scheduling

The Omen. Trey Burke had a crazy-good final high school season, and so did Derrick Walton. Then Trey Burke started putting videos of his summer workout regime on youtube. Derrick Walton's doing that too:

That step-back makes 'em say uhn. Michigan's going to be just fine at the point this year.

Reiterating. Brady Hoke was on Rich Eisen's podcast, wherein he reiterated Jake Ryan's timetable and said some other things:

On incoming freshman tailback Derrick Green being in the mix this fall: "Oh, he'll be in the mix, and Fitz (Toussaint) is healthy now. (Toussaint) is unbelievable how he works (coming off a broken leg). We'll find out (about Green). Like Michigan, you earn it, you earn it every day. You're evaluated every day. We're excited about Derrick, we're excited about that whole class."

Hoke says there won't be another Ten Year War, which lies. Also, only incompetent germans:

On some good things coming out of Ohio: "There's a guy named Schembechler who was from Ohio. We have Charles Woodson, Desmond Howard from Ohio, and the head football coach at Michigan is from Ohio."

We're #1, locally. Nebraska paper averages everyone's finish in Big Ten sports, comes out with Michigan on top by a significant margin: 

If there is a Big Ten sport, Michigan has a team for it.

And it's likely a pretty good team.

The Wolverines' average Big Ten finish for 2012-13, among their 25 men's and women's teams, was 4.04, tops in the conference.

Nebraska's 21 teams had an average finish of 5.57, good for sixth place -- the same spot the Huskers occupied in 2011-12.

Minnesota was second with 4.43, Ohio State third. MSU was 10th, Iowa last.

Surprise. The 2015 Big Ten schedule is an inverse of the 2014 one, except I guess in terms of order. Michigan's docket:

• OCTOBER 3: @ Maryland
• OCTOBER 10: Northwestern
• OCTOBER 17: MSU
• BYE
• OCTOBER 31: @ Minnesota
• NOVEMBER 7: Rutgers
• NOVEMBER 14: @ Indiana
• NOVEMBER 21: @ PSU
• NOVEMBER 28: OSU

Unfortunate bye timing. Not too worried about that @ PSU/OSU double bill since Penn State will still be in the meat of their sanctions at that point.

Peppers peppers peppers peppers peppers. If Jabrill Peppers's last name was Buffalo, that would be a sentence. Instead it is just a lead-in to Sam Webb profiling Mr. Peppers in the Detroit News. Peppers had a rough background—as you probably know, his dad has been in prison for going on ten years—and came through it:

"My brother (Don Curtis) was actually in (the street life), but that was the main person who sheltered me from it," Peppers explained. "He was my role model even though he was not doing what he was supposed to do. He kept me from doing the things that he was doing. I actually wanted to be out there with him. I didn't have a male role model in my life, so he was the closest thing to one. I was looking up to him so I was fighting every day, but every time he saw me out there in the street he would tighten me up and tell me to go home. He would tell me, 'This is not how (you're) going to do it! This is not how (you're) going to live (your) life.'"

His brother was murdered in 2010. The whole piece is highly recommended; it's going to be easy to root for him. Not that I have problems rooting for bionic supermen anyway.

Hello Hopkins. The Big Ten adds Johns Hopkins, which conveniently gets them to six lacrosse teams (M, OSU, PSU plus the two new additions). That's the minimum for an autobid and, like hockey, lacrosse is a minor but burgeoning sport that can fill airtime on the BTN. Hopkins is one of the sport's all-time great powers with a ludicrous 44 national titles, but once they missed the tourney this year for the first time since 1971 they decided something needed to change.

Hopkins is an academic powerhouse, of course, and since its only DI sport is lacrosse their addition doesn't do anything except set the Big Ten up as a power conference. The Big Ten wanted JHU pretty badly, as they allowed them to keep their current deal with ESPNU.

Hope. Brian Kelly on the M-ND series:

"We'd like to play each other," Kelly said. "I don't think it's ending. Give us some time to make it work."

I have my doubts since Notre Dame is stuck with five ACC games year—but they're not in a conference—and now that Michigan has MSU and OSU on the road at the same time they no longer want but in fact desperately need a sexy nonconference game in even years, when ND is away to USC and would prefer a home game against a marquee opponent themselves.

The dumbest thing Gordon Gee said. I know, I know, but where does your head have to be at when Rutgers is doing what Rutgers does right now and you drop this:

The blocking strategy is that we simply have now put the ACC in an almost no-win position. So who do they immediately go to? Louisville.

Yes. A no-win position in which they bring in the defending national champions in basketball and a BCS-bowl-winning football team with a fevered fanbase. Calling Bret Bielema a thug who was going to get fired after three straight Rose Bowl appearances is a strong #2, I'll grant.

