dommanic ingerson

I seem to remember Dommanic Ingerson being more clothed, but I though I have sympathy for the guy can't say this is a huge surprise:

It's still a surprise. You never expect the next link to have a picture of a man who once played basketball at your alma mater emerging from a lake, naked and surrounded by cops.

If I had to pick one Ellerbe-era Michigan basketball player who would end up emerging naked from a lake surrounded by cops it would be Tractor Traylor—who is an exception to the "never expect naked lake emergence from" rule—but Ingerson would probably be second. He epitomized Ellerbe's weird focus on players who had obvious emotional problems. Ingerson was the sort of uncoachable nightmare who would launch a three the instant he crossed half court, get benched for it, and do the exact same thing the next time he got in the game. If you're being nice you might term him an "enigmatic sophomore," as the Wolverine Blog does, but there wasn't much enigma there. He was just a guy who thought a 20% chance at three points was a good gamble and could not be dissuaded.

Ingerson was the epitome of a bad risk on Michigan's part, a mistake one that Ellerbe repeated two or three times a recruiting class. Remember Kevin Gaines? Maurice Searight? Avery Queen? Michigan loaded their roster with naked lake guys in the Ellerbe era; program and player invariably failed each other. If it was one guy here or there that would be understandable. It's the frequency and lack of success that made the late-era Fisher and any-era Ellerbe tenure so loathsome. Even when your problem children turn out to be pretty good basketball players they were often Traylor and Taylor sorts who were hard to root for, to say the least.

The obvious comparison given hoopla over the past couple weeks is Demar Dorsey and possibly Justin Feagin. Since no one got to see Feagin do much more than run an Incredibly Surprising Quarterback Draw or four, it's hard to draw a comparison to the Ellerbe guys who Michigan fans got to be frustrated at over the course of a season, but he's a guy who showed up and promptly exited due to mutual failure.

It's in the numbers here. Michigan signed Demar Dorsey but they also signed Courtney Avery and a bunch of other guys who have shiny grade point averages and letters from Stanford. This Super Bowl featured Saints starting center Jonathan Goodwin, a starter around these parts several years ago who got into serious trouble for robbing a K-Mart and made it okay. It's about outcomes. Brian Ellerbe's were miserable. Under his guidance, the Michigan basketball program seemed like a misbegotten halfway house where troubled basketball players could come, make no effort at developing on or off the court, and spend a year of dorm luxury before that lack of care caught up to them.

That picture above says that Michigan deserved everything they got during their long period of basketball wilderness, not because of Ed Martin but because of Fisher and Taylor and Ellerbe and the list of guys from the mid-90s who could be in that shot, wondering how to keep his privates private when the cuffs go on.