MGoPodcast 14.18: Daddy's Sports Words
1 hour and 16 minutes
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1. Hot Takes and Men's Basketball vs Penn State
starts at 1:00
Whatever, SEGMENT ONE HOT TAKES. Shout out to Randy's daughter for getting into Michigan. We then talk about the Penn State game (sorry). Penn State starts hitting everything en route to a 33-6 run, offense can't hit anything for nine minutes. Dug McDaniel is not generating shots for everyone else, neither was Hunter Dickinson in this game. Just hold the ball above your head, you're taller than everyone else! They look like a bad SEC team this year.
[The rest of the writeup and the player after THE JUMP]
2. Men's Basketball vs Purdue
starts at 20:39
Michigan looks decent in this game and Hunter Dickinson is able to at least slow down Zach Edey. Needed a third scorer, really missed Jett. This team needs someone to step up. Rough day (and especially five minute stretch) for Isaiah Barnes. Purdue can't keep getting away with getting a center at 6'a million" tall. It's a conference full of 11-seeds besides Purdue. The football-basketball dichotomy: they both can't be good at the same time.
3. Hockey vs Penn State
starts at 34:06
Michigan is in this weird place where they're 5th in the conference and 4th in the Pairwise. All things considered, this team has weathered a lot but they're in a good spot. Maybe the Saturday game was a turning point for this team? Officiating was terrible on Saturday, Yost may have been the maddest it's ever been - Brian reverted to his college days in terms of words said. What constitutes a five-minute major? Is there an elite team other than Minnesota? Michigan isn't quite elite right now but not many teams are better either. Could you go .500 in the Big Ten this year and still make the tournament? You could probably just go ahead and promote Naurato to full time head coach by now.
4. Football Bits
starts at 1:07:08
Should Kirk Campbell still be referred to as "Soup"? Which soup do you think he most closely identifies with? Well anyways, Michigan has hired Kirk Campbell as the QBs coach. Apparently JJ really wanted this to happen. We don't know how good of a hire this is but Harbaugh does have a pretty good track record of making coaching hires.
MUSIC:
- "New Body Rhumba"—LCD Soundsystem
- "Joiner"—blondshell
- "Morning in the Sun"—Rubblebucket
- “Across 110th Street”
THE USUAL LINKS:
- Helpful iTunes subscribe link
- General podcast feed link
- Direct download link
- What's with the theme music
We can't call him Kirk because Kirk Campbell is too close to Kirk Cousins and I don't want to call him Kork Coupons because that's what I call Kirk Cousins.
January 29th, 2023 at 7:51 PM ^
Maddest I've ever seen Yost was after Steve Kampfer was taken down and slashed by those two dudes from MSU. I believe it was Tropp and Conboy but I could be wrong on the names.
EDIT: BlueTimesTwo reminded of the names so I changed them to be correct.
January 29th, 2023 at 8:40 PM ^
I watched that clip recently (I was a freshman that year) and remembered being so so mad watching that live on TV. It's not the dirtiest thing I've seen in hockey, but it's up there.
January 29th, 2023 at 10:22 PM ^
Tropp, but yeah, those guys were real shitbags.
January 30th, 2023 at 11:07 AM ^
Ah yes, Corey Tropp and Andrew Conboy. I remember now, thank you. I happened to be in town to go to the game and I thought there was going to be a riot. I believe it was Kampfer's first game back since his previous head injury from the attack in South U. The fans were a little protective of him.
January 30th, 2023 at 10:48 AM ^
FYS! FYS! FYS!
Bunch of fucking goons - always have been, always will be.
January 29th, 2023 at 8:07 PM ^
Let's just call him Bisque
January 29th, 2023 at 8:17 PM ^
Men's basketball vs. Purdue: oof.
Men's basketball vs.Penn State: oof.
Hockey vs. Penn State: oof.
Hockey vs. Penn State: oof.
Kinda different versions of "oof"
January 29th, 2023 at 9:32 PM ^
January 30th, 2023 at 12:02 AM ^
Is the real hot take that is never mentioned..
DO WE EVEN WANT HUNTER DICKINSON BACK NEXT YEAR?
January 30th, 2023 at 8:52 AM ^
He is the 1st/2nd best player on this team and after the first 3 the drop off is HUGE. And one of the top 2 is probably gone after this year. So yes, this is a dumb hot take. However, i do get your point. His improvement through the years have been so tiny. Is that on Howard? Everyone thought Howard would be perfect for the improvement of Dickinson. He has not been. Is Howard to big men what Harbaugh is to QB's? Perceived to the the whisperer, but isn't?
January 30th, 2023 at 10:33 AM ^
i don't want this season's version back.
i really think the college version of hunter dickinson has been done a disservice by the prospective nba version that needed a better outside game.
others have pointed out the fact that he's probably dealing with shoulder issues, which almost certainly has something to do with it. i just really miss him going inside and knocking the crap out of people on both ends.
