isaiah sykes

This is Red's fault somehow. Jack Johnson got nailed for violating the dumbest rule in hockey last night, and then got green-clad taint for his troubles:

The Canucks won in overtime, BTW.

("Dumbest rule" side note: dumping the puck into the stands shouldn't be a penalty. It should be treated exactly like icing. Defensive zone faceoff, no change.)

I love you, Boise State athletic director Quixote. As someone who's been complaining about college football scheduling since at least 1959, I love Boise State athletic director Gene Bleymaier for being the first guy to publicly state we need a  change:

“I make 30 calls at a norm to get a game,” he said. “To get a home game, it takes 50 calls.”

An athletic director who needs a game may send an e-mail blast saying, “We have this date open for a home game.” Bleymaier will call and say, “We have that date open. We’ll come.” After some throat-clearing, hemming and hawing, Bleymaier will hear that it’s not going to work out.

"We work so hard to level the playing field,” Bleymaier said, referring to the NCAA membership. “When it comes to scheduling, it’s ‘Let’s not worry about that.’ It’s a big advantage.”

Bleymaier idea for change is simple. He intends to propose NCAA legislation that would eliminate guarantee games.
“When you schedule an opponent,” Bleymaier proposed, “you play one at their place, one at your place.”

This legislation won't make it out of the Will Everyone Laugh At This committee, but at least someone is making a game effort to kill some giants around here. Maybe Bleymaier could get something less drastic passed? Probably not.

As a bonus, Ivan Maisel says Bleymaier believes the proposal is "dipped in logic and washed in fairness." Never forget that Ivan Maisel is from Alabama. Apparently the Amish sections, which probably don't exist.

Commit, also please learn to shoot. Amongst a bevy of football prospects coming in this weekend will be Detroit Denby guard Isaiah Sykes, who can't shoot but is a 6'5" slasher with crazy passing ability. Trey Zeigler playing for his dad lines this up all pretty:

“It doesn’t matter where I go,” Sykes said. “I just want to go where the best situation is for me.”

One thing that may make a difference was Trey Zeigler’s commitment to Central Michigan on Wednesday over Michigan. Zeigler and Sykes play similar positions, both more slashers than shooters. And Sykes said Zeigler’s decision helped him with Michigan.

“It gives me a better chance of me going there, playing there,” Sykes said.

I was on board with taking Sykes even if Zeigler signed up; without Trey it's a no-brainer. There are some rumors flying around that this is a done deal as soon as Michigan gives him a letter; Yesterday on WTKA Beilein said Michigan feels "really good" about at least one more recruit. If he doesn't get offered this weekend, that's a bad sign—means all those transfers made his transcripts a mess—and if he does and heads out to Arkansas, that's also a bad sign.

Expansion bit from Louisville. After UL AD Tom Jurich apologize profusely for hiring Steve Krapthorpe—seriously—he dropped a bit on Big Ten Expansion from his presumably well-informed perspective:

Jurich said as a matter of fact that the Big Ten is seeking expansion. Their number one target is Notre Dame, followed by Pitt and Rutgers....."I've gone on the offensive, and we are trying to get out in front of this thing.....we will look to Florida and possibly CUSA for replacements."

Probably "Pitt or Rutgers,"  but you know all those crazy Big Ten Voltron rumors going around.

Etc.: Four Wolverines go in the first round of a 2007 NFL re-draft, with Leon Hall moving up to 8th, Lamarr Woodley to 11th, David Harris to 14th, and Steve Breaston all the way to #32 after going in the fifth round originally. John Falk has a book on the way and tore up 'TKA yesterday when they were at practice.

Baraka Obama-a. Remember Kelly Baraka? Unless you're an old-school M recruitnik probably not. If you don't: he was supposed to  be a total ninja RB before a number of high school pot arrests saw him lose his shot at an M scholarship. He never made it anywhere else and has regularly featured in "where are they now?" features end up with the Kalamazoo Xplosion, a minor league football team. Not that you needed me to tell you that with a name like "Xplosion."

Yeah… anyway. About that ninja bit:

LeGarrette Blount ain't got nothing on Kelly Baraka.

Video revamp. Inside Michigan Football sans browser-crippling software:

Schilling's beard is a confidence-building one.

