hey glenn! we missed you!

The uniforms were great, but I wish Adidas had taken the time to replicate the numerals on the 1968 uniforms as well. There are a lot of small details on them that make them unique, not just standard varsity block letters like we saw today.

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?id=S-BHL-X-BKT1968]BKT1968

I don't even know what to think after this one.

It's frustrating to get badly outrebounded by PSU.

Drawing a lot of fouls, very good.

We need defense and a Novak type leader. Not a great performance today, but they showed some signs of improvement on the offensive end.

McGary, Horford, and Morgan combined for 0 points. This is a bad thing. On the bright side, Trey Burke exists.

Burke is amazing as usual. Stauskas and GR3 came to play today.

GRIII performance was nice.  We need it against superior competition, though.  THJ maybe will find his shot again with the week off (it was fugly early one before hitting a three or two in the second half).  I'm personally fine with the Vogrich minutes.  He didn't suck as most here would have us believe.  Also these next 6-7 days are helpful to Morgans ankle.  We need him and lately when he's been in it's been a little rusty looking.  W is a W.  Penn St. may not be a good team but they have some guys who can ball; we did just fine.  If one expects a 30 point blowout in this conference, one may want to recalibrate in their minds how college basketball really works.

That was the only game on the B10 schedule we could win playing like that.  I really felt this team would come out on fire today to get the taste of the last few games out of their mouths.  I was wrong.  Terrible defense and rebounding.  This team needs to get back on track soon or March might not be as fun as it could be.

Defense and rebounding needs to get better. That is all.

Overall thought: everyone needs to calm down. One this board, that is. Sports.

I think the concerning thing about GR3 is that he seems to get points almost exclusively in transition, alley oops, put-backs, offensive boards, etc.  When good teams take that away, he has a lot of difficulty creating any offense for himself. 

Lack of point production from the big men. The big guys miss too many bunny shots. This will be our achilles heel. 

They just finished a brutal stretch coming into this game so it's understandable that PSU would be a trap. Hopefully a week off and a better opponent in Illinois will get the team back on track.

We now have a full week off to rest and work on some issues before we begin the Illinois-Penn State-MSU-Purdue-Indiana final stretch (with MSU and Indiana at home). A week of rest and a final set of games that isn't DEATH will be good to build on going into the B1G tourney.

because we can't play defense and when the offense goes cold, we struggle. If we run into a good defensive team who can get hot from deep, we'll be in trouble

Need to work with bigs on defensive rotations. We're giving up layups on junior high sets like scissor cuts off the high post.

Thought Stauskas showed some toughness after a rough start. He dialed up his defensive intensity in the second half. And I thought that GRIII brought some nice energy.

Once we get Morgan back and healthy our rebounding and defense will vastly improve.

about Morgan? If he's 100%, I would have rather seen him than Mitch for most of the game.

It's always nice when OSU concurrently has an appoinment with Dr. Scholls.

Between Horford, Morgan, and McGary, it would have been nice to get one point.

GR3 had a great game. I knew when he started ripping down those rebounds early he had come to play. This game plus some time off should be a needed boost for his confidence going into the home stretch.

UN-AC-CEPT-ABULL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is MICHIGAN!!!1!!!!!!!! WE win all GAMES by a MIMimujm of 93 POINTS1!!!!!!!!!

/ WingsNWolverines

The team looks tired.  Hoping that the down time will give them a chance to rest and get some practice in before the final stretch.

....March will be madness.

The lack of inside scoring and defense is beyond frustrating.

and I cannot decide who I want to win. First I see Wisconsin's carrot top and I'm like "gosh I hate those guys" then I see Aaron Kraft and I'm like "gosh I hate that guy". I think if they could both lose this game I'd be happy

Michigan is the 8th youngest team in country. Combine that with playing in the toughest conference and I can understand the challenge Beilein is facing.

We need everyone to be involved and we'll be good.

For example, in the past 4 games it seemed GRIII and Stauskas disappeared, but our bigs -- specifically McGary -- were doing well.  Now, today, our bigs were not good -- missed layups and 0 points between McGary, Horford, and Morgan, but it was nice to see Stauskas and GRIII back.

If we can get that production from GRIII and Stauskas as well as our bigs, then we can go deep into the tournament.

From umhoops.com preview:

The Nittany Lions are shooting 40% on twos, 26% on threes for a 40% effective field goal percentage. All three of those shooting statistics rank last in the Big Ten. Penn State turns the ball over once every five offensive possessions, second worst in the Big Ten, and rebounds less than 30% of its misses in Big Ten play (9th B1G). Just how bad is Penn State’s offense? At .87 points per trip in league play, the Nittany Lions are on pace to be the worst Big Ten offense in the KenPom era (2003+) and the only team to score less than .9 points per trip other than 2004 Penn State.

