Just called. For the two night it's about $2100 plus access to tickets at face for $475. There's probably some fees the (very helpful) person on the phone didn't mention.
I think I might jump on it. If it was just my generation, we'd probably mess around with cheaper hotels and holding out on stubhub until basically day-of, but we're trying to get my grandpa out to LA and having the alumni association be able to do things like coordinate access at accessible entrances at the stadium and good transportation might be worth it.
Michigan at #7 is all well and good and we should feel good about it.
The important story of this poll is Iowa at #20 and ISU at #21. We are 3 wins (ISU over N. Iowa, Iowa over Miami(OH) and Rutgers) away from a RANKED EL ASSICO BABY! GAMEDAY IN AMES!
For as many non-rev sports as I attend, I just can't convince myself to get BTN+, its just too expensive for what it is. I very much wish that the Big Ten had gone the SEC/ACC/Big 12 route and their big partnership was with ESPN instead of Fox, because then a lot of content would end up living on ESPN+, which I already pay for. I do get BTN+ for day games when I'm on campus on my work computer, but that doesn't help me when I go home from work and no longer on campus. I did once communicate with the B1G VP who manages that sort of thing and he acknowledged that some sort of off-campus discount for people who have campus logins was worth exploring, but I imagine nothing will come of it.
I'm really not worried about using a scholarship on him, given our projections. Right now, there are 4 natural open scholarships in 2020. Zeb is taking one. Austin Davis will likely be given a diploma and a handshake, so we're back up to 4. We're probably going to lose a guy to the NBA, and we could lose a guy to other natural attrition. I just don't think it's likely we miss out on a guy because 5-6 guys who are better than Jace Howard all want to sign and we have to tell one no.
At some point in the late-2000s/early 2010s a lot of stuff that had been sort of ad-hoc became standardized. The motions during the intro to "The Victors" became standard in the student section, and the Blues Brothers song and its associated motions moved from Yost to the Big House. While I personally think I remember saying "Go Blue" at the end of the Victors as a little kid, my guess is that it went from a thing some people did to part of the song during that round of standardization.
Unsurprising but very exciting. Glad he immediately announced they're getting the band back together and doing a Nick/Quinn pod. Just in time for football!
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think State's ranking is pretty much fine. Dantonio gets about one more year on his benefit of the doubt clock, their defense is top 5 and will keep games close that maybe shouldn't be, last year they probably weren't as bad as they played given all the injuries. Their path to 8 wins, which would put them at about 20 in the poll, is pretty believable.
It is, but they play classification games to get a definitive 1-16 ranking. Germany is guaranteed to play 3 more games, just like everyone else.
Since Germany lost in the first round of the knockouts, the best they can do is 9. If they win tomorrow they'll go to the 9-12 semis, if they lose they'll go to the 13-16 semis. If they win in the 9-12 semis they'll go to the 9-10 classification game, if they lose in the 9-12 semis they'll go to the 11-12 classification game. Similarly, if they win in the 13-16 semis they'll go to the 13-14 classification game, and if they lose in the 13-16 semis they'll go to the 15-16 classification game.
He’s employed because this will make a bunch of money. Michigan has participated in the Big Ten Super Saturday twice, once doing the full b-ball-hockey double header and once just playing hockey, and has yet to give up a home game. If they wanted to participate again, they were going to have to give one up. So Warde figured instead of a sparse 9:00pm Tuesday Crisler crowd against an opponent no one cares about, he’ll take his cut of the gate at MSG, in front of what will still likely be a Michigan-heavy crowd. I’m fine with that.
I went to the first one, the M/Penn St double header. It was a great time. If you’re in New York, go to this, and go to the wrestling meet.
Most of the homework was already done, I have a google doc with this info going back five seasons and just needed to look up App St, Elon, and HBU.
While it would be nice to play a top 10 team, playing both Nova and UNC in campus-site non-con games last year was really unique, and strictly speaking we didn't schedule either of those matchups, they were assigned to us. When you figure the Battle4Atlantis and the conference schedule, we probably are slated to play a top 10 team, we just don't have the games scheduled yet.
