The origins of Juwan Howard. I generally don't lead with long articles behind paywalls with no nuggets to pull out and discuss independently, but Brendan Quinn's profile of a literal basketball court in Chicago is too good not to:

The 10-year-old cooked up his nerves. Deep breaths rising and falling, in and out; his hollow chest turning molten hot. OK, Nook, you can do this. He took a step toward the courtyard, where out in the clearing a pack of boys whooped and laughed, playing baseball and talking smack. A cloud of dust rose from the field and through it walked young Juwan Howard, all tall and awkward, coming to introduce himself.

The boys stopped and turned.

“Isn’t this great?” Howard said. “I’m so excited to live in a townhouse!”

A pause hung, then an explosion of laughter.

“Townhouse?” one of the boys said. “These ain’t no townhouses!”

It's one Juwan Howard had built shortly after getting a giant NBA contract, and is as much about America as it is Juwan Howard.

[After THE JUMP: in which the ripped jersey flagrant is revealed to be a one off]

Todd Graham with no resume. Overnight Michigan State's head coaching search lurched to a panicked conclusion:

BREAKING: #CU coach Mel Tucker has agreed in principle to become the new head coach at #MichiganState, per sources. After Tucker turned down initial interest, MSU power brokers came back repeatedly to Tucker’s reps w/ an offer that was impossible to ignore https://t.co/qjOH0qKirQ

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) February 12, 2020

Coming back over and over to a guy with one 5-7 year at Colorado where he finished 81st in SP+ (with Laviska Shenault!) just days after Tucker publicly turned the job down…

While I am flattered to be considered for the HC job @MSU_football, I am committed to @CUBuffsFootball for #TheBuild of our program, its great athletes, coaches & supporters. #UnfinishedBusiness #GoBuffs

We are #Relentless #Culture #TheBuild

— Mel Tucker (@Coach_mtucker) February 8, 2020

…is certainly a thing you can do. Okay but he took over a bad Colorado program and improved the-

Bringing this thread back up in light of the Mel Tucker to MSU news. Mel Tucker went -3.4 from the previous regime in his lone year at Colorado.

How meaningful is that, well it's just one data point, but keep in mind that successful coaches tend to have an immediate impact. https://t.co/mm4gCmsPka

— CollegeFootballData.com (@CFB_Data) February 12, 2020

In Tucker's defense, his recruiting class is a big upg-

Okay only a slight downgrade on a per-recruit basis from Michigan State's 2020 class. Surely bouncing to Public Relations Disaster U mere months after being the "there's no transfer portal in the real world" guy will improve the situation. Gonna be cognitive dissonance Wednesday for Michigan State fans.

Ultimately remains to be seen of course, but MSU got one of its top two targets, did it in a swift fashion after the early mess, and Mel Tucker’s credentials make him absolutely worthy of the job. https://t.co/Au9le2dTwT

— Chris Solari (@chrissolari) February 12, 2020

The MSU beat is a gift.

I'm disappointed we didn't get interim Mike Tressel but if you were asking me what a reasonable best case outcome for the search was from a Michigan perspective, this is it: a mercenary with no track record who stabbed his school in the back after saying a bunch of stuff that makes him look like a fool for doing so.

Cold comfort. Illinois lost a brutal game to MSU last night when Xavier Tillman got a tip dunk with six seconds left and Ayo Dosunmu appeared to hurt himself badly trying to get off a buzzer-beater response. There's still no word on Dosunmu's status; hopefully he's all right.

There was another notable incident for Michigan fans:

So what happened to pulling the jersey being a flagrant 1? @bigten pic.twitter.com/LQl4NCnFOu

— Seth Berry (@berry_seth14) February 12, 2020

They didn't miss this. They reviewed it. Then DJ Carstensen, who was on the crew that screwed Michigan out of the OSU game, gave Dakich a completely opposite explanation this time around:

Lest you think I’m making this up. This was after Shiny McDistractedByShinyObjects explained the call to Dakich. pic.twitter.com/FMB22XkTG0

— Bryan Mac (@Bry_Mac) February 12, 2020

So either Big Ten officiating is an internally inconsistent fiasco or the league office clarified that attempting to break your fall after being fouled is legal.

The switch. Via the Daily's Connor Brennan, Howard on the Brooks/Simpson defensive switch against MSU:

“Honestly, I think (Zavier) did a great job of handling it because that’s the little matchup battle,” Livers said. “But Cassius guards Eli, so it was like, ‘Eli, why don’t you turn around and guard Cassius?’ Make it simple. And Eli, man, he’s a pest. He’s a really good defender.”

In addition to 11 points and nine boards of his own, Brooks held Winston to just 20 points on 18 shots. In stymying Michigan State’s maestro, the Wolverines disrupted the Spartans’ offense as a whole — holding them to an offensive rating of 94.4, down from 114.5 in their previous matchup, per KenPom. 

“I know in the last game Cassius was very comfortable,” Howard said. “I went back and watched film of our last game. I just wanted to give him a different look. I knew Eli — defensively, he’s a very disciplined player, very technical. He’s not gonna make many mistakes.

“I thought he did a really good job staying front of Cassius, making every catch tough for him, as well as challenging every shot without fouling.”

MSU was unable to take advantage of a big size mismatch as Simpson checked a guy a half-foot taller than him, because that would mean running the offense through someone other than Winston.