Etc.: Yes in fact the Denard injury does hurt your heart. Indiana game at 3:30. The CJHL is coming down hard on teams in their purview that damage the NCAA eligibility of their players. Denard in Jacksonville. Free shirts for everyone. Scouting Tim Hardaway in preparation for the NBA draft. Lol rutgers.

the just released schedules were a flat-out statement that the B10 doesn't believe SOS will matter in playoff selection

MORE LIKE AMBEARCROMBIE AND BEARFITCH, AMIRITE. Offensive linemen Kyle Kalis and Erik Magnuson as models of a certain variety:

Slight difference? Naw. Yes I am going to take this opportunity to note that Kalis seems closer to the field than Magnuson solely based on resemblance to Soda Popinski.

You are victorious. Savor your victory. Spencer will eat cheese, and refugees will be settled, and if any of them look like they might have a double-digit block percentage we're sitting pretty well.

Behold the eye lasers of Brady Hoke.

They are looking. Michigan's got a couple scholarships open and Hoke got locked into a luncheon where fans pepper him with questions so the first one everyone goes with is about the backup QB—could be worse, could be the starter. Answer:

"Yeah, we are (still looking)," coach Brady Hoke said Monday before the West Michigan Sports Commission Annual Luncheon at the J.W. Marriott in Grand Rapids. "But, it's one of those things where there's a lot of I's to dot and T's to cross to make sure it's the right fit."

Michigan's got a month and a half before their summer semester starts, and hopefully they'll be able to reel in someone by then.

The double troll. Hoke got a two-for-one in at the same event:

"The Notre Dame game, that rivalry, which they're chickening out of," Hoke said Monday ….

The remark drew thunderous applause from the crowd.

"They're still gonna play Michigan State, they're gonna play Purdue, but they don't want to play Michigan," Hoke continued. "I don't know how they made that decision."

Tell it like it is, man. Kicker JJ McGrath approves.

U MAD? Also on twitter (shut up Bry):

Our man Coach Mattison getting ready to chill in the community with his gold framed shades. #michigandifference twitter.com/JeffHecklinski…

— Jeff Hecklinski (@JeffHecklinski) May 11, 2013

#inthecommunity #intheweightroom #inurbasesteelingurdudes

Um, okay then. I guess if Michigan's going to have a nonconference game at a neutral site New York isn't the worst place:

"The reception we've had in New York every year we've played there has been tremendous," Beilein said. "I think it's the plan to get there often. How often, I don't know.

"Is it every year? Every other year? I don't know. Right now, it'll be two years in a row and there's a tournament down the line we're obligated to as well. We're going to get there often."

I would prefer games on campus in all situations, but it's less of a big deal when you have Arizona and Iowa State coming in. Michigan is generally going to be the defacto home team against anyone they play there.

Regional: acquired. Also: Super Regional. Michigan got knocked out of the Big Ten softball tournament in the semis, a disappointing result for team with a 91% win rate in conference play. Despite that, Michigan did get a seed, specifically the eighth and last. That means that not only does Michigan host an NCAA regional this weekend, but if they advance they will host the super-regional.

Central Michigan vs Cal kicks things off at 4:30 PM Friday; Michigan hosts Valpo at 7PM. Unlike the Big Ten tourney, NCAA regionals are double-elimination. Valpo is 34-25 and was 11-9 in the Horizon League; they should be a pushover. Cal had a good overall record but was 10-14 in the Pac-12; Michigan mowed CMU down 11-0 in a mercy-rule game about three weeks ago.

Moar replays, fewer charges. The NCAA basketball rules committee didn't do much. They allowed some late-game replays—just what the game needs, more stoppages—and changed the charge rule so that a defender need to be set before an offensive player "starts his upward motion" to pass or shoot to not get called for a block.

I am not a fan. The game's problems stem from a refusal to call obvious fouls, as anyone who's flipped on the NBA playoffs after immersing themselves in this year's Big Ten schedule has been shocked to find out. All that hand-checking? Yeah, gone.

Tightening up the charge rule in that manner just seems unfair to the defender, who can get there in plenty of time and still get nailed because he didn't anticipate that by the time he was getting plowed in the chest the offensive player would put his arms up.

I am vaguely hopeful the proverbial crackdown will be more effective. From Andy Glockner:

The other changes, which really are just a re-emphasis of existing rules on the book, will require officials to consistently and, perhaps exhaustively, crack down on handchecking, armbars, and other techniques used both on a primary ballhandler and on cutters moving through the lane. If the officials do call this regularly, we’ll end up with a lot of fouls and free throws early in the season, and then hopefully teams will adjust and we’ll see better, more free-flowing offense later in the campaign. The off-ball contact in the lane is an especially big problem in the college game, and it will again challenge coaches who teach this as part of their defensive approach to find another way to successfully guard.

