jalen rose

[David Wilcomes]

2/19/2020 – Michigan 60, Rutgers 52 – 17-9, 8-7 Big Ten

It was weird seeing Jalen Rose directly behind the Michigan bench last night. It was weirder when Eli Brooks hit a cold-blooded three after getting stuck with a late clock possession against a 6'7" guy. The camera cut to the bench, where Zavier Simpson and Rose were doing the same thing:

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This is a synthesis of two different Michigan pasts, its present, and its future.

One of the two pasts is offscreen: it's Brooks canning the three. Brooks is the most Beilein kid on Michigan's current roster. He's utterly devoid of swag. He remembers things after you tell him. He plays relentless positional defense in the manner of a guy determined to overcome limitations. He shoots from distance; the rim is a rumor unless the opposition has gotten beaten by one of Michigan's sets.

He feels like a mid-major player who got bumped up by circumstance. Eli Brooks is Zack Novak and Stu Douglass and the progression of guys who are just making it work against all athletic odds. Maybe not the most common Beilein architype, but the most Beilein archetype.

The other past is obvious, with apologies to Chris Hunter: Jalen freakin' Rose. Fab Five guy. Decade-long NBA career. Now paid to be interesting in public. The Fab Five was larger than life and Rose was always the guy with the mic. Your author had some problems with Rose in the Beilein era because he didn't seem to care about the program at all until it made the Final Four, and then that was just an opportunity to talk about how rad the Fab Five was.

To be clear, Rose has every reason to be bitter about how Michigan treated him and his classmates for close to 20 years. hat bitterness could only increase as the idea that paying basketball players was immoral was repudiated by ever more important components of the college basketball ecosystem. First bloggers, then sportswriters, then coaches, and finally the NCAA itself. For Michigan's banners to stay down while Will Wade and Bill Self keep their jobs after being definitively proven as violators by the FBI (the FBI!)… well, if that was me I'd probably be pretty distant too.

But he's back, and he's hanging on Eli Brooks. Hanging.

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The present is Zavier Simpson, who's only on the bench in the shot above because he's got four fouls and Michigan's buying him a couple minutes. Aside from this brief period he barely comes off the floor, leads Michigan in scoring, and is robbed of a double-digit assist game by Michigan's erratic three-point shooting.

Simpson is the exact opposite of a Beilein archetype, brought in as a no-shoot all-D point guard. He's beaten himself into a progressively better player over the course of four years. He's not a Beilein creation or a Juwan Howard creation. He is always becoming himself with no outside intervention except from maybe dad. He scores his 1,000th point in this game on a hook shot he and only he uses.

It didn't matter whether Beilein stayed or not. There was never going to be another Zavier Simpson. Juwan Howard won't recruit anyone like him; John Beilein wouldn't have. That's because there are no other players like Zavier Simpson. He is sui generis.

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To get to the future you gotta put it all together. Brooks is 0/5 in this game at the suddenly impregnable RAC. This space repeatedly wondered whether he had a mental block against high level teams, and thought David DeJulius should start eating to his minutes. Juwan Howard didn't, and Juwan Howard was right, and Eli Brooks just hit the iciest shot of his career.

Jalen Rose is there, a couple games after Dikembe Mutumbo and Worldwide Wes were at Welsh-Ryan, of all places. Juwan Howard knows everyone and everyone likes him. Michigan's tendency towards factionalism could easily rise up in the aftermath of losing the best coach in program history, but it won't because everyone wants Juwan Howard to succeed from Lebron James on down.

Zavier Simpson is there. Juwan Howard has gotten out of Simpson's way and let him have his team.

It's really hard to get everyone pulling in one direction. Everyone reading this knows that in their bones. In Juwan Howard it seems like Michigan's found a guy who can pull up the guys who need it, leave the guys who don't alone, and gather everyone to him, past, present, and future.

[After THE JUMP: the new disaster artist]

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Officiating that even closely approximated what could plausibly described as normal, a breeze from a passing mosquito on a rim-balancing rock, a half-court prayer by the last guys you'd expect to get one of those answered…pick any two things that should or could have happened this year and that's the difference between the 1 seed in the Big Ten Tourney and the 5th.

