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As a side note, this leaves us with one less scholarship for this class since Hagerup effectively becomes a redshirt junior for 2013 rather than a senior and will now be on the 2014 roster. Assuming that he does not screw up again and that he is retaining his scholarship status.

It's pretty clear that regardless of whether the Mastrov/Ranadine group or the Hansen group winds up owning the team it is going to be sold. Neither the Maloofs nor their front office is going to have anything to do with that team for much longer so that is not a concern at all. But yeah, the players on the team are not an ideal group to be around for Trey.

I would imagine the preseason polls will have the B1G order as something like:

MSU

Michigan

Indiana

Iowa

Ohio State

Wisconsin

Purdue

Minnesota

Illinois

PSU

Nebraska

NW

That doesn't quite add up. We play 3 games a year against the other division so 63 games in 21 years. You have us only playing 61 games.

Let's see, from the Purdue perspective they play only 2 games each year against the other 6 teams in the other division [since 1 of their 3 non-division games is tied to Indiana]. So 1 in 3  years we will be playing against Purdue so 7 in 21 years. But there are two leftover games. I believe that just means that we will play 9 against 4 of those teams in a 21 year cycle and 10 against 2 of those teams.

I think the way it will work is that they schedule out Purdue and Indiana in 3 year cycles and then repeat with the home games flipped away. Then you start filling in the other teams randomly or whatever but because of the Purdue Indiana thing you will start to repeat 2 of the 3 teams that you played in Year 1 in Year 3 but will not see the 4th team that you played in Year 1 until Year 4. I think. Might have to fire up Excel to verify but expansion will change it again anyway.  The actual frequency of playing each of the other 6 teams should be 4/9ths of every years. Take 6 teams * (4/9) = 24/9 + (3/9)ths for Purdue = 27/9 = 3 games a year. So it is like a 9 year cycle. Or really an 18 year cycle if you count home and away in even quantities. I think. We play Purdue 6 times in 18 years and play the other 6 teams 8 times in 18 years. That adds up. So a home game against Purdue every 6 years and a home game against Nebraska (or the other teams) every 4.5 years.

Izzo is way better than Heathcote. Heathcote won ~53% of his B1G games and won exactly half of them if we exclude tthe 2 years with Magic. Izzo has won like 70% of his B1G games and while Michigan's troubles certainly helped him build MSU up he's still way above the level they were at before. Even now, with us on the rise they are a top 10-15 caliber team. You're either shortchanging Izzo or else forgetting how much mediocrity Sparty had under Heathcote. Probably the latter. In the 80s Heathcote's Big 10 record was better than 10-8 just 1 time in 10 seasons and they went 6-12 or worse for 5 of those 10 seasons. There was a lot of bad Sparty basketball in between Magic and Mateen Cleaves.

It's true that most college teams only have 1 big but I am not sure that I view having 2 as creating a poor matchup. Matchups go both ways. If another team is playing only one big then that means that either McGary or Morgan can post up and rebound against a non-big. That's a huge advantage for us on offense though it obviously presents a challenge on D for McGary.

A lot of this discussion is general and about total minutes but in reality matchups, foul trouble and injuries are really going to decide this and it will vary by game. If say one of Irvin/Stauskas/LeVert were injured then you have to go big. Or if McGary is in foul trouble then you go small because you can't play 2 of the other bigs since they are not skilled enough. If you are playing the new look Pitino-pressing-Gophers then you go small for ball handling but if you are playing Sparty and don't want to get killed on the glass then you go big. Etc etc.

In an ideal world I think it would be great if you could mix in the zone. But I think again we are looking at a lineup with 9 of your 11 guys being Freshmen or Sophomores. Until they put in the time to really be better at man to man and to be stronger and more physical I think your practice time is better spent towards perfecting your base D instead of learning zone.

Well we have two open spots so he could add one player and still have room for McLimans. We need practice players too. This is McLimans looking for playing time.

We're fine for 2013 at the 2/3 with Irvin, LeVert, Stauskas and GR3 at the 2/3. More guys than minutes, barring injury. You can assume that GR3 is leaving after this year for roster purposes but even still the solution to that is to add a Booker caliber 2014 2/3 rather than a last minute guy who is a role player like we did with LeVert last year.

I'll bet you a shiny penny that we are @Syracuse. A Final Four rematch with the home court tilting the storyline towards a chance for the Orangemen to get revenge for that loss. 

Agree with this for the most part. Attracting a 5th year will be tough too. I still think that if you can get a 5th year then maybe you take one. Even if the guy just sits on the bench, it gives you a practice player and perhaps some leadership skills. Also, yeah there really aren't minutes if guys are healthy. Probably one injury even doesn't matter as minutes would go to LeVert or just different lineups but it provides some insurance in case you are unfortunate enough to have two injuried guys. All you are really losing by doing so is the scholarship money so there is little downside. There's gotta be some combo guard who avged 8 points a game in the MAC or Horizon and would be willing to mostly ride the pine in exchange for the chance to be on a B1G team that made it to the Final Four last year and has dreams of doing so again this year.

These are the positions they will play in the league so both are probably cool with this. I'm not too surprised. There were some serious tradeoffs with rebounding and defense that the typical Beilein lineup tried to offset with ball handling and shooting. But as the talent level rises those compromises become less necessary. It was obvious that physical teams gave our small lineup a lot of problems. If Beilein has proven anything it is that he is able to adapt and be flexible. Showed it in changing assistants and in recruiting and in moving to man to man and now in going bigger. GR3 losing the rebounding battle to Behanon in the 2nd half showed the limitations of this lineup.

Also I think that this recognizes that with the current roster construction without Burke/Hardaway has a lot of bigs. If you play GR3 at the 4 with Donnal you have Beilfeldt, Morgan, Horford and McGary all playing at the 5. We'll still see smaller lineups sometimes when McGary is out of the game.

Winner is clearly Morgan as he now can start at the 5 and get his 20-25 minutes. On the other hand, hard to see where Caris fits in for next year if Irvin is as good as advertised and everyone is healthy.

