Unverified Voracity Comes Up Milhouse
Everywhere you go. A reader sends along this BBC news piece on goings-on in Libya featuring this guy at prayer:
CCHA champs and rid of Qaddafi in the same week*—everything's coming up Milhouse!
BONUS: random Mississippi State sweatshirt in different protest. The 2011 Gator Bowl is coming for you, Qadddafi.
*[Michigan hockey guy lives in the liberated east; Qaddafi's still hanging on in the west.]
Vada latest. Vada Murray is home after radiation treatments:
We have never, ever, in our lives felt so scared. We also have never felt so loved. Thank you for the cards, emails, text messages, phone calls & messages on this website; thank you for your continued expressions of love & support. Thank you to the Ann Arbor Police Department for their unwavering love. They give true meaning to the phrase, "Whatever you need, whenever you need it." Thank you for understanding if we don't personally return your message. We both want you to know, we love you back.
Moves. Touch The Banner relates that Rivals relates a couple of position switches: Steve Watson has moved back to tight end and Will Campbell to the defensive line. You're probably thinking "meh" and "duh," but there's an interesting wrinkle:
But unlike Rodriguez and his clunky defensive staff, Campbell will actually be playing the 3-tech defensive tackle position. I can't imagine the conversations in the former defensive staff's meeting rooms. "Well, we've got this 6'5" behemoth with loads of talent, but his one problem is that he can't stay low and get leverage. We just can't figure out what to do with him."
There wasn't a three-tech DT in the 3-3-5 and Campbell wasn't going to play DE, so since he's not so good at NT it's off to offense. I'm not entirely sure this is as much of a slam dunk as TTB does—Campbell has fallen prey to single blocks plenty—but it's at least worth a shot. I'd rather he became an awesome NT but I think it's far more likely he becomes an acceptable three-tech, and either one of those allows Ryan Van Bergen to be the SDE I think Michigan needs him to be if their defensive line is going to be good against the run.
FWIW, Campbell was pretty effective in the goal line set when he could just plow into the backfield. He'll have to do a bit more than get under a guy and drive him back as he falls down if he's going to be an effective player in the other 98 yards of field, though.
Well, yes. It's natural for people to explode when your floppy-haired gritmonster makes two enormous plays that turn a probable loss into a certain win. As the morning's post indicated in the "elsewhere" section, if you don't have a post extolling Zack Novak today you probably don't have a Michigan blog. The Wolverine Blog says "what about the awesome guys?"
Tim Hardaway, Jr. locked up his third straight Big Ten Freshman of the Week honor — no small feat in a conference featuring Jared Sullinger — with a first-half outburst of “en fuego” proportions: four three-pointers in the first five minutes gave Michigan an early cushion that would allow them to weather a big Minnesota run and still enter halftime with a 35-33 lead. Hardaway finished the game leading all scorers with 22 points on 7-11 shooting (5-8 from three) …
It was Michigan’s other difference-maker, Darius Morris, who came through with 11 second-half points — continually finding his way into the paint among Minnesota’s massive front line and finding a way to create baskets — en route to a 17-point, 8-15 shooting, 7-assist performance while committing just one lone turnover.
That's ridiculously efficient and very efficient with ridiculous assist-to-turnover; Morris is also ~60% responsible for Jordan Morgan leading all D-I players in FG% in the last five games. I hesitate when TWB calls Novak a "role player"—Vogrich is a role player—but he's not one of the two lights-out stars that keep Michigan around so Novak can declare winnin' time.
Hardaway's stats are now gross. In his last five games he's made 60% of his threes. Okay, that's a hot streak. It's more than that: since January 9th he's pulled his eFG% up from 42% to 52%. In that stretch of 14 games he's made 48% of his threes. Even if you chuck out the last five games in the other nine he's hit 42%. Over essentially half of Michigan's season—the tough half—Hardaway is hitting half his threes.
!!!
30 for 30 on black socks. Jalen Rose tweets this:
That is an ESPN documentary on the Fab Five smack dab in he middle of March. Prepare to be massively conflicted.
God, the Penn State game. That's when it all came crashing down. After a somewhat encouraging performance against Iowa—at least it was encouraging on the ground—Michigan hits the bye week, dumps the mostly 4-3/3-4 sets they'd been using, and comes out in a 3-3-5 that Penn State gashes all day. Before that game PSU couldn't run if you spotted them two guys and three yards, and in the aftermath I blew up. UFR tags included "fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu," "fire coach x," "greg robinson," "i want a staple gun," "i've got a feeling i'm going to punch the black eyed peas," and "idiocracy."