Slings and arrows. The Mathlete takes a look at luck over the past two years in the Big Ten and nationally, re-running last season based on performance-adjusted PPG metrics and slicing out some of the huge swings from random plays like fumbles (he leaves in interceptions). Unsurprisingly, Michigan hasn't been on the kind end of things:

I had some questions about whether this "luck" factor was really luck, but there doesn't appear to be any correlation between excellent teams and good fortune. OSU and Penn State average out to be basically even. Iowa nets out around –2. Michigan State's 9-3 2008 team was the second most-fortunate in the country that year, something that checks out in the statistics. It passes a cursory sanity check.

So, then: Northwestern is your official Big Ten lucksack with Minnesota a distant second. If I'm reading the graph right, the Wildcats have been the luckiest team in the country two years running. The negative outlier for 2009—that dot sitting right at –3.0 on the y axis—is Oklahoma, by the way. Not that you needed to be told that a seven-win Stoops outfit suffered its share of outrageous fortune even beyond the Bradford injury.

One stop scouting. The NTDP moved to the USHL this year, which the NHL scouting community loves. Previously, the development team had puttered along in the NAHL, in which draftable prospects are few and far between. Now they're in the USA's premiere junior league and scouts are going "eeee":

"The whole design of the program has given us the selfish benefactor of comparing the Under-18 team on one weekend against the University of Michigan and older players, and then watching them against their group peers the following weekend. But because this is such a select team, an elite team, we think that the elite 18-year-olds should be able to compete against the 21- and 22-year-olds who were not selected in the draft. Those players are older and more savvy but for some reason were passed over."

This should help the NTDP hold on to some of the elite Americans they've lost in recent years. (Example: Stefan Matteau, son of longtime NHLer Stephane Matteau, has accepted a slot according to Michigan Hockey Net.) The 2011 NTDP is a relatively motley bunch. Michigan hasn't recruited anyone from it, a rarity these days. That will change for 2012, as Michigan will have at least two on next years U17s. Boo Nieves is a holy lock for the team and Heisenberg says Connor Carrick has already accepted an invite.

Anything that helps the USHL get on even footing with major junior—something that point equivalencies and NHL alumni suggest is in the process of happening—is good for college hockey.

More Brandon panting. David Brandon loves America:

“Expanding the tournament, I believe is a bad idea … there are certain things that if they are not broke, don’t try to fix ‘em. If there is a better, more outstanding platform out there than the NCAA Final Four and basketball tournament, you have to tell me what that is.”

Not that this matters as the 96-team tournament becomes a foregone conclusion. I can't wait for that 9-24 matchup that will determine who has the right to face at eight seed. Guh.

While I'm on Brandon, contrast Michigan's hiring process with the fiasco that went down in Eugene after Mike Bellotti was presented a $2.3 million going-away present after accepting a job with ESPN:

[Oregon president Richard] Lariviere made two things clear: that he initiated the change in leadership and that university officials made missteps in dealing with Bellotti’s contract that no longer will be tolerated.

“This institution did not follow acceptable business practices in the past,” Lariviere said. “That will not be repeated by my administration.”

Makes the hundred grand or whatever Michigan spent vetting candidates seem like the chump change it is.

Lariviere fired Bellotti because of an "increasing need for strong financial and business management"; the ESPN job was a late development that seemed to allow all parties to save face. (Then it blew up in their face, but it was a nice try.) The trend in athletic directors is clear: CEO types.

Walk it back. Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick has read enough livid emails about Notre Dame's national cachet and the potential damage to Catholicism that would result from Our Lady joining up with those secular hooligans and is now changing tack on Notre Dame's role in Big Ten expansion:

That, Swarbrick insists now, was not a signal that Notre Dame is more open to finding a home for football in the Big Ten or any other league.

"The only things that could make it happen are the sorts of radical change in the industry that would cause upheaval and impact a lot more (schools) than Notre Dame," he says. "You wind up with only three conferences. You wind up with two tiers of conferences. Now, all of a sudden, it's not three divisions in college; it's four. It's the big change.

"I don't see that happening."

Please reduce your ND-to-B10 DEFCON to 85. Swarbrick adds:

"I really do believe strongly that we're sort of uniquely positioned to continue to chart our own course."

Sort of uniquely positioned? DEFCON back to 84!

In other Big Ten expansion news, Barnhardt writes about a 16 team Big Ten, spurring another round of PANIC duly shot down by DocSat, resurrected by the St Louis Post-Dispatch and OSU athletic director Gene Smith:

"I believe that if we expand, you probably ought to look at more than (just adding a 12th school)," Ohio State athletics director Gene Smith said.