As I lay in the middle of the B1G's final season standings, trying to will my defense out of entropy, I could see the faces of the weasels that did this to me and the hair cream aficionados responsible. When fortune smiles on something as violent and ugly as revenge, it seems proof like no other, that not only does God exist, you're doing His will.

Michigan shouldn't by all rights be taking the long way through the Big Ten Tournament. But fortune has seen fit to at least make that path go right through those whose ledgers with us are most in the red: Penn State yesterday, Wisconsin today, and pending survival there, almost certainly Indiana. That's our worst loss and then the only two teams who finished with winning records against us. In Indiana's case that won't change unless we meet in the NCAAs.

Can Wisconsin beat us again? I mean it's basketball: weird things happen even without the increased chaos of fewer possessions. Like for example sometimes the boryanstripes inexplicably side with the harbingers of Rigelian swamp ball:

I felt paranoid watching all of this. It was a temporary window into the world of a 9/11 truther, seeing what looked like an insane conspiracy by Big Ten refs to keep Bo Ryan in their ears, screaming unprintable things about their mothers. A full half-dozen of the calls they made seemed literally impossible, from the two mentioned above to another breakaway layup that Burke missed because a dude hit him on the head and the charge Burke took on Berggren late that went the other way for a critical three-point play. Am I sane? I thought we got a fair whistle at Indiana. I did think that.

At this point a clunky start and a million defensive breakdowns by the freshmen and THJ wouldn't even be filed as weird things. Another weird thing would be an an outfit as attuned to profit margins as this Big Ten allowing a Rigelian sympathizer any kind of access to a whistle. If you need more than "it wouldn't fit the Kill Bill narrative" for reasons to be optimistic, Wisconsin in their own building needed probably the worst complete ref job in the conference's history and an impossible half-court buzzer shot to fall to beat us the first time. Those are thoughts. Here are diaries:

philcollinsHistory lessons. Remember the funny Year in Review (with pics) things that saveferris used to write? Here he goes back to 1989, a time when the Simpsons was that new cartoon your mom didn't want you to watch, lest you turn into a spiky-haired scamp child who tells people to not have a cow, man. Most hilarious thing in the world in 1989 according to 1989 me: a nose tackle named Teeter. Teeter you all! Bad memories: the Tigers, kicking it to Rocket Ismail, and Phil Collins. Good memories: Berenson was just beginning to turn the hockey program around. Yzerman scored 155 points for the Wings, who won the Norris Division. The Pistons were at the peak of the Bad Boys period. Bo's last squad (and one of his best) with that backfield of Tony Boles, Leroy Hoard, Jarrod Bunch and Burnie Legette. And Glenn Rice, obvs.

Speaking of Bunch, he just popped up on the blog this week after someone noticed he was in the latest Tarantino film…

[After the jump]

RIP Charles Drake. I was on the road when news of Charles Drake's untimely death hit the internet. Drake was one of a legion of mid-90s players brought in at running back who eventually found their way to the field at another position. If Ian Gold was the most prominent, Drake was second, moving to free safety after finding running back crowded.

Free safeties who aren't once-in-a-generation good are kind of like longsnappers in that you're usually not happy when their name is splashed across your television. In the safety's case it means they're chasing someone else. The lack of a visceral "oh, THAT play" emotion when his name comes up speaks well to his play. He was a low-event guy in an era when safeties often weren't. Condolences to his family and teammates. 

Holdin' The Rope has a perspective piece worth your time.

In other sunny news. ESPN reports that this consulting firm Penn State has hired is "expected to be tough on" one Joe Paterno:

"Much of the focus will be on the culture of the football program, with findings that go back more than a decade," said a Penn State official briefed on the inquiry, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's going to be very tough on Joe (Paterno)."

The long-awaited report, compiled by Freeh Group International Solutions, the consulting firm led by former FBI director Louis J. Freeh, is the culmination of an eight-month investigation that examined whether university policies and culture were contributing factors to a lack of reports and action about abuse that occurred on campus. Investigators interviewed more than 400 people, including Penn State administrators, faculty members, trustees and former coaches, players and staff from Penn State's football team.

At this point it would be more of a surprise to find out that Paterno would come out of things looking okay. In retrospect that mid-aughts run of arrests that Paterno had little control over and seemed disinclined to care about seems symptomatic of the greater attitude that led to the decade-long Sandusky cover-up. History will not treat the "Grand Experiment" well.