While it is apparent why scheduling App St in a season opener is a dumb idea from a feelingsball perspective and I more or less agree they shouldn't have done it, its a pretty defensible schedule from an NET perspective. We should beat App St, but their 215 NET (209 KP) is in that range of "likely going to beat them but they are not going to be a NET anchor." Last year we played 4 teams in the 290-312 range on Kenpom, this year we only play 2. All in all the Warde-scheduled non-con is a little stronger this year by enough that it should help our NET but not so much that a dumb loss seems looming. Additionally the tourney is significantly stronger, but the Gavitt Games/ACC Challenge is weaker. Overall I think scheduling fewer true bodybags and more teams in the Kenpom 150-250 range is good.
Last year's teams by previous year Kenpom:
@Villanova (Gavitt Games)- 1
UNC (B1G/ACC Challenge)- 8
Providence (HOF Tourney)- 63
South Carolina- 80
WMU- 188
George Washington (HOF Tourney)- 192
Air Force- 237
Holy Cross- 290
Binghamton- 297
Chattanooga- 304
Norfolk St- 312
This year:
@Louisville (B1G/ACC Challenge)- 23
Oregon- 28
Creighton (Gavitt Games)- 55
Presbyterian- 179
App St- 209
UMass-Lowell- 258
Houston Baptist- 281
Elon- 309
Battle4Atlantis will have us play 3 out of: Gonzaga (2), UNC (7), Iowa St (15), Oregon again, Seton Hall (60), Alabama (64), Southern Miss (120).
I'm going Sunday. Pretty disappointed that both Woodland and DJ are about to miss the cut, but should be a fun time anyways. I'm hoping Hovland has a bit of a surge today and makes it to the weekend.
If you're looking to compare this year's schedule to last year's schedule:
Oregon > South Carolina
Presbyterian = WMU
UMass-Lowell = Air Force.
We still need to schedule our Atlantis mainland game (think Holy Cross), and two bodybags (think Binghamton and Chattanooga). It'll be interesting to see who ends up in those three games, as that will be all the games that the athletic department really got to choose. Atlantis being a better tournament than the Hall of Fame Classic should make up for our ACC/B1G and Gavitt Games opponents being a little bit worse. Depending on what happens with the remaining three unscheduled games, our strength of schedule should be pretty close to last year's, possibly a teeny bit harder.
If the weather is good or the event is indoors I wear exactly what I would have worn in my living room: Michigan joggers, a Michigan tshirt, a Michigan zip-up hoodie. I wear the appropriate jerseys to football, baseball/softball and hockey but not basketball or any other sport. I have a lot of good maize and blue layering pieces for cold weather games.
Happy with the way the good part of the non-con schedule came out:
v. Creighton
Battle 4 Atlantis (Alabama, Gonzaga, Iowa State, North Carolina, Oregon, Seton Hall, Southern Miss, figure we play 1 of Zags/UNC and 2 of the others.)
@Louisville
v. Oregon.
Compare that to @Nova, Georgetown/Providence, UNC, SCar last year. The tourney is harder but the others are probably easier on aggregate. It'll be interesting to see what kind of buy games Howard schedules. Hopefully we'll find out soon.
@BFQuinn covers both M and MSU basketball for the Athletic and is my favorite writer who covers Michigan in any capacity.
@chenglis is a great Detroit News beat writer who also tweets about her mom's Michigan hot takes and how old Wojo is.
@aria_gerson is the current Michigan Daily sports editor and football beat writer and is very good.
@ethan_sears, @theo_mackie, and @max_marcovitch are also all either basketball or football people with the Daily and every season you should just go figure out who the Daily beat writers are that season and follow them.
@TonyPaul1984 isn't strictly speaking a Michigan person but often has good info and does a lot of great coverage of the state's mid-majors for the Detroit News.
I was wondering if hiring both Mike Miller and Phil Martelli was redundant and it appears that they've decided it is. I can't really speak to Eisley's coaching credentials but this all makes enough sense to me.
My only hesitation is that its only Paul reporting it and very few Michigan guys. With that said, Tony Paul has an excellent reputation and I don't think he'd stake it on something that's a half-step off his beat unless he was absolutely sure about it.
