "you there—God has selected you to have the deep-seated, socially awkward fandom of the concealed lunatic." It was pure.

And while I've been craving video boards at Yost for years there's something beautiful about not having the thing you just experienced altered by someone else's perspective. Since the Werner goal isn't on youtube no one can tell me he wasn't wielding a scimitar, wearing an eyepatch, and screaming "hhhhhyarrrrr" as he swashbuckled towards the net. I'm pretty sure the unicorn he was riding was named Steve.

Those days are over—see the youtube clip above—but thanks to Carl Hagelin Yost got one last opportunity to walk out of the building buzzing about the thing that just happened in your head, and only your head.

*[Michael Florek was beaten to the punch by the Hoover Street Rag.]

**[Google's spellchecking was heroic here: I typed "wade dublevicz."]

Pairwise

mfan_in_ohio has again broken down the pairwise so I'll just point you to his analysis. Michigan flew up to sixth after the sweep, but it is a tenuous, tenuous sixth. Here's why:

That's Ohio State barely nosing above .500 in RPI after taking a win and a tie from LSSU. Michigan's 3-1 record against the Buckeyes thus counts in the TUC category. This tiny difference in the season of a single opponent swings comparisons against Boston College and UNO. If OSU had split over the weekend Michigan would be eighth and we'd be wondering what a man has to do to get some respect around here.

As it is, OSU's nose getting over the line combined with a couple of wins over a WMU team that did well in its nonconference schedule gets you halfway to a one seed in one weekend. That and a lot of help elsewhere—Dartmouth, RPI, UMD, UNO, and Denver all lost over the weekend. Denver lost to Michigan Tech(!), which is huge because that's a common opponent and a terrible team.

While this is almost Michigan's ceiling, the stumbles of Denver and UMD have opened the door to the last one seed. Michigan easily beats Denver in COP now and is within striking distance in both TUC and RPI—outperforming them by a game down the stretch will do it. UMD, meanwhile, is close enough in RPI to drop if they lose and the six remaining regular season games between the two teams are all common opponents—NMU for Michigan, CC and UNO for UMD. If they take those two comparisons and Ohio State and Ferris can walk the tripwire so that both of them finish the season under consideration, they can slide up to fourth. This will take some luck but if Michigan sweeps Northern and wins the CCHA playoffs I think they'll be 50-50 for the one-seed.

Rooting guide:

• OSU plays Ferris this weekend and can remain in the TUC zone by splitting. However, sweeping will actually put Ferris about where OSU is now, leaving them vulnerable to dropping out in the CCHA playoffs. You probably want a split here but root for OSU on Friday because they're more vulnerable. You want both of these teams to do well in the playoffs.
• You hate Denver and Minnesota-Duluth with the burning fiery passion of a thousand suns.
• Also Boston College and UNO.

Everything else is up to Michigan.

CCHA Race

It's Michigan and Notre Dame with ND maintaining a one-point lead. They have a home-and-home with this Western team; Michigan goes to Northern. Agonizingly, neither game in Marquette is televised. Michigan will win the tiebreaker if the teams end up even in points.

Non-bullets of !!!

Kind of mad, kind of awesome. Shawn Hunwick was not so good this weekend. On Friday it didn't result in much damage because the team had already gotten the other guy's goalie pulled but on Saturday he was off on both of the breakaways. They were breakaways so it's hard to be too mad but he gave up a weak five hole goal on the first and was way too deep in his net on the other. On the other hand, this is what he tweeted immediately afterwards:

Thank you Carl Hagelin for saving my ass. Great senior class. We had a phenomenal four years.

It wasn't that bad. We still love you and the fact that on shots from the point you end up halfway to the blue line.

Also, Hunwick made three clutch, clutch stops in the third period Saturday.

Need moar Swede. There needs to be another Swedish guy on the team ASAP. We've got the flag, we're very enthusiastic about the word "Bork"—let's make this happen.

