pairwise

Hey: watchalong. We're going to do a watchalong for the hockey semifinal Saturday at 9 PM. Be there.

The culture is 8-24 and Jon Sanderson works for Illinois. An Athletic article from Brendan Quinn and Katie Strang reveals that an outside consulting firm has been brought into assess the culture of the basketball program:

…a makeshift meeting room was assembled inside Michigan Stadium last week. There, officials from Rankin Climate, an external firm specializing in organizational “climate assessments,” convened to conduct a probe into the culture of the men’s basketball program. Rankin officials asked some athletic department employees about their experiences in the program, Howard’s leadership and support offered by the athletic department. Those interviewed were told that participation was voluntary, according to multiple university employees granted anonymity because they are not permitted to speak about the investigation.

There's not a whole lot else that was new except some more details of what Sanderson sent the university via his lawyer; there are some disturbing claims:

Sanderson claims Howard approached his son, Jett, visibly angry during a 2022-23 practice and threatened, “I’ll slap the sh– out of you,” adding the incident “sparked a lot of internal conversation.” Sanderson said one coach on staff said he saw Juwan Howard “manhandle” Jett on the side of the court; that coach expressed that he was upset with how Jett was being treated.

As many have said in the aftermath of this article's release: it's the athletic director's job to know what the culture of his second-most important sport is. Hiring an outside firm to do your job for you is a waste of money and time. If the consulting firm comes back and says "eh this is fine," should Juwan Howard be retained? No. So what are we doing here? It feels like Warde Manuel wants someone else to make the decision for him.

Meanwhile the season is over for most teams that will be axing coaches. There are already 34 open head coaching spots in D-1, and the most attractive candidates will start going off the board soon as Michigan tries to figure out if the culture is bad on the worst Michigan basketball team in living memory.

Decisions made. Vandy—a program with much less recent historical success—just fired Jerry Stackhouse after Stackhouse went 9-23 in year five. The buyout is supposed to be north of 15 million dollars, which is wild. Vandy hired a guy with no head coaching experience who never got to the tournament and is stuck with that buyout after five years… and even that athletic director was able to see the writing on the wall.

[After the JUMP: football stuff! You should click. I promise.]

Previously: Part 1

We're back for the second half of our breakdown of the NCAA Hockey Tournament Pairwise field at the midway point of the season. In the first piece we covered teams 1-8, this piece will cover teams 9-14, as well as Michigan and then give a mid-season prediction on the tournament field. First, #9: 

Pairwise #9 - Massachusetts Minutemen

Top Offensive Players

Goalies

On paper, UMass looks like a middle-of-the-pack team that’s found a way to grind out a number of wins. They’ve held their own within the very competitive Hockey East Conference and have also earned wins against some tough non-conference opponents, including Michigan. Helping their Pairwise is the fact that two of their four losses have come in OT against conference rivals.

Junior defensemen Scott Morrow and Ryan Ufko drive the offense for the Minutemen and freshman goalie Michael Hrabal, who wasn't the starter to begin the season, has taken over the #1 duties and has given them the chance to win most nights. UMass is in a good spot right now, but their position is far from a lock and if they can't get more scoring from their forwards and their goaltending doesn't hold up, look for them to be one of the teams on the outside looking in at Tournament time.

[AFTER THE JUMP: the rest]

As we are at the unofficial halfway point in the NCAA hockey season and exiting the holidays, we are going to gaze into our 'Crystal Puck' and try make some sense of Pairwise and see who will make it to the NCAA Tournament. For those unfamiliar, Pairwise Rank (PWR) is a formula used to seed the NCAA Tournament in hockey, from 1 to 16 (accounting for autobids via conference tournaments), before the committee is involved to factor in host schools and avoiding same conference matchups in the first round. As a general rule, you want to be in the top 12 of the formula to feel safe about getting in, while 12-18 is the bubble range.

As of this writing, Michigan is in the 15th position in Pairwise, so getting into the tournament this year is going to rely on a strong second half to increase their ranking in Pairwise (capturing their 3rd straight B1G Tournament title to earn an autobid would also accomplish that feat). As both the CCHA and Atlantic hockey tournament champions will get an automatic bid, likely from outside the top 16, teams in the 15th or 16th slot will usually end up missing the dance. So, Michigan wants to at least be in the top 14 and the purpose of this piece (and Part 2) is to analyze the teams ahead of the Wolverines, their current basic team statistics, players who are leading the way and a short synopsis of their season up to now and a projection on how they will do during the 2nd half of the season, to project out Michigan’s path back to the tourney. In this piece we'll be covering teams 1-8 in Pairwise, whereas Part 2 (coming in a few hours) will cover 9-14, plus Michigan and some predictions

[AFTER THE JUMP: Teams 1-8]