Prove you are a Michigan Basketball fan
The joke replies in the "Michigan Basketball Resurgence" post made me think that this would be a good post. (and it is my first ever).
List your favorite michigan basketball players from the years that the teams were not as easy to watch as they've been the last few years.
My cool story bro - I shared freshman year orientation with Avery Queen and Josh Moore - one 7'3" and the other 5'8". They drove around in a red ford tempo.
My favorite player? Probably Senior year Graham Brown.
yikes, he drove me crazy. Couldn't understand how a guy that big could not rebound..
I will say Lavall Blanchard (was actually not bad) and of couse Dom "Bomb" Ingerson. Dom Bomb would launch it like he was Stauskas...but Stauskas he was not.
I was part of the original Maize rage back then, I believe it started the year before my freshman year 01'.
Huh? On a per-minute basis, he was an excellent rebounder. As a senior he averaged 7.3 rpg in 24.7 minutes per game, which works out to 10.6 per 36 minutes.
Brown's stats:
http://statsheet.com/mcb/players/player/michigan/graham-brown
Me and my housemates called Graham Brown "the Ogar" because of his general demeanor. I believe he was also voted the dirtiest player in the BIgTen that year.
Reed Baker Rain Maker
I came here to say this.
He was playing in Bangkok as of 2012.
blanchard
First time caller. Love your show. 6'2" 230. Fav Mich Bball player? Well, I might've shared a dorm room freshman year with the OP; OP, if you had a computer monitor stand made like your presumed jump shot...out of cinder blocks, Press 1.
/s
//but not really.
I was all set to have Albert white be my favorite. Boy, did that not go well.
Jerod Ward
for the #1 recruit in the nation for giving Michigan a shot
for not partaking in the Ed Martin scandal while his teammate did
for being a person of high character on and off the court
Tim McCormick!?!
I went to Brian Ellerbe's Michigan Basketball Camp twice (1999 and 2000, if memory serves). Pete Vignier taught me how to box out. The second year, I got food poisoning from a bad Caesar salad at West Quad. For the most part, I put up goofy jumpers and ran around really slowly.
I own a Josh Moore jersey. And an "Air Georgia #23" t-shirt I bought out of a black garbage bag in the Crisler parking lot for about five bucks on the way into a game.
I had student tickets for five years, stretching the final three Amaker seasons and the first two Beilein years. I sat in the third to last row of the gold seats for every game my freshman year because I wanted to prove a point and sit in my actual seat instead of sneaking down into the bleachers. For more than a few games, I was the only one there for a section in each direction. For the four years I was actually an undergraduate student, we went to the tournament zero times.
After all of that, my all-time favorite Dark Ages player is LaVell Blanchard, closely followed by Gavin Groninger. Dark horse benchwarmer love to Amadou Ba and Leland Anderson.
When I was 8 years old, I was the ball boy for a bunch of games during the second season of the fab five. Juwan Howard was by far the nicest and went out of his way to interact with us...can't say I was a huge fan of Jalen though.
Also, thread needs some of this:
Just ignore the actual video.
Was checking up on Daniel Horton (one of my favorites, along with Air Georgia and Dion Harris) and saw this thread
http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/daniel-horton-rips-beilein
Man, I never realized a) he said this and b) how down on Beilein people were earlier on. How wrong they've turned out to be....
I completely forgot about that. I don't really remember being all that pissed about losing by 7 to Kansas. I also remember we lost something like 5 games by 5 points or less. The year of the moral victory.
on the heels of a disappointing <.500 campaign the year before and they were sitting at 11-5 with only one wins over a good team (at 22-12 Clemson) and headed for 11-9. Then this happened:
Played with Morris in high school. Could have been a lot better, never reached his potential and injuries.
Daniel Horton
Jamal Crawford
Bernard Robinson Jr
Brent Petway
Zach Gibson
Back to back posters with a Grand Blanc guy up there. I am proud.