Marissa McClain/Daily

Muppets. I totally should have muppetsed. Sorry. I had some people over afterwards and it slipped my mind.

With an assist to Lee Moffie. Moffie's fought for playing time most of the year despite having quite a knack for scoring because he's not that great defensively. Late in the third period as Michigan was trying to tie, however, he was ridiculously good. He's at his best when it's desperate and he can pinch and use his skill and wheel around the zone.

Other defensemen. It was a weekend full of defenseman thoughts:

• Greg Pateryn had a goal and three first assists on Friday. He essentially beat WMU by himself. As a bonus he would have had a fourth assist if you could assist on your own goals—he made an excellent play to control the puck and make a cross-ice pass in to the zone to set up the scoring chance. He still gets too aggressive at the blue line.
• Jon Merrill was really really good Friday—my friend just kept saying "he's really really good"—and then had probably his worst game as a Wolverine Saturday. It wasn't just the breakaway; he probably had more turnovers Saturday than in any two games he'd played this year.
• Mac Bennett is now leading the rush like 25% of the time there is one when he's on the ice.

What does he have to do? Lindsay Sparks was fast out there and looked as dangerous as he usually does. He hasn't put up much in the way of points but I'm continually surprised he can't get in the lineup regularly.

Exploding Lynch. Two on Friday, then two very fancy moves to get to his forehand Saturday. After the first I thought "that's the most dangerous thing he's done as a Wolverine" even though the shot was stopped; he did the same thing a period later and scored. Let's throw everyone down on the fourth line.

BONUS. Googling for Denver goals did turn this one up:

I'm hoping Hagelin channels Ortmeyer in his final games at Michigan.

Elsewhere

Yost Built with a weekend recap. The flag is apparently headed out with Hagelin:

As the crowd honored the seniors after the game, the Swedish flag that has flown at Yost for three seasons was tossed over the glass to Hagelin. The students had passed it around throughout the game, autographing it and writing thank yous and words of encouragement to our Super Swede.

I wondered what all the stuff on it was. Also: this is a bonus from having Senior Night on a weekend where the students aren't on break.

Michigan Hockey Net has press conference recaps from Friday and Saturday. Berenson:

On what Berenson said to Carl when he gave him a hug after the game… Well, I just told him “Aren’t you glad you came to Michigan?  And aren’t we glad that you came?”  And good for him.  He set a standard here. He’s been a terrific kid, student, player, teammate—you know, just a terrific kid.  It’s the first Swedish player we’ve had and we’ll always remember him.

AnnArbor.com has a slideshow. Daily slideshow. Florek's column. Photos from Michigan Exposures. Full highlight package.

2013 commit JT Compher will join the NTDP, which should lock him up for college—it also suggests he's a high-end guy.

The must-get. I mentioned this on twitter yesterday but in case you don't follow me and my pork-induced time travel, this man exists:

 

This man exists and is an in-state defensive back who already claims an Iowa offer. I promise to refer to him as LEVITICUS PAYNE, in full, in caps, for the duration of his career if he ends up at Michigan. Unless that is an illegal inducement. Which it totally isn't.

Love expert. So… yeah… this…

…is the best thing ever produced by a university athletic department. Fact. It also produced a sad zinger, if you're a masochist. (Quick masochist test follows. Q: Are you a Michigan fan?)

Pipped. Sticking with hockey, Bryan Hogan is healthy. Unfortunately for him, Shawn Hunwick's been playing as well as he possibly can and Hogan's had nine games over the past year. Result:

Hunwick has been solid since then, and remains the Wolverines' No. 1 goalie. But if necessary, Berenson said Hogan could be inserted into the lineup. Berenson said he never considered making a change in Saturday's 3-0 loss to Miami after Hunwick gave up three goals in the first 40 minutes.

Not sure why he'd pull Hunwick after he gave up some goals where 1) he fell victim to a wraparound because he's short and has to come way out of the net, 2) got sold out on a breakaway, which he stopped, only to get sold out on the guy following up the play, and 3) gave up a 5x3 goal on a cross-ice bomb to one of the nation's best power plays.