Seems likely to me that he created this account specifically so that it was easier to dismiss that fake account floating around yesterday (which has since been deleted).
As much as I love the idea, Michigan is lucky to fill Crisler on nights where they are playing basketball. To get enough people to show up to a practice that the atmosphere is good is just unlikely imo. I mean, I'd go, but you'd need to be able to guarantee a packed student section and at least the lower deck entirely full.
I got my Master's from Michigan in '17 and stayed in Ann Arbor, because my field is academic in nature and the University of Michigan is a legitimate leader in it where my job prospects were good and my opportunities for continuous advancement within UofM made sense to me. Then I worked in the private sector for a year. Now I'm back in the fold at a UofM department I enjoy and I can honestly say that for me this is the best situation, that taking an external job and waiting it out until a UofM job opened was worth it. My department just won a major award from the national organization for our field. But the vast majority of my grad school cohort lives somewhere way else, because that's what made sense for them. You gotta go where the jobs are, and where the city's lifestyle suits you. For me, that was always Ann Arbor, but not everyone can be so lucky.
Yeah that also makes a lot of sense. I just got mad for atmosphere/having to take vacation time to watch lacrosse reasons and didn't consider real competitive reasons for setting it up that way.
Women's Lacrosse times have been announced: Friday is M/Play-In Winner at 4pm, Denver/USC at 7. Winners at noon Sunday.
How the games got scheduled this way boggles my mind. Why would the home team have to play during the work day while the neutral site teams get prime time? Seems like a real waste of an opportunity to try to get a decent crowd there. I don't know whether the NCAA schedules these centrally or if there are travel concerns with USC or what, but it seems like if you're the home team you should be playing at a time when people can actually show up.
EDIT: Twotrueblue pointed out in the Lax thread on the boards that scheduling them in this order makes it easier on the team to do scouting after they've already played as opposed to before, which actually makes a lot of sense.
Game times announced: UM/Play-In Game winner at 4pm Friday, USC/Denver at 7.
Winners play Sunday at noon.
Why the Michigan game is during work and the USC/Denver game is in primetime is beyond me. I guess it could be centrally controlled by the NCAA for TV reasons but if the athletic dept has any control then that seems like a very poor decision.
Super pumped to show up for some Lacrosse Friday night, really hope a good crowd greets the team, they deserve it. Interested to see what game times are, especially Sunday. Hoping for an afternoon game before Mother’s Day dinner...
Exciting but decisive Michigan win. Fahey wins 6-2, 6-2 for her 20th consecutive singles victory. Minor ran out to a big lead before a UK rally made it 5-5 in the second set. Minor won the next game before a UK double fault gave her the match at 6-0, 7-5. Minutes later Perione finished off a 6-0 second set to take the match for the Wolverines. Even if Minor had ended up losing its very likely Michigan would have won 4-1. Great day for Michigan, who almost certainly head down to Georgia.
Men play at 7, I will not be in a position to provide updates. Go Blue!!
Michigan has won 5/6 first sets, with the sixth standing at 5-4 Kentucky. Meanwhile Brienne Minor has gotten out to a 4-1 lead in her second set, after winning the first 6-0.
Wolverines take an extremely exciting doubles point. Jones and Patiuk win 6-3 in 3 doubles, while Fahey and Minor rally back from a 5-2 deficit to win 7-5 at the 1s. 2s Pairone and Craciun have their match abandoned in tiebreakers.
Wolverines lead 1-0, now six singles matches will be played, each worth 1 point, so Michigan needs 3/6 to win the match and advance.
14-11 Northwestern is a final. Michigan is likely to go to the BTT as a 3 seed, for a likely rematch with Northwestern. Loss stings especially after how long they stayed with them, but a significant improvement from the drubbing @Maryland a couple weeks ago. Michigan closes their season next Tuesday @Detroit Mercy, with the BTT starting May 3. Go Blue!
5-5 at the half. Come on Wolverines, a bunch of wins this season that could reasonably be described as "the biggest in program history" but I'd argue this is up there if it holds.
A caveat that I don't fully know what I'm talking about there are people on this board who can answer better than me, but there's a lot of factors.