Bearing in mind that Beilein's starters traditionally avg over 30 minutes I think we will see something like:

Walton 25/Albrecht 15 

Stauskas 30/LeVert 5/Irvin 5

GR3 20/Irvin 20

McGary 30/GR3 10

Morgan 25/Horford 15

I suspect Walton starts at about 20 minutes but will be up to 30 by the end of the season. I think you redshirt Donnal and go small when McGary is out. Can't play of 2 of Morgan/Horford/Bielfeldt simultaneously as there is not enough skill there. But I guess the choice between Donnal at the 4 and sliding GR3 back there in a small lineup all depends on how good Donnal is. I have a sneaking suspicion that you are better off going small and having Stauskas/Irvin on the floor at the same time rather than Donnal on the floor.

Actually his FT shooting was down a couple % points and he got to the line a lot less often. And while his total assists was up, his assist rate was actually down from 14.2% to 13.0% this year. That reflects a lot of other buckets for Stauskas/McGary/GR3 that were being created by Burke. Anyway, Hardaway pretty much had the same season as last year except that he shot 37% from 3 instead of 28%. All of the other differences in Hardaway's final line are pretty minor differences.

He looks like a 2/3 naturally. He doesn't seem quite as muscular or athletic or GR3 and even GR3 had some definite matchup and rebounding shortcomings.

But where the suggestion of Irvin playing out of position at the 4 gets serious is if GR3 leaves. In particular, what if Hardaway stays and GR3 leaves? Then you've got Hardaway, Stauskas and LeVert at the 2/3 but the 4 is real iffy. Donnal has the closest skillset to the ideal Beilein 4 but is he good enough to play major minutes, especially as a freshman? If he is OK, but if not then your choices are either an undersized Irvin playing out of position at the 4 or going with two bigs and McGary at the high post while Morgan/Horford/Bielfeldt try to set tons of screens and get boards. Would be a better rebounding team but you lose skill if those guys are getting more minutes. Tricky.

Or what if McGary and GR3 both left? I don't think you can go with 2 of Bielfeldt, Morgan and Horford on the floor simultaneously as there is just not enough offensive skill. So again it gets down to Donnal versus Irvin at the 4. Donnal fits the position better but Irvin is almost certainly the better player and more useful on offense. Actually, they might both have to play some at the 4. At that point, we are starting to get thin if those two are gone.

Really this is not so much about Irvin as it is about whether GR3 (+ McGary) comes back. And then it is also about either finding a true stretch 4 who can play Beilein's offense but also has the size/athleticism to defend and rebound better than some smaller guys have in the best. Or whether Beilein adapts again and goes big. Or whether we sacrifice on the defensive end/boards at the 4 to get the best players all on the floor. Hopefully GR3 comes back and makes this all moot.

I was just thinking, Congress and Lobbyists or the NCAA and Compliance Officers? Which is the bigger incestuous cesspool?

I don't think that you can criticize anyone for choosing the NBA versus college. I do think that you can judge the timing of that decision as well as the assessment of how likely they are to be drafted. We've seen several Michigan players like Darius Morris, Manny Harris, Sean Higgins etc make the decision to go early, not get picked in the first round w/ a guaranteed contract and then not stick long or make any impact in the league. If the ultimate goal is to have an NBA career, sometimes you are better off waiting. Trey coming back probably flipped him from a 2nd round pick to a lottery pick. Every year there are guys who go pro and do not get drafted and never play a game in the league. Nothing wrong with wanting to go to the league but there are only a limited number of spots available and a lot of guys are out of the league by 25.

Yep, that was part of the problem. Love Beilein but once Caris stepped on the baseline it immediately became a foul situation. Would have liked to have seen a TO there to communicate the strategy to the team as they did not foul very quickly. At the least, he has to sub out Burke on D there for Spike because Burke has 4 fouls. Then Burke back in with the free throws. I really don't know why he was not substituting Burke out on D in the last 50 seconds as he could have subbed in offense with each Ft. Definitely cost us time as Burke did not want to pick up his 5th. Some other guys though were not as quick to foul as they could have been.

The absolute most disgusting thing about "amateurism" in college sports is that the unpaid players who generate the fan interest and money all have to sit up there and answer the questions from the media after they lose. But god forbid that the officials who make six figure salaries ever have to go up there and be grilled by the media about their performance. We would absolutely never want to hold them accountable or anything. I would love to hear an explanation for about 50 calls in this game. Some are subjective but a lot of the stuff like the goaltending or McGary's kick ball or Burke's block were obviously incorrect at game speed. I really want to see Mike Higgins getting grilled about all of his missed calls that he gets paid to make correctly.

He was offered the Celtics job and a really big pile of money. Think it was like $75 million for a decade or something. At that point he'd just been to two straight national championship games with Kentucky and had little to prove as a college coach but still obviously had dreams of being successful (and rich) in the league. He wasn't.

This story has been around unofficially since it happened although I think it was only in the past few years that Pitino added the part with his wife preferring Kentucky to the public narrative. Although it was widely suggested that she was why they went back to Kentucky even though people said that he could not take the Louisville job at the time given that he had been the coach at Kentucky. Previously, the story was just that he was going to go to Michigan but called to talk to Martin and Martin was MIA playing squash or something. Maybe he would have gone to Louisville no matter what but you have to wonder how Martin could let him bail without at least upping the offer and trying to talk him into going to Michigan. I mean, I like Beilein a lot more as a person but Pitino's at his 7th Final Four...

They missed on Albrecht. He's probably not who you'd want as a starting PG in the B1G in the long-term. But he certainly is good enough to be at least a role player. Which means that he is good enough that he should have had better offers than Appalachian State which is pretty low on the D1 ladder. He should have had some interest from at least MAC or Horizon league caliber teams. 

McGary, you can see that his motor is just off the charts. The impressive thing to me has been the little 10'-12' jumper that he is flashing as well as how good he is at driving from the top of the key. His defensive ability to create steals and his passing too in the open court. His game is pretty well rounded and with him now in shape he looks a lot more like the 5 star #2 or #3 ranked recruit as he was ranked at one time than the #30 type he would up as. Underrated.

GR3 was probably rated correctly. He's too deferential at this point but the athleticism is excellent and he has a pretty smooth jumper and he can drive too. The SDSU game is a nice example of what he can do. I really hope he comes back and becomes an assertive player because he could wind up being a really high draft pick and make a big difference in how good next year's team is.