PSU today: 44% 2pt, 33% 3pt, eFG = 54%, 1.05 PPP

GR3 is a monster when he is allowed to run. When good defensive teams shut down the transition game GR3 struggles...and so does Michigan. Trey Burke as a passer makes Michigan Basketball scary. Trey is the reason we are in the BIG title hunt. If Trey can determine when to be "the guy" and when to distribute better, we could be in the NCAA title hunt.

Was a little better, still the verdict is out on how to beat Michigan. We still struggle mightily on defense. I hate saying this but not sure we beat Indiana or state, hate being negative, I'm sure people will flame bait me, this team is young and has little toughness. The tournament will be about our draw, that will depend how far we go.

What's up with Jordan Morgan?  I don't understand letting him play for 2 minutes then pulling him.  Either let him rest or play the guy.  He seemed to be quicker today than past games, so I was confused with him being benched.  A 75% Jordan Morgan is better than a healthy Horford.

Which brings up Horford.  What does he bring to this team?  He has little offensive game, as everytime he touches the ball he seems to panic.   And on defense he just gets pushed around.  He should not end this game with just one rebound.  He is just too soft to playing right now in my opinion.  I would love to see Bielfeldt play more.  Every time he is in the game, he seems to be crashing the board and pulling in offensive rebounds.

Lastly, anyone else feel like we should switch up our defense more?  Teams have figured out Michigan.  They put their center on the top of the key, and force Hardaway, Stauskas and Robinson to defend one on one in the paint which they struggle to do at times.  I feel like we should play more zone to help this.  Or even play two bigs on the court at the same time.  Our man to man right now is not working as we are getting killed in the paint and on the boards.  Somethings got to change if we want to make a run this year.  

Sorry for the hate bigs, but zero points combined by you four just has me shaking my head.

Happy to get the win. I know the guys must be suffering a bad hangover from the MSU game, and the Wisconsin heartbreak is still fresh in their minds.



But still, its Infuriating to see Penn State out-rebound us and be able to impose its will on our defense for much of the game. Im sorry, but Penn State sucks. They've lost their best player to injury, and still, their walk-ons have their way with us. I don't like the fact that we have to win games by out-scoring our opponent, and not be able to just fall back on solid defense. Penn State had open lanes and exploited them all game.



I hate being such a negative nancy, and at the end of the day, these are 18-22 year old kids we're talking about. But these are problems that just aren't going away. Quite frankly, they could be getting worse, and could (maybe will?) cost us in March.

The team still looked tired overall.  The week off is a godsend.  I expect us to bring our A game against Illinois.

We need yo start playing as a team again. The last 6 games has been the trey burke show. During the 19 games win streak, they were getting everybody involved and everyone were having fun.

Dooms day is coming! Out rebounded and no points for the big guys. The defense was the worst I have seen and all of this against a terrible team at HOME. Not much to look forward too.

To anyone who said GR3s struggles weren't due to exhaustion, I rest my case

Can IU get warmups that do not resemble a candy cane?

Can ohio win a BIG championship with quintuplets named "Buckeyes"?

Can Tubby Smith dance?

i got tickets to the game in happy valley on the 27th.  alittle worried after penn states effort today and michigan's lack of effort on the road as of late..  anyway will be my first michigan basketball game GO BLUE

At least our bad loss was to a Top 5 team on the road. Anyone watching this Wisconsin - OSU game?

Sure, it wasn't pretty, but after the past few weeks, AND a crushing loss for OSU at Wisconsin, I'd call it a perfect day.  We're still in this...

0 points from the C position. Enough said...

I would like to see more of the [Big]-THJ-GRIII-Lavert-Burke lineup. Brought some good defensive intensity and pressure when we were struggling.

Our bigs, especially Mitch, spend way too much time out on the perimeter, hoping to trap the oppositions point guard. Sure every once in a while we get a steal out of it, but today, it left the lane wide open. 

We made Boronvnjak look like an All-American as he had a career high 17 points on 7 for 9 shooting. Kinda hard to miss layups when absolutely nobody is guarding you down on the low block. 

Forget the crap out there and get back in the paint and guard your man!

Thank God GRIII came to play. Welcome back. 

I was really pissed the entire first half but knew Michigan would still win.

At least it was a game and not a boring blowout for all the former players who came back.

The House That Cazzie Built, Rice filled, The Fab Five electrified and Beilein resurrected. 

but, nice to be past the moster part of the year.  Get healthy, get back at Sparty, and get ready for some March Madness.

..but by all the conventional logic, we shouldn't have had to fight today. Here's a handy chart of our FG and 3FG shooting as well as our opponents in conference play (thumbnail - original chart is big):

You can definitely see the trends pre- and post-Indiana at this point. To be fair, we have played four of the top 30 teams in defensive efficiency in the last two weeks or so, which is definitely part of the reason that our average FG% is about 7% less than before Indiana, but I would also agree with those who said we looked tired and flat today as well, so this week before Illinois could not come at a better time. Rest, regroup, work on the game. 