First of all the fact of the matter is the program is only 8 years old. Every other program in the Big Ten (which includes Johns Hopkins) has had a program since the 50's, and in the case of every program except OSU it's actually much longer than that. That's a lot of institutional support and knowledge that we have to catch up on, in a sport that does not have a ton of parity.
Another factor is that the Big Ten is very good, once it added JHU to get to six it instantly became a formidable lacrosse conference. Every team but Michigan is currently ranked, Maryland has made it to the final four every year since the Big Ten added lacrosse. In 2017 4 teams were seeded in the NCAA tournament. Its hard to stand out against our schedule because our schedule annually includes teams that can be expected to be good.
As far as coaching goes, in retrospect it might have been a mistake to bring John Paul from the club level to the varsity level. I don't know enough to to comment on whether or not starting off with a club coach was an actual mistake, but he certainly didn't do enough to keep the job. If in a few years M lax is pretty good and someone tells me it was worth keeping JP to have a steady hand the first few years and get the alumni involved, then I'll believe them. Maybe it made sense from a program development perspective, and the plan was always to be good by year 10, not by year 5. But on the field it was likely a net loss. Conry seems like a good person to bring the program into the second era of its varsity status, but it's going to take him a couple years to get going and I'm fine with that.
There's also recruiting challenges. Brother Rice is quite good, but the lacrosse hotbeds are all on the east coast, so east coast teams (see: Maryland, Hopkins, Rutgers) have a recruiting advantage over us. Hopefully Conry, with his Maryland connections, can close that gap a little. We can also close the gap through facilities. The UM Lacrosse Stadium and associated practice facilities are extremely nice, and its a good start in letting us play with the big boys.
So those are some of the reasons, I'm sure there are more that other people can better speak to, but this is my understanding of why its been so hard for this program to get going, and furthermore why we shouldn't be upset or nervous about this being a long-term project. It's a long term project and its clear they have the necessary backing from the Athletic Department to let it play out. Hopefully we can say the same of the fans.
Yeah, didn't quite work out this year but the Big Ten is a hard conference and I'm willing to give Conry a long leash, let him get his guys in there. These things take time and I know that. Even though its Neilsen's second year, it seems to me that the women are having a delayed Pearson Year 1 and even if the program is overall still much better than it was, they'll likely experience a bit of a backslide next year.
First of all is there no longer an edit button on posts? Was there never? I swear there used to be.
Second of all, I redid the math on whether or not the women have clinched a BTT berth and I think they have. Its possible to get Hopkins, Penn St, and M all to 3-3, creating a three way tie for two spots, but I assume M's head-to-head wins over both those teams would hold up as the tiebreaker, I'm just having trouble finding it in writing. A win tomorrow takes away the ambiguity.
Went to this match and had a blast. Incredibly intense, got very chippy on the field. The PKs were a roller coaster.
The Princeton Parents were the whiniest opposing fans I’ve ever seen. Constantly yelling at the refs, getting into it with Michigan fans. A Princeton mom went down to the field at halftime to yell at the groundskeeper for shoveling the sides unevenly and then the groundskeeper came up into the stands to jaw with some dads. It was insane. They were such pricks, it made it even better when we won and got to look right at then when we were cheering.
The "do chores during sports" move is among my favorite strategies. I won't do it during M games so much, but I'm happy to throw a different game up on my phone and clean a bathroom.
Recent Comments
Just called. For the two night it's about $2100 plus access to tickets at face for $475. There's probably some fees the (very helpful) person on the phone didn't mention.
I think I might jump on it. If it was just my generation, we'd probably mess around with cheaper hotels and holding out on stubhub until basically day-of, but we're trying to get my grandpa out to LA and having the alumni association be able to do things like coordinate access at accessible entrances at the stadium and good transportation might be worth it.
I think John Falk has ruled in on this and said it would be a Jug Game.
Michigan at #7 is all well and good and we should feel good about it.
The important story of this poll is Iowa at #20 and ISU at #21. We are 3 wins (ISU over N. Iowa, Iowa over Miami(OH) and Rutgers) away from a RANKED EL ASSICO BABY! GAMEDAY IN AMES!
