It's Mott Week on MGO. Or MGoMottWeek. Or Buy Stuff so we can donate to Mott week. Still working on the title.

There are no bowl games in Ann Arbor. Neither are there any home games in the Big Ten Championship or National Championship playoffs. That means this Saturday is the last time you get to see the Denards and the Kovacses and the Omamehs and Roundtrees and Vincent Smith play at Michigan Stadium. They grow up so fast. It seems like just yesterday they were committing to the early spreadrod classes, or committing to Carr.

How this works again:

1. Wednesdays I put up a winnable prize that consists of a desirable good.
2. You guess the final scores of this weekend's designated game (football or hoops, depending on the season), and put it in the comments. First person to post a particular score has it.
3. If you got it right, we contact you. If not, go to (5)
4. The desirable good arrives at the address you give us.
5. Non-winners can acquire the same desirable good by trading currency for it. BONUS THIS WEEK: We donate to Mott if you do so!

About Last Week:

Greg Mattison appreciates the fact that nobody imagined Northwestern would score 31 points against his unit. Course it did none o' ya any good.

This Week's Game:

The Iowa Huckguys arrive this Saturday in Ann Arbor to challenge the Michigan Wolverines to a battle of execution in honor of the God of I-formations.

And on the Line…

Few are left from the hybrid class, but a good chunk of the seniors this senior day were the last to have committed to Carr (Moore, Mealer, Demens, Floyd kinda, Campbell the first time) while others were among the first couple of classes under Rodriguez (Denard, Vincent Smith, Roundtree, Omameh, Barnum, Roh, Hawthorne, Kovacs, Kiwatkowski). I think 'tis fair to say that none of them got what they thought they were signing up for, with the notable exception of the thing Lloyd always said is the thing they were signing up for: a degree from the University of Michigan.

In his honor, and that of class longest-serving starter Patrick Omameh who's also known for his works there, MGoBlog will be donating part of the proceeds from any MGoShirt purchased this week to C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. You can join us by purchasing something from the store, or by giving directly.

Winner gets the Lloyd shirt, and the Space, Bitches! shirt carryover from last week. Stay classy!

BONUS: Guess Thursday's Three Stars

Billy the Movie (Actually "Perseverance: the Story of Dr. Billy Taylor") opens this Friday night at the Michigan Theater, and since one of the winners can't go I get to give his tickets away again. So…if you're gonna be in town on Friday and you wanna go, then guess the THREE STARS (in any order) of tomorrow's hockey game vs. No. 7 Notre Dame (yes, including the Irish ones, as if). If nobody gets all three, we'll start with who got 1 and 2, then 1 and 3, then 2 and 3, then just 1, etc. Don't everybody say Trouba.

If you can read this you don't need glasses:

One entry per user. First user to choose a set of scores wins, determined by the timestamp of your entry (for my ease I prefer if you don't post it as a reply to another person's score--if you do it won't help or hurt you). If nobody gets the score, this week's prize carries over to the following week's. Deadline for entries is 24 hours before the start of the game (since I won't have time to pull them on gamedays). MGoEmployees and Moderators--anyone else with moderator privileges--are exempt from winning because you could change your timestamp. If you choose the score that Brian published in the official preview and it actually ends up the final score, well, that would be pretty amazing because Brian picks scores like 29-11 all the time. We did not invent the algorithm. The algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The algorithm killed Jeeves. The algorithm is banned in China. The algorithm is from Jersey. The algorithm constantly finds Jesus.This is not the algorithm. This is close.

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“Hi guys. What’s up. Heiko, what’s going on?”

MGo: Not much. Just hangin' out.

“It’s really good to see you.”

MGo: It’s good to see you, too.

“I’m not just saying that.”

MGoBeaming: Really? Aw.

“Yeah, I kind of am.”

What’s the word of the day?

“What’s the word of the day? I had one. If you wouldn’t have asked me, I would have come up with it.”

Denard?

“No. That was coming up somewhere, but … let me think. I’ll get back to you on that, okay?”

Can you define Denard?