Square hats and blasphemy. Jalen Rose, on the left, in his younger years:

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Rose should show up in a Michigan-themed version something similar the next time he's on ESPN. I would pay a dollar for that.

Probably the final number. The number of current or former Michigan athletes who will be competing in the London Olympics: 18. And then there's Michael Phelps, who may not have actually attended Michigan but it something of an Ann Arbor institution if you've ever been in one of the diners he shoveled calories into himself at.

Points for sentiment. Not so much execution. From a reader, here is a tattoo:

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This is not quite up to Lamarr Woodley standards.

The new guy. The News interviews Erik Bakich, Michigan's new baseball coach. There's not much that's not boilerplate, but I liked this:

When you're building a program based on pitching you need to have strong frontline pitching.

We'll see how it works out. Bakich has a thin track record but did relatively well at a tough place to win, is young, and has recruited well both as a head coach and an assistant. It's a reality check as to where Michigan's program stands.

Keith Jackson. The 1985 South Carolina game featured Jamie Morris hammering the Gamecocks and SC's "wide open, gambling offense" scoring three points:

Chesson hype: incremented. Sam Webb reports that Jehu Cheson ran a 4.4 40 at Michigan offseason workouts. If fast, will be intimidating.

CEASE PANIC. Our annual Cass Tech Commit Considers Taking Visits But Decides Not To After Panicking The Internet event has transpired:

Michigan football commit David Dawson turned some heads Friday when his plans to camp at Florida were revealed.

A day later, the trip is no more.

After speaking to Michigan coaches, the Detroit Cass Tech offensive lineman -- ranked by ESPN as the country's top guard -- no longer will attend the Gators' Friday Night Lights camp, according to GoBlueWolverine.com's Sam Webb.

Twitter warriors can stand down. Those inspirational quotes about loyalty can be re-directed to your significant others. I've found that condescending public tweets are what make a relationship go in this modern age of ours.

Extremely important abbreviation UPDATE! If you see "FINAO" on a football recruit's twitter, it stands for "failure is not an option." Thus sayeth Heiko in an act of investigative journalism unparalleled in the history of the site. You may all resume your day to day lives.

This is a man to have a drink with. Sun Belt Commissioner Karl Benson proposed a four-league, 33-team superconference combining CUSA, the Sun Belt, the WAC, and Mountain West. The slide on which this proposal was tendered was labeled "Makes Too Much Sense." Someone should get Karl Benson drunk and have him opine on the other conference commissioners.

Next year's defection worries. A couple of Michigan's 2013 hockey commits made the "A-list" of big time prospects the CSB puts out around this time every year. C JT Compher (expected) and D Michael Downing (maybe a bit of a surprise) are two of the five college-bound guys on that list. That generally means they're expected to go in the first couple rounds.

Big Ten hockey expansion: seeking 100 million or bust. New PSU coach Guy Gadowsky was interviewed by The Pipeline show and PSU hockey blog Thank You Terry transcribed interesting bits. From the non-PSU perspective, this is the most interesting bit:

Speaking of the Big Ten...

"I know for sure there’s been three other Big Ten schools that have contacted our administration and are very curious as to how [the transition to NCAA hockey] happened and what they needed to do. The reality is that the prerequisite to that is that you get a Mr. Pegula or Pegula family that’s going to give 100-odd million dollars. Those guys aren’t hanging off trees. So that’s the prerequisite and that’s hard to find. But I do think there’s a lot of interest – if they can get it done, I know there are Big Ten schools that would love to be a part of it."

Don't expect the Big Ten to get up to eight teams unless magic fairies with money bags descend on the right schools.

Etc.: Ace will no doubt cover LaQuon Treadwell's not-quite-itchy-enough trigger finger extensively in Tuesday Recruitin', but what you need to know now is he didn't commit and now plans to do so on a "random day($)," probably by rolling a d100 until it comes up 1. Yes, highly touted receivers have d100s. Loads of them.

Alex Anzalone has decided to avoid creeper-associated universities and will go to Notre Dame. Beilein is not calling recruits at midnight. Burke and Hardaway are among the 20 players at the Lebron Skills Academy.