Also, Red fired up the line blender and came up with this:

Carl Hagelin          Louie Caporusso  Chris Brown
Scooter Vaughan  Matt Rust             Luke Glendening
David Wohlberg    A.J. Treais            Luke Moffatt
Ben Winnett         Kevin Lynch          Derek DeBlois

Based on recent performance I think AnnArbor.com has the second and third lines flipped there. Will it matter? Eh… maybe. I still think you have to put Lindsey Sparks in just to see what happens when a little guy with some skill gets on the ice.

Basketball follow-up. When I went back to assess NCAA tournament chances it struck me how close this team was to pulling off two or three wins that would have them not on the bubble but solidly in the tourney, and I thought about the 2009 team that got those wins against UCLA and Duke.

So is it good or bad that right now Michigan is the #55 team in Kenpom? Two years ago the Michigan team that made the second round of the tourney finished the year 50th. This team is nearly their equal. Look:

Team	Offense	Rk	Defense	Rk
2009	113.3	44th	95.2	67th
2011	110.5	46th	96.1	77th

This year's team is slightly worse at both O and D but the differences are small and Michigan is so young you can argue they'd play better down the stretch than older teams closer to the top of the learning curve. That year's team was also so young—289th nationally—and improved at the tail end to squeeze its way in. If this edition of Michigan basketball can do that against a reasonable closing stretch the sole difference between this year and the tourney year will be a few points here and there against UCLA, Duke, Syracuse, OSU, and Kansas.

Possible addition. Chris Pool tweeted something about a Graham Glasgow visiting Michigan this weekend. [update: and as I write this I see Tom's all-seeing eye has confirmed it.] Glasgow is a 2011 OL from Illinois with no ranking anywhere. After reading the stuff available on Rivals it seems he's a preferred walk-on sort. He had an Eastern Michigan offer but Minnesota was talking to him about walking on. Also he just visited Ohio State(!), and I'm pretty sure they're full since OL Chris Carter ended up not getting charged* in his Hand That Rocks The Cradle case. If he's looking for a walk-on spot Michigan can accommodate that, and possibly sell him on the idea he's got a better shot at PT at M.

*[Which seriously people, when you complain about Ohio State being "at it again" you sound ridiculous. Fulmer Cup standings do not lie unless we're talking about Michigan State. Feel free to hammer OSU for its regular scandals involving their players having contact with boosters and Kiffin-esque secondary violation collection, but as far as behavior goes people who live in fairly sturdy brick houses shouldn't throw rocks at others in fairly sturdy brick houses. It's pointless and you look silly.]

Exactly wrong. Excellent The Only Colors post on the effect losing Korey Lucious has had on the Spartan basketball team stands in magnificent contrast to the News's take: "Deflating loss exposes Spartans' lack of grit, heart." This is exactly wrong. MSU is playing an elf who bakes cookies. He is backing up another goofy walk-on. This is the corrected version of that headline:

Deflating loss exposes Spartans' excess of grit, heart

Or:

Deflating loss exposes Spartans' lack of persons to put balls through hoop

Not that this will stop anyone's stupid meme. Some poll found that 81 percent of the state didn't go to either Michigan or Michigan State. A third of these people said they weren't fans of either. A third said they were MSU fans, a third said they were Michigan fans.

Graph. Here's a graph of Michigan's offerees and where they went from Touch The Banner:

It'll be interesting to see how this graph shifts under Hoke. Guessing the overall numbers get smaller and the SEC's share shrinks drastically.

Etc.: Kansas ditched the students who follow players around to make sure they're in class and is now going with senior citizens. About half of I-A has gotten nailed for major violations, but major ain't what it used to be. Michigan gets to be on a list of a dozen schools that got hit twice YAYAYAYAYAY. Bob Wojonowski being Radley Balko back in the day. Previous article about Rodriguez dissing former players disputed by Woodley, Orr, Runyan. Stewart Mandel obliterates Saban's attempt to defend himself from negative PR about oversigning.