This bit was particularly painful:
| Line | Dn | Ds | O Form | D Form | Type | Play | Player | Yards | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M1 | 1 | G | Goal line | 3-3-5 stack | Run | Dive | ? | 1 | |||||||||||
| Whatever. This isn't even M's to-date successful goal line package. RPS -1. | |||||||||||||||||||
That's right: Michigan ran a stack on first and goal from the one. I bring it up because a reader hit up a coaching clinic featuring PSU's Mike McQueary and reports back:
He used Michigan as an example of the importance of finding a few things as a coach that you can connect with your players on re: scheme, rather than trying to run every kind of scheme with minimal understanding (Less is better).
The hardest thing to watch was a near-goal line stand where PSU ran a Fullback draw into a 3-man front and barely needed any blocking to get the TD. He referred to that as "some knuckleheaded goal-line defense".
I still can't believe RR screwed up his defense enough to get fired. I mean, of all the epic fails in the history of epic fails. All they had to be was mediocre in year three. This is painful:
"This clip makes me feel a little sad for Coach Rodriguez. His offense is nearly impossible to gameplan for, but the defense couldn't get it done"
Fffffuuuuuuu.
Etc.: The Wolverine Blog rebuts the Rodriguez-attrition meme. I think the truth lies somewhere in between it and the MNB piece. The problem was that Michigan needed to have a run of below-average attrition after late Carr-era departures and didn't get it. Robocop speaks to the city of Detroit: statue yes. Denard Robinson was a clue on Jeopardy.
If Hoke and Co. can get BWC to be anything like he was hyped up to be, I will be one happy person. We need him to be able to contribute this year, and I think this coaching staff has the ability to coach him up right.
That looks like downtown East Lansing.
Thank god that guy doesn't have a bread helmet or we'd never hear the end of it.
It shows "Michigan Buckey"...umm... Interesting.
this is the SECOND TIME ive seen someone sporting a umich shirt in libya now. caught it on the news a few days ago, but didnt have a chance to record it.
frankly, it'd make more senese were they the nike rejects that never made it to tj maxx, but these are adidias shirts. go fig.
Can that dude in the M sweatshirt kick field goals or play O-line? If yes, I say we offer him pronto. While he may end up receiving an OSU offer, the sweatshirt leads me to believe that he considers Michigan to be his dream school, and that he would come home to Ann Arbor is offered. Also, dude probably is tough in the trenches, being that he lives in Libya and is willing to risk his life to protest - he would bring a good mentality.
"That is an ESPN documentary on the Fab Five smack dab in he middle of March. Prepare to be massively conflicted."
Why? Will it be during a hockey game? The Fab Five teams were the first sports teams I loved as a child and the subsequent death of the program didn't make the nostalgia any less.
I feel the same way. If you feel 'conflicted' I pity you (though I also understand.)
There is no real consensus among Michigan fans about the Fab5. Some want to assasinate Webber and others keep having kids until they have 5 they can name Ray, Jimmy, Jalen, Juwan and Chris. There's also plenty between.
How you feel about the Fab Five seems strongly correlated with how realistic/optimistic/naïve/jaded (choose your adjective) you are about college basketball. If you believe - as some fans do - that 95% of programs are squeaky-clean and that having a rogue gambler launder money to our guys constituted a distinct competitive advantage, then you probably hate their guts. If you believe - as other fans do - that there are basically Ed Martins all over the country and that NCAA enforcement is pretty much a crapshoot - then you probably don't.
who obviously isn't holding it against Michigan (both the state and the U):
http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/022811aad.html
[posted elsewhere on the Blog a day or two ago]
I was at Crisler for a lot of those games that never happened.
Those non-existent tourney runs were the most fun I never had not watching basketball.
Those days that never were sure were exciting.
I'm pretty sure that documentary falls about two hours after the selection show. So... If we have a nice little run here to end the season, but for some reason are on the outside looking in come Sunday night, I think myself and a lot of other fans are going to be in a horrible mood by the time that documentary starts.
On the other hand, if we take care of business and get in, that will be an awesome fucking day.
