Michigan To Face Tulsa In NCAA Tournament Play-In Game
An official Internet Hero by the name of Sarcastic Prick leaked the news partway through CBS's interminable selection show, but we waited until it was officially official: Michigan will face Tulsa on Wednesday in Dayton in an East region 11-seed play-in game; the winner will play six-seed Notre Dame in Brooklyn on Friday.
Wednesday's game will tip off at around 9:10 pm on TruTV. Friday's game, should Michigan make it, is set for a 9:40-ish start on CBS.
The full bracket [click to embiggen]:
Tulsa, a surprise inclusion in the field, is two spots below Michigan on KenPom at #58. The Golden Hurricane have two common opponents with the Wolverines: they split their season series against both UConn and SMU, two teams that defeated Michigan in non-conference play.
If Michigan advances into the field of 64, they'll take on an exaggerated version of themselves. Notre Dame boasts the tenth-most efficient offense in the country according to KenPom—and the #172 defense.
Much more coverage coming this week, obviously.
Here I am
Rock you like a hurricane
Wednesday can't get here soon enough to get this 80s crap out of my head.
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If we beat Tulsa, Brooklyn is basically a home game for us. Noice.
Yup. Notre Dame will probably match our attendance easily, if not beat us
I'll take it though. Our New York fans can (and will) bring it.
No way in helll. There are almost 20,000 Michigan grads in NYC, more than double what Notre Dame has. And our alumni there would be ALL OVER the chance to see the basketball team play in one or two NCAA Tournament games in their own backyard.
If we beat Tulsa, the crowd at Barclay's will probably be ~75% Michigan.
They'll have a decent crowd but we'll probably double them up. Just win Wednesday baby!
Lounge Homeboy you're in the Dangerzone
When a team like Michigan holds the microphone.
Uh, you know where the term "subway alumni" came from?
That term was coined to describe the large number of people, usually Catholic, in the New York area who have no tie to ND but root for them in sports. They are the one Midwest team that can beat us for support in the NYC area.
If we are in that game and can get 50% of the crowd on our side, I'll take it.
March 14th, 2016 at 12:29 AM ^
I mean, the Notre Dame Basketball FB page has 20k likes. Michigan's has almost 450k.
and zoom in on NYC. Not perfectly scientific, but you might be suprised by what you see.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/03/upshot/ncaa-football-map.html
Edited to add: I will admit that ND does seem to be very popular on Long Island. But Michigan basically dominates Manhattan.
I'm aware that we have a lot of fans in the New York area. But ND probably has even more. If you look, they're in the top three of almost every neighborhood in the region.
They are bandwagon football fans though. They are not going to come out in mass for a 1st round basketball game. ND will have a lot of people there, but they will not dominate the stadium.
But let's not count our Brooklyn chickens just yet . . .
ND doesn't have the same traction among it's alumni let alone its "subway" fanbase for basketball. I'd compare it to Ohio State: football will travel anywhere, but basketball is an afterthought.
Yeah ND is popular on LI. I grew up there and was a big ND fan as a kid because my older cousins went there. I'm glad I no longer am!
There are still a ton of people who strongly identify as Catholic and see Notre Dame as part of that for some reason. Its like people there see ND as the official athletics program of the Catholic church. Also, New York State also does not have a big state U that fans can get behind (But GO STONY BROOK!).
no matter how you squeak in. We have a coin flip first game, and if we win that, we have a game in which we have a very good chance to win (40/60ish) in what will be a great environment. Win that, and you've already got yourself three extra games and who knows what happens in the third.
Teams do not and should not EVER prefer the NIT to the NCAA when you're close to the bubble.
Umm, yeah TrueBlue... NOBODY does prefer the NIT.
Where are you getting THAT from?!
when they're frustrated with having a bubble team. They say it'll be better for the team to go to the NIT, possibly win a couple games, have more practices, blah blah blah.
Yes, I know no one brought it up here, so it seemed a bit out of left field. But in light of the good, fun matchup potential we ended up with despite being the second to last team in the field of 68, which was brought up here, I'm just reiterating to that crowd that it's never the case that you'd rather be in the NIT.
March 14th, 2016 at 12:00 AM ^
I've never heard an MGoBlog preference for NIT over NCAA, but I don't get out much.
Key to Executive Washroom: Moist Towelette
March 14th, 2016 at 10:47 AM ^
I'm guessing these games have been sold out for months. There'll be a good contingent of UM fans but I don't see it being a huge percentage of the people in attendance.