Stauskas is about right. He really is a great shooter. I'm not sure how much more upside there is to his offensive game as he doesn't have 5 star type athleticism. But he will still improve and he can become a much better player if his defense improves.

LeVert seems underrated to me. I know some folks don't like his game and his frame is so small. But he is quick and has long arms. Plays hard. Like his handle. Obviously he is overwhelmed and the redshirt probably would have been a good thing but this is our year so you had to play him. He's scored a ton in HS. Not a top 100 talent but he was a late bloomer who should have been attractiing more attention.

Spike does well in space but he doesn't have the control over it when things get crowded. Spike actually has the highest turnover rate on the team this year at 20.6. Granted that LeVert's low TO rate has more to do with him never touching the ball but I think if you watch them both off of the bounce, with both hands LeVert is better. He has the better crossover. Certainly in terms of a quick first step to create offense Caris is better. And guys on the team have said LeVert has a good handle as well.

LeVert actually has a good handle, probably the best on the current team besides Burke and he is able to get to the rim reasonably often. The problem is that he has zero ability to finish and is always getting blocked or missing layups after he gets the chest bump from the defender. He will probably never be very good at finishing with that thin frame but if he can learn how to draw contact fouls as well as pass off of the bounce then he can be somewhat of a creater. Definitely a project but I have some hope for him. Agree with your overall point that this team needs guys who can create shots and Walton and Irvin are probably going to have to step up and do that if we are going to be really successful.

Yep, and projections for next year's draft always involve guessing how high school seniors will do as freshman and thus how attractive they will then be when they are eligible for the draft. History is littered with super blue chip guys who either didn't pan out or took a while to become good. It's highly speculative to talk about next year's draft.

Also, if a large number of guys in college now who might go pro next year decide instead to go pro this year because "next year's draft is so loaded" then this year's draft winds up having more talent and 2014 has less.

I was just a few years older than you and still in high school at Pioneer and like you I wound up being an LS&A student a few years later. My dad was still teaching in the business school and we had had season tickets for years. Because of that, we were actually able to get faculty tickets to the Final Four and amazingly the seats were better than our upper bowl seats at Crisler. We were behind the Michigan bench in about the 25th row which was great there were some places in the Superdome that were a long way from the court.

We actually had to stay in Mississippi and drive in because we couldn't find any hotel rooms in New Orleans (or perhaps they were all insanely priced). Kentucky fans were everywhere, thousands of them were there even though they did not have tickets. UK and Pitino had won their first 4 games by something like 120 points and were a heavy favorite. We had really struggled in the first four rounds even though we were gifted a really easy path to the FInal Four (unlike 92). Remember that UCLA game? Great comeback. Then we had to beat a #12 and a #7 in the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight.

The early game Saturday was the Kansas UNC game and that was not that exciting. Kansas was not as good as the other 3 teams as they had good guards with Jordan and Walters but did not have the front court skills of the other teams. When our game tipped off it it seemed like the whole arena was from Kentucky. But we led early and that game was back and forth. It went to overtime and in the end we won. The Kentucky fans were just so incredulous that they could lose. Mashburn, Travis Ford, Rodrick Rhodes, Jared Prickett, Dale Brown, Tony Delk, that team was loaded. I know some people say the Duke Kentucky game the year before was the best basketball game ever. That may be, I really don't know. I am convinced though that the Michigan Kentucky game was the best college basketball game that Michigan has played in in the last 30+ years in terms of the quality of play and being an exciting game. Other games like Kansas this year can perhaps compete based on how exciting they are but the quality of play was off the charts. Webber was awesome.

The National Championship game...what can you say. Donald Williams had a career night on the biggest stage possible. Webber was great again and I really thought we were gonna win partway through the second half. Jimmy King played well. I loved Ray Jackson because he was not as talented as the other guys but he had a tough night and fouled out. When the free throw was missed you just felt that it was destiny for Michigan to either tie it and send it to overtime or for Rose to penetrate and kick out to either King or Pelinka (was it Pelinka or Voskuil who was in the game?) for a 3. Everyone was in such shock that Webber was not called for a travel and the arena was still up in arms about that before we all realized what had happened with the timeout. Such a sad ending. To not even have a chance at the tying shot was just so disheartening. And then after the game you felt like well at least the starters will all be back next year and even better. That was a ray of hope since the 93 team was so much better than the 92 team and you felt we had to win in 94. Back then no one went pro until after their junio year. But Webber left and Arkansas beat us by 4 in the Elite 8 on their way to the national championship the next year and that was the end. So close...but not quite. Great times and exciting basketball even if the ending wasn't the same as 89. I'll feel the same way about this team. Even if it doesn't end up with two more wins it was still great fun to watch the ride.

Some of what you say is true, like the administrative complacency regarding facilities. But a lot of the other decisions can be traced in part to Webber's (and others') actions. Ellerbe was hired to be an assistant and was promoted because the independent report by the law firm on the scandal came down in October 1997 and left no choice but to fire Fisher immediately. With practice about to start, no coaches on the market due to the timing, Dutcher being tainted etc there was no one to hire except Ellerbe at that point as he had not been around for any of the chicanery. Then Ellerbe actually had a good year, earning a #3 seed in the tourney and winning the BTT and with probable sanctions on the way we were in no position to go get a name coach. We made the wrong but seemingly sensible at the time decision to keep him and plow through the sanctions and get to the other side. No one understood then that it would not be resolved for many years.

As far as Amaker, certainly Bill Martin screwed that up as Pitino claims that he would have gone to M. But one of the primary reasons that Amaker was hired was because he had that squeaky clean Duke image and with the case still dragging along the University wanted to appear to have changed. Moreover the scandal was still hanging over the program and limiting the pool of candidates.

Facilities - I mostly agree that this is on the administration. But don't think that the scandal also didn't turn off some of the big money people who help get facilities paid for.

You can't blame Webber directly for a lot of MIchigan basketball's problems for the decade from 97 to about 07. But a lot of the choices that other people made were influenced and altered by both the sanctions, the sense of impending doom before the sanctions and the complications that arose because of the choices of Webber, T(r)aylor, and Bullock. Their actions set in motion the chain of effects that led to a lot of shitty basketball.

