purdue

For the duration of his tenure, Joe Tiller was infamously supposed to be the guy behind Tom Dienhart's bitchy anonymous quotes in the Sporting News. So it's good to know that the mustachioed Wilford Brimley impersonator doesn't fall far from the diabeetus commercial:

"We've had about 90 kids on campus all summer and they've been in summer school. We don't have a general studies major at Purdue so they've had to take real classes too."

This, as anyone who remembers the grand tenure of Garrett Bushong can tell you, is hypocritcal bunk. Purdue is an engineering college full of nerds that preserves a small section of itself so it can jam Big Ten athletes onto its campus. This is totally fine by me as long as their head coach doesn't take shots at Michigan for doing the same thing. Presenting the Purdue major breakdown*:

Gimme Shelter

Count: 21.

I Can Manage And Stuff

Count: 7.

Basically Kinesiology

Many Purdue players have variants on lifting weights all scientific-like as their majors:

Count: 14.

Majors That A Lot Of Football Players End Up In Everywhere

Count: 14

Possibly Actual Majors

Count: 6

The Grand Accounting

60% of Purdue's declared majors are either in one specific fake major or physical education. 90% of them are in stuff like the aforementioned, construction, or the usual diet of communications/sociology. Danny Hope should stick to personal grooming tips during his public appearances. That is all.

*(Notes and caveats: Purdue's site was pretty good about picking out walk-ons but some of the guys without bios or at positions like third string kicker or backup longsnapper didn't explicitly mention it. Kickers, punters, long snappers, and anyone without a bio or with a really short bio that didn't mention recruiting rankings is excluded. So are the folk explicitly declared walk-ons. Undecided players and those who "plan on" majoring in something or another are excluded, but the breakdown of the planning stuff was basically more of the same with a greater emphasis on "management.")

[Ed: Spring report coming this afternoon. I have to decrypt some stuff.]

The longest win streak in the history of the MCLA ends at 49. Michigan coming out of the weekend with a 1-1 record on the road wasn't a surprise, but the way they did it certainly was. The undefeated and seemingly-invincible Wolverines were run off the field by reeling Colorado for three quarters before staging a furious comeback that fell just short. They recovered against #2 Colorado State a couple days later and will likely maintain their #1 ranking.

Colorado

Only able to check the score of this game on the UmichLacrosse Twitter feed, it sounded like the Wolverines were getting run off the field on Friday night in every way. In actuality though, they were the more dominant team in every way except the scoreboard. Michigan had 48 shots to Colorado's 33, nearly doubled them up in groundballs, and cleared the ball at a higher rate. In addition, David Reinhard won nearly 70% of the faceoffs he took.

So what was the difference? Michigan wasn't getting good looks at the cage early in the game, and wasn't forcing Colorado's goalie to work quite as hard as Mark Stone. Only seven Wolverine shots in the first half were on the goal, and though three of them went in, Colorado scored six before the break, while forcing Stone to make five additional saves.

The third and fourth quarters, Michigan had more effective offense, but Colorado's Bradley Macnee came up huge in the cage throughout the third, while his teammates gave CU an insurmountable 11-5 lead going into the fourth. Though a late Wolverine rally would bring the final score within a pair of goals, they were unable to finish the comeback, and lost for the first time in nearly three years.

Official Site Recap.

Colorado State

Nobody knew exactly how Michigan would react after a loss, because it hadn't happened in quite some time. In fact, nobody except the seniors on this team had ever lost a game in maize and blue(!). It's no surprise that a John Paul-led squad would be able to turn that adversity into motivation against a top-notch opponent, as the Wolverines came right back with a comfortable 10-6 win over previously-undefeated #2 Colorado State.

Michigan was able to turn yet another dominant statistical performance into scoring production, breaking a 5-5 three-quarter tie with a dominant 5-1 fourth quarter for the big win. Eight different Wolverines scored, with Trevor Yealy and David Rogers both notching a pair. Stone came back from his shaky start against Colorado to stop 15 shots while only allowing 6.