Anonymous coach talking. This edition is on basketball and includes almost the entire Big Ten because it's all on the bubble. I imagine the guy talking about Michigan isn't very good at his job:

They’re not a great defensive team. You can go inside on them. You’ve gotta put Teske in ball screens. That’s where he’s a liability.

Per Synergy Michigan is 85th percentile against pick and roll ball handlers, 77th percentile against roll men, and 2nd percentile against post-ups. All together Michigan is 91st percentile against PNR.

Then there was this about PSU's Lamar Stevens:

He is hard to guard because he’s not a great 3-point shooter but he thinks it’s going in, which is half the battle.

I think we're done here.

This guy seems overqualified. Michigan is hiring PSU's former run game coordinator as an analyst:

SOURCES: Former #PennState Run Game Coordinator/OL coach Matt Limegrover is expected to become a senior analyst at #Michigan. He has spent most of the past decade in the Big Ten at Penn State and #Minnesota.

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) February 8, 2020

Limegrover was Jerry Kill's OC and seemed to make a lot of chicken salad, particularly on the ground, with the Minnesota roster. Then he was PSU's OL coach for the last four years until getting axed in January. That's weird, too: PSU was third in the conference in rushing average. They did give up a lot of sacks.

A bad story. OSU DBs Amir Riep and Jahsen Wint have been arrested for rape and kidnapping; OSU immediately suspended them. Unless I'm failing to remember multiple incidents this is not a pattern at OSU and neither guy had previous red flags so in the highly likely event they're booted from the program there's nothing to criticize there.

OSU may be laser focused on football to the detriment of things like following NCAA rules and knowing where campus is but they haven't had a lot of off-field incidents in the past decade. The JT Barrett DUI incident where he plaintively asserted "I'm the QB of Ohio State" with no real expectation that would work—it didn't—is pretty good evidence that OSU isn't run like MSU in this regard.

Clean games, mostly. The Daily's Rohan Kumar had a hockey article with various items; this one jumped out at me:

While hosting Wisconsin, Michigan significantly limited its penalties. Heading into the weekend, the Wolverines were averaging 8.96 penalty minutes a night. That figure wasn’t too much of an issue due to the group’s skillful penalty kill unit.

But in the two games against the Badgers combined, Michigan served just six total penalty minutes.

“Honestly, I think it’s just the point in the season,” senior forward Jacob Hayhurst said of the drop. “It’s late. Everyone knows what the refs are gonna call and what they’re not gonna call. I think there's gonna be a little more leeway each night, just because it’s getting that much closer to playoff hockey.”

Michigan is 53rd nationally in penalty minutes, but this may be a Big Ten effect. Four Big Ten schools (PSU, Michigan, ND, and Minnesota) are in the bottom ten in PIMs; Ohio State is 49th. Only MSU (38th) and Wisconsin (13th) are significantly off the bottom.

I can't say I've been upset about a bunch of no-calls. There's the occasional thing your poisoned fan brain thinks is bad until you see a replay and then it's tenuous.

Ouch. Hockey's Eric Ciccolini is shutting his season down and undergoing surgery after what sounds like a miserable season:

His shoulder has been subluxing — sliding in and out of socket, repeatedly dislocating — throughout the season, and it got to a point where continuing to play through it didn’t make sense.

“He was playing with it all year, and about a week and a half ago, it happened again in practice,” Pearson said. “Not a hit, just an innocent little play and it got to the point where it was hard for him to play. … He could’ve played the rest of the year and had it after the season, but then it gets into your recovery time for the following year, because it’s a six to eight-month recovery.”

11 points on an offensively challenged team while undergoing that isn't bad; hopefully he can pick it up next year.

ZMo. Not quite being an NBA player can take you to some interesting places in life.

Told @JustJMo he’s Zordan Morganić now and there’s no going back. Good luck Zordan https://t.co/ycWSGIpBa2

— Stuart Douglass (@SWD_317) February 7, 2020

Morgan will play for the Slovenian national team as they attempt to qualify for the Olympics. It's going to be tough: Lithuania is in their group and only one team gets out.

I see what you did there. Andrew Kahn has a Phil Martelli article:

Phil Martelli was lost in the supermarket.

In his 65 years, the revered basketball coach had never been grocery shopping.

"I was like, 'Am I going the right way?' I looked up and thought, 'What the hell am I doing in the dog food aisle?' I don't have a dog. I have no desire to have a dog."

This was in August, a few months after Martelli's life, like another famous Philadelphian's, got flipped turned upside down.

If you are a certain age Kahn has just put the Fresh Prince's theme song in your head for the next several days. I wanted to share this experience with you.

Also, I think my attempt to say absurd Phil Martelli things may not have gone far enough. They do not impose a dog upon you if you take a wrong turn in the supermarket. Martelli may be confused because he had to sleep in the same bed with East Penobscot's mascot during a winter storm in 1975. 

Etc.: Safeties should be worth 11 points. Stream of Gonzaga (Hunter Dickinson) vs Dematha (Terrance Williams) if you want to see a couple of basketball croots in a more realistic light than highlights. Michigan's 2016 recruiting class finishes #6 in a re-rank done by the Athletic. #7 is Minnesota(!). Mo Hurst is still the best three-tech PFF has ever charted. Wyatt Shallman is now a literature professor at Wesleyan. Or at least he looks like one.

Ex-EYBL coach takes stand in Avenatti trial, says he funneled money to player handlers.