Don't get me wrong, I loved going to games during the Fab 5 era and the two tourney runs were great. In the big picture, violating amateurism rules is pretty small potatoes. Forgive that and move on and I am happy to reconcile with Webber. But I do still believe that a lot of the bad basketball grew out of Webber's choices and the long lasting consequences they resulted in.

Kenpom has them 5th in the country in TO % and 11th in steal % with a fairly fast tempo so presumably they do indeed run the same pressing system.

Ten win improvement from last season for them but the resume is pretty thin. Who knows how it will turn out but I have to imagine that a lot of MN folks are wondering WTF? You would think they could at least find someone with a multi-year record of success and improvement.

But when Wisconsin did their search, Ryan was hardly a hot name. His previous coaching career was basically 2 years of going .500 in the Horizon league at Wisky-Milwaukee and killing it at Division III Wisky-Plattsville. I don't really blame MN for trying but understand that if you find your guy it is going to be a young head coach from the MAC or Richmond or Northern Iowa or whatever. It's not going to be someone like Brad Stevens, Shaka Smart, Buzz Williams which are way out of Minnesota's league. Maybe it is just the media that is floating these names but you would think the A.D. would be leaking realistic names to the media for them to write about and thereby to control expectations so that the hire doesn't land with a thud.

That was my first thought as well. Even a potential scrub just for depth and to allow for some possibility of redshirting Morris if Gardner stays healthy would have some value. Or to hedge against the disasterous possibility of Gardner/Morris being dinged simultaneously. Obviously you'd have to see attrition of 2+ before fall to put us at 84 and open up a schollie.

We won't get the shots that we did against Florida after they went zone because Syracuse is much longer. Their length does concern me as our perimeter shots will be pretty well contested. We'll have to get Burke penetrating and passing as well as having the guy who flashes towards the high post not have TOs and find the open man. Syracuse does not rebound well so we need McGary to go berserk on the boards. I think the matchup is OK but as always we will need to hit our 3s which means Stauskas/Hardaway. Hardaway is definitely in another one of his cold streaks.

I guess there is half of a generation for which M basketball is an afterthought and football (and perhaps hockey) is all that matters. But seriously, the Citrus Bowl win to cap off a 9-4 season vs a 9-4 Florida team or a win to go to the first Final Four in 20 years? It's not really very close.

To some extent that is true as you have to have the support of the fans or it doesn't really work. But the A.D. also has to ask himself who is the better coach too. If you've fired a guy and you hire someone who is not any better then either your hiring process is flawed or you overestimated the attractiveness of the job or both. And you've released the current fan/media pressure but you haven't upgraded the program. Alford certainly lost the Iowa fanbase himself which is why he had to jump to NM. Certainly the job is a pretty good one but UCLA fans think that the job is the pinnacle of college basketball coaching based on some stuff that happened 40-50 years ago. They haven't figured out that the playing field is much more level and things like facilities, budgets, $, fan support etc matter too and UCLA. And this hire is not going to make the Bruin alums/boosters happy at all. He has no particular UCLA ties and this looks like settling rather than making a splashy hire. The fanbase will not be in love with him from day 1 by any means.

The thing is that if you lose the football game it is a loss and then you move on to the next week's game. The 2011 football team was never going to win a national championship anyway so there were no bigger implications other than just that one loss if we lose to ND. In the tourney, you get the loss but it is not just a loss. It is win or go home. Football occasionally has games that are effectively elimination games for the national championship but that wasn't really in play at UTL. The magnitude of continuing your season, or not, makes this the greater game.

I hear ya. Hard to pull off that look for those of us old enough to remember 89. You can always put the T-Shirt underneath to mitigate the visual; as a bonus in this case it is also an authentic style since that is how Rice used to do it.

I don't agree with that take on Hardaway. He shoots 39%/50%/70%. He doesn't get to the line much. His handle is improving but is still not that good for an NBA prospect. He's OK as a defender but not much more than OK. He's not a particularly good passer and has more turnovers than assists. His freshman and junior years he put up ORtings of 108 and was worse his sophomore year. Seems like a good kid and has the intangibles in that he wants the shot and is a bit of a leader on the team. But overall he's basically a streaky shooting high usage above average college SG with NBA size. That's a skillset that generally winds up in being a 2nd round pick and being a backup in the NBA. That is pretty damn good overall as that is not a bad life to live but it doesn't make him worthy of a high draft pick. He needs to either improve his game all around by making another step forward next year to build on what he did this year. Or he needs to simply make more shoots and in particular become better at creating his own shot.

No way he has better physical tools than Oladipo. Vitale's comparison of Oladipo to Jordan is over the top but Oladipo can still jump out of the gym and is way better off the bounce than Hardaway.

Playing a difficult schedule certainly prepares you for tough teams in the tourney and given that Gonzaga is in the WCC they need to do that. But Gonzaga consistently plays one of the tougher non-conference schedules and this year they played West Virginia, Clemson, Oklahoma, Davidson, Washington State, Illinois, Kansas State, Baylor, Oklahoma State and Butler. They are clearly trying hard to schedule major conference and quality mid-major opposition. So this doesn't really apply to them.

Anyway, it's one game and stuff happens. This game was decided by Wichita State going 14 for 28 from 3. If the Shockers shoot their season avg of 34% from 3 then they make 9 of 28 and score 15 fewer points on those 28 shots and lose this game.

Not sure if you are serious about being disappointed? Sorry my sarcasm detector may be deficient. At the least, Syracuse boosters were well-known to be throwing cash around in the 80s and 90s and Boeheim isn't stupid. The 93 tourney ban for Syracuse grew out of a little bit of that being uncovered but it was not exactly a big secret that there were more involved including some players from the state of MI who went to Syracuse. Dunno about this more recent stuff and college basketball isn't exactly filled with a lot of high minded saints. But Boeheim has had a certain rep for decades.

Miami and Duke both deserve a #1 more than Gonzaga IMO. Gonzaga killed their conference and all but winning the ACC at 15-3 is still more impressive to me than going undefeated in the WCC. And while I hate Duke, they were great out of conference and once you factor in the Kelly injury they probably deserved to be a #1 even more than Miami.

Virginia is a weird team. They went 11-7 in the ACC and have some pretty good wins but they also have some really bad losses. Seems to happen a lot to slow tempo teams like them or Wisconsin as the reduced possessions increases variance. Kenpom has them #27 and the highest rated team not to make the tourney. They also lost a lot of close games, 8 losses by 6 points or less. They can make an argument to be included but it's hard to feel like they got screwed or anything. Beat Delaware at home next time.

I don't know what the future holds for collegiate "amateurism" but I am certain that Delany's position of power would be "de-emphasized" into a retirement well before athletics in the B1G ever will be. Way too many stakeholders with an interest in keeping the profits of this industry running full tilt even if it means shifting some of the $ from coaches/administrators to the players. The establishment would kick and scream but they'll go along in the end.

People are just stressing because of how the year ended. Sure, weird shit happens occasionally and if a team gets hot from 3 then it could be close. But still, South Dakota State is bad at defense. Like...worse than Northwestern or PSU or Nebraska at defense. Worst defense we've seen since West Virginia. We are gonna score some points on them and Wolters will get his but we should win. Even after considering our play of late. 

Now VCU on the other hand is a legit team and that will be an interesting game to see if they can force Burke to give it up or if he can break the press himself frequently.

Looking forward to this game so much. Hope the refs call all of their slappy fouls. Let's have a lead that is larger than 3 points at the end of the game please, k thanks.

The rule was changed but in the opposite direction. Perhaps 5 years ago? Previously you could block a ball after it hit the backboard if it was still on the way up. Now, touching it after it has hit the backboard is goaltending provided the entire ball is above the height of the rim.

At least FInal Four and maybe a National Championship game appearance. Nobody hangs banners for the Elite 8 or Sweet Sixteen. I realize a lot of people here don't remember Michigan getting to those rounds but those really aren't a big deal. A Final Four is something to be proud of. 

I'd also be very happy if we won a B1G tourney but I think that highly unlikely as we'll be more tired than our opponents in every round after PSU. Not gonna happen.

Congrats to Burke regardless of what he does. Much harder to score 20 in today's game then in faster paced times of the past.

This style of basketball is just so bad to watch. There is something to be said for good defense but this is just total lack of ball skills too. Wisconsin didn't even get to 20 points. I can't wait until Bo Ryan retires. Fucking ugly basketball.

You know you are getting old when someone references being a baller and an impala and you immediately think of a rap video that is 10+ years older than the rap video that that person is actually referencing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J58L_bEdqS8

[Didn't even remember the Michigan jersey....]

Just eyeballing those numbers it looks like about an 8% chance of both losing to Indiana and getting the first round bye. Most of that is from the scenario where WI loses to MSU and PSU. Otherwise, it is pretty much beat Indiana or else we have to play on Thursday against PSU.

Didn't check how Kenpom's % vary from the Massey #s you used but I know we are 44% against Indiana on kenpom and Massey has it as 45% so it sounds like perhaps they are pretty similar.

Those % are kinda interesting but basically meaningless since they assume a 50/50 chance of each outcome. So MSU pops up at 37.5% chance of a #5 but in 2/3rd of those scenarios they will have lost at home to NW which is like 2% chance of happening. If you weight them for probable outcomes it does not look pretty for Michigan if we do happen to lose Sunday.

Incidentally, not a fan of this tiebreaker process. This is why you want to actually have a schedule where you play all of these other good teams at home instead of missing them as we did with WI and MN this year. Sure you might lose that home game but you'll probably win and that will help under this tiebreaker. Head to head is fine when teams play a full home and home but with the unbalanced schedule we wind up losing a lot of these tiebreakers because of the Wisconsin loss. This whole thing would shake out differently if Wisconsin had had to come to Ann Arbor. It seems to me that a better tiebreaker in cases where you play once would be using the combined conference records of the teams that you had to play on the road. That would reflect the advantage that IN gets by not having to play @WI and that WI gets by not having to play @MI as the cumulative winning % of the teams that they played on the road is less than than it is for us. Teams that played a harder schedule, and this applies to MSU as well, should receive a benefit rather than a penalty for that in seeding.

It's not likely but kenpom has them at about 20%. I mean, if Indiana can lose at home to Wisconsin, if we can lose to Penn State, Kansas to TCU etc etc. It's not like 1%, OSU is still a good team. Crazy things can happen in one college basketball game.

A lot of people are posting the "There are no B1G referees, only NCAA [Division 1] referees" comment. On its face this is true, but it partly misses the point. While it is true that the guys who do B1G games do other conference games as well, it's not like there is a random massive pool of nationwide refs from which the B1G game assigments are drawn and all of the individual differences cancel out. Most refs work primarily within just a few conferences and usually that is based on either the top conferences (B1G, ACC, Big East) or it is based on geography (B1G, MAC, Horizon). The B1G scheduling coordinator seeks out certain refs who they perceive to be good. Secondly, many refs actually have a primary conference that they declare. The way that works is that refs pick a primary conference who gets to schedule them as much as the league wants and in exchange they get more $ for being responsive to the league's scheduling needs and the convenience of already getting a chunk of games scheduled in one geograpic region.

There are 18 games/team *12 teams * 3 referees divided by 2 teams per game = 324 referee assignments per season (ignoring BTT). Last year there were 9 men who did 168 of those 324 assignments or 52% of all ref assignments. See: http://statsheet.com/mcb/conferences/big-ten/referees?season=2011-2012.  All sorts of great data on refs on that site by the way. When people talk about B1G refs they are talking about the style of those particular refs who are popping up at a lot of B1G games. TV Ted is just one guy but he was in about 22% of the conference's games last year. See that link above but Mike Kitts, TV Ted, Terry Wymer, Mike Sanzere and Ed Hightower did 1/3 of the refs assignments in the regular season. Just five guys. So yeah, there are not B1G exclusive officials but there are a fairly small group of officials who do B1G games a lot and make up a good % of the refereeing.  Now, whether those particular guys who do the B1G currently are more prone to allowing physical play is I guess is up for debate. Dunno what the data says. Certainly there are individual differences that are clearly visible over time

The conference office's direction and tradition of play in the league and other stuff may also play a role. For sure reputation matters. No way that the Iowa guy, McCaffrey, gets away with the physical play against us that Izzo does. But Izzo has been to 6 Final Fours and has a reputation for teams w/ physical play and reputation matters so he'll get more calls or more importantly more non-calls. Refs are human.

The statement on Henson could have been worded with more nuance but it is basically correct. When he came out of Brighton in 98 the Yankees drafted him and the understanding was that he could finish his college career at Michigan and play a more limited baseball schedule than a minor league prospect normally would. That seems to be what the writer was referring to and it was indeed the understanding during the 98-00 seasons. Later on he was traded to the Reds during the 2000 baseball season and then traded back to the Yankees around the time of the spring game in 2001. From the Yankees perspective, that agreement ended at the point he was traded to the Reds. Then when he was traded back to the Yankees Henson agreed to a new contract and to quit football and play baseball only. So the Yankees did push for him to quit baseball but in so far as the writer was referring to the first time they owned his rights it is correct. It was only after he was traded to the Reds and traded back that they forced him to choose between football and baseball. Could have been written more clearly certainly.

That's actually a pretty nice catch on the second chair that gets thrown at her. Just takes the one hand, the left one too, and snags it and tucks it under in one motion. Ready to turn up-field and toss another table. Braylon would have dropped that for sure.

We've still got a lot of work to do but it is great to control everything. Can't wait until the weekend.

Beat Penn State! And F Ben Brust!

We have total control over our overall NCAA seed as well. If we won out we would have beaten MSU, Indiana and then something along the lines of Illinois, MSU and Indiana again in the BTT if we were the #2 BTT seed. That's a lot to ask...but if it happened it would give us the best resume in college basketball. Next two weeks are gonna be crazy.

That was my first thought too after reading those. Between MSU 1990 and MSU 2001 it is pretty clear that officials (and timekeepers) do affect the outcome of games. The 5th down game between Missouri and Colorado when Colorado later won the national championship as well as the kicked ball by Nebraska against Missouri in 1997 also came to mind. There are tons of example of the officials significantly impacting who won football games.

I don't pay much attention to Dakich but I did note when he said that Glenn Robinson II was the best Big Ten player he had seen except for Steve Alford or Calbert Cheaney. Which...granted he only played two years but for those of us old enough to remember Big Dog averaging 30 PPG and like 10 boards/game during his second year I found that to be pretty funny. I'm not old enough to remember Magic or guys before that but I'm certain that Robinson was better than Cheaney who was better than Alford.

As far as the minutes, I think the issue is not wearing down over the course of the season but wearing down in tourneys. In the B1G we'll have to play 2 in 2 for the semis and 3 in 3 if we play in the final. Beilein will have to play the bench more and play some lineups that we haven't seen as much. Think we'll see more 2 big lineups, and more Levert. Might still have just as many minutes for Burke as we are so dependent on him. Ideally, we get Illinois or Iowa as a #2 versus #7 matchup and win comfortably in the first game.

Not as bad in the NCAAs but you are still doing 2 in 3 days so it is different than the Wed/Sat flow of the regular season where it is 2 in 4 days or 2 in 5 most of the time.

Thanks.

I've done a little bit of class 5 climbing but I'm not much of a climber. Mostly as a means to tagging some peak. I do get to down a fair amount of scrambling and mountaineering with the snow/glaciers that we have in WA. But the majority of the time it is just hiking or snowshoeing and such. 

2)I do a lot of hiking and mountaineering. Nothing super technical but I get out a lot in scenic places and I have done a decent number of peaks. As much as I loved living in Ann Arbor for 11 years, I don't think I'll ever choose to live in the Midwest again as I'd miss the mtns too much. If you're bored at work you can poke around my photo albums from some hikes: 

http://www.pbase.com/ericnoel/

When I was younger I thought that doing the PCT would be something I would enjoy but I eventually realized that I don't love the backpacking aspect to grind out that much time sleeping in a tent. I'm always very impressed with the people who have the mental stamina to thru hike the AT/PCT/CDT etc.

To answer the other questions:

1)Nothing in particular. 

3)Nope

4)Con jalapenos.

It's a shame that no one plays like that anymore. Can you imagine anyone scoring 149 points now? That's like 3 games worth for Wisconsin. It was really kind of a crazy way to play basketball but it was so incredibly entertaining and unique. That was when the shot clock was still 45 seconds then too I believe. If I recall correctly I believe their goal was to get a shot up within 7 seconds on every possession and because of the way they trapped with the full court press the other team pretty much wound up getting an open shot pretty quickly. But they would still win a lot because they generated turnovers, could out shoot most teams and they had way better conditioning. 

I knew we were going to lose the day before the game when Rumeal was quoted in the Ann Arbor News saying that we could run with them. Which was insane, no one could run with them. UNLV beat them the following weekend by having Larry Johnson post up and then having Augmon slash to the basket. Oh well. UNLV would have killed us anyway. That UNLV team and the one the next year that lost to Duke in the Final Four was as good as any team in the 30 years that I've been watching college basketball. 

The Izzo thing is a poke at Michigan. He could have made the exact same point without the words "like Michigan has" and the same point would have been made. Or substitute in "like Syracuse" since they've been scheduling cupcakes for 30 years. 

Also, there have been years where his point was valid as MSU had really tough schedules. This year, eh, not so much. Their schedule is pretty similar to ours:

#11 @Kansas

#47 vs UConn

#100 Texas

B1G/ACC Challenge #10 @Miami

#4 vs Pitt

#34 vs K-State

#69 Arkansas

#108 vs WVU

B1G/ACC Challenge #43 NC State

They didn't schedule anything harder than us. WVU and TX both turned out to be total flops. Arkansas is blah. But it is pretty even. Kansas and UConn are just bigger names but they aren't really better than Pitt and KState. It did turn out  that MSU drew an opponent in Miami in the B1G/ACC that is better than expected and NC State doesn't like to play defense but that is not something that the schools schedule. 

What Izzo probably should be saying is that people kind of forgot about them because of those two losses but it was only 2 games in the course of a ~35 game season. And @Kansas is a great win that they should have gotten more credit for but people forget about it because it was a while ago. 

It would be interesting to go back and look at when Indiana players have won Player of the Week or Freshman of the Week under Crean. I'm too lazy to look it up but I would be shocked if they haven't gotten those awards under Crean during a week where they also lost. Of course, if that happened I am 100% certain that he must have questioned the criteria and objected vehemently to individual play being valued more highly than team success in determining the winner of an individual award given weekly.  /s

I think he has a little bit of a point in general. MSU was not playing well at the beginning of the season and the media has been slow to pick up on the fact that they are playing pretty well right now. The Miami loss looks a lot better. Wins @WI, Kansas, OSU and over us is pretty impressive. 

But he didn't do himself any favors with that absurd Oladipo vs. Dawson comparison. Let's see Oladipo is making 67% of his 2P shots and 52% of his 3s. Meanwhile Dawson has made 57% of his 2s and has yet to make a 3 this season. Oladipa gets to the line a lot more (46 FT rate vs 33 for Dawson) and shots 75% there vs. 55% by Dawson. Oladipo's assist rate is about 50% higher than Dawon's. Dawson has a slightly higher DReb rate, Oladipo a hair better at ORebs. Dawson with a few more blocks and Oladipo with a few more steals. Both with a lot of turnovers. Overall though they are not in the same ballpark. Oladipo is #1 in the country in Total Shooting and Dawson is #361. Dawson's a solid player but Oladipo has been insanely efficient offensively and is worthy of national player of the year consideration. 

I'm not surprised they got killed by MSU. MSU was gonna be hyped and 2nd road trip in 4 days, 4 tough games in 11 days w/ 3 roadtrips, coming off a really tough loss etc. They looked tired even before MSU. My biggest gripe this season is that GR3 and Stauskas have been playing too many minutes. I know they are the best options but the minutes are too high IMO for freshman. Not enough off-ball movement and sloppy defense but I think those are caused by guys with tired legs. With only two games in two weeks and both at home between MSU and @PSU we should get some rest and energy back. Bad teams and rest will make this team look a whole lot better. 

Beilein needs to say something about the rough play before the MSU game. He probably won't as he is too classy but if ever there is a time to bring focus to that it is before we play them at home. 

The defense is a big concern. We are now last in the conference is 2Point % D and 10th in eFG%. Either that is indicative of missing Morgan more than we thought we would or we just are not that good defensively. Probably a bit of both. A lot of the interior problems are team defense mistakes but those are forced by the perimeter guys not being that good.

It still won't take much for us to tie for the conference title. We just need to win at home and have MSU beat IN and then OSU beat MSU.

Tournaments are weird things and while I think that Indiana is a little bit better than us (maybe Florida too?) we are more or less as good as anyone else in the country.  

Purdue may be a trap game since it is sandwiched in between MSU and Indiana. Still, we should win. And we are basically done with road games otherwise. No more home whistles and home crowds against good teams.

Need a bit more physicality. Not sure that that is gonna happen this year, probably not. 

I hope Walton and Irvin are good defenders. We won't be as good offensively next year but in the long term we can make up for Burke and possibly Hardaway leaving by replacing guys who are not as good at D with better defenders. I also hope those guys can create off the dribble because right now Burke is the only guy doing that and he'll be gone next year. 

Will be interesting to see what happens long term with the mix of post players and the 4 spot. Obviously depends on whether Hardaway goes pro. But if GR3 stays and Hardaway goes and you keep GR3 at the 4 then you have Irvin/Stauskas starting at 2/3 and LeVert has to sub in for both spots w/ Walton/Albrecht at point. Then GR3 at the 4 w/ one of the bigs as his backup. If you have a roster of 11 guys, assuming Burke and Hardaway gone, don't see how you can have 5 of the 11 sharing 1 post spot between Donnal, Morgan, Horford, McGary and Bielfeldt. I expect we'll have to consider playing 2 bigs more of the time w/ McGary or Donnal at the high post and possibly move GR3 to the 3. Or else bring in a last second recruit to play the wing but that is unlikely to be a high level player. Lots of variables but this roster looks like it is drifting to be more of a traditional one with a bigger 4 rather than what Beilein has been running. It's been fascinating to watch his system evolve as the talent gets better and I've been amazed at how adaptable he is.

The officials hosed us. There was another play in the first half too where the ball bounced off of a Wisky player's head laying on the ground and the ref said it was off Stauskas. Just atrocious. LeVert was hammered on one play. A lot of poor calls. I thought the one WI block was a goaltend. McGary also goaltended on a play and they missed that although WI immediately got a putback. 

We need to finish better and be more physical in finishing. Guys got fouled on a lot of shots close to the rim and those fouls were not called and became misses. That's on the refs but if they take some of those shots up stronger then they will get calls. 

In the big picture, B1G officials let way too much physical stuff with the hands go on and now the body bumping is out of hand too. That's always going to be a disadvantage for us as that is not our style of play and favors certain teams like WI and MSU that tend to be overly physical. 

What a collapse in the last 3 minutes by Indiana. And how weird not to see Illinois screw things up for once. Awesome. Indiana still has their 4 toughest road games ahead and 2 losses. Wouldn't be surprised at all if they only win 1 of 4, maybe at Minnesota. 

The PPP is misleading in this case. The offense certainly scored a lot of points but we got to that 1.19 number by shooting 14 of 24 from 3. Shooting 58% from 3 is not sustainable and not going to happen again against a good team. We've got good shooters but we are hitting 40.2% on the season from 3. So that 1.19 is inflated by a lucky shooting night. If we shoot our season average of 40% instead of 58% that is about 10 of 24 on 3s and 12 fewer points, maybe a little less due to OREBs and that game turns into something along the lines of a 10 point loss.

At this point it looks like Burke is having trouble creating penetration against more athletic and physical teams. Better competition, sure. Tired legs? Maybe. Just not able to do it? Dunno. In any event, that reduces the open shots for everyone and leads to a lot more perimeter shots that are often contested. It's not a strategy for beating the very best teams. We need someone else, and it doesn't necessarily have to be Burke, to force the defense to rotate off the dribble and then pass to the open baseline guys or cutters or just score. It hasn't happened against the good teams yet.  

Having said that, we don't need to score 1.19 PPP (or hit 58% from 3) if we can do a better job defensively. And we'll pretty much have to if we want to win the B1G, B1G tourney or the tournament. OSU hit some shoots too that they don't normally hit. But that was not a good defensive performance by us.

I agree with your overall point and the parts about Amaker and facilities. Also the UNLV team, great fun to watch them too. 

But as far as "Who hired Brian Ellerbe?", that disaster pretty much can be traced back to Fisher/Webber/T(r)aylor/Bullock et al. It's not like Goss/Bollinger just picked Ellerbe from among a pool of great candidates. It was October and everyone else in basketball had a job when the law firm report came down and made it necessary to immediately fire Fisher. There was no choice to hire anyone better or to promote Dutcher who was too close to Fisher to be viable. Effectively, the Martin scandal forced them to hire him on an interim basis.

You can perhaps make an argument that they shouldn't have given Ellerbe more than one year.  Obviously in hindsight it seems like a terrible blunder. But at the time people thought that he had done a solid job guiding that 97-98 team to a 25-9 record and #3 seed and we all thought that the NCAA was going to drop the hammer big time and that no one else would want the job until that was resolved and suffered through. That latter part probably was true. So I think you pretty much can lay Ellerbe at the feet of Webber and company as their violations set in motion the circumstances that led to that period.

Now Amaker is a different story and that falls on Bill Martin big time for flubbing the Pitino hire. 

Burke took way too many poor shots. Needed more penetration and less jump shooting.

Like the mental toughness that they showed, just like in the OSU game in coming back. But they did not play smart. 

Not only were Stauskas and GR3 invisible on offense but they were used on D too. Played freshman which is gonna happen. Oh well. 

I don't have all that big of a problem with Zeller's putbacks. He's a beast and they are 6th in OReb so giving up about 35% on those is not unexpected or that bad. 

Officiating was horrible. Seen it so many times at Indiana it is just a running joke. 

F Oladipo. And someone please make Vitale retire.

Bit of bad luck as Indiana isn't going to hit 88% of their 25 FTs very often. We never drove to the rim for easy 2s in the endgame, just more 3s, not a good idea.

Missed about 5 shots right at the rim too in the first half which was part of how they built their lead.

You play bad and you lose sometime. I think the bigger concern is that when we run into adversity Burke does the heroball thing and runs clock down and then shoots a 3. Not a winning strategy against other top teams. Need to run the offense like normal. 

This team may play better basketball in some sense but I don't think they are on the same level as the Fab 5. The high end talent, especially for post players was just so much better when the best players would virtually always stay for 3 years. We are after all talking about basically 3 NBA All-Star players on one team and while this team is talented it isn't like that. 

The Fab 5 did have more turnovers as they would often try to make too many passes just for style points. They did not shoot FTs well. The one thing that this team certainly does better is shoot. King could shoot OK and Voskuil and Pelinka were actually solid from the perimter. But that team really could have used a wing 3 who could shoot from the perimeter. I loved Ray Jackson toughness but he was not a good shooter and that team would have been that much better with a Stauskas type at the 3. 

Again, hard to compare rebounding across eras but with Webber, Howard and Eric Riley off the bench they had a lot of height for rebounding. People also forget that that was a better defensive team than this one, mostly because of its length and athleticism. They held opponents to about 41% FG that year IIRC. Although they would double the post touches a lot and that made them vulnerable to good shooting 3 point teams. Though It was a little easier to recover on doubles and help back then as the 3 point line was about a foot closer.

This team is probably closer to its potential whereas the Fab 5 never quite put it all together and lost a lot of close important games ie Duke x2, UNC, IU, OSU etc. They are not as good in absolute terms IMO but obviously they can still win championships so they can still achieve much more than the Fab 5 did.

Must have been a slow day at Arby's if the employees are uploading videos to youtube.

We did pretty much get crushed in 2010. They might have actually had the better team in 1999 too when they crushed us by 3 points.

The 1990 trip of Desmond and the Sparty Bob timekeeping game in 2001 were crushing in a certain way I suppose. 

Funny thing is that there are 3x $100s, the back of a $5 bill visible at the top and maybe a few others beneath that in Treadwell's pic. That's $305 plus some unknown other stuff that may or may not be $1s or $100s or nothing.

Post a pic of a few 100s in cash and you can pretend you're a baller. But if you told the ladies you had $305 in your checking account you can be sure that no one is mistaking you for Jay Z. Something weird to kids about cash money. 

Mateen Cleaves, he would have changed the course for two programs over about a decade long span. 

Garnett. People thought he was coming to M and would be another insane athlete like Webber (and he was, in his own way). 

Tebow is a good one. 

Justin King maybe puts us over the top in 2006. Victor Harris? Lots of secondary guys come to mind.

Did we recruit Rocket Ismail? That was before I followed recruiting. 

It's selfish but I can't help but wonder what would have happened if some of the teams would have had certain guys who went pro early. Imagine the 93-94 team with Webber. The 92 football team that went 9-0-3 if they'd had Desmond. Drew Henson to the Yankees. Given the weak schedule we played in 2001, hard to see how we still lose to any of Washington, Sparty Bob and Tressel with Henson. Go to the national championship game and get killed by Miami. But still, the whole rivalry dynamic would have changed if Tressel had lost that first game in Ann Arbor. It's too easy to imagine all of the things in the past that could have had positive ripple effects if they had happened differently. 

Another aspect of this that leaves me somewhat optimistic is that we are still so young. People forget that we are 338th out of 347 teams in experience per Kenpom. Hopefully some of these young guys like Stauskas, GR3 and McGary will start to see the intensity and physicality of defense now that we are playing OSU and MN etc and try to match it in their own games. Not sure that intensity is something you can re-create in practice against guys you play everyday. You would have to think that such a young team would be more likely to improve over the course of the season than would the avg team; although it would be interesting to see if any data backs up that theory.  

Also, Burke was clearly more active defensively off the ball against Minnesota than he normally is. My hope is that after struggling against Craft again that perhaps he will try to take a page from his game and re-dedicate himself to improving his defensive game just by being more active on D. 

I can see Oklahoma or Oklahoma State or a lot of other schools that are not Michigan. But I just have a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that an elite Illinois receiver who could pick any school would choose Ole Miss. Yeah, Standifer goes there. Is he really basing a college/career decision on one high school friend? I cannot think of what possible criteria results in Ole Miss being the sensible choice. 

Anyway, best of luck to him. Hopefully for him it takes Arkansas and Auburn a while to recover or else he'll be looking at fighting Mississippi State for the honor of finishing in 6th place in a 7 team division for the next 4 years. 

Burke breaking ankles with a crossover? Or some such pic. It's hoops season now. The banner can always be changed to Lewan this summer in another 6 months before football season starts.