Stressing that was his opinion and may not be shared by some colleagues, Smith added that he believed the impact "would be pretty massive."

A sixteen team Big Ten is stupid. I complained earlier that an expansion to 14 would see Michigan play Penn State 29% of the time; going to 16 would drop that to 12% (eight conference games) or 25% (nine). That's not a conference any more. The only way it could work would be to adopt promotion and relegation. Whenever I bring this up people point out that the radical swings in team quality characteristic of college football could doom very good teams to irrelevance, and they're right. But it makes more sense than pretending to be in a conference with a team you play once every eight years.

If you're going to expand like that, I think 15 is the number. My completely bats proposal for a 14-team Big Ten is mathematically unworkable, but if you add a 15th team you can break the conference into three divisions of five that play each other and two (or possibly three) opponents in each of the other divisions, and then you can have relegation/promotion crazytimes at the end of the season. This will never, ever happen.

I'm hoping this is all a game of chicken to convince Notre Dame to sign on the dotted line. Expansion of the Big Ten past twelve teams is an idea on par with a 96 team NCAA tournament.

Reviews of a mixed variety. Local scouting service "Best of the Best" returns from the MSHAA playoffs with impressions of a number of players, three of them relevant to your interests. Isaiah Sykes:

He doesn't have a jump shot to save his life, but you'd be hard pressed to find a better finisher and slasher in the 2010 class statewide. Also drop dimes like a 5'9 PG. Terrific rebounder, and is great at getting the defensive board and starting the fast break and making something positive happen with the basketball. High majors are recruiting him, and it's warranted, would be a good late pick up for any up-tempo college team.

Carlton Brundidge:

He's already committed to Michigan, but I don't know if he'll be successful in that system. In order to succeed at the highest level, picking the right system will be a absolute necessity for him. At the end of the day, he's a SG, and that's the bottom line. He produces and gets the job done, at that's what every team needs. He's a very good finisher for his size at the high school level and he can score in bunches when he gets rolling. All in all, his upside is limited in my opinion.

Decidedly negative, that. Hopefully he can develop a jumper over the next year and a half. Finally, Amir Williams:

A defensive phenom no matter the game because of his length, size, and timing, his effect on the game will be felt no matter what. He is also a hungry rebounder, who attacks the glass. Those are two big positives that you'd like every big man to have in their game, once the offensive part of his game becomes more consistent, we could be looking at another McDonald's All American out of the Country Day program.

Etc.: Rich Rodriguez's most recent presser in youtube form: part one, and part two. TSB unbreaks One Shining Moment. Dienhart surveys the explosion in assistant coaches' salaries.

At least there's that. Darren Everson has a great piece on Michigan's recent malaise and the hockey team's bounce-back that won't have much news for anyone who's lived through this year but is a great summary if you need to explain why you're sitting in the bathtub clutching yourself to someone who's not a Michigan fan.

Mary Sue Coleman shows up at the end to provide a throwaway quote, prompting a complaint from Dave Birkett about her tendency to show up in the WSJ but turn down local requests. This is probably because the WSJ asks her questions like "Do you like to win?" and local papers are more likely to ask eleven questions in a row about the threat Demar Dorsey poses to local schoolchildren. You must lie in the bed you have made.

Give me back that filet of goalie. Give me that goalie. If you've been watching the NCAA tournament you, like me, must have the bizarre Filet o' Fish jingle stuck in your head. There is but one thing as persistent this day:

Shawn Hunwick had a decision to make:

Go to Albion and become the school's first goaltender, or ...

Walk-on at Michigan. [ed: this story manages to spread one sentence over three(!) paragraphs, which must be a record.]

For the few moments the blinding television lights remained locked in on him, Shawn Hunwick played it cool.

In almost three years at Michigan, Hunwick played exactly 18 minutes of college hockey. But he never complained, never skipped, and never asked for playing time. He just kept his mouth shut, and did his job.

There is also an article from [NEWSPAPER REDACTED]. It covers exactly the same ground as the 37 other articles about Shawn Hunwick. Give me that fish.

Berenson's locked Hunwick in an electrical closet since the CCHA finals in a desperate attempt to keep his head on straight. We'll see if it works. Hunwick finds the electrical closet roomy, by the way, and thinks it's an honor to be in an electrical closet at Michigan.

Meanwhile, Louie Caporusso on avoiding that Air Force thing again:

But according to Caporusso, the formula for avoiding an early exit like last year is simply “shooting the puck on net with a purpose.”

