zack gibson

"A fertile ground for dangerous upstarts lately." That's the accurate, expected, still painful knife Doctor Saturday gently slips between Michigan's ribs in his latest premature assessment, this of the UConn team that will inaugurate Michigan's luxury boxes and possibly clock year three of the Rodriguez era on the head before it can even kick over some MAC team's sand castle.

The assessment doesn't exactly live up the DocSat's foreboding tweet, which said he would be the first person to jump on the bandwagon of a "serious contender in the Big East." That sounds bad. It's not quite that bad in the final analysis, though:

The Huskies are a couple playmakers away from standing out as a conference favorite, and one of those guys may emerge on one side or the other. Unless they come up with more firepower on both sides, though, the existing talent level makes it hard to forecast anything better than 8-4. That's not a breakthrough, exactly, but it is a more generous guess than they've ever gotten before at this time of year.

UConn suffered through a series of painfully close losses before a breakthrough-ish game against Notre Dame launched them on a four game win streak. Syracuse, USF, and South Carolina were the other victims. In any case, UConn returns a crap-ton of starters from an 8-5 team that saw the breaks go against it last year. I don't think they'll end the year #2, but the specter of that Utah game has been duly raised.

Hypothesis damage. It's not like losing Manny Harris is going to help the team, especially if it continues to shoot zero point two percent, but I can't be the only person who has glanced at Harris's relatively meh efficiency numbers (47.7 eFG, basically equivalent to Novak) and thought that replacing him might not be the mountain it appears to be.

Here is a chart that slaps that idea in the face and tells it to sit in the corner. Presenting the top ten Big Ten players in John Hollinger's comprehensive PER stat:

RK	PLAYER	GP	MPG	AST	TO	USG	ORR	DRR	REBR	PER
1	Evan Turner, OSU	28	35.4	22	15.5	26.8	6.6	24.8	15.7	31.3
2	Robbie Hummel, PUR	27	30.3	12.9	6.5	19.6	6.5	21	13.7	28.31
3	Draymond Green, MSU	32	25.4	22.6	12.8	18.1	10	22.1	16.1	25.85
4	Damian Johnson, MINN	34	25.5	18.6	10.7	16.6	6.8	12.5	9.6	25.36
5	DeShawn Sims, MICH	32	32.1	5.2	8.4	23	12.7	18.6	15.6	25.2
6	Manny Harris, MICH	31	36.1	17.3	12.1	24.4	6.8	15.4	11.1	24.76
7	JaJuan Johnson, PUR	32	31.1	4.6	11.4	19.7	9.3	18.1	13.7	24.66
8	John Shurna, NW	33	36.3	12.7	9.9	21.8	6	16.1	11.1	23.68
9	Zack Gibson, MICH	32	10	6.8	13.5	15.1	12.1	16.2	14.1	23.66
10	Trevon Hughes, WIS	31	32.5	14.2	10.4	23.5	4.6	13	8.8	23.3

One-grunt observations on the three bolded folk: obvs, guh, wha?

Okay. I think that Michigan playing super small at all times skews this towards the players on the team who actually haul in rebounds. Still, this is one statistical measure that passes the sniff test—check out the top of the national leaderboard for Enter Samhan, Some UNI Guy, and Argh Running 40-Footer—that disagrees with the various Kenpom measures that declare Manny Harris a prolific but inefficient scorer.

Also… holy jeez maybe we could have figured out a way to put Gibson on the floor a bit more.

(HT: Inside The Hall.)

Money money money. Bleed Scarlet shouldn't feel too bad about missing USA Today's most recent FOIA rampage, a January database of revenue and expenses at public division I schools. It seems like the entire blogosphere whiffed on. I certainly hadn't seen it.

Anyway, this perked my ears up:

The vast majority of sports programs — even those that purport to support themselves — receive significant financial backing from their institutions to operate. Of the 99 institutions in the table below, all but four — Louisiana State, Ohio State, and Purdue Universities, and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln — reported receiving at least some revenues in the 2007-8 fiscal year from one of four categories of “allocated” revenues: student fees, direct state or government support, direct institutional support (general fund money), or indirect institutional support (facilities, energy costs, etc.).