I was never so invested in a team (outside of M football) as I was with the Fab Five. I was in high school at the time and I still remember how excited i would get to watch those five guys play. I love all of them and if I had quintuplets as opposed to quadruplets and all were boys I would have named them Jalen, Juwan, Ray, Chris and Jimmy. Most talented group of basketball players I ever watched (IMHE anyway).
The stupidity of trying to run the 3-3-5 coming out of the bye week for two years running made it necessary to can the man, but GOD DAMN IT it still pisses me off how stupid that was. That was a scheme that gave our kids no chance. No. Chance.
Basketball is happier.
its only because all our players were young!!
/s
Thanks for the link, Brian.
I'm not sure if I misinterpreted your writing, but the "slam dunk" comment seemed to be a reference to my statement that Campbell will be playing the 3-tech. For clarification, the "news" that he'll play 3-tech came from Rivals; it's not just a wild guess on my part. Of course, things can always change between now and September, so we'll see.
NSFW or H. Wives are watching, you know. Hehe.
I'll just change my link... lol
Freshman are suppose to get better right? Can this kid get any better then 42%-60% of three's over half a season? Just how good can and will Jr get?
He has plenty he can improve upon: pull-up jumpers, penatration through traffic, shot selection, defense, etc. I wouldn't expect a Morris type leap next season, since he's already had huge improvement throughout the season, but some improvement should be expected.
Mo Taylor was awesome with a freshman and then treated the rest of his college career as an NBA prep course - settling for outside jumper again and again.
Hardaway Jr's 3 shot may not improve but he has plenty of other areas to improve upon.
THJr is absolutely nothing like Mo Taylor, who was all talk and no action.
or increase in 2011?
I'm thinking it's use will decline somewhat, except on 3rd and long perhaps. We'll see.
Man, that phrase sure has come in handy the last three years.
Well, almost as handy as "Goddamnsonofabitch!" and "AwchrrrrEIST!"
Cathartic? No.
Funny in the offseason? A little.
What's especially mind-boggling to me is that he played on defense in college. How could somebody who spent four years learning how to stop the opposing offenses be so apparently clueless as to hire Greg Robinson? Wasn't he aware of how awful Syracuse had been under Robinson? Wasn't he aware that after a long and successful stint as a position coach at UCLA under Terry Donahue, Robinson was elevated to DC whereupon UCLA had their first losing season in years? Wasn't he aware that Robinson was fired from his KC Chiefs job because of a spectacularly bad Chiefs defense that, among other things, failed to get a single punt out of Indy in a playoff game? The only thing I can figure out is that RR was either blinded by the Super Bowl rings or figured that Robinson wouldn't rock the boat with RR's staff from WVU. Still shaking my head. Whatever his faults as a HC may turn out to be, my conclusion is that Brady Hoke has a much firmer grasp on how to construct a strong staff than RR did.
I am just adding this as a reply instead of new post...
"I still can't believe RR screwed up his defense enough to get fired. I mean, of all the epic fails in the history of epic fails. All they had to be was mediocre in year three"
RR proved one of two things a) he's not head coach material in a major conference or b) he was not ready to be a head coach in a major conference.
Good Grief, the Zook even lasted longer than RR!
I look forward to seeing RR on the sidelines at Clemson and wish him well, but the ACC isn't the B10, SEC, PAC10 or B12.
To be fair...Zooker is at a terrible school with very little recent success and RR was at the winningest program of all time who is (was) the backbone of its conference. Not exactly apples to apples.
Considering Illinois' glory days were back in the 20's and 30's, it's fair to say that Zook has lower expectations to meets than the head coach at Michigan. One shared Big 10 title and Rose Bowl berth in 6 years is bonus time in Champaign.
Not only was he a defensive player in college, the part that gets me is that he made his career by scheming around defenses.
How could he be so clueless when it came to stopping a power-run team when he realized the disadvantages of using a power-running scheme in his offense? I don't get how he couldn't reverse engineer more of it.
The great unknown is how many good coordinators were willing to work for RR after the Shafer fiasco. Shafer was a promising DC who left a pretty secure, low-pressure perch at Stanford to come here, and was jettisoned after one season (during which he seems to have not had much leeway to do what he wanted). It may be that RR really wanted to hire a stud but couldn't get them to return his calls, and settled on GERG.