It is also noteworthy that the FG% for our opponents is 7% greater since Indiana, as is opponent 3FG%. Tougher defenses seem to get us out of our offense, and we do struggle on defense allowing 0.935 points per possession, significantly less than some of the teams we just played. I think this moderates as this team builds experience, but it was disconcerting to watch a team with a statistically worse defense dictate the game to us for stretches. 

I still think we do great in this next stretch, but we definitely need this break. 

...and I choose to blame the terrible acoustics of this new laptop. Apologies to the board on that one. 

We've played the 3rd hardest schedule and have the 3rd youngest team in the country. We just have to move on." - John Beilein

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/schedule/_/id/130/year/2008/michigan-wolverines

Well it could be worse.  We just won a game and some people are about to just give up on this team.  The team had 1, SINGULAR, one game all year where they played a BAD game.  My choice between getting mad or upset about a poor performance is to just remember how awesome this is compared to what not so long ago was the norm for Michigan Basketball.  For those who wish to say thats a losers mentality.  Well, I don't play on the team and if my feelings are somehow effecting how they play, then they should be undefeated.

Without those 2 things you can be beaten by almost anyone,if you can't see that this team is vulnerable then  you are watching with rose colored glasses.I hope I'm wrong but I see at least 1 more reg season lose,probably 2,a loss in B1G tourney and another in NCAA that adds up roughly to a 26-8 record,pretty good for a young team but not what we've been hoping for.       

I was pleased to see us play more zone and extending it to create turnovers & transition baskets.Also we drove more which  got us to the line.

I think Morgan and McGary had about 4 rebounds and ZERO points along with 4 missed layups combined. wtf?

On a side note, how is Amir Williams this bad for OSU?  

About Morgan, Mcgary, and Horford's play today, a melmet loses its wings. SAVE THE MELMETS.

My dad just sent me a text from the airport. He ran into Glen Rice standing in line at the taco bell but he didn't have anything to get his autograph with.

Undefeated at home. Ton of young talent. Lot of big games coming up that will define this season. Need a healthy Morgan. Go Blue

MSU is coming close with a trip to Michigan and Ohio State, and home games against Indiana and Wisconsin.

Very happy to see GR3 back to him normal self.



I honestly think he could be the best player on this team. Which is saying a lot I know. But I just don't think we have seen him turn up the heat yet.

It was extremely quiet inside Crisler for the most part, but it was also understandable the game was definitely a snoozer.

And what is so hard about finding the right color maize? The past two times they gave out shirts, the shirt was orangeish. But in the sections where the blue shirts were given out, the maize on the shirt was the right color. I don't understand it.

before the game. They seemed tired and not very energetic. I know these guys well so this isn't something I am use to seeing. The team in general looks like the are tired. When you watch the offense there is a lot of standing around on the perimeter while Burke figures out the defense. Today the pick and roll was totally absent thus no scoring from the Bigs. On the other side PSU ran the pick and roll effectively a day and seemed to score at will with it.



It seems to me that the offense is a little stagnate. Not much movement and getting the play running too late in the shot clock ending with an off balance shot or bad shot in general. When you watch other teams in the Big 10 I see movement and these teams attack the basket from all directions. Michigan seems like they attack only from the point to many times. Wing players are in their positions but don't move from there once Burke starts his move into the lane. It looks like he is being a little selfish and not getting everyone involved like good point guards do.



Burke had a great game as a shooter and he did complete a couple nice lobs to Robinson for dunks but Hardaway was pretty invisible and the Bigs need more touches. That starts from the point. One last observation that I've noticed the last few games is other good teams pushing the point out way past the three point line. when this happens its difficult to get the offense going. Teams like Indiana, MSU, and Ohio State move the ball around much better and everyone on the floor is getting touches on about every play. I am not talking shots but touches. this creates a defensive nightmare for teams and this creates the defensive breakdown those teams I listed attack. This team as it stands right now seems a little flat footed against the better teams in the Big Ten. This is something I didn't see earlier in the season. I hope it gets corrected. GoBlue.

Glad we avoided it, but man we look like a shadow of our early season in most phases of the game. Hoping we can use excessive time of and get through next two to get our second wind. Go blue!

Some thoughts...



McGary needs to stop trying to jump the passing lanes on D. In the second half Penn St got a couple of easy buckets because McGary went for a steal, failed, and forced a help defender to come up and play the ball handler.



Robinson's game is largely dependent on transition opportunities. He isn't confident or skilled enough yet to do a lot of damage one-on-one.



Hardaway wi be fine. He's a streaky shooter. Sometimes it leads to the 2nd half against Ohio, sometimes it leads to the past two games.



We have not displayed the requisite effort to win the battle on the boards in the past three weeks. Offensive boards have been killing us.



Going zone might be a good idea since a lot of our defensive problems stem from perimeter players getting beat off the dribble freeing up big guys underneath or shooters in the corners.



The week off is coming at the perfect time. Beilein will have ample time to look at film and the guys can get some rest after that gauntlet.



I still think we can run the table until the NCAA tournament and go in with a 30-4 record or maybe 29-5. That should be good for a one seed.