men's gymnastics

A few weeks back I did a non-revenue sports piece looking at the fall disciplines, how Michigan's teams fared and who the most decorated athletes in the various sports were. Today we're doing the same, except for the winter sports. A future spring sports edition will be coming in the future and it will be longer than this one, as there are only five sports to cover today: men's and women's swim/dive, men's and women's gymnastics, and wrestling. I've written up summaries for both swim and dives as well as wrestling, while I've enlisted the help of MGoBlog gymnastics correspondent BiSB to cover those two, since he knows a hell of a lot more about it than me. 

 

Wrestling

Michigan Wrestling capped off a solid season at the NCAA Championships back in mid-March, unable to secure a second-consecutive B1G Tournament title, but there's no shame when you compete in a conference as difficult as the B1G. The team went 11-4 in their head-to-head matches, 5-3 in the conference which was tied for fifth with Minnesota and Northwestern. Penn State were kings of the league this year, a perfect 8-0 in conference and winning the national championship. Along the way, the Nittany Lions won the B1G Tournament, which was held at Crisler Center in Ann Arbor this year, where the Wolverines placed fifth. In a sign of the B1G's dominance, Michigan finished sixth in the national championships in Tulsa, behind PSU, Iowa, Cornell, OSU, and Missouri. They were unable to match last season's second-place national finish, but even taking sixth is a sign of the program's strength all the same, not to mention the individual accolades the season produced, which give Wolverine wrestling fans lots to be proud of. 

Speaking of those individual accolades, let's talk about Mason Parris. The fifth-year senior became Michigan's 24th individual national champion when he secured the NCAA heavyweight title in Tulsa and the program's first ever winner of the Dan Hodge Trophy, awarded to America's best collegiate wrestler. Parris' national title capped off an immaculate 33-0 season, the capstone to what was already an illustrious collegiate career. Parris began back in 2018-19 as a freshman, 7th in the B1G that season in the heavyweight class, qualifying for the NCAAs. He was already a captain by his sophomore season in 2019-20 and took 2nd in the B1G, before the year ended early due to COVID.

[UMich Athletics]

2020-21 was Parris' first NCAA All-American campaign, where he was the national runner-up for the heavyweight title, but his senior season was marred by injury in the back-half, robbing him of the chance to win it all. He was still named an All-American again, but Parris wanted to return to school to finally take the national title. He got the clean bill of health necessary and dominated this entire season, culminating in the championship match against Penn State's Greg Kerkvliet, which Parris won to take the title. Word is that this may not be the last we see of Parris: in an interview with Rivals' Josh Henschke, Parris revealed that he plans to train for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris (would be fun for puns!) and the Michigan Daily reported after the championships that Parris will stay in Ann Arbor over the summer to continue training for the Olympics. Considering that Parris was the runner-up at the NCAAs in 2021 to a future Olympic gold medalist in the Tokyo games (Gable Steveson), making Team USA for Paris seems attainable. 

Beyond the greatness of Parris, Michigan had two more All-Americans at the NCAAs. Cameron Amine took fourth in the 165 lb. weight class, earning All-America honors, which is the third time he's earned that distinction in his collegiate wrestling career. Will Lewan was seventh in the 157 lb. class, also his third All-America honor. Lewan, like Parris, is a fifth-year senior who will depart the program, but Amine has two more years eligibility remaining with his COVID-shirt and a red-shirt applying. Sean Bormet leads a strong program, competing in the toughest conference in college wrestling, and though some key wrestlers will be graduating, there is every reason to believe that Michigan will remain competitive in the years to come. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Aquatics and gymnastics]

YOU'RE A TALLER. User Bombadil reports that Ian Bunting is still getting mail from Mississippi State, too.

This may be fake but probably not.

WE'RE ALL FLIPPER. Congrats to the men's gymnastics team, national champs. Sam Mikulak is your champion on parallel bars and high bar plus the overall individual national champ.

With men's swimming bringing home a title of their own plus the basketball team's run to the final, Michigan is actually threatening Stanford's Director's Cup hegemony. When the Director's Cup releases their updated standings tomorrow Michigan should be on top of the rankings with only a few sports left: golf, base/softball, track and field, women's water polo, women's lacrosse, and men's volleyball.

Michigan's pretty good at some of those… but, uh, unfortunately Stanford is better.

Top 25 Rankings for Stanford in spring sports, most rankings updated last weekend:

Softball - 16

Men's Golf - 8

Women's Golf - 12

Baseball - receiving votes

Women's T&F - 9

Women's Water Polo - 1

Men's Volleyball - 6

Women's Rowing - 9

Women's Tennis – 12

This is how you dominate the Director's Cup since a year after its inception. If you want even more details, the board has you covered.