“Can I define Denard? Fast. That’s the first word that comes into my mind. Like those word associations that you do ... Denard Robinson, fast!”

Devin Gardner?

“Devin Gardner? Funny. Pretty funny guy.”

In all seriousness, Denard’s legacy? Can you discuss?

“Well, I can honestly say he is the most electric player that I have ever coached. That would be the first thing that comes to mind. And a joy to coach, I might add. Comes with energy every day. Wants to learn. Tough. Competitive. All those things. His demeanor might lead you to believe that’s not true, but he’s highly competitive.”

file

Opening remarks:

“Well are we on game 18 or what? It seems like, hoo boy. Every week. This next one is as big as any of them or bigger because one, you’re in the title hunt. You’re still playing for a championship. And two, these seniors deserve to play a great game, deserve to have things be like they should be when you’re a senior at Michigan and you play your last game there.”

What do you take from surviving Northwestern?

“Well the thing that we saw in that game -- people wouldn’t have seen it -- that defense played unbelievably hard. There’s a play in the fourth quarter when there are 11 helmets truly hitting the ball on our sideline, and ironically the next play Craig Roh got a sack and it held them to a field goal rather than a touchdown. And you never know when that’s going to happen. I’m not a stat guy. Never have been. The only stat that matters to me is whether we win or lose. I don’t like it when teams run the football, but the thing that you also saw on that tape, one, that quarterback is a tremendous football player and a tremendous athlete. I think there were four or five legitimate sacks that we had them -- any other quarterback you probably would have had a sack -- that he changed from being a third or a second and long to a first down.

"And that’s where the perception is that you’ve got to get off the field. We’re not talented enough, and there aren’t many [teams] that are good enough, to be able to say, ‘We could have gotten off here, but we’re going to let you play three more plays.’ That happened too many times where you had just what you wanted and he made a play. And I won’t say that our guys didn’t, even though they could have, that young man Colter is -- he’s got my respect, I’ll tell you that. That guy is a football player. And their running back was a very good football player also. The greatest thing is that there are some mistakes again that we have to have corrected on some blitzes and things like that, but they played hard and they stuck together and gave us an opportunity, and our offense did a great job at the very end there and we came out with the win, and that’s all that matters.”

Iowa: not very good. BHGP on the Hawkeye depth chart at guard and RB:

IOWA FOOTBALL TAKES ON MICHIGAN SATURDAY (/GROAN).Here's the two-deeps. Conor Boffeli is your left guard this week. Jordan Walsh, Austin Blythe, Nolan MacMillan and Boffeli have all had a turn playing turnstile there since Brandon Scherff and Andrew Donnal left the Penn State game due to injury. Neither Mark Weisman nor Brad Rogers are listed at running back or fullback.

Last week, Damon Bullock got to play an Iowan version of Poor Damn Toussaint, rushing for 1.9 yards a carry against Purdue, the #85 rushing D in the country. Iowa is not good. FWIW, the game was off the board yesterday but has now been set at Michigan –20. Iowa is not good.

YAHHHHHHHHHH / Bryan Fuller

Basketball: possibly very good. I took in my first non-tiny-stream version of Michigan basketball last night*, and this happened:

"I probably should've dunked it," the Michigan freshman forward joked. "I missed a little tip-in, I was kind of upset about that."

It was awful. I'm so depressed.

The Wolverines' freshman forward showed off every facet of his game, and his potential, scoring 21 points on 8 of 9 shooting. He went 3-for-3 from behind the 3-point line, he finished off alley-oop dunks and even grabbed six rebounds.

Oh right that part well you guys just aren't demanding enough excellence. It is only by doing so on the internet that excellence can be achieved.

But seriously folks. !!!

Let us take a brief moment to consider Jordan Morgan, who continues to lose weight and get more athletic. He uses this additional athleticism to be incredibly annoying. Here is a screen in your face. Here is a hedge of your screen that puts you in the corner six feet from the three point line. Also it comes with free batting at the ball. He is going to rotate back now and not block your shot but just make it so that when you jump you're bouncing off him a little. And then he will run the floor.