If that actually gets called like the NBA, the game is going to get a lot cleaner once we get past the section of time when all games are horrible foul-fests. That would be great for Michigan, which is historically a low-foul team that uses a crapton of cuts.

I AGREE WITH NICK SABAN. I've been agreeing with Dave Brandon lately about things like "how many conference games should we have?" and "should we schedule Virginia Tech," so I may as well just agree with everyone about everything. Here we go:

“I’m for five conferences – everybody playing everybody in those five conferences,” theAlabama coach said Thursday night before speaking at a Crimson Caravan stop. “That’s what I’m for, so it might be 70 teams, and everybody’s got to play ’em. …”

Saban reiterated his desire for the SEC to expand from eight conference games to nine per year for each team.

I… I'm with Napoleon.

Hockey commits. Michigan picked up a commit from OJHL goalie Hayden Lavigne for either next year or the year after. So while the door for Rutledge is hypothetically still open, he's just picked up two competitors for the rest of his career. I don't think he's coming back. Lavigne started 18 games last year, posting a .922 and being named "second team All-Prospect" in his league. He was a third round pick in the most recent USHL draft even though his OJHL team expects him back this year.

The addition of Lavigne signals a sea change in the way Michigan is acquiring goalies. Used to be they'd plug and play a top prospect every 3-4 years. Now they're adding a third contender to the mix, and instead of first-round draft picks they're random guys. This can work. It's clearly not the best way to go about things, but Jeff Jakatis and various Miami goalies have proven that goalies are weird and can come from anywhere.

Michigan also picked up a commit from a USHL defenseman named Cutler Martin. He's a '94 (ie, he'll be 20 when he comes in next year) and has very little internet profile out there. Seems like he'll be a third pairing guy to fill out roster depth.

At what point does something become and out-and-out lie? Here's NBC Irish blogger Keith Arnold claiming "Michigan asked to stop ND series first" because Bill Martin wanted to put in one of the occasional two-year hiatuses that the series has seen since its resurrection. Is this merely dishonest or a flat out lie? I think it's actually the latter, since of course "stopping" the ND series is something you do when you, say, cancel all future games. Michigan never had any intention of doing that.

Etc.: More than you needed to know about the all-time-wins chase from the perspective of a Texas fan. Women's tennis hits the sweet 16, their fourth straight. Men go down to a first-round upset. Soccer brings in the #6 class in the country(!). More things you wouldn't buy on eBay. It's Mott Takeover week at WTKA.

I don't know if Beamer is still going to be around for this but hey look an honest to god legit opponent in a home and home:

Michigan & Virginia Tech will play a home-and-home series during the 2020 & 2021 seasons; 2020 (Michigan Stadium), 2021 (Lane Stadium).

Da'Shawn Hand will be out of school for multiple years at that point, and the 2020 game is a home anchor for a year when Michigan plays OSU on the road. Thumbs up.

Michigan did a pretty good job at this this year but needs to avoid the Binghamtons of the world a bit more.

Les and Bo standing around, 1989. I'm just posting this for the shorts, really. Seriously, it's almost entirely guys just standing around. In shorts. From 1989.

This thing I am the foremost practitioner of is banned! Of all people, it fell to Barry Alvarez—he of the cancelled Virginia Tech game nigh on the eve of the season—to reveal that the Big Ten is going to dump I-AA opponents posthaste:

“The nonconference schedule in our league is ridiculous,” Alvarez said on WIBA-AM. “It’s not very appealing…

“So we’ve made an agreement that our future games will all be Division I schools. It will not be FCS schools.”

I… actually, I don't care. It does restrict the availability of cupcake games, thereby driving up the costs to schedule MAC folks and the like, but not significantly. If you want to have a walkover, Eastern Michigan's just as piteous as Northern Iowa—significantly moreso, in fact.

This man either gets it or does not get it depending on whether you get it or do not get it. Indiana's athletic director:

“What they like to do is make opportunities available to wear different kinds of uniforms,” Glass told Inside the Hall, “and we’ve had multiple opportunities to wear alternative uniforms, and we’ve respectfully passed on that. … I would never say never, but I think it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be doing that.”

A number of college and pro teams are trying the new jerseys out. We’ve seen schools such as Michigan State and Ohio State wear alternate uniforms in recent weeks.

So why not Indiana?

“The IU men’s basketball uniform is iconic,” Glass said. “I have a poster on my wall that is kind of like a fake group photo of all the All Americans that we’ve had in basketball, and the jerseys, whether its from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s or 2000s, pretty much look the same.”

Indiana fans say "thank God" in the comments, because they either get it or do not get it. Kids hate it and Indiana's program will crater on Wednesday as the Hoosiers mass defect to Bill Walton's new Hypercolor State team.

