bree evans

CEASE PANIC ONCE MORE. See, I do learn: the most recent twitter panic was a report from Devin Gardner that Denard Robinson had cut off his dreads, and I refrained from having requesting mass panic. MGoUser Raback Omaba stakes his hard-earned Dorsey-commit rep on this report that takes us down from DEFCON 2:

Reports of him shorning them and sporting a "lil boosie fade" were premature. Denard merely trimmed his dreads and styled them differently. However he maintains his trademark Denard Robinson dreadlocks. He did not get a fade, his dreads are still there. Significant amounts of dilithium remains hanging from his head, perhaps more effective than before. Let's worry about football now rather than carry on about hairstyles of future Heisman winners. Move on. Denard still has dreads

He has a fade and dreads? The magic of Denard is ever-expanding.

RESUME PANIC. These aren't happening but the asked-for horrifying new jersey mockups have arrived and are terrible enough to cause you to run around screaming:

mmjersey16

These will happen someday, probably when we're flying around in jet cars and pushing a button at our jobs. You know, when Denard Robinson doesn't seem fast.

Jihadexpansion update. Mary Sue Coleman talked to a bunch of alumni at a function in Boston recently that a couple of MGoUsers report back from. Some small amount of detail on the second-to-last event in the NCAA whatnot:

Pres. Coleman stated that UM will be announcing its self-imposed sanctions by the end of the month.  She indicated that there was cross communication between the coaching staff and the compliance people.  The coaching staff thought they'd been given the green light, whereas the compliance people thought that a different question was being asked.  She said that unlike reported in some places, at best the overage amount would amount to roughly 2 hours a week.  She also predicted that many football programs across the US will be dropping compliance people to avoid danger of giving "coaching advice."

A later post in the thread gives the 24th as the date on which Michigan will send back the report and announce whatever they're self-imposing. If it's in line with previous violations of this nature Michigan will have to give back the hour overages two-to-one and may have to forgo the use of a coach for some period of time. Assorted minor items will be tacked on; the guess here is that no scholarship penalties will result except possibly a single one this year that's more symbolic than anything—Michigan won't be able to get up past 84 this year anyway.

An old guarantee. MGoVideo gets in on the WH gig by providing a youtube embed of the 1986 edition of The Game featuring Jim Harbaugh's famous guarantee:

Stick around afterwards for a quarterback comparison that Harbaugh dominates on completion percentage not not looking like Sloth.

Upset machine. Michigan alum Mike Cammalleri is rocking Eastern Conference heavyweights as the Montreal Canadiens go on the NHL's annual Cinderella playoff run, and putting his name amongst some of the sport's all-time greats in the process:

With seven goals in a seven-game series victory over the defending Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins, Cammalleri equaled a team record for tallies in a single playoff series shared by Maurice (Rocket) Richard (1944 and 1958), Jean Beliveau (1956), Bernard (Boom Boom) Geoffrion (1957), Guy Lafleur (1975) and Marcel Bonin (1959)�all of them but Bonin long established members of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

How's that for company?

Impressive, rhetorical question guy. Impressive indeed. Here's Cammalleri's seventh and final goal of the Pens series, the eventual game-winner:

(HT: South Bend Wolverine, who we all feel for deeply.)

After a scary injury last year that saw Bree Evans lie motionless on the ground after a home-plate collision in an exhibition game against State, she's returned to the field hale, hearty, and hitting. She's now batting .365 as a sophomore, second-best on the team. The official site has deployed its feature machine in response:

The softball team is now 44-6, 16-1 in the conference, and is cruising towards another top seed in the NCAA tournament. This weekend's regular season finale at Iowa will be televised live by the BTN at 6 on Friday and 4 on Saturday.

Etc.: MVictors on what went down with Bo and Harwell.

Somewhat less than timely, but still good. Michigan softball player Bree Evans, who suffered a scary injury at the beginning of the month, is out of the hospital. She's been out for a good long while…

Evans was released from the hospital two weeks ago, according to Michigan sports information director Leah Howard. Howard declined to comment on details of Evans’ injury.

…but better to know late than never, I guess.

Well, let's be explicit about it. Deshawn Sims and Mann Harris talking to Fox Sports's Jeff Goodman for a Beilein fluff bit before the season:

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - DeShawn Sims had just finished up his freshman season at Michigan when he heard the news that John Beilein had been hired to replace Tommy Amaker. At the time, Manny Harris was the Wolverines' top signee, and the word quickly swirled that he would explore other options.

"People were saying Beilein's system was for white boys," Sims said.

"I heard he didn't even like players that dunk," added the athletic Harris.

Elsewhere in basketball, perhaps the most newsworthy thing to come out of Big Ten Media Day was Illinois coach Bruce Weber suggesting that the Big Ten will "probably" move to a full round robin "down the road." I got so excited about it that I retweeted it, so, yes, I am enthusiastic about the hypothetical change. It just makes sense, and now with the Big Ten Network it makes financial sense—in conversations I've had with them they have a strong preference for intraconference matchups.

And here's a Tim Hardaway Jr fluffy bit from ESPN, courtesy reader Woodson2Heisman:

Michigan checks in at #15 in both preseason polls, but this is slightly terrifying:

Junior guard Manny Harris - an All-Big Ten team selection Thursday - has battled pulled hamstrings since the start of practice and Beilein, himself a victim of the consistently tight hammys, has been extra cautious. …

“Now that it’s happened, it’s got to be a season-long therapy thing,” Beilein said. “We can’t let down. He’s always been tight in his hamstrings. I have tight hamstrings so I know what it’s like. It can lead to back problems.