The Colorado loss seems to have been just what this team needed. They had been sleepwalking a little too much in previous games, and destroying their air of invincibility could re-energize them for a Nationa Championship run. If the CSU game is any indication, that may be exactly the case.

Official Site Recap. Colorado State Recap.

What it all means

[…after the jump. That's how you tease, baby.]

Okay, he's enrolled. Now strike! Devin Gardner finally managing his early enrollment has spurred not one but two columns echoing a theme from this blog. It's "please God, no more freshman quarterbacks." Angelique Chengelis:

So former Inkster star Devin Gardner has enrolled at Michigan, and the potentially next great quarterback will participate in spring practice and compete for the starting job this fall.

Operative word: Compete.

And the Daily's Andy Reid:

So, Devin Gardner is officially on campus — but be careful what you wish for, Wolverine fans. He’s not the answer for next season.

I agree with both takes, as is obvious anyone who's been reading this site's annoyingly persistent demand to redshirt Gardner if at all possible. I've read a couple other evaluations of Gardner's recent play that jive with what I though I saw in the later editions of the MGoCreeperVan's Gardner highlight videos: his throwing motion degraded over the course of the year from the very pro-style delivery I saw in Inkster's opener against Pioneer to the shotput pushing motion that was more prevalent in the state championship game. I don't think Gardner got a lot of dedicated QB coaching at Inkster and will probably need a year of constant correction to get his mechanics back to the point they were at when he was the #1 QB in the country to Rivals.

Is it really not that bad? I basically share the same opinion most people seem to have about this Michigan class: it's short on blue chips and—on paper—the worst recruiting class since Kelly Baraka and Reggie Benton were the highlights of the lame 2001 group. In terms of production on the field, Lloyd Carr's last two classes are probably worse for reasons that aren't anyone's fault, but at least when those kids were in high school people thought they were pretty good.

But actually it might not be that big a deal. This was created by a Rivals poster elegantly named "Stinky P1nky" on the 21st. [Update: FWIW, the poster in question first put this chart on The Mainboard.] It is thus a tiny bit dated but the changes since then are small and the resulting chart is an interesting one:

Michigan's class is #11 nationally if you average out the four major services that do these things, though I'm not that familiar with MaxPreps's rankings. (They're probably a little better than that now since the Black commit temporarily bumped them a spot on Scout and Rivals, but then again they'll probably fall by signing day as they're almost full and other teams have more room to add players.) Notre Dame is just behind M and probably dropped after losing a couple of high profile recruits, one of whom is a four-star defensive end from Indiana who goes to a Catholic high school. Harbaugh can recruit a little bit.

This doesn't take class sizes into account very well and thus probably overstates the class quality, but at the very least it's a lot of solid players who will help Michigan solidify the roster, banish walk-ons to the scout team, and put them on a talent footing at or above the Wisconsin-Iowa range in which it's obviously possible to have an excellent team. If and when Michigan gets back there and the maelstrom of negativity surrounding Rodriguez subsides, a recruiting bounce would have them back at their traditional level. And last year's class, the first that Rodriguez was wholly responsible for, certainly indicates that is where Rodriguez would like to go.

The fudge factor. Now to throw some cold water on the above positivity with a seemingly unrelated Notre Dame commitment. A relatively anonymous TE/OT from Kentucky named Tate Nichols is committed to Stanford, but then backs off and switches to Notre Dame. His rankings then:

Two of the three main recruiting sites considered Nichols a tight end recruit and as such didn't slot him very high. Both Scout and Rivals tabbed Nichols as a 2-star tight end recruit with Scout considering him the 52nd overall TE. ESPN did list him as an offensive lineman, giving him 3-stars, a 75 grade rating, and a ranking as the 101st overall offensive tackle recruit.