Even more rules changes, these of the on-field variety. It's February, which means something something flowers and the NCAA's annual set of rules changes. These are just proposals at the moment, so don't write your congressman yet.

The flashiest is jacking up the targeting flag. Now it comes with a free ejection, and if it's after halftime a suspension for next week. Also a free review:

To balance out the incidents where a player is unfairly penalized, officiating crews would be allowed to review the hit through video replay. Said the committee, the replay official "must have conclusive evidence that a player should not be ejected to overturn the call on the field."

Sounds a lot like the interminable and pointless elbowing reviews from basketball, except people do get hit with targeting flags at the moment. This will either lead to those calls disappearing again, or a parade of defensive backs making a split-second decision wrong heading to the locker room.

Others are minor cleanups aimed at giving referees an easier time:

• all blocks below the waist are legal if they're in front of a defender, illegal otherwise
• you can't spike the ball with one or two seconds left (presumably an attempt to prevent games where one coach disposes of his headset instantly and the other stages a hunger strike for his last second on the sideline)
• an extra official for Big 12 conference games
• Lane Kiffin and Boise State can't jerk people around by switching numbers or wearing blue on a blue field.

Nothing in those is going to have an impact on your viewing. I thought we'd hear something about repealing the helmet rule, too—seems like forcing a player without a helmet to stop playing is punishment enough. No dice on that one.

Good lord. Northwestern makes the case that their basketball outfit is cursed with low-effort sketchy photoshops and lots and lots of evidence:

Look, I'd do more unfortunate things for Northwestern basketball, butmore freakish unfortunate things happened to Northwestern basketball than happened to the players in that episode of the Simpsons where all the players get into freakish unfortunate accidents.

The Wildcats are now down JerShonn Cobb, Drew Crawford, Sanjay Lumpkin, Chier Ajou, Aaron Liberman, Alex Olah, and Jared Swopshire. A few of those guys are on redshirts and may be in the lineup if Carmody was inclined to waste their final year of eligibility on a team nowhere near the NCAA tourney; even so, that's Angry Blank Hating God territory and some.

This is Darren Rovell's fault, of course.

Bring on the bee people or whatever. Gerry DiNardo might know something about something. Not football, but moving because of football:

I don't think we'll ever play with a 14 team team conference, I think it'll be 16 (by 2014, when Maryland and Rutgers join). And I don't think they're going to go through all this conversation and all this realignment and do it again for just two more schools. Where are they going to come from? Hard to say, but I would guess the footprint would continue to grow southeast, so that would leave me to believe that would be the ACC. When you look at schools institutionally, they'll be schools similar to Maryland and Rutgers. They'll be an academic fit, which I think is important, and appear to be in areas where there's population, and I think those are the similar things that has driven expansion

The Big Ten Too is totally happening you guys. This is why the league is already talking about a ten-game conference schedule.

Nebraska hockey: not happening. Their athletic director just said "nope":

On his monthly appearance on the Husker Sports Network, Nebraska athletic director Shawn Eichorst threw cold water on the idea of the athletic department starting up a division 1 ice hockey program. The only sport Nebraska has any intention of starting is the new sand volleyball program. That's cold water, not the ice that a hockey program would need. A lot of people had hopes that with Eichorst's background at Wisconsin and the Big Ten's expansion into hockey that the Huskers might join the ranks of the division 1 schools with hockey programs. But that doesn't appear to be in the cards at this time.

The vast deserts of Nebraska have long teemed with moppets who have done nothing but play volleyball, so they should be an instant national power in that. If Nebraska isn't inclined to add hockey, I'm not sure who would. I bet it would be a success at Iowa—triangle of hate, good USHL base—but it's tough to find the money, somehow.

Zone read: not dead yet. Michigan will keep it around next year:

"Are we just getting rid of all the zone-reading? No, we're not," Borges said. "We're going to keep some of that stuff in our offense because we have a mobile quarterback, and as long as we have a quarterback that can threaten the defense as a runner, we're going to have bits and pieces of that that we're going to keep.

"Are we going to run him 25 times? That's over. We're not doing that anymore. That was logical, with what we had (in Denard Robinson). but now we want the quarterback to be more of a passer-runner, than a runner-passer."

I hope the end point is somewhere between 25 times and Gardner's ground efforts last year, where on-purpose runs were limited to some goal line rollouts and the occasional draw. I'd like to see Gardner get 6-8 called runs a game to go with whatever he gets on scrambles.

Etc.: Jeff Bridges has a go-to shirt. I'm fine with Michigan not having a member of Andy Staples's all two-star team this time around. It might be a problem that the Big Ten has eight kids on the team. Brief preview of Michigan's 2013 by me at The Saturday Edge. Goodbye, Matt Painter. Kenpom profiled.