“If we give him a lot of confidence and start building him up in our head, then it’s only going to make it harder on us,” Caporusso said. “I find if you brainwash yourself to believe that they don’t have a good goalie, you’re better off putting the puck in the net.”

The final countdown. Center Jon Horford just signed on, replacing Ben Cronin's wonky hip with a rail-thin post with some touch near the basket and good passing skills.

I don't want to steal too much of UMHoops's thunder as Michigan approaches what will be a critical couple weeks for the basketball program, but a high level overview: Michigan has two scholarships open and they may fill both of those slots despite the jam that would cause in the class of 2011. The candidates:

• Mount Pleasant SF Trey Zeigler. Ziegler is similar to Manny Harris, but higher rated on average. He is down to a top five of Michigan, Central, State, Arizona State, and UCLA. Complicating factor: his father is the head coach at Central Michigan. Zeigler could sign up to help his dad, whose job security is shaky.
• Detroit Denby SF Isaiah Sykes. Sykes can't shoot but he can get to the rack at will and is in the 6'5" range with long arms and a feverish desire to rebound. He has no offers after a high school career that saw three transfers; he didn't even play the first half of this season.

Michigan will obviously take Zeigler if they can get him. Sykes is the wildcard. Beilein's been to a number of his games recently, spurring both UMHoops and AnnArbor.com to get video and scouting reports on the guy. If Zeigler ends up going elsewhere—the tenuous conventional wisdom is that it's probably CMU or M—I can't imagine Beilein won't offer Sykes and end up with him.

Would Michigan take Sykes if it got Zeigler, though? Maybe. Michigan could free up another scholarship in 2011 for a post if they did not offer Laval Lucas-Perry a fifth year, and it's possible they wouldn't have to do that if someone transferred because of a lack of playing time in the aftermath of Zeigler, Sykes, Hardaway, and Smotrycz (who will push Novak from the four to the two and three) arriving. If I was Beilein I'd make my decision on Sykes independent of Zeigler.

The spring signing period starts in two weeks.

And fin. There was some hubbub in the comments when Michigan State reinstated a number of players who participated in the PREWB. Included were BJ Cunningham and Mark Dell, the highest profile participants not immediately booted. This set Dantonio up for a buffeting.

Why I can't figure. State has lost eight(!) players as a result of the PREWB, and six of them hadn't had previous run-ins with the law. This is not like Glenn Winston's reinstatement. None of the guys who are back on the team got any jail time; just about every program in the country would have done the same thing.

You can hammer Dantonio for two things here: letting Winston back on the team after months in jail after an unprovoked attack on a pair of innocent bystanders, lying about Roderick Jenrette's freshman year suspension. The actual handling of the aftermath here seems appropriate. Both guys who played in the Alamo Bowl, by the way, are gone. That wasn't on Dantonio.

While we're on Michigan State: they've got a goofily named quasi linebacker on their depth chart too. They've got a "STAR" listed and might be moving to a 3-4, or some other defense with three dedicated down lineman and an array of hybrids.

Happy trails. The Blue Gray Sky is packing it in. This site's relationship with those guys fell off a cliff after we did an article exchange before the '05 M-ND game. Mine was a description of my experience after the painful 2002 loss, after which a young child came up to me and literally said "good game, mister" as if I had fallen into Pleasantville. I added in some stuff about Notre Dame's program not being very good, which was basically true, and how this made Michigan's rivalry with them frustrating because they did things like lose two of three to Ty Willingham.

Theirs deployed "Skunkbears" and actually featured these two sentences:

Yost was but the first in a litany of men of low character to hold the reins at UM. ... Gary Moeller was frustrated that he couldn't pick Notre Dame up, drink it, and then drive into a ditch.

It was kind of like punching your brother in the arm and getting a baseball bat to the head in return. Suffice it to say there were no more article exchanges.

Even so, BGS was one of the first blogs to materialize out of the ether and when they weren't dredging up apocryphal stories about people who have been dead for 70 years, they were drafting incredibly research-heavy pieces I was jealous of. It must have been nice to have a blog with eight or so contributors; one of them could just hole up for months and come out with a precise breakdown of formations organized by down and distance. I can't find that in particular, but I did find their "Four Plays" series, which was a 2006 version of Picture Pages on steroids. They were good. They were Notre Dame fans who posted on ND Nation, but they were also good.

Etc.: Dennis Dodd says "if there were ever a coach to root for, it's Rich Rod." Is that a good thing?