Finally, A Decent Weekend

Submitted by jokenjin on
Finally, a decent weekend, although it would have been awesome if hockey had swept Alaska. However, getting a big OOC win in basketball, Denard proving his speed against OSU and picking up two (maybe more?) recruits in a single weekend is some of the better news we've had in awhile. Hopefully it continues. Go Blue!
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Michigan sports

anwonadell

January 17th, 2010 at 4:27 PM ^

Let's not forget about local boy Peter Christmas (AA Pioneer grad) winning the 3k against Ohio State in 8:18! It's nice to see a guy from Ann Arbor tearing it up for UM.

Joined: 11/19/2009

MGoPoints: 580

Tater

January 17th, 2010 at 6:22 PM ^

Living in the Tampa Bay area, I only get to see nationally televised UM games. For awhile, it seemed that the basketball team lost almost every game I got to watch, not to mention the football team's late-season swoon. Nationally televised games are more important for recruiting than regionallyy televised games are, because they pretty much determine the image that most fans and therefore recrits outside of the UM media market are going to have in their heads when they hear "University of Michigan." Needless to say, the wins over Indiana and UConn are great national publicity for UM, and could be very helpful with a couple of crucial recruiting years coming up. This team is going to be very good when Nowak, Douglass, Lucas-Perry, Morris, and the taller guys we haven't really seen a lot of yet are upperclassmen, but the next two years are probably going to determine Beilein's future at UM. I don't mean Beilein's employment future, but whether he will be remembered as a solid coach or a great one. Right now, this team's upside in two years reminds me of the Butler team that did so well with four seniors starting, but one very tall four or five-star recruit would change all of that. They need someone big, strong, and skilled enough to establish position down low, get the ball, and do something with it once he has it. This sounds easy, but it seems like the last legitimate center Michigan had was Juwan Howard, unless you want to count the Barkley-esque but not classic Robert Traylor. Throughout the years, Michigan has almost always gotten by with centers who were deficient either in height, skills, or both. Even the NC team of 1989 had a center who was more comfortable shooting threes than playing inside. Just once, I would like to see Michigan be the team with a great center and a low-post game. Imagine Michigan with a giant down low, passing it out to a guard who is wide open for the three because four defenders had to sag on the center.

Joined: 08/13/2008

MGoPoints: 30584