For as many non-rev sports as I attend, I just can't convince myself to get BTN+, its just too expensive for what it is. I very much wish that the Big Ten had gone the SEC/ACC/Big 12 route and their big partnership was with ESPN instead of Fox, because then a lot of content would end up living on ESPN+, which I already pay for. I do get BTN+ for day games when I'm on campus on my work computer, but that doesn't help me when I go home from work and no longer on campus. I did once communicate with the B1G VP who manages that sort of thing and he acknowledged that some sort of off-campus discount for people who have campus logins was worth exploring, but I imagine nothing will come of it.
I'm really not worried about using a scholarship on him, given our projections. Right now, there are 4 natural open scholarships in 2020. Zeb is taking one. Austin Davis will likely be given a diploma and a handshake, so we're back up to 4. We're probably going to lose a guy to the NBA, and we could lose a guy to other natural attrition. I just don't think it's likely we miss out on a guy because 5-6 guys who are better than Jace Howard all want to sign and we have to tell one no.
At some point in the late-2000s/early 2010s a lot of stuff that had been sort of ad-hoc became standardized. The motions during the intro to "The Victors" became standard in the student section, and the Blues Brothers song and its associated motions moved from Yost to the Big House. While I personally think I remember saying "Go Blue" at the end of the Victors as a little kid, my guess is that it went from a thing some people did to part of the song during that round of standardization.
Unsurprising but very exciting. Glad he immediately announced they're getting the band back together and doing a Nick/Quinn pod. Just in time for football!
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think State's ranking is pretty much fine. Dantonio gets about one more year on his benefit of the doubt clock, their defense is top 5 and will keep games close that maybe shouldn't be, last year they probably weren't as bad as they played given all the injuries. Their path to 8 wins, which would put them at about 20 in the poll, is pretty believable.
It is, but they play classification games to get a definitive 1-16 ranking. Germany is guaranteed to play 3 more games, just like everyone else.
Since Germany lost in the first round of the knockouts, the best they can do is 9. If they win tomorrow they'll go to the 9-12 semis, if they lose they'll go to the 13-16 semis. If they win in the 9-12 semis they'll go to the 9-10 classification game, if they lose in the 9-12 semis they'll go to the 11-12 classification game. Similarly, if they win in the 13-16 semis they'll go to the 13-14 classification game, and if they lose in the 13-16 semis they'll go to the 15-16 classification game.
Ugh. I don't know what I did wrong, and I can't figure it out. Here's the tweet:
https://twitter.com/_ZachShaw/status/1152227671524302848
He’s employed because this will make a bunch of money. Michigan has participated in the Big Ten Super Saturday twice, once doing the full b-ball-hockey double header and once just playing hockey, and has yet to give up a home game. If they wanted to participate again, they were going to have to give one up. So Warde figured instead of a sparse 9:00pm Tuesday Crisler crowd against an opponent no one cares about, he’ll take his cut of the gate at MSG, in front of what will still likely be a Michigan-heavy crowd. I’m fine with that.
I went to the first one, the M/Penn St double header. It was a great time. If you’re in New York, go to this, and go to the wrestling meet.
Most of the homework was already done, I have a google doc with this info going back five seasons and just needed to look up App St, Elon, and HBU.
While it would be nice to play a top 10 team, playing both Nova and UNC in campus-site non-con games last year was really unique, and strictly speaking we didn't schedule either of those matchups, they were assigned to us. When you figure the Battle4Atlantis and the conference schedule, we probably are slated to play a top 10 team, we just don't have the games scheduled yet.
While it is apparent why scheduling App St in a season opener is a dumb idea from a feelingsball perspective and I more or less agree they shouldn't have done it, its a pretty defensible schedule from an NET perspective. We should beat App St, but their 215 NET (209 KP) is in that range of "likely going to beat them but they are not going to be a NET anchor." Last year we played 4 teams in the 290-312 range on Kenpom, this year we only play 2. All in all the Warde-scheduled non-con is a little stronger this year by enough that it should help our NET but not so much that a dumb loss seems looming. Additionally the tourney is significantly stronger, but the Gavitt Games/ACC Challenge is weaker. Overall I think scheduling fewer true bodybags and more teams in the Kenpom 150-250 range is good.
