gritty grit gritsteins

Michigan shot 8-17 from WANTING IT MORE while Ohio State had just three HUSTLES out of 20 WHEN YOU PLAY HOOPS. They even out-DECIDED TO GO OUT AND GET ANGRY'ed them 14 to 8.

And you can't have one without the other…

Thank you Triplor, god of threes. Your praises shall be sung with the ardor of a thousand Dakich-approved SHOW INTESITYs.

Source needed, but too good to pass up. This image is awesome.

BaZPIbb[1]

Message board random who posted this only linked to imgur, so it could come from anywhere. UPDATE: Melanie Maxwell of MLive is the photographer.

Burke is of course going WHEEEEEE, and  then the Michigan State folk from L to R are going "welp," "welp," "welp," "I am terrified of all things," and "welp."

All the better to rip your heart out. Burke called his shot with McGary earlier in the game:

Michigan forward Mitch McGary said Appling used a spin move earlier in the game, which Michigan won 58-57, and Burke told him exactly how he was going to swipe the ball.

"He told me whenever (Appling) spins, he puts it in his right hand and it's an easy steal," McGary said. "Tim and I were just hoping he didn't hang on the rim."

Note that if it didn't work Appling would have had a choice between pressing the opportunity presented and giving Michigan a last shot of their own or holding for the final shot—it was an excellent time to go for broke.

Champions are made in the hot tub eating pizza. Greg unearths this great shot of Michigan kicker Bob Bergeron eating pizza in a hot tub that made SI:

sep51984bobb_thumb[1]

He got to keep the pizza. Wild west back then.

CIVILIZATION. This is the end of it. There is nowhere to go but down from this.

Or this.

Gritalanche. It was a gritclone on Saturday. A toughdome.

Michigan's Mitch McGary provides much-needed energy, toughness off bench against Michigan State

It was a tickertocker.

Michigan shows its heart in critical win over MSU

It was a toughygritintestinalblockage.

Michigan finally shows grit, toughness, desperation in gutty win over rival Michigan State

It was a basketforge.

Trey Burke, Michigan show mettle in win over Michigan State

To be fair, John Beilein started it:

“We’ve had some real pretty wins here, where we did everything right and the ball went in and we just played lights-out,” Beilein explained after the win. “Today, it was all about grit.”

Michigan allowed Michigan State to rebound half of their misses. Congratulations to Mike Rothstein, who did not play along.

Burke steals a signature win for Michigan

Or at least his headline writer. You never know who does those things these days.

Make sure you use the right block M, as long as it's some shade of blinding yellow. Via Kyle Meinke, Michigan's persnicketiness about the block M:

BEOUj_8CYAAywis[1]

I'm fine with this. Persnicketiness is good with the whole branding thing. but don't try to tell me that that color maize represents the colors Michigan is using on their uniforms these days. Y'all need to get your persnick on more.

BONUS: Hey, #FFCC000 is what I settled on when I was eyeballing what maize was way back in the blogspot days. I was off on the blue, using #000022. This portion of the post brought to you by things no one cares about but me.

Tiebreaker scenarios. The events of last week have caused an enormous hairball in the Big Ten standings below Indiana. Michigan actually has a not-infinitesimal shot at the title since Indiana finishes with Ohio State and Michigan. These teams are still in the hunt:

  • Indiana: share clinched. Win outright by winning at home versus OSU or @ Michigan.
  • OSU: win out (@ IU, Illinois), Michigan beats IU
  • Michigan: win out (@ Purdue, IU), OSU beats IU
  • Wisconsin/MSU: IU loses out, win UW/MSU game, don't blow last game against low-level opponent.

The chances are not good, but they're not zero. You may shake your fist at the Wisconsin and Penn State games now. In the event that a bunch of teams tie at the same record, Michigan is hurt by going 0-1 against Wisconsin (grrr) and often loses the tiebreaker and gets stuck without a bye in the first round of the Big Ten tourney, playing (grr) Penn State. If Michigan finishes 12-6 in the Big Ten that is at least a 50/50 proposition.

Lolizzo. Classic "my players destroyed the universe, but it's my fault" line:

"We were looking to get Gary a shot at the top of the key or to Keith and we didn't run it right," Izzo said. "We had a couple of freshmen in there that struggled with it. That was my fault."

Izzo : "my fault" :: humans : "just sayin'"

Also.