January 30th, 2023 at 3:21 PM ^
Hunter is a very limited basketball player-organically. And, no amount of coaching is going to improve him significantly enough on the defensive end to make him into a plus man-to-man defender. And offensively he needs to be built into a role player instead of being made the focal point. Physically he is what he is...there is no particular blame or fault in this regard. To me it does not seem to be possible to, at this point in his life, to transform into something he has never been before-other than maybe his freshman year when he was surrounded by players who actually knew how to play this game as a team.
I don't know what the specific answer/solution is here but it seems as though, personnel-wise, they are not that dissimilar to Purdue. The coaching staff surely must feel like they are between a rock and a hard place in this regard. I do not envy their predicament-but I'm not sympathetic with their lack of response.
January 30th, 2023 at 10:26 AM ^
The pessimistic Hunter hot takes are that he's regressed, he doesn't care, he goes to skeeps, etc.
I have been in that camp every now and then, including after yesterday's performance. The optimistic hot take is that the guy is battling shoulder tendonitis and he's too stubborn or too proud to admit that his body just isn't cooperating. Brian's complaint in the podcast combined with other observations I've made lends me to believe this is the actual issue. Brian wants him to raise the ball above his head. I want him to raise his arms on defense. I want him to attack the glass and go for rebounds. But he plays with his hands down around his waist. As a Beilein disciple of fundamental basketball, it bothers me to see Hunter not get his hands up on defense. But what if that simple act causes him pain? We all saw the cup marks on his shoulder against Purdue. I've seen him wear athletic tape (or KT tape) on his shoulder. People I go to the gym with do that stuff to address pain, when they should really just take time off and heal. So maybe we should be rooting for HD to come back next year and lead a more experienced team to a B10 title and a tourney run. I'm willing to at least consider that and give Hunter the benefit of the doubt, considering he was smart enough to choose to go to Michigan. He is one of us. Until proven otherwise, that's what I'm going to believe.
January 30th, 2023 at 11:18 AM ^
Yeah, the cup part does make me think there's something going on there. And I have seen him wince sometimes out there at times; if you told me he had good days and bad days and that's why he looks good some times and other times not I'd believe you. And to his credit he's played every game this year while other guys with lingering issues (like Hall at MSU) has been in-and-out of the lineup.
January 30th, 2023 at 8:19 AM ^
I think we can safely fire the "basketball school now" meme into the sun. Aged more like Kathleen Turner than Jennifer Aniston.
January 30th, 2023 at 10:07 AM ^
Pay attention, we’re a hockey school now!
January 30th, 2023 at 10:34 AM ^
it's true for one of the basketball teams.
January 30th, 2023 at 8:20 AM ^
Harbaugh has a good track record of hiring coaches? Really? I think he actually has quite a bad record. How many times have we had to get rid of coaches in the last eight years that no one else would hire? He has almost no coaching tree despite being a head coach for 20 years. His best hires have been from his brother. I love Harbaugh and have been a big defender of his, but hiring coaches has not been a strong suit.
January 30th, 2023 at 8:33 AM ^
Bob Shoop has entered the chat.
/Bob Shoop never entered the chat.
January 30th, 2023 at 9:58 AM ^
I think his coaching hires have been up and down. At the beginning of his tenure, we had guys like Drevno, Pep Hamilton, and Don Brown that didn't really work out here. Then, it seemed like he turned it on. I thought that Matt Weiss was overrated but Sherrone Moore was definitely a hit and the two DCs were hits.
January 30th, 2023 at 11:33 AM ^
I'd call Don Brown a wash overall. He worked out REALLY WELL for the first couple of years, but then he worked out REALLY BADLY once OSU solved him. He then failed to adjust for the fact that OSU had adjusted to him, and that was that.
January 30th, 2023 at 12:16 PM ^
I think he was always a one trick pony. He just had a monster DL in 2016 with lockdown corners that could make any DC look good. Once he was trying to force something with Vincent Gray playing man coverage, he was toast.
January 30th, 2023 at 2:28 PM ^
I think you're mostly right. My completely non-expert take on Brown was that his scheme was designed to stop the spread-n-shred offenses from like 2000-2017 that were what the best offenses ran. It worked phenomenally well for that, especially with the caliber of players that UM had when he arrived. The problem is that offenses shifted to the more air-raid types that most of the top teams run now, and his scheme - outside of maybe having all-american level talent - was just not good at stopping that kind of attack. So once OSU got away from the Meyer QB-running-spread to the Day passing-spread, it was all over.
January 30th, 2023 at 3:41 PM ^
this board's revisionist history on don brown will never cease to amaze me.