Goodbye, 11 to 15 minutes. Draft Express's Trey Burke draft video is all kinds of fun. Even the five minutes dedicated to Burke drawbacks features a number of Kobe assists or shoulda-been Kobe assists:

What an awesome player.

YER A BALLERZ. The NCAA 14 cover:

Will I buy this crap-pile of a game from the worst company in America because it has Denard Robinson on the cover? Maybe. Have they fixed the kangaroo linebackers yet? Made any positive changes to gameplay since 2004?

ORGAN TRAWLERZ. The NHL's Central Scouting Bureau has released their final rankings, with a slew of future Wolverines included:

• #34 JT Compher
• #49 Michael Downing
• #84 Tyler Motte
• #111 Nolan De Jong
• #136 Alex Kile
• #142 Andrew Copp
• #157 Evan Allen

2014 recruit Dexter Dancs fell out of the rankings after being 154th in the midterm. Everyone went up save Compher, who dropped from #20. Default reminder: the CSB has separate lists for goalies and Europeans, so add 30% to each guy's ranking to get a projected draft spot. FWIW, Compher and Downing have appeared in a lot of first round mock drafts I've seen.

So. Michigan's class may lack a Trouba-level dominant star, but it is extremely deep. Everyone who's coming in next year* save recent goalie pickup Zach Nagelvoort and Bryson Cianfrone is likely to get picked in the upcoming draft. Kile in particular is a bonus after being passed over a year ago. He nearly doubled his points in the USHL this year and gives Michigan another option for a scoring-line forward.

That helps make up for the fade from Cianfrone, who was headed for the first round of the OHL draft before his Michigan commitment. He's off NHL draft radars and has a 6-15-21 line in the USHL this year. He is a 5'8" kid who's coming in as an 18 year old, so you can construct a picture in which he still develops into what he was supposed to be a couple years ago.

Anyway: strong incoming class that hopefully sticks around long enough to be impact upperclassmen. And how about Andrew Copp?

*[Spencer Hyman and Max Shuart may also arrive, but neither signed a LOI so I assume they are walking on.]

And we're done. Show us what we've won. Oh, it's a wheezing dog and a dead iguana. Jim Delany on further Big Ten expansion:

"Given everything that has gone on, yes," Delany said when asked about the ACC’s deal cementing the current five major conferences to their respective lineups.

Although Delany said the 16-team superconference format was also "an arbitrary number" that he wasn’t part of, the Big Ten was open to further expansion. ... There still is the possibility that a team from the SEC (Missouri) could leave for the Big Ten -- the SEC has no grant of rights or exit fee -- but that’s a pipe dream, at best.

So here we are. Playing Rutgers and Maryland every year, and not Iowa and Wisconsin and Nebraska. It's hard not to see Delany as a giant middle finger to fans, just walkin' around. Mighty big hand you escaped from there. Tell us more about media markets. Please, yes, just like that. Yes. Like that. About media markets.

What is a name, anyway? The powers that be paid someone millions of dollars to tell them to call the college football playoff "College Football Playoff." Nice work if you can get it. Not quite as good as Bill Hancock's job, which is to say whatever the hell he wants at any time without bothering to pretend he believes it.

That is not actually a name. If you call your dog "dog" you have not named him but described him. It is bad when your "name" for a thing is in fact a description of a superset of what you are—there are already other, separate college football playoffs. Delany:

"I'll be happy with whatever. Obviously I'm not great with names."

Yes, but that's no reason to eschew the concept entirely. You can try again, Mr. Delany, as long as you float some trial balloons to see if the entire internet mocks you before you make a decision. You can love again.

Anyway. These folks trademarked their name-type substance. Can you even do that? I want to make shirts that say "COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF" to test this out. If Xerox is too generic to be a trademark, how can "college football playoff" be unique enough? Someone who likes being in lawsuits, please find this out.

Further confirmation. In not-quite-announced news that's pretty much announced, yeah, Desmond Morgan is permanently moving to MLB so James Ross can start at WLB:

“Playing in space is something I definitely had to adjust to my first two years here because I wasn’t used to that in high school. I was more of an in the box kind of guy,” Morgan said. “Going back over to MIKE, I kind of feel a little bit more comfortable in a sense because of that.

“During the spring, it’s been an adjustment but it was something I kind of grew up playing.”

