A2toGVSU

February 25th, 2018 at 11:00 PM ^

He found Beilein's stash of secret sauce or pixie dust or whatever it is that makes the basketball team so dangerous at the end of seemingly every season.

In the last month, Hockey has gone from, ".500 team we can be excited about for future seasons" to bubble team, to now firmly grabbing an at large bid. They are dangerous.

EDIT: JB doesn't have a stash of pixie dust. That shit is magic. Magic would certainly be an unfair advantage and an NCAA violation.

1VaBlue1

February 25th, 2018 at 10:08 AM ^

Wow!  Didn't think they'd get that high!  Looks like they open Friday at home against Wisconsin.  Not sure this is a good matchup because UW has played them tough all year.

karpodiem

February 25th, 2018 at 10:40 AM ^

College hockey is crazy, impossible to say until all the conference tournaments are completed. I think Brian on Twitter said the best case scenario (winning the Big Ten Tourney) would put us at 7. I think that's a bit conservative, a win against ND and OSU likely moves us up to 6 and maybe even 5 if some of the other teams above that ranking don't end up winning their conferences and lose to a lower rated (most likely non Top 16 PWR) team?

Mi Sooner

February 25th, 2018 at 11:42 AM ^

We are a 3rd seed in a regional who’s 1 seed is Pairswise #2 overall, since we are #10 overall. This is the pure spot; the NCAA will move teams around a bit to improve attendance (yeah right) and avoid league match ups. Win and we stay at least a regional 3 seed and we might get lucky and move up to a regional 2 seed.

rob f

February 25th, 2018 at 10:55 AM ^

3 Michigan vs 6 Wisconsin in the B1G Tournament First Round next weekend at Yost.

Friday- 7:30pm/BTN+
Saturday- 7:30pm/BTN+
Sunday (if nec.)- 7:30pm/BTN+

#GoBlue

rob f

February 25th, 2018 at 11:11 AM ^

but this probably is at least partially on Jim Delaney for moving up the B1G Tournament to shoehorn it into MSG's schedule. A quick glance at the BTN schedule shows that they are televising a B1G Tournament men's game on Friday evening and B1G women's games Saturday evening.

Sunday evening at 7:30 has a rerun of a regular BTN show, but I doubt they're going to change the TV schedule to accommodate us.

NittanyFan

February 25th, 2018 at 11:26 AM ^

is that none of the pre-semifinal games are on a network other than BTN.  This move forward isn't helping in terms of the tournament's TV visability.

ESPN2 is literally showing a Sun Belt basketball game next Friday evening at 7 PM ET.

Jim HarBo

February 26th, 2018 at 8:08 AM ^

MAYBE one of the games would be televised on FSD, *MAYBE*.

Now all games are televised, though you have to pay a $7 subscription to get your team.  As I live 5 states away, this is a much better deal than paying to $15 a month to get "all" of the regional FS networks that were out of market,  and catch the marginal number of games that were actually broadcast.

I get to watch UM wrestling, gymastics, softball, field hockey.   These are all good things.  Not everything about this environment is bad.

 

karpodiem

February 25th, 2018 at 11:07 AM ^

Holy shit I might buy it just to post a pirated stream on MGoBlog, this is insane. F'ing $60 million disbursed to schools each year for TV rights and they can't use an overflow channel for playoff hockey.

Yep, I'm going to do it. Discord (https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/218485407-Streamer-Mod…) has password protected channels and streaming.

I'll post the stream, you'll need to e-mail me your MGoBlog username, and I'll include a string of characters to include on a post you edit within the streaming post to verify that it's actually you not and not the dirtbag NCAA/Big Ten. F*** you Big Ten, F*** YOU.

Jim HarBo

February 27th, 2018 at 3:41 PM ^

There is a streaming option, for a subscription.  If you don't care for that, or think it is too much, you can choose to excersize your consumer right to not purchase, and even cancel your other subscriptions that you feel contribute to the problem.