His rankings now:

Update: These were his rankings on Saturday when he committed. Today, Tuesday morning, Scout has changed him to a 3-star offensive line prospect and the #71 overall OT recruit.

Would this have happened if Nichols switched his commitment to Kentucky? I seriously doubt it. But when it's Notre Dame or Michigan picking up a who-dat type recruit that guy tends to grab stars almost instantly. This year Michigan saw it with Carvin Johnson, Jake Ryan, and, to a lesser extent since he's still two stars on Rivals, Ray Vinopal. All of those guys were unranked or two stars until their Michigan commit prompted a re-evaluation.

That's not to say that the guys who got bumps didn't deserve them, but it's obvious that committing to a primo school causes the sites to re-evaluate your game. San Diego State commits are not afforded this privilege.

Speaking of Jibreel Black. Useful: Touch the Banner has a scouting report in which Brandon Graham gets name-checked. Useless: remember these guys?

Apparently part of the Rodriguez rebuild is getting a couple of defensive linemen whose names combine in a funny way when they're on the bench: Michigan has just recruited guys named "Black" and "Ash." They should go the whole nine yards and invite Ball State running back Brandon Kish to walk on and then have poker pro Tony Ma hang around on the sidelines.

Wait, so now you're mad your guy didn't get hit by an elbow? Via UMHoops on the twitter is this weird incident from the Purdue game:

Kramer was defending on the left wing in front of Michigan's bench when Laval Lucas-Perry swung his elbow high, forcing Kramer to bob out of the way.

Seconds later, Michigan called a timeout and Kramer walked toward Purdue's huddle motioning to his arm and patting his elbow. That was likely directed to the officials.

Apparently, Kramer also told coach Matt Painter. Painter -- spouting mad -- then appeared to go toward Michigan's bench. He was held back by official Steve Olson, who had his hand on Painter's chest. Painter appeared to be jawing at Michigan assistant coach John Mahoney. Mahoney came over to Painter and appeared to pat him on the back and then walk away.

And by "incident" we mean "non-incident." Was this on TV? I don't recall this, though I admit that for a good chunk of the second half I was not paying super-close attention. I imagine a gritty gritadillo like Kramer spends a lot of time dodgy elbows that want to go where his craggy, pore-laden gritface happens to be. A little hissy from your coach about not actually getting hit is a little weird even if he got clocked last year. He's Gritopher Gritmer: he likes elbows in the face. Makes him feel alive.

Side note: Mahoney is the assistant who got T-ed up last year. He's yappy.

It's a matter of national security. The Detroit News reports back on their efforts to FOIA something from MSU about the Posse Roundup & Engineer/Woman Beatdown:

Most details of the altercation at the Rather Hall dormitory, however, were blacked out on the document. Officials cited sections of the FOIA law that protect an individual from unwarranted invasion of privacy and legal proceedings in an ongoing criminal investigation as reasons why most of the information was withheld.

Officials also declined to reveal details of six 911 calls made around the time of the incident, video surveillance footage in the dormitory, results of polygraph tests and taped interviews with players.

This is not surprising given the lengths to which universities go to avoid FOIA compliance, and I said earlier that the four additional departures from Michigan State's team seemed like a stiff price to pay. I do wonder if some of the big names returning to the team (Cunningham and Dell, mostly) might be the beneficiaries of a double standard that Michigan State would not like to see in the public eye.

Also: six 911 calls. !!!

Meanwhile, two more Spartans have been charged. They are DT Oren Wilson and perpetually troubled walk-on Myles White. White 1) was involved in the first PREWB, 2) just plead guilty to public urination, and 3) is now involved in PREWB II. Surely this must be the end for him. He's a walk-on. I track because I fret: Myles White is incoming Michigan tailback Austin White's brother.

Wilson started all last year as the NT, FWIW.