“Stretching is not my favorite thing to do, it’s not his. Therapy isn’t, but he has to do it. “

Ugh. Season-long nagging injury for the unquestioned star of the team. This is not so good.

Because you're still on a Quest for Toronto. Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician, the fantastic Syracuse blog, asks "why isn't anyone talking about Scott Shafer?" Insert snark here. But then TNIAAM drops some year-to-year numbers that are a little bothersome since Michigan and Syracuse have essentially swapped defensive coordinators:

Syracuse Defense Rankings 2008 vs 2009 (through seven games)

Statistic 2008 Defense 2009 Defense
Run Defense 102nd 6th
Pass Defense 84th 115th
Scoring Defense 102nd 81st
Total Defense 102nd 62nd
Interceptions 99th 73rd
Fumbles Forced 59th 11th
Fumbles Recovered 84th 6th
Sacks 101st 24th
Tackles For Loss 106th 49th
Opp. 3rd Down Conv. 117th 38th

That's across-the-board improvement except in pass defense. So, okay, there's a lot of noise in these numbers and they'll probably fall with Cincinnati and Pittsburgh the next two games on the schedule. And Syracuse apparently returned a lot of people on defense, including all the good players. But it's at least an indication that Scott Shafer isn't a total git who lucked his way into the Michigan job and blew it all by himself.

On the other hand: the last time I offered a small complaint about Robinson, one of the guys from The Only Colors who does their version of UFR emailed me about a post he'd put up highlighting Robinson's halftime adjustments. That's pretty noisy, too, but in the offseason we'll take a thorough look at the two defenses.

Early signing. Don't know why this came up just now but Rodriguez is in favor of a couple changes to recruiting. One is an early signing day that this site has advocated before:

“I would be in favor of having an early signing day around the third week in December, when the junior-college signing date is, and then have another signing date like we do now on the first Wednesday in February," Rodriguez said on Tuesday's Big Ten coaches teleconference.

The other item he's mentioned is the past is allowing schools to offer official visits over the summer, something that makes sense for schools fairly distant from talent sources in Florida.

Adios, Ufer. Bob Ufer died this week in 1981, and a guy emailed me to let me know he'd been putting up some Ufer retrospective videos on the tubes:

I haven't spent a lot of time scouring youtube to confirm this, but I bet Michigan dominates it, what with Wolverine Historian and this poster ("Ghosts of Michigan") and now a zillion individual plays from UFR.

CONSPIRACY These are the items I was talking about Monday when I mentioned a number of questionable calls that went against Michigan. The illegal formation is on the right tackle here:

illegal-formation-sort-of 

There was also the too-many-men call on the Robinson interception, or lack thereof:

12-men-psu

You can see the ball has already been snapped.

Rodriguez is not happy about this stuff, nor is he happy about the ridiculous Schilling holding call—the second time in two Big Ten games that Schillling's crushed a guy and gotten a hold for his troubles. RR:

"Some of them I understand, when you twist and turn a guy, whatever," Rodriguez said. "But if you've got your hands inside in great position, you're drive blocking a guy and he falls down, because, one, he loses his balance or something, I don't think it should be called holding.

"There is more of a gray area, and there's more frustration, I think, in seeing some of the calls."

No doubt some Penn State fan will run back to his message board going "lol we won 35-10" so let's just be clear: this did not have an impact on the outcome of the game.

While I'm at it, here's Holly Rowe, Hoth Edition:

holly-rowe-on-hoth

Etc.: College presidents complaining about how coaches' salaries are excessive. Adrian Witty is still planning to enroll in January. Beilein's top priority for AD is a guy who will renovate Crisler for serious. A package of reforms designed to make the money trail from shady college coaches to shady AAU coaches more illegal has passed in its entirety.

AnnArbor.com:

Michigan softball center fielder Bree Evans is in serious condition at University of Michigan Hospital after a head-on collision at home plate during an exhibition game with Michigan State on Thursday evening.

Evans, 19, was taken off the field on a stretcher and transported to the hospital by ambulance, according to Michigan sports information director Leah Howard.

Best wishes to her and her family.

Update: Paul's got a tweet with slightly encouraging news:

Glimmer of good news. As they were moving Bree Evans onto the gurney she was able to move her toes. Game called in the bottom of the 4th.

Also, a report from the scene relayed by Craig Ross:

Michigan scored 3 runs in the bottom of the fourth to go up, 3 - 0, but then Bree Evans tried to score from third and slid head first into the MSU catcher, probably hitting her head on the bottom of the catcher's shin guards, something just about the top of the shoe, you could hear the impact. Evans appeared to be knocked out cold, and she lay there, face straight down, for a good 20 minutes, not moving at all. at long last, an ambulance arrived and drove right onto the field, they rolled Evans over, stabilized her neck, put her on a back board, and took her away to the hospital.

Stunning that it took so long for serious help to get there. It would have been the better part of 45 minutes between incident and getting her off loaded at the hospital. Surprised that no emergency vehicle was present near the field, as there is with other sports. The stadium went instantly silent when Evans went down and stayed hushed throughout the rest of the time, until she was taken away. The game was canceled at that point. It was hard to tell whether Evans was out for the entire time, someone in front of us said that the people from the ambulance asked what hurt, and she said neck and back. I certainly didn't hear anything. There seemed to be no bleeding, but there also was absolutely no motion from her for the entire time. Looked like a bad one, but I guess we wait and see.

A potentially serious injury almost happened in the bottom half of the previous inning when the State third baseman hit the fence and flipped over it while chasing a pop up. She was a little shaken up, but nothing like the Evans collision.