vikings

Brief Big Ten Tournament note. No column on it; I wasn't feeling massively invested because I had to miss the second half of the Minnesota game to go to Yost and watched it after I knew the outcome, then Ohio State came out and was all like "today we will play like a team with two lottery picks on it." Once that happened and Burke got annihilated by Craft it was clear this was going to be an ugly old-style loss, which fine. Michigan is not on the level of national contender… yet.

If anything the tourney just reinforced my feeling that this team did fantastically to pick up a Big Ten title split and now that there's a banner in hand the rest of this is house money. After beating OHIO*, that is. Losing to a 13 seed would leave a sour taste. Everything else is gravy-coated candy.

I'll leave the garment rending about how we're not competing for a one-seed for the next couple years.

Side note: now do we believe that Craft is a totally awesome defender? Yes? Okay.

*[SBN MAC blog Hustle Belt refers to the Bobcats as "OHIO" for reasons that are unknown but very probably related to their stunning upset of Georgetown as a 14 seed two years ago.

232323232%7Ffp43366%3Enu%3D3434%3E252%3E8%3B6%3E25252529%3A7235ot1lsi[1]

Since giving them the all-caps treatment is a term of respect that doubles as diss of plain ol' Ohio, this blog will refer to the Bobcats as OHIO from now on.]

Dave Brandon approves. Michigan-ND 1978 was like Michigan-MSU 2012 in two ways: one team looked totally ridiculous and lost 28-14.

The two games were different because one team didn't look ridiculous and Ufer was going ape in '78.

This game also provides ammunition for both sides of the maize/yellow debate. It's clear that UM's maize is much lighter than the yellow ND is wearing; it's also unattractively blinding.

Also ridiculous. I wish I'd found this before I posted on hockey's tourney streak today, as it really hammers home how remarkable it is:

Let me put that in perspective- of ALL of the teams that have won a National Championship in Hockey the last 21 seasons, here's the tournament appearances:

Michigan- 21

Boston U- 15

Minnesota- 15

North Dakota- 14

Michigan State- 14

Maine- 13

Wisconsin- 13

Boston College- 13

Denver- 10

Lake State- 6

Northern Michigan- 5

UM-Duluth- 4

Inside that, the longest streak is 9, shared by Maine, Michigan State, and North Dakota, but North Dakota will extend that to 10 this year. At least should.

Unless there's a power lurking outside this list—and I don't think there is—every other team has missed the NCAAs at least six times during the streak.

Help next year. Hockey's got blue chips on the blue line and at forward in their next recruiting class. Boo Nieves is the forward, and he sounds a little like Carl Hagelin:

Matt Herr thought he had seen it all after taking over as coach at the Kent School in Connecticut following a productive collegiate and professional playing career.

That's before he was introduced to 6-foot-3, 184-pound center Cristoval "Boo" Nieves last season.

"I don't know how he skates so freaking fast for his size," Herr told NHL.com. "He's one of the best skaters I've seen this year. I think he can jump into the American Hockey League and play right now and you wouldn't even blink." …

"He just explodes off the mark and has agility, balance and quickness to break loose from traffic," Eggleston said. "He also has the physical strength to plow through checks along the wall and bring the puck with him. He sees the ice very well, is a very smart and creative playmaker and captains the team ... he's a very good team player."

Herr then compares him to Joe Thornton, which… like… probably not. Here's hoping, though. If Michigan doesn't suffer any departures at forward I'm guessing that AJ Treais slides up to the top line next year between Brown and Guptill; Nieves should center the second line with PDG and… Moffatt? That sounds pretty good to me.

If they can keep defections on defense down to one they'd be skating something like Trouba-Merrill/Bennett, Moffie-Chiasson, Clare/Serville-Carrick. Depth is a bit scary there but kids develop; Serville especially seems like an offseason in a weight program will do him good.

Help the Mathlete. He needs some crowd-sourcing to fill in holes in his recruiting database. Your reward is good feelings and some interesting posts.

That's the ticket. Kyle Meinke tries to make us all feel better about going up against that Alabama defense:

"There ain't no one who can learn that defense in under a year," outgoing free safety Mark Barron said last month at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. "We played in a very difficult defense, first of all. We did a lot of different schemes.

"I really don’t believe anyone can learn that defense in under a year."

Score! Please score.

Trey Burke is childhood friends with everyone on an Ohio D-I roster. OHIO backup PG and lightning bolt Stevie Taylor has played with and against Trey Burke for big chunks of his career. UMHoops has the story and the requisite adorable picture:

536055206_thumb7_thumb[1]

Um… check with the basketball team. Michigan's hockey team has adopted a mantra that should be familiar to anyone who followed Michigan basketball's NCAA drought-breaking team of a few years back:

The No. 4 Michigan hockey team emerged from its locker room before Saturday’s game against Notre Dame wearing shirts with the team motto, “Burn the Boats,” prominently displayed.

Hey! I remember that! Isn't that…

“(Sophomore forward Luke) Moffatt brought it up this year,” said sophomore forward Derek DeBlois last month. “It has to do with the Vikings. When they would go to fight, they would burn their boats. No retreat, you just kind of lay all your chips on the table and fight until you win.”

…NOT ABOUT VIKINGS AT ALL. It's actually a famous event in the Spanish conquest of everything when they were discovering the new world, which is why the basketball team's version of the slogan was in Spanish. [Ed-S: actually...] Come on. Vikings. I've never heard about anything so ridicul—

Book%20o2[1]

SHOULDN'T HAVE TALKED ISH ABOUT VIKIIIIINGS AIEEEE—

 

Etc: James Rogers interviewed. Michigan Tech goalie coach and former Michigan goalie Steve Shields profiled. MEL PEARSON UPDATE: Tech reaches the Final Five for the first time in five years. Tech is two games away from .500 on the year. Carty on Draymond Green and Zack Novak. Ohio's PG in a bikini.

vikings

This is not a muppets post. I'm not even sure what this is since I don't think Michigan's had a team like this most recent edition of basketball since the blog's existed, and probably not since the 1997 football team went from "M stands for mediocre" to a national championship.

Expectations this year were on the floor, like "I hope they win ten games" on the floor, and they end it watching a runner to tie the defending national champions clang off the back rim. They swept Michigan State for the first time since 1997, breached Tennessee's reactor core, reached the second round of the NCAA tournament, and didn't bother to have a senior day. A friend kept saying he just wanted to keep seeing them play basketball, and that's about right, and when's the last time you could say that about Michigan anything?

The team is hereby awarded the above image of slightly silly looking Vikings charging headlong to glory. Denouement Monday.