Joe Bolden and Royce Jenkins-Stone will back up the MLB and WLB spots, respectively.

BONUS: James Ross named "most improved player" this spring. Hype rocket is entering stage two.

Ann Arbor is pretty all right. Click for big.

WE AGREE OH MY PANTS. Dave Brandon and I both think a ten game conference schedule is a good idea.

"I'm in favor of looking at it for the same reasons we went from eight to nine," Brandon told MLive.com. Those reasons include more competitive schedules, as well as greater ability for players to see each of the league's 13 other teams in their careers.

The money thing is an issue, but raise your hand if you'd willingly eat the extra costs from a hypothetical exhibition game in exchange for a tenth conference game. That's everybody, right?

Etc.: "In a sign of the times, Michigan has competition at fullback." : /

25 memories of "college sports' dumbest goldrush." Blake McLimans taking his talents to Oxford. RIP, Toomer's oaks. Senior highlights from Mark Donnal. Stretch four, yo. Athletic directors are sad. David Thorpe really likes Trey Burke($).

New feature. Profile pages now contain a table with the user's most recent comments presented in reverse chronological order. This is mostly useful for mods, but now you can track the progress of your favorite (or "favorite") mgousers. Before you get any funny ideas, the main reason I implemented this was so that we could better judge a poster's body of work when we're considering a banhammer. Applications unrelated to totalitarianism are just a bonus.

Victors. Congratulations to the men's gymnastics team and their shiny national title:  

Michigan beat out usual suspect Stanford by three-tenths of a point for its fourth national title and Michigan's first (varsity) title since 2005. You'll see them at the UConn game, no doubt.

One of these things is extremely similar to the other. Ohio State recruit Jamel Turner just got shot. According to his facebook feed he's as fine as you can be after getting shot, but getting lit up is the latest and scariest development in a tumultuous couple years for the blue-chip defensive end. Turner was kicked off Ursuline's team and was declared academically ineligible as a senior. He headed to Fork Union for a post-grad year and was asked to leave. Eleven Warriors calls him "troubled," which… yeah, seems about right.

I don't even have to tell you the local media's reaction to all this, do I? I don't but here you go anyway:

Suddenly, many of the dozens of schools that had once recruited Turner started getting back in touch. But just as Ohio State never pulled its scholarship offer when he got into trouble, Turner would not be swayed from his original choice.

"(Coach Jim) Tressel is a good man, and he stands by his word," Turner said. "So I'm going to stand by my word, and we're going to get it done."

Not that it should  be any different. If Turner manages to keep himself on the straight and narrow at Ohio State that will be a win for both parties. If Ohio State decided to cut ties with him he'd be headed for a place with far fewer resources at his disposal and would have a much greater chance of hanging around the sorts of places where you get shot.

Turner hasn't gotten into any problems with the law, but it's not like that matters in the media environment Michigan is facing these days. Drew Sharp is running around saying "we don't know" about the trouble that Dorsey obviously got in after he was diverted from serious legal consequences two years ago. If Dorsey doesn't qualify there will be another round of clucking about how Rodriguez shouldn't have "taken a chance" on the kid. If Turner washes out there will be sad panda columns about today's society.

It is in this fashion—pretending it's not about wins—that the media proves it's all about wins.

(Side note: Turner is from Youngstown, as is Fitzgerald Toussaint. Toussaint's dad got locked up for stabbing his mom's new beau… at a football game Toussaint was playing in. I am moving Youngstown below Somalia on my list of potential vacation destinations.)

Everyone's 6'6". Michigan offered 2012 Flint Powers wing Javonte Hawkins over the weekend:

Hawkins was told by the UM staff he is their "#1 sophomore wing recruit". Hawkins definitely has outstanding upside and potential. Baylor, South Carolina, Notre Dame are the newest schools to his recruitment.

Best of the Best also throws some names out for Michigan's assistant coach job: Dan Fife (not Dane, Dan), the head coach at Clarkson, Oakland assistant Saadi Washington, Bakari Alexander, and Oronde Taliaferro.

Update: Maybe it's Dane after all.

By way of podcast explanation. WH posted up a vintage Michigan Replay intro. It is fantastic. As a bonus, it answers the question "why you using that funky music for the podcast?"

God, remember when Michigan Replay was the only way to see highlights of the previous week's game? I remember installing crazy netscape plugins to download the tiny grainy video of Charles Woodson's punt return on CNNSI in '97, thinking that if I didn't get it right then I'd never be able to watch it whenever it occurred to me. Yeah. Not so much.