Regardless of how justified you think you are, what you are intending to do would be a criminal act. > 99% chance that you will get away with it, if you choose to rationalize your behavior against possible consequences.   Don't think that the day won't come where the hammer won't come down on this, all the people that got busted for pirated music at one point thought that too.

rob f

February 25th, 2018 at 12:03 PM ^

finish my edit.

Essentially, the NCAA article (I finally read through it) says they try to avoid regional first round matchups of conference teams. In this case, it tries to avoid an opening round MICHIGAN-ohio state game. That's why it has the screwy-looking brackets that don't otherwise make sense.

Keep in mind, though, that the current rankings will change as we get through the rest of the season and conference tournaments, making those pairings obsolete.

NittanyFan

February 25th, 2018 at 12:14 PM ^

The Midwest regional is in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  No joke.

The NCAA is inventing some new geography there.  But then again, nobody --- outside of Sioux Falls in 2018 and Fargo in 2019 --- west of the Appalachians wanted to bid.  

The NCAA hockey's regional model is definitely broken right now.  With the current Pairwise rankings, we'd have:

(1) 2 #4 seeds getting to play in home regionals that they are hosting (Pairwise #13 PSU in Allentown and Pariwise #14 North Dakota in Sioux Falls).

(2) 3 of the regionals being east of the Appalachians in an environment where 5 of the top 6 Pairwise teams (everyone x Cornell) and 8 of the top 10 Pairwise teams are from the West.

scanner blue

February 25th, 2018 at 11:18 AM ^

Said this after the game last night. With softball tournaments at home, season ticket holders got first crack at 8 am I think. You can go to the ticket office on S. State St. at 830 and deal with a real person and not get in a computer “queue” and leave with tickets in hand.

Kewaga.

February 25th, 2018 at 11:17 AM ^

Seems odd to me.

 

#1 Notre Dame, gets a bye... but then has to play #2 OSU if they win?

 

It seems as though, the winner of the #3 Michigan vs. #6 bracket should play #1 Notre Dame.

 

And the other side of the bracket would have:

#2 OSU vs. #7 MSU play the winner of

#4 PSU vs. #5 Minnesota 

 

Sure you get a bye if you're number one, but then you likely have to play the number #2 team for a single elimination game....  

 

Is is just me or does it seem like the #3 vs #6 and #2 vs. #7 brackets should be flipped?

 

http://www.bigten.org/sports/m-hockey/spec-rel/022418aab.html

Ceal

February 25th, 2018 at 12:04 PM ^

As I really did not have much in terms of expectations for the team this year.   I figured there would be improvment, but the recruting classes for the next few years look really impressive and Coach Mel is the man!   Hope this is just the start of some great years to come for the hockey program!

ToledoWolverine

February 25th, 2018 at 12:48 PM ^

What is the fucking point in having a network dedicated to broadcasting a conferences sporting events when they don’t fucking broadcast them. Delaney can stick that big ten + right up his ass. These games should be staggered so that when you turn on the Big Ten network this weekend there is a live game of hockey or basketball on the air.

Ceal

February 25th, 2018 at 2:17 PM ^

Coach Mel Pearson!   He might be the best college hockey coach out there, and although I loved Red, he was just out of touch with the modern game.    Mel also is not just a amazing coach, but also a great recruiter.    I really thought it would take 2 or 3 years, but was almost certain that he would make us a national power again.   Its hard to imagine another team with the talent some of the late 90's teams had in terms of NHL talent, but I really could see it happening again in the next few years.    Unfortunately, real talent now is often one and done in hockey now as well, so will be interesting.   

Sambojangles

February 25th, 2018 at 4:35 PM ^

Based on everything I've seen, we won't catch OSU, but have a shot at the #7 overall (2 seed) if everything breaks right. Realistically, we're looking at a 3, and unless we get swept by UW and other weird things happen I don't think we can drop below that, let alone fall out of the tournament. 

Root for MSU to beat OSU and Penn State to win in 3 next weekend, I think. If nothing else, it would be nice to host a semifinal instead of having to go to Columbus for that game.