Small disaster apparently averted. Depending on what you believe, 2010 hockey recruit Jacob Fallon either got the boot or voluntarily left the NTDP, thus throwing his immediate future in flux and opening up a possibility he would play in the CHL. That is apparently not going to happen. Fallon has latched on with the Indiana Ice of the USHL and will presumably be in Ann Arbor next year unless Dean Lombardi drafts him and then kidnaps his mom.

Good work, Nike. This kind of stuff is why I'm glad Michigan got away from Nike:

That's a before-and-after of the Michigan State logo. New guy is pissed off because he looks dumb. Might go knock around some electrical engineers for variety.

Michigan State fans are not happy if a poll on The Only Colors is any indication. Opinion is currently 7-86(!!!) against. Required PREWB-related photoshop can be found at The Wolverine Blog.

Purdue 69 Michigan 59, Michigan 10-9 (3-4 Big Ten)

Even when I assumed Manny Harris would be hitting the court in West Lafayette with the rest of the Michigan team, I thought Purdue would pretty easily crack an 11.5-point spread. When word got out that he was suspended for the game, I was expecting a blood-letting. At times, it did look like that. But somehow, Michigan managed to scrape out some good possessions and keep the game close. There is no such thing as a moral victory, but this had to be about as close as it gets.

DeShawn Sims was just about all Michigan had working early, but Zack Novak chipped in to help out, finally beating his shooting bugaboo (4-7 from beyond the arc). Sims showed why he's such a great player, carrying the team on his back at a time when Purdue probably could have quintuple-teamed him with no risk of anyone else scoring.

Sadly, Michigan only plays the Boilermakers once this year, and it leaves with a taste of "what could have been?" had Manny participated. As it is, we saw the Michigan team we've known for most of the year: Not bad, but outside of the two stars (or one in this game), not good enough to win the big ones.

BULLETS

• Why, Manny, why? I'm also pretty interested in hearing how a practice can get chippy enough for a guy to get suspended for unsportsmanlike conduct. That was his first missed game in 85 career contests.
• There's no plausible reason that Matt Vogrich should pretty much ever get a rebound, but time and again he manages to do so. He had two defensive rebounds, and one offensive that the boxscore doesn't credit to him, for whatever reason.
• Even when he doesn't shoot well, it's safe to say that Zack Novak is the third most important player on the team. When Manny doesn't play and Novak is actually dropping bombs, his impact to the team is elevated even further.
• My eye for the intricacies of basketball is admittedly untrained, but it really seemed like Stu Douglass had a poor game defensively. There were times that his lack of effort really jumped out at me.
• Purdue is a ton more talented than Michigan at nearly every position (even Sims has competition with JaJuan Johnson), and without Manny, they managed to keep it close. That sucks for now, but does bode well when Beilein gets more of his own players.
• The Wolverines have been rebounding surprisingly well of late. They were only out-rebounded by Purdue by a margin of 4.

Up Next

The Wolverines host in-state rival #6/7 Michigan State on Tuesday. On short rest, and potentially without Manny for a second consecutive contest, things could get ugly. It is a Maize Out, so pick up your gear today or tomorrow, or plan to show up early: the first 3,000 fans to Crisler will receive a maize t-shirt.

The Essentials

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

Michigan

Since I didn't recap the Wisconsin game in it's own post, a brief overview: It was good and then it sucked. And as much as I don't like to whine about the refs, I thought this game (as with most at the Kohl Center) was officiated... sketchily. Moving on...

Though the tournament has been a hardly-realistic dream since much, much earlier this season, the Wolverines would have been back in the picture had they beaten Wisconsin. They didn't, so each game becomes a must-win to keep the dream alive. Unfortunately, that means they'll have to beat some really good teams. Having Wisconsin on the ropes in the Kohl Center is a good sign they can get it done, but now it's time to finish.

DeShawn Sims was a beast against Wisconsin for 25ish minutes, in no small part because they were missing Jon Leuer. It won't be as easy against a fully-heathy Purdue team, and he's going to need some help to get the job done. Manny Harris was having some success Purdue last year before his questionable ejection, and Michigan's shooters will have to be on their game as well.