I watched all of the 2000-01 Duke game. I think it started with a 34-4 Duke run. That was opposite a Final Four MSU team.
I missed most Michigan basketball for the next decade while I bounced around the country for work. Some of those teams were bad enough that sending a TV signal outside the BIg 10 footprint violated several anti-smut statutes.
Probably the worst in a long run of disappointing squads. We lost to Penn State twice! Only win in the final 10 games was a win over Iowa at home (we beat them in Iowa City too, they must have been lousy).
It was the 2004-05 team that broke my spirit. I broke a kitchen chair during the 99-68 loss at Georgia Tech. I hung on to that chair for several years before realizing there was no way I could fix it. That team started 12-5 with some very close losses but lost 13 of its final 14 games, most by double digits. At the time of Horton's suspension they were 12-7. The rest of the year was Dion Harris and Dani Wohl running the point with walk-ons getting major minutes at the guard spots.
Maceo Baston.
When I worked at Ulrichs I sold Jalen Rose his books for his freshemen classes. He came in with all the other guys from the fab 5. He was quite clueless about the process but Webber was setting him strainght. cannot confirm nor deny whether he actually cracked any of the books open.
One of my favoriet Michigan moments of all times was Guard Thompson draining 3 pointers against David Robinson and Navy!!!
My favorite moment was dancing on the streets of South U after Rumeal drained the shots during my freshemen year of 88-89
LaVell Blanchard. I've always said there should be a plaque honoring him somewhere in the complex. He stayed in AA when he could have gone anywhere, and he soldiered on playing his heart out for four miserable years. He always gave max effort during some rough times.
Graham Brown.
He was always a hard worker, set lots of picks and did the dirty work. I remember when he set a pick against a Wisconsin PG and he might have knocked him out?
Another favorite was Michael Griffin. Didn't score many points, but he was a scary good defender for his size and picked up quite a few rebounds for Michigan in the late 80s.
Also, for good measure Amadou Ba
I cannot believe that we have this many responses and noone has come up with the perfect answer to the question asked--Thad Garner. He was terrific on probably the worst team we have ever had. He was worth the price of admission on his own, and, almost every game, there would be a 2 or 3 minute period when he would totally dominate the game from the defensive side of the ball. He had a great heart and great energy. Those too young to have seen him missed a really good one.
Don't think he ever saw the floor, but he was at least listed on the roster at some point.
http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-baskbl/archive/roster-2000-01-archive.h…
Rotolu Adebiyi was also one of my favorites.
Gonzales may have gotten some mop-up minutes, but never more than a couple here or there. Jon Jansen was on the basketball roster for about five minutes his freshman year, too.
Now that would have been fun to see.
Jansen never played, and may not have even made it through the whole season. It was his redshirt year, IIRC.
As for Jermaine Gonzales, career stats:
5 games played, 12 total minutes, 1 rebound, 1 assist, 1 steal, 1 block, took a three pointer and missed.
Legendary stuff.
He could leap out the building. I watched Michigan basketball just hoping to see a big dunk from him.
My first Michigan basketball game comes with a cool story. It was the late 70's and I was probably in first grade at the time (Lawton Elementay in Ann Arbor). My family was eating at Blimpy Burger when Bob Ufer walks in. My parents goaded my younger brother into singing The Victors for him and Ufer gave us two basketball tickets. I went with my dad and after the game we walked on the court and he held me up to touch the net. Good times.
I have another celebrity Blimpy Burger sighting as well. I was once walking in as Dr. Kavorkian was walking out.
On the down side I was at Michigan for the Fab Five and never went to a game. I had football and hockey tickets instead.
And Garde Thompson's dad was my social studies teacher in middle school.
Mike Talley and Tony Tolbert were on my floor in Adams house (West Quad) my freshman year. One day Steve Fisher came onto the floor looking pissed. He was screaming so loud at one of those guys for missing class that we could hear it loud and clear the next room over.