academic casualties

[Scroll down for Hello: Blake Frazier]

Admissions giveth (Brandyn Hillman) and admissions taketh away. Just as football's newest safety asked out of his letter of intent after an academic "hiccup" derailed his matriculation to Notre Dame, Michigan basketball is losing its 2023 center to enrollment issues.

Kante is an athletic center prospect who wasn't expected to be an impact player for at least a couple of a years. With Hunter Dickinson in the portal, however, Kante was next in line to take on minutes whenever Tarris Reed wasn't on the court. Rumors of an issue with Kante's enrollment started circulating before Dickinson put himself on the market, so it's likely that Michigan has already been in contact with other centers in the portal.

They probably wanted another big anyways, but they're going to need one now, whether that's coming up with the money to keep Dickinson, finding another starter, or at worst recruiting a big who can complement Reed. Transfer forward Tray Jackson played center for Seton Hall, but that was such a bad fit that Jackson's transferring to Michigan.

Michigan's freshman class is now just George Washington III. Guessing that will be a topic down the road.

Rumors about senior running back Chris Evans running into some kind of serious academic trouble have been circulating for about a week without word from an official source. Michigan today confirmed that Evans, at least for the moment, is off the team, via Angelique Chengalis of the Detroit News.

Chris Evans is not a member of the football team at this time — per David Ablauf, Associate AD for Football Communications. “Privacy laws prohibit us from commenting further.”

— angelique (@chengelis) February 5, 2019

Evans confirmed it's school-related but he isn't leaving the school:

I am going through some academic issues right now. I’m working through it now. I will still continue my career at the University of Michigan ! #GoBlue

— Chris Evans (@Kidnplay_abc123) February 5, 2019

The Michigan Daily's Ethan Wolfe reported that it was indeed some form of academic misconduct.

Sources told The Daily that Evans’ departure is a result of academic misconduct, and he was disenrolled from one of his classes this week. It is unclear whether he is still enrolled at the University. Evans explained his situation on Twitter following news breaking of his status on the team.

We also received a couple of credible-ish reports last week that these academic issues were both very serious and self-inflicted. Students reported he was not in class last week but was today, so it appears that he is getting at least a chance to work back toward his degree.

His future on the football team remains in greater doubt. Regardless of whether Evans is available again next fall, he almost certainly won't be participating in Spring practices.

The news was particularly shocking given the particular player. Evans has never—to our or the public's knowledge—been connected to off-field issues in the past. Evans runs a youth football league in Ann Arbor (his team is ranked #3 in their age group), and in fact asked us to promote a fundraiser for it held the same night we did that Pistons event.

Cone deficiency. The news that Conelius Jones will not be with the program this fall is not exactly news today, but permit me a day to recover from my World Cup hangover. This is the reason:

According to Brown, Jones went through a rough stretch with personal issues over the winter. Although he graduated with the rest of his class and maintained a 2.5 grade-point average, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound Jones struggled with the SAT, which kept him from qualifying.

That must have been a rough stretch with grades almost at rock bottom, since Jones claimed he had a 3.7 GPA and offers from Wake Forest, Duke, and Stanford when he committed to Michigan. A decline that steep probably means the initial GPA report was a bit inflated.

Unlike Dorsey and his immediate enrollment at Louisville, Jones will head to Fork Union in an effort to get qualified, at which point he'd come in as a mid-year enrollee. This means he's honestly just a hair away from qualifying—the NCAA severely restricted how much grade magic prep schools could work a couple of years ago—and has a decent chance of getting in in January. Michigan has taken kids from prep schools, although not particularly successfully: Marques Slocum spent a semester at Milford and Arizona CB Quinton McCoy spent a prep year before ending up on campus. Neither lasted two years.

As far as the 2010 team goes, Jones's absence creates a distressing lack of Cone in the hairy depths of the quarterback depth chart, and that's about all.

I don't think Dorsey's situation is at all related to Jones and Kinard. Dorsey was qualified; the other two guys are headed to prep school. That doesn't have anything to do with hypothetical anti-Rodriguez forces executing their dastardly master plan. And even if the academic side of things is cracking down, they have a very good reason to do so: Michigan's latest transfer-saddled APR score is ugly, and Michigan is going to have to put up a major improvement lest they fall below the 925 line of doom.