Update: HAHA J/K MANNY IS SUSPENDED

Purdue

The Boilermakers started the season on fire, racing out to a 14-0 start before losing consecutive games to Puronsin, Ohio State, and Northwestern. They stopped the slide on Tuesday against Illinois, and sit at 15-3 on the season.

Purdue is led by a few guys who aren't quite stars on the Evan Turner-Manny Harris level, but are well-known nationally, and a few of them should play in the NBA. 6-4 guard E'Twaun Moore uses the most possessions for Purdue, and leads the team in eFG%. 6-8 forward Robbie Hummel might have the most name recognition on the team, if only because Purdue struggled somewhat last year when he was out with a back injury. He's a good rebounder and shooter, and has Purdue's best offensive rating. 6-10 center JaJuan Johnson rebounds well, swats a lot of shots, and gets to the free throw line more than any other Boilermaker. 6-3 guard Chris Kramer leads the team in getting elbowed in the face, and also in opposing fans wanting to elbow him in the face.

Purdue plays a different defensive style than Wisconsin, though both are known as exceptional defensive teams. Where the Badgers are content to prevent any penetration and clog the inside, Purdue will get out on the perimeter and try to take away passing lanes with their tight man defense.

Tempo-Free Breakdown

If you need an explanation of the stats, check out Ken Pomeroy.

Difference of more than 10 places in the national rankings get a 1-letter advantage, more than 100 gets a 2-letter advantage, more than 200 gets a 3-letter advantage, etc.

Going into the game at Wisconsin, I thought MIchigan was a team finally rounding into form (hey, just a little late, guys!), but a team that was finally playing its best ball would have been able to come away with that win if they wanted any hope of making the tournament. So, we're left with the tough truth: Michigan is an NIT-caliber team, and Purdue is a top-5 seed caliber team.

Surprisingly, though, Purdue doesn't have huge advantages in any particular tempo-free category over the Wolverines (although they do have some advantage in nearly everything). This looks like yet another game (as almost all seem to recently) that Michigan should be able to keep close and then hopefully make a bid to steal it. That will be a tough task on the road, especially since Michigan had fewer days to prepare for this game than the Boilermakers did.

KenPom sees an 11-point MIchigan loss, and Vegas likes the Boilers by 11.5. I see this game being a little less close than that, and Purdue ices with free throws in the final couple minutes to emerge with a 16-point victory.

Rounding up the week's best in user-created content.

A little off the wall choice for the diarist of the week. Captain Obvious writes an awesome set of lyrics about the state of Michigan's football team:

It's a punt block when it's already too late

It's a no-punting sign on your Space Emperor's leg

It's like ten thousand Slots when you need is a MIKE

It's meeting the Center of my dreams

And then meeting his shredded up knee

And isn't it ironic... don't you think

A little too ironic... and yeah I really do think...

It's like rain on Homecoming Day

It's a blown punt when you've already faked

It's the three points that you just couldn't take

Who would've thought ... it figures

Congratulations, Captain Obvious, you are the Diarist of the Week.

michelin looks at similarities between the overall trajectories of the Notre Dame and Michigan football programs.

The promising thing is that, unlike ND, UM has more, not less, starters coming back for the next two years. Clearly, it’s way too early to tell—as Brian has intimated today—but I can't help worrying that we might end up like ND if we keep getting rid of coaches before they can build their program.  

I think at this point, there's no (rational) fan calling for Rich Rodriguez to be fired at least until the end of next year, so this overall worry may not be an issue. I still recommend clicking through because lolnd.

On a similar note, Brady2Terrell looks at the 47 coaches who have started their Big Ten coaching careers with 2 consecutive losing seasons:

*5 (10.6%) have won even a single Big Ten title;

*5 (10.6%) have finished their tenure with even a winning record;

*2 (4.3%) have won at least one Big Ten title AND finished with a winning record; and

*0 have won national titles.

