Don't Give up on Basketball Just Yet...
We are still a young team and from the looks of it the Big Ten isn't very strong this year. If we can just become competent defensively and get ONE of our 4 centers to play at their best level this team still has good potential once we get Irvin back to full health. Be patient guys!
November 21st, 2015 at 12:12 AM ^
Thank you for acting like the walls aren't collapsing, coach will get this team together
November 21st, 2015 at 12:22 AM ^
At least OSU and Wisconsin are bad this year.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:56 AM ^
MSU is good though
November 21st, 2015 at 1:05 AM ^
On the Bad List add Illinois, Rutgers, Penn State, Northwestern, Minnesota, Nebraska, etc.
I think we'll be ok. Thanks.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:13 AM ^
First of all I'll correct you by saying we lost in the elite 8, not the sweet 16 that year. And second of all, I agree, this team will only get better. Hopefully they regroup and use this as motivation to toughen up on their defense and rebounding. Xavier is a good team and they wanted it more tonight.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
November 21st, 2015 at 12:19 AM ^
Fixed it, thanks.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:15 AM ^
If people are actually "giving up" after one loss, in the 3rd game of the season to a major team that's going to be in the NCAA Tournament and was in the Sweet Sixteen last year.....wow
I'm guessing those are the same people that were nowhere to be found prior to 2011-12.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:16 AM ^
Keep the faith as we have JB. And don't forget....
November 21st, 2015 at 12:18 AM ^
I mean, it's not even gif worthy. The thought of people giving up after the 3rd game of the season is too moronic to process.
It's not like we lost to UT-Arlington.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:19 AM ^
Exactly, Xavier is a good team. Does it excuse a 16 point loss at home? No but it excuses a loss at all. This is D-Walt's 4th game back. Spike is rusty, Zak is hurt. Everybody needs to calm their tits.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
November 21st, 2015 at 10:04 AM ^
Ok, my tits are calm
November 21st, 2015 at 10:14 AM ^
Will need verification please. Present them.
November 21st, 2015 at 2:10 PM ^
i'd feel a lot better if i could muster optimism about production from the 5
November 21st, 2015 at 12:36 AM ^
or NJIT.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:17 AM ^
I'm barely on the basketball train, let alone giving up on it....
November 21st, 2015 at 10:10 AM ^
A downside to Harbaugh.
The basketball team's been paying too much attention to Michigan Football.
They'll be fine come January after Harbaugh wins the NC. (Unless he accepts an invitation to play in the NFL playoffs.)
November 21st, 2015 at 12:18 AM ^
They're the same people that trash the football team every Saturday on the game thread.
I love Michigan but I hate a huge portion of it's fans.... *shrugs*
November 21st, 2015 at 12:24 AM ^
It's not exclusive to any one fanbase. There are idiots everywhere.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:27 AM ^
There are idiots everywhere... but OSU does not have any non-idiots in its fanbase!
November 21st, 2015 at 12:25 AM ^
I just assume that the blowhards type 10 times more than guys who are chill and just move on to other tasks in their day to day lives... Most Michigan fans are great, it's the few who have a lot of free time and like to bi#ch and moan about everything that are annoying.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:35 AM ^
They're the same ones sending death threats to players
November 21st, 2015 at 5:57 AM ^
Amen to that. Let us see how we look in a few weeks.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:14 AM ^
Didn't watch the game, but it's way too early to panic.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:43 AM ^
Xavier is a consistently solid team and stylistically almost the polar opposite of our game. The rebounding numbers are troubling, but this is the kind of early season loss that helps a team develop an identity. They'll be fine, finish third or fourth in the conference and make the sweet sixteen.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:15 AM ^
I lack it at the moment, but I appreciate it.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:16 AM ^
will make it more difficult but if the defense and shooting improve than I see no reason we cannot finish above .500 in the conference and make the tourney.