"This clip makes me feel a little sad for Coach Rodriguez. His offense is nearly impossible to gameplan for, but the defense couldn't get it done"
If that statement alone isn't enough to cause a 'face palm', I don't know what is. Ah, the (offensive) possibilities....
That coupled with the fact that it comes from McQueary, who I regard as a PSU punchline. My enduring memory of Mike McQueary is calling out Michigan's defense prior to their 1997 game and then becoming Glen Steele's personal bitch.
That statement is silly hyperbole.
OSU and ntMSU were extremely prepared.
Given that PSU beat us all three times we had RR here - by 29, 25 and 10 points - he may have just been polite.
But unlike Rodriguez and his clunky defensive staff, Campbell will actually be playing the 3-tech defensive tackle position. I can't imagine the conversations in the former defensive staff's meeting rooms. "Well, we've got this 6'5" behemoth with loads of talent, but his one problem is that he can't stay low and get leverage. We just can't figure out what to do with him."
First, that "clunky" defensive staff got Brandon Graham to play low and turn him from an overweight talent into a first-round NFL pick. They also had Mike Martin playing with some pretty good pad level and leverage, too. So to say that Campbell's technique was the coaching staff's fault is incredibly ignorant.
Second, if a guy can't get low and establish leverage, THERE IS NO POSITION ON DEFENSE HE CAN PLAY. PERIOD. While a nose gets doubled more than a 3-tech in general, any opposing coaching staff worth its salt will find the guy playing high and double-team road grade his ass 7 yards down field. In other words, a position switch isn't the answer.
Now, he may be more suited to play 3-tech than nose, but if Big Will finally plays with good pad level and leverage, a) with his body frame and quickness he would be successful and nose or 3-tech and b) it will be the result of three years of coaching, not one. And if he can't, they might as well try him at kicker 'cause he won't see the field anywhere else.
The attrition on top of the thin defensive recruiting to start put Rodriguez into a position of not taking the usual time to train up young talent. Campbell needed to redshirt so he could focus on pad level and not on learning the defensive schemes.
I agree with your assessment that the coaching staff weren't completely clueless. But unfortunately their desperation to try and insert as many complex schemes as possible was a poor decision.
The more I think about how this was the ego of Rich Rodriguez not being able to let Shafer do what he wanted to do, the more I think Casteel stayed in West Virginia had more to do with personal conflict than just salary.
I'm pretty sure Michigan (who was paying for Rodriguez's buyout) would have been willing to pay Casteel enough if Rich Rodriguez had said, "I have to have this guy on my staff!"
To put this in context, I commented many times in opposition to Brian on his defensive analysis, taking the path of "give them time, the payers are young." But after watching the bowl game, and seeing that our defense with 4+ weeks of extra practice/time off was still the same clueless bunch of guys I watched in the Wisconsin game, while the opposing defense apparently seemed to have a good game plan for minimizing the Incredible offense, I calmly watched to the very end, then turned off the TV and said, "yep that's it, Rich Rodriguez is gone no matter what."
no one will really know the exact reasons and all the details. The coaching staff doesn't deserver to be ridiculed, but they did fail. And it was a huge fail that justified a complete change in staff.
Right. Brandon Graham's a success story. He was a 5-star recruit coming out of high school, was pretty good in 2007 (prior to Rodriguez's arrival), and he was about 6'2". Getting a 6'2" guy to play with leverage is not an amazing coaching job.
But hey, if you want to disagree that we should be criticizing a defensive staff that was dysfunctional and produced horrid on-field results, then be my guest. I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
Meanwhile, you're right that a guy who doesn't have leverage is going to have a hard time no matter where he plays. But when you play nose tackle, you're playing over a) the shortest guy on the offensive line and b) a guy who's automatically in a 3-point stance and, therefore, positioned low.
So you can either put your 6'5" guy who stands straight up across from...
a) a 6'3" center who's already the lowest guy on the line by virtue of his stance
b) a 6'5"-6'7" guard/tackle who might be crouching in a 2-point stance
I'll take my chances with "b."
1. If we're putting BWC where his body fits best, then he's an OT.
2. The defensive staff had a ton of problems, but getting production out of the DL wasn't one of them.
1. We seem to be putting Will Campbell where we need bodies.
2. Who's talking about production? That defensive staff was the WORST at putting players in position to succeed. Craig Roh at linebacker? Craig Roh at defensive tackle? Jordan Kovacs as a deep safety? Cameron Gordon as a deep safety?