Meanwhile, the other blame meme floating around is that Rodriguez is bringing in a lot more kids at academic risk. That may or may not be true but unless Jones's transcripts and offers were just totally fictional this doesn't seem like an example. It's one thing to take a guy who has a lot of work to do, and another to take a guy well above the minimums only to watch him collapse.

What happened with Cissoko? In other happy news about never-were kids, Boubacar Cissoko pled guilty to four separate counts of robbery and faces sentencing that won't be 45 years but hypothetically could. The News takes an in-depth look at what happened to a high school kid no one thought would have problems until he got out of this protected environment:

He was intentionally protected, growing up on Rosa Parks Boulevard in Detroit, a neighborhood that was rough-and-tough 40 years before Cissoko got there.

"He came from a sheltered background," Willis said. "By 10:30 he was in, home. He was driven to school, driven home. We are a close-knit family, we were tight on him."

Even the history of the riots which began along what was then known as 12th Street was kept from Cissoko, by the family.

"He's a good kid," Willis said. "When he left, he was praying five times a day."

Isn't there a show about Amish kids who head out into the world for a year or two and go totally nuts? In this case it seems that protecting Cissoko from negative influences left him unprepared to deal with them. He was unvaccinated. Bonus points to the News for deploying one of those beautifully dry newspaper sentences that radiate detached authority:

Less than worldly, he was suddenly thrust into a scene in Ann Arbor in which young adults believe they have achieved a level of sophistication that they may well never attain in life.

Oh, snap.

Another oddity: court documents show Cissoko's age is actually two years older than Michigan (and Cass Tech) listed him, which might explain why he didn't live up to the recruiting hype.

Burn the regionals down. It takes some doing to make me livid about something that won't happen until 2012 and involves a committee making a decision, but holy aarrgh I want to punch a wall:

First, the announcing of four more regionals means we won't be seeing the slightly less moronic proposed tournament format, which at least included one playoff round that made some sense.

The second problem is the hosts themselves.  The hosts will be Minnesota, Michigan Tech, Holy Cross, and Fairfield/Yale. If it feels like a repeat, it's because it pretty much is. The two eastern ones aren't that big of a deal. They're sure to be boring, empty arenas for critically important games, but there aren't really any better options. Plus, with now-defunct Fairfield helping host in Bridgeport, you get the joy of the 17 people in attendance saying, "What the hell is that deer doing in here?"

Tech is hosting in Green Bay, which is WCHA territory. This will be the fourth consecutive year that Minnesota hosts something. They were awarded regionals in 2009 and 2010, get the Frozen Four in 2011, and now have another regional in 2012. WCH points out that over that time span the entire CCHA gets to host three events.

It is ludicrous that the next two years will see zero regionals in CCHA territory. I hope the St. Louis regional is attended by five people. Are any CCHA teams even bidding for these things? Why hasn't Michigan put in a bid using the new rink in Toledo? I'm not sure where the breakdown is, but something's got to change.

Solar domination. The American Solar Challenge is Michigan's. If you don't think this is a big deal, look at the size of the trophy:

It's a big deal. From the looks of it, it's about three times as big a deal as the World Cup. This is Michigan's third straight national title. Seriously: Directors Cup this event, yo.

An actual loss on the tubes. EDSBS found 40 minutes of youtubery not posted by WolverineHistorian. It's the 1988 Michigan-Miami game that Michigan ended up losing 31-30. Though it is depressing, the pants are very tight and Al Trautwig's doing his very best Data impression:

Draft disappointment. We knew that Michigan's 2010 hockey class had collectively slipped in the eyes of NHL evaluators, but the extent to which they did still surprises:

• Jon Merrill fell into the early second round, going #38 to New Jersey.
• Alex Guptill went in the third round to Dallas.
• Luke Moffatt and Lee Moffie were both seventh-rounders.
• Clare, Fallon, and Deblois did not go.

That's disappointing from a talent standpoint. At least Merrill and Guptill went to generally patient, NCAA-friendly organizations. Michigan might get an extra year out of Merrill and stands a good chance of hanging on to Guptill.

Etc.: Nebraska fans are preparing for Big Ten hate. Michigan is not featured. Woo 8-16!