Nice Story on B-Ball game tonight vs. Concordia

Submitted by StephenRKass on

There's a sweet story at annarbor.com about Michigan's basketball game tonight against NAIA team, Concordia University, Ann Arbor. Obviously, the Concordia team is vastly overmatched in ability, size, speed, etc., etc., etc. But what a thrill for those kids.

I remember what a thrill it was for me to play hoops in the CCRB against Gary Grant and Glenn Rice and Tim McCormick. I'll never forget guarding Rice (and being terrified I'd trip like a clutz and injure him in some way.) Or, being the 5th guy running pickup ball with some guys on the team and a couple others back for the summer from the NBA and CBA. I was totally gassed after several games, and humiliated they kept passing me the ball and shouting out, "shoot the ball, white boy." But those are great memories I'll always have.

No matter what the final score tonight, I can only imagine what it must be like for the team at Concordia to play at Crisler. And the wild thing is, they'll be back to their dorms down the road after the game tonight. I wish I was close enough to go to the game, such as it is.

MGoAero

December 6th, 2010 at 4:43 PM ^

Nerd Alert:

It is a full-sky map of Energetic Neutral Atom (ENA) density obtained through the IBEX satellite mission, which I worked on (http://www.ibex.swri.edu/) as a systems engineer.  ENAs are created when intergalactic radiation interacts with solar radiation, which is what defines the 'boundary' of the solar system.  Until IBEX, we didn't know much about where the boundary was, or how it behaved.  IBEX launched Oct 08 and will likely outlive its intended lifetime of 2 years by many, many times that.  It's returning some genuinely unexpected and interesting science data that the program scientists couldn't have even hoped for.  Lots of reading is available via a google news search for 'IBEX'.

oriental andrew

December 6th, 2010 at 4:11 PM ^

Dude, that you were even able to run with those guys is an accomplishment.  Back in my day, when we'd see guys like Ty Wheatley and Amani Toomer in CCRB, they always played on the A court and let's just say that you had to be pretty damn good to even sniff court time with them.  So I just watched.  And boy, Wheatley had some serious ups and could destroy the rim when he dunked.

esipp

December 6th, 2010 at 4:26 PM ^

My friends and I had played a few games at the CCRB, then Alan Branch shows up during our game. He warmed up on another court by dunking repeatedly, but we lost and just left. Thank god of that because I was playing the 4/5 and would have been terrified of him trampling me every play.

Michigan4Life

December 6th, 2010 at 4:38 PM ^

DC Stonum and Junior Hemingway at the CCRB during the summer.  Stonum is the more athletic of the two, but Junior is so physical that it's hard to hold ground against them.  Luckily, neither of them are good shooters.  I had to take a physical beating from Junior quite often esepcially when we're both going for the rebound.

I used to guard Kelvin Grady in AAU basketball.  He was near impossible to keep in front because of his quickness and speed.  If his outside shot is working, he essentially became unguardable for me.  I've played AAU teams that has D1 prospects but Kelvin Grady stood out to me because of his athleticism and ball handling.  I thought that he would do well in Michigan basketball.

mGrowOld

December 6th, 2010 at 4:55 PM ^

Very cool story and congrats on being on the court with our National Championship squad.

I have a similar story kinda.  Back in 1981 my fraternity was playing in an intramural tournament against one of the non-Caucasian houses.  Curtis Greer had graduated the year before and was playing defensive tackle for the St. Louis Cardinals but for reasons known only to him, had come back to play in this stupid game.  I was guarding him and sometime during the game he got inside position on me and went up for a layup.  Being 6'5" myself I was able to jump over him and pin the ball on the backboard.  Bad move on my part.  Curtis's fraternity brother proceeded to serenade him with a "white boy stuffed Curtis" chant and lots of laughter at his expense.  He looked at me like he was going to kill me so I somehow twisted my ankle and left the game before I died.

Section 1

December 6th, 2010 at 6:19 PM ^

I've played in Concordia's gym, in the summertime as a kid.  I went to Dave Strack's basketball camp, when he ran the camp and Johnny Orr was Michigan's coach.  We lived and played at Concordia, which had emptied out for the summer.  Years earlier, Strack had coached Cazzie Russell, Bill Buntin, Oliver Darden and a freshman Rudy Tomjanovich.  He later went to Arizona to become AD.

Concordia's got a nice gym; I hope those kids get a thrill from playing in Crisler.

http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/97/basketball/02_11.html

burtcomma

December 6th, 2010 at 5:43 PM ^

Had Anthony Carter dunk over me (I'm about 6 ft 4) back in the early 1980's (man that guy had springs!) and also had Jim Smith (wide receiver) complain to me that I would not call a foul on him back around 1978 or so as he kept blocking my shot from behind.  Told him no way I was going to stop trying to score a basket on him so I could tell my friends about it........He laughed and let me put the shot in and stopped fouling me.  A lot of my opinions about various Michigan athletes were formed by how they treated people when I was a resident advisor at South Quad and when I ran into them on campus as I lived in A2 from 1976 until 1999.

Elise

December 6th, 2010 at 6:10 PM ^

I didn't run into too many athletes on campus (engineer, MMB), but Gabe Watson was one of my favorites because he was the only football player to ever actually come watch rehearsals. He did this on a couple occasions, and it usually made the practice go just a little bit better for us I think.

Section 1

December 6th, 2010 at 6:12 PM ^

at the old Waterman gym, which was the most beautiful basketball court I ever saw.

I was "guarding" Dave.  He was probably not aware of my existence.

Bando Calrissian

December 6th, 2010 at 6:13 PM ^

There's a guy over on RCMB who claims to be a Concordia assistant talking about how he can't decide which MSU Final Four shirt to wear underneath his suit tonight, as well as taking suggestions on what to say to his kids to get them to beat Michigan.  He's even half-seriously taking suggestions from people who think his players should punch Novak in the junk.

Pure class.  Michigan by 40.

LSA Superstar

December 6th, 2010 at 7:37 PM ^

I wasn't good enough to play at the CCRB, and we always lived south, so we played at the IM Building.

I'll never forget when I was eating a quesadilla I had smuggled in from BTB during a break about a half hour before closing time and I looked up and my roommate Ben was running half court four-on-four with Zach Gibson.