Last year's teams by previous year Kenpom:
@Villanova (Gavitt Games)- 1
UNC (B1G/ACC Challenge)- 8
Providence (HOF Tourney)- 63
South Carolina- 80
WMU- 188
George Washington (HOF Tourney)- 192
Air Force- 237
Holy Cross- 290
Binghamton- 297
Chattanooga- 304
Norfolk St- 312
This year:
@Louisville (B1G/ACC Challenge)- 23
Oregon- 28
Creighton (Gavitt Games)- 55
Presbyterian- 179
App St- 209
UMass-Lowell- 258
Houston Baptist- 281
Elon- 309
Battle4Atlantis will have us play 3 out of: Gonzaga (2), UNC (7), Iowa St (15), Oregon again, Seton Hall (60), Alabama (64), Southern Miss (120).
I'm going Sunday. Pretty disappointed that both Woodland and DJ are about to miss the cut, but should be a fun time anyways. I'm hoping Hovland has a bit of a surge today and makes it to the weekend.
If you're looking to compare this year's schedule to last year's schedule:
Oregon > South Carolina
Presbyterian = WMU
UMass-Lowell = Air Force.
We still need to schedule our Atlantis mainland game (think Holy Cross), and two bodybags (think Binghamton and Chattanooga). It'll be interesting to see who ends up in those three games, as that will be all the games that the athletic department really got to choose. Atlantis being a better tournament than the Hall of Fame Classic should make up for our ACC/B1G and Gavitt Games opponents being a little bit worse. Depending on what happens with the remaining three unscheduled games, our strength of schedule should be pretty close to last year's, possibly a teeny bit harder.
Schedule posters are typically free at the UM ticket office. If you’re out of state, maybe try calling them and see if they’ll send one?
Fire Bakich?
Wow. Here are all of each of their offer tweets if people want to see it for themselves. It's probably not much but it's cool.
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=from%3Ajaygup23%20offer&src=typd
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=from%3Ajabri404%20offer&src=typd
If the weather is good or the event is indoors I wear exactly what I would have worn in my living room: Michigan joggers, a Michigan tshirt, a Michigan zip-up hoodie. I wear the appropriate jerseys to football, baseball/softball and hockey but not basketball or any other sport. I have a lot of good maize and blue layering pieces for cold weather games.
Happy with the way the good part of the non-con schedule came out:
v. Creighton
Battle 4 Atlantis (Alabama, Gonzaga, Iowa State, North Carolina, Oregon, Seton Hall, Southern Miss, figure we play 1 of Zags/UNC and 2 of the others.)
@Louisville
v. Oregon.
Compare that to @Nova, Georgetown/Providence, UNC, SCar last year. The tourney is harder but the others are probably easier on aggregate. It'll be interesting to see what kind of buy games Howard schedules. Hopefully we'll find out soon.
…
A few I haven't seen:
@BFQuinn covers both M and MSU basketball for the Athletic and is my favorite writer who covers Michigan in any capacity.
@chenglis is a great Detroit News beat writer who also tweets about her mom's Michigan hot takes and how old Wojo is.
@aria_gerson is the current Michigan Daily sports editor and football beat writer and is very good.
@ethan_sears, @theo_mackie, and @max_marcovitch are also all either basketball or football people with the Daily and every season you should just go figure out who the Daily beat writers are that season and follow them.
@TonyPaul1984 isn't strictly speaking a Michigan person but often has good info and does a lot of great coverage of the state's mid-majors for the Detroit News.
@jmwink_ is me.
I'm just happy there are no 10pm ET games.
Weird that he doesn't have a verified account but this seems pretty official.
I was wondering if hiring both Mike Miller and Phil Martelli was redundant and it appears that they've decided it is. I can't really speak to Eisley's coaching credentials but this all makes enough sense to me.
My only hesitation is that its only Paul reporting it and very few Michigan guys. With that said, Tony Paul has an excellent reputation and I don't think he'd stake it on something that's a half-step off his beat unless he was absolutely sure about it.