Eh? Really? No Michigan? A quick zip over to the database provides an answer. It is not earth-shaking:

As of 2008, six hundredths of a percentage point of Michigan's athletic department funding comes from the university. This is not a one-time fluke, as direct support went from zero in 2005 to about 30k the next year and 50k the year after before landing at its current totally insignificant amount. What is it? I asked SID Bruce Madej:

This is how we are required to report when we receive funds to pay for work study students who assist us during the year.

That mystery solved. 

Now let us ask the eternal question: why does Eastern Michigan have a football program? 86% of athletic department "revenue" comes as a subsidy.

Etc.: Hidden in the night game announcement is a two-year break in the M-ND series in 2018 and 2019, which an mgoblog user picked out and MVictors confirmed was a new development. DocSat on the "cult of the bracket."

Michigan 13-14 (6-9 Big Ten)

OK, I swear I'm going to stop trying to come up with clever titles for the last couple games unless something really hits me (maybe "Euthanasia" for the Big Ten Tournament loss). Midway through the first half of this game, it was going just as expected: Michigan was getting absolutely killed even if the scoreboard didn't show it. My ongoing sense of basketball malaise had already set in. Then, early in the second half, something funny happened: they started fighting back. It's just like this Michigan basketball team to keep me emotionally invested before ripping my heart out. Predictably, after taking a brief lead they collapsed, allowing the Illini to cruise to a comfortable win.

This game was a microcosm of the season: ultimately disappointing, but with enough hope sprinkled in to make it actually hurt so the fans can't just stay numb. Another microcosm of the season? A sequence late in the second half. Michigan nearly forces a shot-clock violation. Brandon Paul blatantly travels (uncalled, of course), before getting the ball to DJ Richardson, who hoists a 30-footer that barely beats the 35-second buzzer. Win for the defense, right? The ball ricochets directly to Mike Tisdale, and the Illini get some easy second-chance points.

This had to be one of the worst shooting performances Michigan could have put forth (and no, idiot who sits behind press row, it's not on the coaches—like they can hear your whiny bellowing anyway). They were getting open shots from three-point range and mid-range, they were getting into the lane for easy layups—this was not a failure of offensive design. However, the final shooting numbers were ugly: 24.6% from the field, 29.2 eFG%.

There was nothing the coaches could do to get the team shooting better. Can't make an outside shot? Go inside to DeShawn (3-12 on two-pointers). DeShawn's not scoring? Let Manny drive the lane (4-12 on two-pointers). The only people that had anything resembling a spark for Michigan were Zack Novak and Zack Gibson. Gibby shot 50% (1/4 from three-point land) and Novak made four threes.

As the season winds down, and it's clear that nothing's going to change with this team, I start begging for a painless release. They've lost confidence, and rightfully so, and probably the only thing that's going to restore it at this point is to move on from the 2009-10 season.

BULLETS

• Layups. Dude, layups. Michigan missed 15 of them. Nothing was working. If the Wolverines make half of those, this game is easily won.
• As much as it was a horrible performance by the team at large in shooting the ball, DeShawn Sims probably had the worst performance in comparison to expectations. He's been beyond solid all year long, and Michigan needed him today, but he couldn't come through. Fortunately, he still managed to put in some solid work on the glass.
• That said, somebody, anybody other than DeShawn Sims has to be able to put the ball in the hoop.
• A few steps forward over the year for Darius Morris, but this was a step back. 3 assists, 2 turnovers, 1-7 shooting. However, he was relied on to shoot much more than usual this game, and once he can get a consistent stroke and form, he should be a real weapon.
• For all those who were outraged at Stu Douglass for not going after an offensive rebound against Penn State, you got what was coming to you last night. He went after a loose ball, and it led to an easy Illinois dunk on the fast break.
• Is it next year yet?

Photo Gallery

Up Next

The Wolverines head to Value City Arena to take on Ohio State on Saturday at noon. Though Michigan beat the Buckeyes at home on January 3rd, the bad guys were without Evan Turner, who is among the front runners for National Player of the Year. This should be an ugly contest for the Wolverines.

Up Next

The Wolverines head to Value City Arena to take on Ohio State on Saturday at noon. Though Michigan beat the Buckeyes at home on January 3rd, the bad guys were without Evan Turner, who is among the front runners for National Player of the Year. This should be an ugly contest for the Wolverines.

Note. In case anyone hadn't noticed, the restrictions implemented Saturday were lifted yesterday, so things should be back to normal. I think it worked out pretty well; there were a number of threads that got deleted but overall things here were way less dumb than elsewhere, thanks in large part to turning off the ability for people to sign up to vent. That system will return in the aftermath of future HEAD ASPLODE type events.