Morgan's still undersized and may still be foul-prone against better competition, but this year Michigan can turn to Mitch McGary and Jon Horford when that happens instead of a badly miscast Evan Smotrycz, so I don't even care that much except Morgan does seem a step or two better than those guys because of the aforementioned embodiment of the most annoying noise in the world.

Big guys have a tendency to make that senior step up—Chris Young, Pete Vignier, Graham Brown—that makes them loveable lunch-bucket little-coaching-squee machines, and Morgan is in that year even if he's a junior thanks to the redshirt. There's a reason he's starting.

He'll probably see his minutes reduced against teams that can put out a post guy who can simply outhuge him; other than that it's going to be hard to get him off the floor.

Other things:

• Vogrich > Stauskas at the moment because of defense, Stauskas > anyone in terms of three point shooting ever. Totally not getting ahead of myself based on three games.
• The defense started off a little ugly, but after it was 26-25 ten minutes in the Jags scored only 29 more points in the final 30 minutes. It doesn't seem like it will be a strength, though. That's the tangible thing Michigan will miss without Novak/Douglass.
• Jon Horford thunderdunk + Tim Hardaway thunderdunk + GRIII alley-oop festival == John Beilein looking at his team, thinking about the dudes he coached at Cansisius and wondering if it's even the same sport.
• Not a huge fan of the two post setup. If you're going to do that one of them has to be able to operate out of the high post or shoot—not necessarily threes, but midrange jumpers—and I'm not sure Michigan's posts are prepared to do that yet. McGary might be a high post guy in time. They'll probably run it 10 minutes a game or so.
• McGary's blown layup thing definitely looked like a guy used to having more up than he currently has. Looks like he'll have time to round into shape.
• Fact: Spike Albrecht is better than half of the guys Amaker recruited.
• Hardaway took no threes. In fact, there were exactly two shots all game that irritated me, one a long contested heat check Burke three, the other a long Hardaway two with 20 seconds on the shot clock. Two is kind of an amazing low number.

*[Defensive defense of self: It's hard for me to carve out the time to go to Crisler early in the week because I am working so hard for you, reader, and hockey versus MSU against BBball versus Slippery Rock is no contest.]

The vexer is now the vexee! Or maybe vice-versa. I'm vexed.

Will Campbell wrapping up vexing career by playing his best football

Commence the Rodriguez rabbling!

"It's been bumpy, it's been up and down," Campbell said. "I wish I was under this coaching staff all four years, but I wasn't, so the opportunities they gave me I just tried to capitalize on.

"I'm not saying that (the previous staff held me back). I was just lazy and young, and didn't realize the opportunities in front of me."

You could have had a stuffed animal rubbed on your face, man. That was the opportunity you missed in favor of eating cheeseburgers and playing video games. Verdict: good call.

Format set, mostly. The people who made the playoff thing got together to hammer out some playoff details. They are:

• A 12-year contract featuring a bucket of money delivered by ESPN.
• The Rose, Sugar, and Orange Bowl all have set lineups, with the Orange featuring the ACC champ versus the highest ranked SEC/Big Ten/Notre Dame entity that did not make the playoff or the Rose/Sugar.
• The highest ranked team from a minor conference—Big East now included—gets an auto bid to an "access" bowl. In years when the Rose/Sugar/Orange are all out of the semifinal business that means there is essentially one slot up for grabs.
• It's unclear what happens when the Rose hosts a semi and the Fiesta/Cotton/Peach bowls are acquiring teams. When the Rose/Sugar are hosting semis they will not allow the Big Ten or SEC champ to be in the Orange Bowl to make the Fiesta/Cotton/Peach setups more attractive in a long term TV contract.
• There is another bucket of money coming for the title game.

More documents, more facepalming for the NCAA. Get The Picture has been all over every document released as part of the Ed O'Bannon case's discovery process, and here's the latest palm-to-forehead moment:

Davis then writes: "Here's my concern -- Eil [sic] is a current player on the Ole Miss team. Is using his actual number and attributes (height, race, etc.) too close to reality thereby using Eli's likeness (if not his name) and causing an eligibility issue?"