Seems likely to me that he created this account specifically so that it was easier to dismiss that fake account floating around yesterday (which has since been deleted).
As much as I love the idea, Michigan is lucky to fill Crisler on nights where they are playing basketball. To get enough people to show up to a practice that the atmosphere is good is just unlikely imo. I mean, I'd go, but you'd need to be able to guarantee a packed student section and at least the lower deck entirely full.
I agree
I got my Master's from Michigan in '17 and stayed in Ann Arbor, because my field is academic in nature and the University of Michigan is a legitimate leader in it where my job prospects were good and my opportunities for continuous advancement within UofM made sense to me. Then I worked in the private sector for a year. Now I'm back in the fold at a UofM department I enjoy and I can honestly say that for me this is the best situation, that taking an external job and waiting it out until a UofM job opened was worth it. My department just won a major award from the national organization for our field. But the vast majority of my grad school cohort lives somewhere way else, because that's what made sense for them. You gotta go where the jobs are, and where the city's lifestyle suits you. For me, that was always Ann Arbor, but not everyone can be so lucky.
A foul ball hit my car but on the bright side they gave me the baseball.
Dent in my hood but honestly it's not too bad.
Yeah that also makes a lot of sense. I just got mad for atmosphere/having to take vacation time to watch lacrosse reasons and didn't consider real competitive reasons for setting it up that way.
That actually does make a lot of sense.
Women's Lacrosse times have been announced: Friday is M/Play-In Winner at 4pm, Denver/USC at 7. Winners at noon Sunday.
How the games got scheduled this way boggles my mind. Why would the home team have to play during the work day while the neutral site teams get prime time? Seems like a real waste of an opportunity to try to get a decent crowd there. I don't know whether the NCAA schedules these centrally or if there are travel concerns with USC or what, but it seems like if you're the home team you should be playing at a time when people can actually show up.
EDIT: Twotrueblue pointed out in the Lax thread on the boards that scheduling them in this order makes it easier on the team to do scouting after they've already played as opposed to before, which actually makes a lot of sense.
Game times announced: UM/Play-In Game winner at 4pm Friday, USC/Denver at 7.
Winners play Sunday at noon.
Why the Michigan game is during work and the USC/Denver game is in primetime is beyond me. I guess it could be centrally controlled by the NCAA for TV reasons but if the athletic dept has any control then that seems like a very poor decision.
Super pumped to show up for some Lacrosse Friday night, really hope a good crowd greets the team, they deserve it. Interested to see what game times are, especially Sunday. Hoping for an afternoon game before Mother’s Day dinner...
Exciting but decisive Michigan win. Fahey wins 6-2, 6-2 for her 20th consecutive singles victory. Minor ran out to a big lead before a UK rally made it 5-5 in the second set. Minor won the next game before a UK double fault gave her the match at 6-0, 7-5. Minutes later Perione finished off a 6-0 second set to take the match for the Wolverines. Even if Minor had ended up losing its very likely Michigan would have won 4-1. Great day for Michigan, who almost certainly head down to Georgia.
Men play at 7, I will not be in a position to provide updates. Go Blue!!
Michigan has won 5/6 first sets, with the sixth standing at 5-4 Kentucky. Meanwhile Brienne Minor has gotten out to a 4-1 lead in her second set, after winning the first 6-0.
Wolverines take an extremely exciting doubles point. Jones and Patiuk win 6-3 in 3 doubles, while Fahey and Minor rally back from a 5-2 deficit to win 7-5 at the 1s. 2s Pairone and Craciun have their match abandoned in tiebreakers.
Wolverines lead 1-0, now six singles matches will be played, each worth 1 point, so Michigan needs 3/6 to win the match and advance.
Gotta hope this is the men’s equivalent of last year’s season-ending women’s upset over Penn State. Great way to head into the offseason, Go Blue!
14-11 Northwestern is a final. Michigan is likely to go to the BTT as a 3 seed, for a likely rematch with Northwestern. Loss stings especially after how long they stayed with them, but a significant improvement from the drubbing @Maryland a couple weeks ago. Michigan closes their season next Tuesday @Detroit Mercy, with the BTT starting May 3. Go Blue!