Hopefully the team performs better than this blog. It's honestly embarrassing that even moderate traffic renders this place completely inaccessible.
Right, because as any good businessman knows, the choice between reliability and free content supported by advertising/donations is mutually exclusive. After all, just look at every other sports blog on the internet.
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Sorry to say as a bronxblue fan, but Stu Daco is right - so bronx, surf and anyone else who sticks up for this blog's consistent, persistent troubles staying up just when people most want to access it:
It is pretty lame that they are unable to do what other (inferior in all other ways) websites can reliably do. Provide access to it's content at the most important moments for the subject of the blog's very existence
I buy stuff from Moe's and Amazon frequently, which I access through Mgoblog. I book rounds of golf through Teeoff.com, and I nearly always access it through this blog as well.
So while the content isn't costing me anything, I am financially aupporting the blog nonetheless. I feel it's well past time to criticize the blog's operators, and mock and ridicule them into upgrading it.
Before i stop accessing all those sites through the portal on Mgoblog...
Maybe it doesn't belong in this thread, but Stu probably brought it up now because it's hard to access the site right now. I get it.
There is no other site like MGoBlog. Go look around. Join mlive. That should be a stable site.
I'm saying that if Brian doesn't care to fix it, so be it. But coming on a blog to complain that your free stuff isn't available when you want it is just lazy.
Do you know how to set up a site that handles traffic better? You want to suggest a better caching layer, maybe a move away from Drupal? How about a way to optimize the MySQL tables that store comments? Maybe a way to expand out the load balancers for the site so that they can handle these spikes better?
If you do, then reach out to Brian. But coming on here to say something we are all well aware of isn't helping. It's just faux concern trolling.
So basically, your argument is "unless consumers can personally fix the problems responsible for poor functionality of a product, they shouldn't complain." Yikes. I sincerely hope nobody lets you anywhere near a business, especially not one driven by advertising revenue and charity from the consumers themselves.
I'm not going to argue with you anymore about this, because all you are doing is complaining for the sake of it, as if we don't all know this site needs some major revisions to its backend. My point is that if you want to see it fixed, offer something more productive to the discussion or go somewhere else for your content. But all you are doing is bitching for the sake of it.
And I could get into the childish "huh, you must suck as business" addendum, but I'm guessing you haven't had to make many tough technology decisions and implement them in your life, so it would mostly be over your head.
Tough technology decisions? Is this a joke? There are hundreds of sports blogs on the internet that run exponentially better than this one, and people here have offered financial and technological help for literally years. Nothing changes.
I think people should have the right to voice an opinion about that, considering they are responsible for the keeping the site afloat and contribute tens of thousands of dollars every year. I'm not sure how anyone could disagree, but apparently you believe "shut up and deal with it or leave" is a more legitimate stance. Okay, fine.
Anyway, how about that Tulsa game? Very winnable, and I think Notre Dame is the weakest 6 in the field. Could sneak into the Sweet 16.
Sure, you have a right to voice your displeasure. The mods aren't banning you, are they?
The rest of us are similarly free to ridicule you for being petulant and dickish on a thread that has jack shit to do with those issues. There are meta threads for that. That's how this works.
You know I was going to wait for a Meta thread, but then I figured I should just comment now while I can access the site.
March 13th, 2016 at 11:15 PM ^
I didn't realize this debate was going to run on so many entries, so my response is above, right after the first couple comments.
As a contributor bronxblue, you're acting as if the blog is being attacked without warrant, and by people with no skin in the game. I detailed in my prior comment all the ways I personally contribute to this blog's financial health.
It's geting ridiculous how this site crashes every time people most want to get together on it, and well past time to fix it. That's just a fact, not an opinion.
Also, the only ones with the right to bitch are the advertisers - not entitled free content readers like you.
That would be far more persuasive if the site's viability wasn't 100% dependent on the satisfication of consumers receiving the product for free. In fact, that's kinda the entire point of a for-profit blog, or basically every website in existence.
You seem unhappy with the site. Feel free to send Brian an email voicing your displeasure and how you'll take your extremely valuable eyes somewhere else.
Uh, a LOT of people have been complaining about this for a long time. I don't know about Stu being in a minority.
But I'm not about to stop viewing this blog based on some "hurr durr bizness" principle and I also realize that the people who run the blog aren't drowning in Benjamins.
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