MINUTES FROM FRESHMEN, M/MSU, 3/3/2013

  • Michigan: 93
  • Michigan State: 72

Etc.: Wojo thing. Everett Cook on setting the trap. MSU highlights reveal glorious 57-0 victory for the People's Team. Five Key Plays.

hollis51318CTvmVL

By now you've read the Burke tweet, which needed three full-sized threads before everyone could get their Ha-Ha's out: One to point out its irony, one for when big brother slapped him in the face for it, and of course the wicked hangover. The oddity I saw was "People u seek out is better than those that seek u" and "EVERYONE got something to say... smh I thought this was my life!" are in a dialect totally incongruent with every tweet I found in 20 minutes of scrolling through Hollis tweets. Dude wasn't just giving Trey Burke sage advice, he was delivering it in a language that young people understand. Allow me to translate:

jive

This will all blow over soon enough but should serve as warning to young people everywhere: NEVER under any circumstances give your handle out to old people; they think you speak Jive!

Please tell me you got that. It's somebody's general rule that people won't watch movies more than 15 years older than they are.*† ‡ By this rule you'd have to have been born in 1995 (a high school senior) to be excused from Airplane! I'm looking at you, people who didn't get dragonchild's cockpit full of Michigan defenders.

Funny thing about Airplane!: I respect that flick as a classic to the point where I'll be condescending toward someone who hasn't seen memorized it, but until recently I didn't even know it was an almost perfect spoof of Zero Hour! (1957). It's a testament to how good Airplane! is that it stands up even if you don't get the main joke; to be fair, the diary kind of doesn't. It's also ironic that I would make fun of people for a movie reference going over their heads when what that movie referenced totally went over my head.

Everything You Need to Know About Airmen. So I checked out Zero Hour! and now one of the Airplane! jokes I never really got totally makes sense. You know how Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's character is obviously Kareem Abdul-Jabbar but the narrative keeps trying force this "he's Roger the co-pilot!" thing, to the point that when they pull him away he's got his Lakers shorts on? In Zero Hour! the co-pilot was played by Elroy Hirsch.


Zero%20Hour

ie Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsh…

crazylegs

…and when Kareem appears we're supposed to get how crazy it was that a kid could see Crazylegs in a pilot's uniform and not be like "OMIGOD YOU'RE ELROY HIRSCH!"

Crazylegs was a Badger who got moved to Michigan when a lot of WWII servicemen were transferred as part of a program to give in-training Navy and Marine officers a college education. Hirsch on the transfer:

"But I was to learn a far more important thing about Michigan. It's not something you can hold or see ... but you sure can feel it. I'm speaking about the great Michigan tradition. Corny you say? Not on your life. It's there ... it engulfs you."

Today the service academies don't get first dibs on any draft-age citizen they want, but they do have virtually unlimited scholarships, bringing in 40+ recruits a year (that makes two oversigners on the 2012 schedule). This and many more interesting facts about Air Force can be found in the very early preview by Rabbit21. The whole thing is fascinating. Diary of the Week!

Lines! The bats, oh the bats. They are home and hot, as softball swept their five-game homestand by 10-2, 11-2, 12-4, 6-0, and 12-2 scores. Outfielder Nicole Sappingfield had five RBI last night, including a walk-off grand slam. Shortstop Amy Knapp owes a girl in my section an apology for her put-away homer on Sunday vs. Penn State, which hurt the girl's wrist when she tried to catch it.

Player ERA W/L GS CG Sho IP H R ER BB SO OppAvg.
Haylie Wagner 1.28 15-4 15 13 4 109.1 72 25 20 20 68 0.185
Sara Driesenga 2.39 6-5 14 5 1 76.0 73 41 26 25 39 0.247
Stephanie Speierman 1.83 1-0 2 1 1 15.1 13 5 4 6 17 0.22
TEAM 1.73 22-9 x 19 6 202.0 158 71 50 53 125 0.211

Etc. CenterIce's writeup on the incoming hockey recruits. AC1997 updated the basketball offseason outlook for departures; now with 100% more ohgodBurkestay! Helle had a board-bumped travel diary for this year's road games. If you're going to Minnesota, try the Jucy Lucy [sic]. Pro-tip: let it cool first.

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* There's a corollary rule that states you will think anything made in the 15-year span around when you were born is pure genius, but this rule is really just an observation by people my age that most of the best movies (Godfather, Star Wars, Back to the Future, etc.) all came out around then.§

† Trekkies are of course excluded.

‡ It's at least 17, since my wife agrees with me that The Lion in Winter with Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn is way better than the remake with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close. Reminder: Angevin discussion is not OT in comments. Someone's going to take me up on this eventually.

§ Which is to say if some kid thinks Harry Potter and something with Russell Crowe in it constitutes the golden age of film, they should be beaten.‖

‖ Yes I'm doing the Alt85 thing again.

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angryiowarbhg

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ynozk

Those figures: MSHOT92 made those!

And now for your moment of zen: