Recent Comments

Lavigne is pretty highly-regarded for a goalie, just young.

In hockey, the line seems to be the best women in the world can compete with an above-average high school team. I could see that being pretty similar in other sports as well.

...but they need at least another win or two in the tournament before they're not automatically "...you mean that school Reed Baker transferred to?" in my head.

I'll laugh at how Minnesota burns money more than anyone, but I'm not sure that was the full quote. They weren't expecting to make a profit in the first year. The law allowing them to sell beer was passed pretty late--I believe a game or two into the season--and they didn't have the infrastructure set up to sell it themselves, so they contracted the job out to a third party, knowing that their cost would probably only allow them to break about even on alcohol sales. Next year, when they take over the operation themselves, they should make a lot more money.

If you really want stupid, look into the politicking and grandstanding that went into beer being served there in the first place.

If you exclude the guys listed above, that leaves Milne, Copp(you can cross him off too), or Selman.

...is how much the accompanying photo made me laugh.

1. The reason they keep picking the same sites out east and with Minnesota is because they hand out regionals based on bids, and if nobody else bids to host those events, the same places keep getting picked.There's just very few places that meet the NCAA's criteria for what they want out of a regional site and have the interest to do so. About the only reason Cincinnati was picked was because they were a new choice.

2. Home sites would be infinitely better. The NCAA's problem is similar to the issue they had with home sites for football; namely the possibility of a team with an inadequate or unavailable arena earning the right to host.

This has been a bad move, if only for how bad of a PR hit the team, and Kill specifically, have taken once word got out that they paid $800k to avoid playing a real opponent. Public opinion has largely been sympathetic towards him, and yesterday put a huge dent in that.

The other problem is that season tickets are going to be a huge problem for the Gophers coming up. Lots of people paid full price for season ticket packages, and they've practically been giving tickets away to anyone that wants them the week before games. They sent out a deal this past week where if you bought Purdue and Michigan tickets at $15 a piece, you get the Michigan State ticket for free, while season ticket holders paid over $40 for each game. Good luck trying to keep those people buying season tickets at $40+ a game when the schedule includes a bunch of nobodies where you'll be able to pick up tickets for $5 on the secondary market.

The bowl thing is over rated. They've been to plenty of Sun Bowls and the like. Nobody cares, and if anything, it ends up costing the school money because the payouts are so dismal.

No human polls factor into the PWR.

Kudos to the woman in that picture for having the savvy to hold out for the extra special zebra strip jerseys Michigan will probably be wearing against MSU this year.

I think the line on the Savannah St/OSU game last week was 67.5, and OkSt still covered that pretty easily.

EDIT: Also worth noting that despite losing 84-0, Savannah St did win the all-important time of possession battle.

Don't go with Bort. Far too common...

Sad to hear, though my only memory of him is having a post named after him here: http://mgoblog.com/content/ontario-sneed-haunts-my-dreams

'No contact rules' probably do get broken(I have no clue on the inner workings of football recruiting), but it's worth noting that those rules don't apply if the player is on that school's campus, which I would assume he was for the football camp.

I've never really seen the problem with recruiting young kids.The player has to be the one to initiate the contact, so if they're harassed, they're being harassed by choice, and it's not like the commitments are binding at all, so either party can walk away in the future if circumstances change.

The last thing you'll ever find at the NOOF is "perspective'

This goes back to the discussion in the Carrick thread about the CHL being a "professional" hockey league. Say what you want about the hasn't-been-raise-since-the-80s $45 stipend, but would anyone feel comfortable with Trouba playing a year in Kitchener after this "reported offer" and then showing up and playing at Michigan the following year as an "amateur" athlete?

Technically what changed is that his right were traded to Plymouth from Guelph in the past week.

But being racist and batshit crazy is still on the table, right?

I agree that Hunwick is the only worthy candidate here.

The one thing I will say for Hensick that should also go in the 'pros' is that his 222 career points is a number that almost nobody is going to touch. The two closest players to Hensick since he has graduated were still 25 points behind him. Even the really good players that leave early are never close to the pace Hensick put up.

Shameless self-plug, but I wrote a little about how nobody is coming close to Hensick here: http://www.westerncollegehockeyblog.com/2012/1/23/2727960/jack-connollys...

It looks like two losses by Cornell or Western Michigan would get Northern Michigan into the tournament.

"It's worth pointing out that colleges do not have the option to extort local governments for facilities."

Somebody has never been to Minnesota.

Freshman ineligibility would only work in sports like football and basketball where the NCAA is the only option. It would have a pretty devastating effect on a sport like college hockey, or, I'm presuming baseball.

The CHL has their own specific contract with the NHL that keeps their 19 y/os out of the AHL, which is a big part of the reason the NCAA considers the CHL a professional league. The NCAA doesn't really care where their players play once they sign, since it's not like they can go back to the NCAA.

Rochester Century HS in Minnesota redeems the town a little by being one of the only high schools in the state to use The Victors as their school song amidst a sea of mediocre versions of the Notre Dame fight song.

I'd be very surprised if that ended up being a 15-person class. There's likely a couple kids that will be asked to play another year of junior hockey before coming to Ohio State. Plus, two of the recruits are goalies, with one who will be coming in as a junior in terms of eligibility. So essentially, they'll have probably 9 or 10 freshman skaters at most, which is big, but not unheard of.

That weirdly made my day.

If you play an average or below average FCS team, the D-1 teams aren't going to have a problem.

I guess with no Little Brown Jug game this year, Rodriguez skipped over the Minnesota game film.

It's correct that Lessio was taken in the Entry Draft, and not the Futures Draft.

The big difference between the two drafts is that players drafted in the Futures Draft can be put on a team's affiliate list--meaning the team retains their rights without having them on the actual roster--for up to three years. Teams can add them to the actual roster whenever they want though. A pretty good handful of kids taken Tuesday in the Futures Draft will be playing in the USHL next year. Boo Nieves was picked in the Futures Draft and is going to play a year of prep school and then probably go to the USHL the year after.

The Entry Draft is more of a one year thing. If a player doesn't make the roster after being taken in the USHL Draft one year, they go back into the pool the following year.

Lessio being taken in the first round would seem to indicate that Waterloo is pretty sure he's going to play for them as of right now. But then again, there's been kids in the past in similar situations that have had 'changes of heart' and ended up going the other direction.

So after a soul-crushing walk-off loss to the Twins in Game 163 last year, I swore to myself I was never going to the Metrodome again, but broke that rule on Saturday and was treated to another disappointing walk-off loss. Bad things just seem to happen in that place.

Usually I'll agree that the Dome sucks for baseball, but on a day that it snowed in much of the upper part of the state, and was a little too cold and windy to do any serious fishing, it wasn't all that bad to go sit eight rows behind home plate in a t-shirt and enjoy a baseball game on a Saturday afternoon.

Technically WHL is a little different than OHL since they draft a year earlier, meaning there's a little more projection at that age.

Just because the Pairwise math sucks, doesn't mean all math sucks and we need to go the complete opposite with hand-picking the last couple spots.

I would be more interested in seeing a proposal like you worked on a couple years ago where the Pairwise categories were used to tweak the RPI. For example, UMD had a 6 game advantage over BU in the RPI, but BU won the TUC category by half a game, and the common opponent category by about half a game. UMD still wins that comaparison by about 5 games, rather than losing the comparison, which is what kept them out of the tournament this year.

I'm not a math guy, so I'm not sure how the particulars work out, but it seems to me that at least solves one problem with teams that nobody considers credible bubble teams flukily winning comparisons against contenders that clearly had much better seasons--BU and Lowell this year, Northern Michigan two years ago, etc.

Two wins would be even bigger. If Michigan swept this weekend and didn't meet Ferris again(or beat them in the playoffs), that would give them two points in their comparison with Ferris. Combined with Ferris' awful record against TUCs, Michigan would almost be guaranteed to win that comparison, even if Ferris remained near the top of the country in terms of RPI, and winning an outlying comparison like that could be huge if they're trying to sneak in on the bubble.

It's a really stupid technicality in the system--two games on home ice over one weekend negating 30 other games--but they may as well take advantage of it.

Who asked "Are you a quintessential Michigan Man?"(Rhetorical. I'm sure it was the Free Press.)

Blech. Another example of why press conferences are useless.

Matt's does have a really good burger, is pretty cheap and has a nice hole-in-the-wall local type atmosphere. I'd plan on getting there early though. It's a small place and I'm sure it will crowded tomorrow. Also make sure you bring cash since they don't take credit cards.

I'm glad we'll be getting Mike Patrick. Now that Britney is possibly going back to Judaism--probably purely for the jokes--I'll need someone to keep me updated on her during critical moments of football games.

You're generally right about juniors, though I will point out that education packages can also be negotiable. Any good player with decent representation negotiates a deal where they're guaranteed four years of schooling as soon as they give up their NCAA eligibility. The problem is that not all players can negotiate like that, and for those that can, most don't end up using those education packages anyway.

For example, two years ago when the Vancouver Giants were trying to steal Kyle Turris away from Wisconsin for one season, they promised him four years of college at any school he wanted, but they knew that he was going to get drafted high enough that he'd at least get a shot in the NHL and they'd never have to pay a dime of that.

Duluth is only 2 and a half hours from Minneapolis, which by Minnesota standards, isn't all that far. Their fans would travel pretty well. I'm sure in the committee can finagle it, they'd like to get UMD at Mariucci if they can't get Minnesota.

I don't know about being screwed as badly as Michigan, but last season, Denver had two calls go in their favor that the league eventually apologized to the other team for, including one so egregious the official was fired.