...1-tech/3-tech isn't like DE/DT/stack backer or safety/spur.
A DT should be able to play both nose and 3-tech, especially in the B1G where teams are trading TEs and HBs on you all game (unless you flop your DTs when they trade, but not many coaches are fans of this).
Well, just like any position, a player has to be somewhat flexible. But there's a reason that certain guys play NT and certain guys play 3-tech. Depending on your defense, sometimes your MLB becomes the WLB and sometimes the WDE becomes the SDE. Campbell has to play both positions, but teams don't motion their TEs/H-backs on every play. On the majority of plays, he's still going to be a 3-tech if that's where you want him to play.
Rock fucking solid analysis. Everybody wants to blame someone. Sometimes and I'd say almost all the time it is a lot of little things that add up to a big thing. If Campbell turns into a good player a lot of people will have had a hand in it. Tall, Frey, Barwis, RR, Hoke, Mattison etc..and most importantly and probably 95% of it is BWC. These guys are not being taught incorrectly. I guarantee that. Maybe the coaches couldn't get thru to BWC, but that doesn't mean they are idiots. It means he couldn't mesh with that 1 player and that particular task was a failure.
Nobody said anything about them being taught incorrectly. Bruce Tall seemed like he was pretty good at teaching fundamentals, and the guys who didn't learn (Campbell, for example) didn't get on the field much.
That being said, it's Greg Robinson's (and Rich Rodriguez's) job to decide which guy starts at which position. Tall can't put Adam Patterson at DE unless Robinson/Rodriguez say so, and he can't start putting 4-man fronts out there unless Robinson/Rodriguez say so.
The entire defensive staff was ridiculously clueless, and the deployment of William Campbell - along with a half dozen other defensive players - is proof of that.
I look forward to the Fab Five documentary being some sentimental shots of an empty Crisler, forlorn, slow-motion images of an MLibrary staffer unfurling the Final Four banner on a table in Hatcher Special Collections, the other four making excuses for Chris Webber, and lots and lots and lots of talk about style, swagger, and their individual identity. No remorse, no regret, just "legacy" and the University being made to look like the evil empire out to "make it seem like we never existed," or some such line. Socks, shorts, hair, style, swagger, attitude. Michigan is secondary.
It will be so typically Fab Five, and so untypically Michigan. Wish we could just leave this whole thing in the past while we try to rebuild from what Chris Webber and Ed Martin did to start the depressing deep-sixing of our basketball program.
Just when our team looks like we've begun to transcend what Martin hath wrought, perhaps looking to lock up a second consecutive NCAA bid without having a booster pay for it, we have to haul this out of the archives on the Worldwide Leader. Again. "Conflicted" isn't the right word. More like "exasperated."
Are you the type of fan who always had a problem with RichRod not being a Michigan Man? No indctment there, just trying to figure out why I disagree with your sentiment so strongly.
I don't know if he did or not, but he's definitely one of those guys who has a very narrow definition of what Michigan is and whines like somebody pissed in his cheerios when anyone else tries to pin something else on the brand because what he sees as the Michigan tradition is the most sacred thing in his world.
His online persona is utterly punchable.
I was all for the Fab Five until I found out later what they (one of them, anyway) was all about. And the fact that there was never an apology or any regret shown, just made it unacceptable for me. I don't miss the banners and don't care if they ever come back. I have high regard for talent and accomplishment, but character matters also. I will take a Zack Novak over a Chris Weber every day of the week. So yeah, I think Brian got it right about being conflicted.
I spent years defending them to old blues who didn't like the attitude, who were probably a bit racist at root, and then it turns out the program was as dirty as a dirt sandwich. So they took all my most amazing college basketball memories, and trashed them. And instead of I'm sorry, we knew it was wrong, but man colleges profiting on us is F'd up, we get arrogant denials. Frankly, if Chris Webber was more of a man, this could have all been done long ago, instead of having it fester. So yeah, that was my team; and they were disgraced. Conflicted works for me too.
Just when our team looks like we've begun to transcend what Martin hath wrought,
Ed Martin caused us to hire Brian Ellerbe? News to me.
Every year, programs go on probation. Most do not hire guys with losing records at schools like Loyola of Maryland. That was one of the worst hiring decisions ever, and it absolutely blew up in our face. Look to OSU for an example of a program that didn't panic when it landed on probation and hired a competent coach.
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