Note for students: Maize Rage mass meeting 7PM in the League's Vandenberg room. Who wants some FREEEEEEE PIIIZZZAAAA?

Further adventures in epic rootability. Remember how Darryl Stonum was this year's Roy Roundtree, who was in turn Michigan's version of Rick Vaughn? Yeah, Stonum is taking the comparison as far as he can without literally raiding whichever Planet Hollywood contains the skull-and-crossbones originals:

Awesome. He was probably thinking Run DMC, but either way it is epic.

Just plain epic. This is astounding:

I would buy a billion of these before they were taken from us. Sadly these are not extant, but you can get it as your wallpaper.

The Freude. You will want to check out This Week In Schadenfreude this go-round for obvious reasons:

My 11 year old thinks ND football is a joke
by btd (2010-09-19 00:43:18)

She can't grasp why they are even on TV. She said it tonight. "Daddy, why does anyone care about Notre Dame? Have they ever been good?"

Basically there isn't a kid alive today that has ever seen real ND football.

This running diary didn't even make it in because I ran out of room:

12:06 Went and got a bottle of NyQuil and a bottle of Woodford Reserve. Placed them both on the table in front of me. Flipping a coin to see which one I start chugging.

12:10 Why?

12:16 WHY DO WE HAVE THIS BLACK CLOUD HANGING OVER OUR FOOTBALL PROGRAM!?!?

The freude is strong this week. BONUS: find out where Tacopants transferred. It won't be a surprise.

Mascot win. So the Ohio Bobcat got fired, reprimanded, and banned for life from Ohio athletics for a spectacular attack on the Ohio State mascot:

So worth it. He's never going to have to buy a drink in Ann Arbor, State College, or any other Big Ten city.

Elsewhere in fantastic misbehavior, Orson's Alphabetical catches an old Arizona fan shattering a child's innocence:

The look on the kid's face afterward is priceless: "this never happens to me in Iowa."

The latest lack of outrage. This is probably the most convincing explanation of an assumed ref disaster ever. It's about the delay of game, or lack thereof, on the Michigan State fake punt:

"The responsibility is assigned to the Back Judge, who in this situation was standing beneath the upright. Proper mechanics dictate that his focus be directed to the play clock as it approaches zero. When the play clock display reads zero, he must re-direct his attention to the ball. At that time, if the snap has not started, a flag will be thrown for delay of game. If the snap has begun, no flag will be thrown.

"Under these procedures, there will always be a small amount of lag time between the time the clock reads zero and the time the Back Judge is able to see the football.

"On the play in question, this lag time created the situation where it appears the play clock expired just before the snap. We believe the snap occurred well within the normal lag time for the Back Judge to make this determination.

That makes total sense. I wish officials would do this more often. Issue little dicta explaining why penalties were (or in some cases, were not) called and you reduce the complaining at least somewhat.

Bork on. Hockey season is going to start soon and Red Berenson is talking them up:

"We realized we were as good as anybody at the end of last year and this team will take that (confidence) and put that on the ice,"  …

"Does it make our team better? Definitely, it's huge," said Berenson of having Hagelin and Caporusso back. "You're so much more optimistic because you know who your top players are. I felt they had their heads in the right place. They are really invested in this program."

The usual blunt assessments of early departures (Pacioretty and Palushaj are in the AHL and "probably don't like it") are also included along with an interesting Cold War II tidbit: the rink will be Olympic size. Advantage to a quicker Michigan team, no doubt.

Etc.: Congratulations, commenters, for not being NDNation about Dantonio's heart attack. It is in this way we will not be a newspaper's comment section. By request, shots of Michigan Stadium's renovation from above. MGoBlog invades North Korea. Srsly. The Team, The Team, The Team: the video they played Saturday.