November 21st, 2015 at 11:04 AM ^
I don't believe the D and rebounding can get any worse.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:17 AM ^
The team went 11 deep by my count, when that gets whittled down to a reasonable rotation watch out. I don't understand scheduling this game for game number 3, seems like a lose lose.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
November 21st, 2015 at 12:28 AM ^
Not our doing. You can thank Humpty Dumpty for setting up this dumb additional conference challenge which was only made because of #footprint.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:38 AM ^
Gah. That picture of Delaney on my iPad is just HUGE. You can see all the little nooks and crannies in his face and every discolored tooth, wayward hair, etc. That's some scary shit.
November 21st, 2015 at 7:13 AM ^
I opened MGoBlog this morning - about 10 minutes ago - and was mindlessly scrolling through this thread and happened to stop hitting the down arrow on this photo. As a result, I am putting Bailey's in my coffee so that the haunting is minimal. After all, there is football today, and worse, I have to face family.
November 21st, 2015 at 10:07 AM ^
Didn't even notice the teeth as I was so entranced by the eyebrows. Those things are crazy.
November 21st, 2015 at 10:14 AM ^
in an evil-looking fashion.
Haha. Thanks for the chuckle.
November 21st, 2015 at 1:23 AM ^
...we need to get used to playing in these early season games. Blaming Delaney for this is silly. Sparty went out and beat Kansas in their second regular season game. Same goes for Kentucky over Duke. If you want to play with the big boys, you need to schedule and start winning these games.
November 21st, 2015 at 10:22 AM ^
We had Xavier at home too. There's nothing out of the ordinary with that game. It's a game, this program needs to win year in and year out. We weren't even competitive.
November 21st, 2015 at 8:41 AM ^
There is nothing wrong with this challenge. You need to play some challenging games early on.
November 21st, 2015 at 8:30 AM ^
Pretty sure it was a win-lose.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
November 21st, 2015 at 8:43 AM ^
But if you win, the tourney committee looks back and says it was early and that this has no relevance to where they are 5 months from now. If we lose, half our fanbase bails, and the team loses confidence.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
November 21st, 2015 at 12:18 AM ^
I have a hard time using the youth excuse. Our best player is a senior, our next best players are juniors. Pretty much everyone else got extensive playing time last year because of all the injuries. This team shouldn't look like it did tonight, even this early in the season.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:20 AM ^
By kenpom's stats we are 225th in the country in experience.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:23 AM ^
Which measures what? Age? Year? Number of games played? Everyone thought we'd benefit from all the freshmen that were thrust into playing time last year, now we're inexperienced again?
November 21st, 2015 at 12:40 AM ^
Who said we didn't benefit from it? We'd be losing in blowouts (this game was close until the end) if they didn't play last year.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:48 AM ^
I'm saying, I have a hard time calling a team inexperienced when most of the players have played at least 1 season's worth of meaningful minutes. This isn't a team breaking in 5 freshmen.
November 21st, 2015 at 1:08 AM ^
Just because they're not all freshmen does not mean they're all experienced. It takes a while to learn a sophisticated offense like Beilein's. It takes even longer to play good zone defense in college.
There is a big gap between an All-Freshman team and an Experienced team. We're mostly sophomores with a few upperclassmen sprinkled in.
Bottom line is they need to play together more and need to man up.
November 21st, 2015 at 1:12 AM ^
That's fine. But you're also choosing not to acknowledge that two of the most experienced players (Irvin and Albrecht) aren't 100%. You're overreacting to a loss on the 3rd game of the season to a really good team.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
November 21st, 2015 at 1:24 AM ^
Seems to be a common theme for the past five years.
November 21st, 2015 at 12:20 AM ^
The position of weakness, the 5, is our youngest spot. Doyle is a Soph, Wilson is a Soph, Mo is a Fr.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
November 21st, 2015 at 12:33 AM ^
Fair. But Doyle played almost all of last year, he shouldn't be getting abused like he did. And if youth and inexperience at the 5 was such an issue, maybe we shouldn't have let Bielfeldt leave.
November 21st, 2015 at 6:01 AM ^
Maybe Beilien has more confidence in their development than you do?