January 30th, 2023 at 11:12 AM ^
The past couple of years he's been better. Off the top of my head he did hire Durkin right before he became HC at Maryland (and I'm not scrolling any farther on his wikipedia page), he hired Gattis who was successful at UM, he Mike Hart who hasn't been a great recruiter but has been a top-notch coach, he hired Mo Linguist only to see him jump to Buffalo HC, Sherrone Moore has been one of the best position coaches in America the past couple of years, and Minter seems like a pretty good DC.
I agree he's not been great but no coach bats 1.000 on hires. But Harbaugh does seem willing to pivot and hire new blood more than a lot of older coaches.
February 2nd, 2023 at 8:56 AM ^
This is a very strange comment to me. He definitely does not have a bad track record. He has a pretty extensive coaching tree. He's not Saban and no one has turned into Kirby Smart, but many on past Stanford, 49ers and UM staffs have gone on to be HC's and have moved onto other P5 Coordinator roles. Some have jumped from college to the NFL.
Also, the current coaching staff is excellent and that includes the turnover. His guys know football, know how to coach, and most are still working as coaches at respectable levels. Many are or were head coaches.
January 30th, 2023 at 8:21 AM ^
I have updated my 2023 MGoBlog music playlists with the songs from this episode - here are the links:
- Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/2023-mgoblog-music/pl.u-11z0ofMkqvL
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2a7Hw0FHtgqw351LwW8wPz?si=8690043244a24050
Go Blue! NIT baby!!
January 30th, 2023 at 10:36 AM ^
seth's 'good old hockey game' ad drop was absolutely, simultaneously, delightful and horrifying. i can't wait to hear it next week.
January 30th, 2023 at 11:16 AM ^
I was laughing my ass off
clearly the highlight of the entire podcast
January 30th, 2023 at 10:56 AM ^
Seth's ad drop is why I listen to the whistle with these podcasts.
January 30th, 2023 at 5:07 PM ^
"listen to the whistle" is a fantastic phrase.
January 30th, 2023 at 11:51 AM ^
A couple of follow up comments on basketball.
One of the reasons our offense is so clunky right now is that we have 3 non-shooters on the floor that opponents aren't respecting. Watch replays and see what happens on ball screens or post feeds. TWill's defender sags to the restricted circle while Dug/Kobe have everyone go under ball screens because they aren't good shooters. Meanwhile, we had to fight over the top of every PSU screen because they put 4-5 shooters on the floor at all times.
We complained about spacing last year because Diabate and Jones weren't shooters and Houstan was erratic. Well, Kobe is a huge step back from Eli and while Jett is better than Caleb, TWill is just as bad as Diabate and Dug is arguably just as bad as Jones. Baker is better, but limited. We had a top-30 offense last year despite those spacing issues but we lost Diabate's garbage-man offense (TWill has been a zero there), we lost Jones ball screen skills (Dug is a freshman as Brian correctly tells you will suck there), and we trade Eli's savvy 5th year skills for Kobe's raw talent.
We all think of Kobe as a good shooter, but two years into his career he's a 26% shooter - which is horrible. His form looks good, his FTs are good....he will probably get there. But the scouting report is to let him have those shots and do everything to clog the lane from all four spots who aren't Jett or Baker.
Speaking of Baker - I suspect he and Funk would have quite the shooting contest in an empty gym. But the lesson here is get a high volume shooter up-transfer rather than a low-volume shooter lateral transfer. Baker could never get his shot off consistently enough at Duke to crack the lineup and we saw the difference yesterday between them. Funk was cranking threes all over the place at lower levels like he is at PSU. Similar analogy to the Heat telling Duncan to shoot 10+ threes per game in the G-league so he could learn how to get open and shoot quickly in the NBA. Baker doesn't find his spot as easily and passes up contested shots. Funk just finds ways to shoot.
January 30th, 2023 at 1:44 PM ^
This is a spot-on analysis, I'm not sure I'd disagree with a single thing you mentioned. I think the two major questions I have are:
How much of this can we chalk up to a "bad season" thing?
What does Coach Howard need to change and is he willing to make those changes?
January 30th, 2023 at 12:11 PM ^
I mean, the last segment was delirious but "Fantastic Voyage" was the Coolio pull, not "1, 2, 3, 4"?
January 30th, 2023 at 1:54 PM ^
Is the Naurato situation a microcosm of the Athletic Department (Director)? What other AD would leave an interim coach in place for an entire season, especially if that team has Frozen 4 potential? Who benefits from not naming Naurato the permanent coach? Not Naurato, not the players, not the team, not the fans. Just because you screw up the ouster of Pearson doesn't mean you shouldn't make an attempt at fixing the situation. Is Naurato's standard the Frozen 4, does he have to reach it be named permanent coach? Are we going to have a surprise hire to take over as permanent coach, come playoffs? Do you let the team play a full year with Naurato, allow him to bond with the recruits, and then just decide not to bring him back next year?
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