There have been complaints about censorship, to which I say nuts. Example of a pulled thread:

F--- me.
F--- my life.
If football can't fill the void in my life, i'm just going to have to turn to booze and sluts. 

This is noise, and things on the internet get ruined when the signal to noise ratio gets too low. The MGoBlog trend is ever-increasing levels of restriction as the blog grows to keep the ratio relatively high, and that won't change.

Also BONUS. I've turned on the ability for folks to use Windows Live Writer to put up diary posts. For now it's restricted to 500+ point folk; once I know it's up and running without incident anyone will be able to use it if you like. Complicated instructions will allow you to access much more convenient picture uploads and tagging and whatnot. It's just a better editor in all ways. (protip: the main column is 560 pixels wide.)

Mac/Linux people will have to pound sand. Sorry.

Fun fun fun until daddy's head explodes, leaving chunks spread across the county. So… was yesterday's appearance on WTKA fun or what? Yes, it was fun or what. If you'd like a hear a man attempting to hang on to the last shreds of his sanity, there are podcasts:

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4 || Part 5 || Part 6

Sorry I can't embed them; WTKA's site is a little less than modern.

If you just want to get to the part where smoke comes out my ears, MVictors has helpfully clipped it out. Now I'm going to go put my head in a bucket of ice. Maybe I'll steam some broccoli at the same time.

Elsewhere in last weekend, This Week In Schadenfreude sticks Michigan—and yours truly!—above the fold. Peek into the terror that is my inbox.

Mary Sue got your back. President Coleman with the long-term vote of confidence:

"I don't think it's fair to coaches to bring them in and say, 'We're going to give you three years,'" she said in an interview on Friday, citing a recent example. "When [former men's basketball coach] Tommy Amaker came in, we stuck with him for six years. It just wasn't going to work; it wasn't the right fit. But it wasn't a rushed decision."

Note that the statement specifically implies not just next year but the year after for Rodriguez. Short of a major violation from the Freep jihad—which I will reiterate is not the expected outcome from anyone on the Michigan side of things—Rodriguez will get to 2011, at which point it's up to him.

Why the suck? We're living in an era of college football hyperbole thanks to the 12th game and bowl games now counting as official stats, but not retroactively. Every good multi-year starter is now breaking or threatening this record or that. There's no better example of this than Juice Williams approaching the top five in all time Big Ten passing yards. All these records mean nothing.

But there's one area of hyperbole that's not hyperbole at all: we are really living through an era of the worst calls in college football history. Before the advent of replay, bad calls were just bad calls and were relatively understandable since they were irreversible split-second decisions. Now, though, replay officials can commit the cardinal sin of screwing up an obviously correct call. Here's a touchdown from the Indiana-Iowa game:

This was ruled a touchdown on the field and overturned by the replay official. It is in the building when it comes to worst calls ever made because some guy saw indisputable evidence—watch the field turf change color as the IU receiver's foot rakes over it—of a touchdown and called it not a touchdown. (It's not very far in the building since I can think of two more egregious ones off the top of my head: Brandon Minor's pylon-aided touchdown against Michigan State last year and the onside kick Oregon was awarded despite never even recovering the ball.)

So, a question: why are confused goats allowed to run these things? Honestly. There is no other explanation for this stuff. A few years ago refs correctly called Antonio Bass down against Iowa and the replay official overturned it despite clear evidence that the reason the ball came out was Bass's elbow hitting the ground. They failed to overturn that ridiculous Domata Peko touchdown. On the Indiana call above it is so obvious that the PBP guy immediately says "oh he dragged that right foot" as the spray of fieldturf pellets goes up. Most replay calls are that obvious on a first viewing, and yet they take five minutes and there's a reasonable chance the guy in the booth can't see what's completely obvious to everyone watching the game.

I don't know what the fix is, but I think a major problem is that replay officials are often referees who have been put out to pasture. Therefore they are crazy and old. Putting crazy old people in charge leads to things like Florida State's defense. It is not a good idea.

You grow like a weed. Hope burgeons for your #15 Michigan Wolverine basketball team (who wants some FREE PPPPPIZZAAA) for a variety of reasons, mostly Manny Harris and Deshawn Sims. Big Ten Geeks has put together a great study that provides another reason for optimism:

The big, overarching conclusion is this: a player shows the most improvement between his freshman and sophomore seasons than he does any other offseason. In fact, the freshman offseason improvement is, on average, greater than the improvement between a player's sophomore season and his senior season.