11-10 Northwestern with under 7 to go. Going to be quite the finish.
10-8 Wolverines! Michigan goes on a 4-0 run for their largest lead of the game, 12 minutes left.
5-5 at the half. Come on Wolverines, a bunch of wins this season that could reasonably be described as "the biggest in program history" but I'd argue this is up there if it holds.
A caveat that I don't fully know what I'm talking about there are people on this board who can answer better than me, but there's a lot of factors.
First of all the fact of the matter is the program is only 8 years old. Every other program in the Big Ten (which includes Johns Hopkins) has had a program since the 50's, and in the case of every program except OSU it's actually much longer than that. That's a lot of institutional support and knowledge that we have to catch up on, in a sport that does not have a ton of parity.
Another factor is that the Big Ten is very good, once it added JHU to get to six it instantly became a formidable lacrosse conference. Every team but Michigan is currently ranked, Maryland has made it to the final four every year since the Big Ten added lacrosse. In 2017 4 teams were seeded in the NCAA tournament. Its hard to stand out against our schedule because our schedule annually includes teams that can be expected to be good.
As far as coaching goes, in retrospect it might have been a mistake to bring John Paul from the club level to the varsity level. I don't know enough to to comment on whether or not starting off with a club coach was an actual mistake, but he certainly didn't do enough to keep the job. If in a few years M lax is pretty good and someone tells me it was worth keeping JP to have a steady hand the first few years and get the alumni involved, then I'll believe them. Maybe it made sense from a program development perspective, and the plan was always to be good by year 10, not by year 5. But on the field it was likely a net loss. Conry seems like a good person to bring the program into the second era of its varsity status, but it's going to take him a couple years to get going and I'm fine with that.
There's also recruiting challenges. Brother Rice is quite good, but the lacrosse hotbeds are all on the east coast, so east coast teams (see: Maryland, Hopkins, Rutgers) have a recruiting advantage over us. Hopefully Conry, with his Maryland connections, can close that gap a little. We can also close the gap through facilities. The UM Lacrosse Stadium and associated practice facilities are extremely nice, and its a good start in letting us play with the big boys.
So those are some of the reasons, I'm sure there are more that other people can better speak to, but this is my understanding of why its been so hard for this program to get going, and furthermore why we shouldn't be upset or nervous about this being a long-term project. It's a long term project and its clear they have the necessary backing from the Athletic Department to let it play out. Hopefully we can say the same of the fans.
Yeah, didn't quite work out this year but the Big Ten is a hard conference and I'm willing to give Conry a long leash, let him get his guys in there. These things take time and I know that. Even though its Neilsen's second year, it seems to me that the women are having a delayed Pearson Year 1 and even if the program is overall still much better than it was, they'll likely experience a bit of a backslide next year.
Oh, interesting. Thanks!
First of all is there no longer an edit button on posts? Was there never? I swear there used to be.
Second of all, I redid the math on whether or not the women have clinched a BTT berth and I think they have. Its possible to get Hopkins, Penn St, and M all to 3-3, creating a three way tie for two spots, but I assume M's head-to-head wins over both those teams would hold up as the tiebreaker, I'm just having trouble finding it in writing. A win tomorrow takes away the ambiguity.
Mopop is $75 with Vampire Weekend headlining and music from noon to midnight. Bled Fest is $35 for a full day of punk rock.
Seems like you’re just going to the wrong shows.
Went to this match and had a blast. Incredibly intense, got very chippy on the field. The PKs were a roller coaster.
The Princeton Parents were the whiniest opposing fans I’ve ever seen. Constantly yelling at the refs, getting into it with Michigan fans. A Princeton mom went down to the field at halftime to yell at the groundskeeper for shoveling the sides unevenly and then the groundskeeper came up into the stands to jaw with some dads. It was insane. They were such pricks, it made it even better when we won and got to look right at then when we were cheering.
The "do chores during sports" move is among my favorite strategies. I won't do it during M games so much, but I'm happy to throw a different game up on my phone and clean a bathroom.