Another NCAA staffer, Melissa Caito, wrote in response: "Pls be cautious as you move through this -- any more 'watering down' of the video games will likely move the manufacturers to cease operations with us."

I'm not a lawyer, but that seems bad.

BONUS:

Another document made public Monday by the plaintiffs lawyers showed the results of an NCAA commercialism and licensing survey in which 12 of 150 responding Division I schools said they "engage in the sale of licensed products bearing a current student-athlete's individual likeness."

This was 2004 to 2006. I wonder what constitutes "likeness" here—it's possible some schools admit that putting 16 on a jersey and selling it is enough, while others are like "16, never heard of him, who's named 16 lol nobody."

Etc.: MGoUser hops on reddit to ask if people actually show up at other schools. Burke is now 20, also scoring and assisting. Billy Taylor documentary is FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIDAY. Even the most reasonable minds have to wonder about whether there is some conspiracy at Penn State. Oh… against Penn State? Oh. Safety blitzin'.

Bullets:

• If Denard were a rapper his stage name would be Day2Day.
• Hoke says decision on Denard's status for Saturday will be made based on health, not sentiment.
• Mario Ojemudia is "coming along," which probably means he won't be ready for Saturday.
• Will Campbell "probably played his best football game" against Northwestern.
• Hoke did think about going for a touchdown instead of a field goal at the end of regulation but decided not to.
• Whether Denard could play situationally even if he were unable to throw the ball is something Hoke may consider. (What does that even mean. Aye aye aye.) Take two: Hoke will talk to Denard about playing situationally or as a runner if he remains unable to throw the ball on Saturday. Maybe.

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

Presser

file

How are you doing?

“Better than the alternative.”

Opening remarks:

“Really proud of our football team. I’m proud of how they stuck together. I think I mentioned, I may not have -- they really stuck together the whole game. They believed in each other, believed in what we were trying to get accomplished. I thought there were some really smart decisions made by players and by some of the guys on the staff when the two returners at the end of the game on the punt, because of the way they tried to punt the ball, Gallon was able to get some real positive yardage and set up being able to get the ball to whatever yard line it was to try for the field goal to tie it. If you have one returner back and that ball bounces, you lose field position and those things. Kids executed it well.

“This week’s a special week. Number one, our seniors. Last time they get to play in the greatest stadium in this country. Get to wear that blue jersey here at home and so it’s really special for us as coaches and for those underclassmen who go out and play well. Iowa, as you know, they’re a very good football team. They’ve lost the last two games I think by a total of six points. Run the football well. I think they’ve had some nicked up people when you look at it earlier in the year, but I think they’re really coming together. James Vandenberg, I think, is a very good quarterback. We’ve got our work cut out for us, and we have a lot to do.”

About Last Saturday:

Jug Half Full - 35, Jug Half Empty - 13

Tom Olmscheid / AP

Get well soon.

May I suggest a bacta tank?

/ runs away giggling.

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

The Road Ahead:

"This big?" / "No, THIS BIG."

No. 24 Northwestern (7-2 overall, 3-2 B1G)

Last week: Idlecats.

Recap: 

Mmm bokeh.

This team is as frightening as: A guy who shows up to a fight armed with only a Maglite. Except it's not a Maglite. It's a lightsaber. And he is Luke Skywalker. Fear level = 10. 

Michigan should worry about: Northwestern possesses the best wide receiver in the world. His name is Kyle Prater, and you don't know this because they have been keeping him a secret. They have been saving the surprise. Michigan has no idea what's coming. 

But I do.

Michigan can sleep soundly about: There is no shame in getting beaten by a player who is so elite that his presence at USC violated the laws of competitive fairness, which forced him to transfer to a small liberal arts school in Evanston and wear purple for the rest of his life.

When they play Michigan: Prater will have 12 catches for 170 yards and four touchdowns. 

Next game: @ Michigan.