Here's the o-rating chart:

That's one of four graphs that all say the same thing: older players are better and younger players get better faster.

How this applies to the Big Ten this year:

Schwing. Indiana is a runaway winner here but their goal is to go from one of the worst teams in a major conference to one of the worst teams in the Big Ten. Amongst actual contenders no team should see its players improve more than Michigan and the only team that's even somewhat close is Minnesota. The bounce Michigan gets should be significant.

I'll add in my default caution: past performance is a better predictor of future results than past results. Michigan's past performance lags behind their past results—they finished the year #50 in the Pomeroy rankings instead of the 40th-ish their tourney seeding suggested or the 32nd-ish their second-round status suggested. That's the baseline from which I'm measuring improvement, and from that perspective I've thought projecting a leap into the top 15 was optimistic. 25? Sure. 15? Probably not. The above chart is convincing enough to close some of that gap, IME.

You rang? There are three main questions going into the season. One: can Manny Harris reduce appearances of Evil Manny to a couple here and there? Two: will one of the wing players step up to be a true three-point gunner with an eFG percentage Salim Stoudemire would be proud of? And three: will we get anything from a big lumbering gumpy white guy?

BLGWG #1 is Zack Gibson, who can't shoot threes like he thinks he can and doesn't do much offensively but has erratic moments of OMGIBSON ownage. College bigs like him often take some time to get it together and find themselves blossoming into useful, even good players their senior year. Examples from recent Michigan vintage include Graham Brown and Chris Young. And late last year Gibson was a huge factor on defense, making a lot of plays that no one else on the roster can make for reasons of being 6'5" tops. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a quasi-breakout year that no one except Michigan fans notice.

BLGWG #2 is Ben Cronin, who Mike Rothstein hyped up a few days ago on AnnArbor.com:

“My legs are in the best shape they’ve been in in a long time,” Cronin said. “I’m sure it’s going to turn over on the court where I guarantee I’m going to be a little more explosive than I’ve ever been. And my endurance is going to be better because of the track, so I’m really excited about where I’m at.”

Cronin is what Beilein looks for in a big man. He’s intelligent. He has good passing skills, something demonstrated during Saturday’s open practice when he found cutting players from the high post.

He’s also demonstrated the ability to shoot three-pointers - something Beilein’s most well-known big man, former West Virginia center Kevin Pittsnogle, was known for.

There's no way Cronin is an effective or frequent three-point shooter and the conditioning/hip issues are probably going to limit him to 10-15 minutes a game—Beilein says Cronin "doesn't have his bounce back" in the article. But in his cameo last year before the injury redshirt he showed some skills to go with his hugeness. If he can spell Gibson effectively Michigan will be able to roll out a decently sized lineup against the big thumpers of the world, which would do wonders for Michigan's atrocious 2PT FG defense.

No. This guy attempts to defend Deadspin for the Phillips Incident, stating that the rumors weren't "unsourced" based on Daulerio's round of contrition interviews in which he repeatedly stated that they weren't just publishing random emails. I don't know if I believe that; given the way it was framed it was clear Daulerio didn't care either way, really.

And let's remember what the "news" is here: Deadspin has successfully ferreted out the very newsworthy information that one ESPN vice president is in a relationship with another ESPN vice president. Armed with this knowledge, we will defeat cancer and Marcelo Balboa. Daulerio's wandered around giving interview after interview in which he acknowledges he had a hissy fit, which he apparently thinks will earn him credit, before claiming that there was a noble purpose—exposing ESPN's inconsistent enforcement of sexual harassment rules—behind everything. The evidence marshaled for this consists of the following items:

• An ESPN radio host sexually harassed someone and was suspended for it.
• ESPN VP 1 is dating non-related ESPN VP 2.

Daulerio's attempts to explain his actions after the fact are feeble post-hoc justifications for a mean-spirited, purposeless expose on the private life of a non-public figure.

Etc.: I'm not sure why, but EDSBS has a photoshop of Gruden-as-M-coach on a post about Steve Kragthorpe. I noted that I didn't understand the blocking scheme on a particular run play that Penn State ran last week; Smart Football says it's a zone variant called the "pin and pull"