The numbers aren't pretty, but there's still hope ahead for Michigan fans. Like he says, it's not that we're screwed, it's that we're in uncharted territory here. A positive comparison would likely require winning one or both of the last two games. Hey, then Rich can be like... Jackie Sherrill?

TAMU was 5-5 going into its final game at Texas, which was playing for the SWC Title. TAMU blew out the Horns in Austin, something like 38-12, sending the Horns to one of those nondefunct bowls. The 6-5 record wasn't good enough for a bowl game in those days (unless you were ND or UM) so TAMU stayed home but the win in Austin took all of the heat off of Sherrill.

TAMU went on to win 3 consecutive SWC titles in 85-86-87 and beat Texas each year. Sherrill had finally "arrived" at a school where Football is king over the other sports.

Let's hear it for positivity!

The week started off with some seriously emo posts following the Purdue loss. Geaux_Blue said:

I guess why I made this diary is simple. For those of us All In, the road is narrow and uphill. The likelihood is 5-7 and the off-season is going to be months of looking at checkbooks and wondering "why did I spend $50 to drink at the bar and watch non-Siller shred us in November." This is difficult and not even close to the experience of overcoming kneeshoulderelbowhead like Forcier or any player is facing. But the fanbase has its own wounds. And they're licked (that's what she said).

A rational take for the fanbase that continues to support Michigan.

Lordfoul sums up what we know coming out of the Purdue game. In condensed form:

1. Michigan has the worst defense in the B10.
2. The offense continues to improve.
3. This confluence of probabilities is not favorable for the current coaching staff. Michigan is known for giving its coaches time and not being hasty in firings. That said this situation may not right itself in time to save Rich Rod and friends even given the extra slack.
4. I would put it at at least improbable that we will win either of our last two games this season.
5. Danny Hope is an asshole.

I disagree with point #3. Dude, there's no way Rich gets fired after two years, and a (highly likely) bowl game is probably enough progress to save his hide for another year. He may get fired after that, but it wouldn't be because there wasn't enough time, it would be because he was given enough time and failed.

hekdchi looks at what has improved between year 1 and year 2 of the Rodriguez era:

This entry will list the raw numbers of Michigan's 2008 season versus the 2009 season thus far to demonstrate where the team has and has not improved in the Rich Rodriguez era.

Hint: offense good, defense bad. This is probably not terribly surprising to anyone. Of note is that the defense is giving up fewer points than last year, and has improved in a couple other categories (though slightly). Expanding on that idea is clarkiefromcanada, who takes umbrage with the use of the term "regression":

Like all of you I am totally frustrated with how this is working out this year; however, I am sick and tired of the naysayers, trolls and newbie idiots posting the exact same material on "regression".

Amen. Especially since it's totally fair to expect a defense that lost half of its starters will get a little worse. Speaking of losing all those starters, Misopogon gives a handy graphical representation of his stellar "Decimated Defense" series. There are kittens involved. Jokewood also shows that even the sheer numbers, especially of upperclassmen, are a sign that Michigan isn't going to be a great defense:

The rest of the Big Ten averages 50% more upperclassmen on defense.  We are dead last in the conference by a wide margin in terms of experienced defensive players.   Purdue and Notre Dame - the two teams closest in terms of youth - also have terrible defenses, against which Michigan averaged 35 ppg this year.

It may be a while before the numbers are worked out, too.

Steve Sharik's awesome X-and-O post was frontpaged; you're probably familiar with it.

Familiarize yourselves with the veer, fools.

Etc.: Wolverine in Exile runs down the BCS rankings. 909Dewey talks about expectations for Rich Rodriguez coming in, how they've shifted, and how he's living up to them. stubob previews the ugly games of the week. The Mathlete looks at the Purdue game by the numbers. I recommend you stop reading before you get to pass defense. The man... the myth... THE_KNOWLEDGE predicts coaching changes.