I wish I could upvote you more than once.
FUCK Dingle-BERRY MELROSE!!!
You only come to MGoBlog ten times a day?
Where I'm from, that's called breakfast.
very well stated.
Go Blue!
before the seasons for both sports started if you had asked people would you be excited if UM BB reached the final game and hockey made it to the frozen four everyone would've been jumping at it. Both teams over achieved and had great seasons and did the University proud.
Sure it sucks to get that far and then loose, but that doesn't diminish how great of a season both sports had.
It just doesn't. Seriously.
Let's be serious for a second. To me, taking this attitude toward sports or anything makes little or no sense. What attitude? That if the last part of some enterprise goes badly, that the entire effort was never worth doing, or indeed, you'd rather have failed up front rather than have the end be less than perfect.
I can't agree with this attitude in sports, in love, in books, in anything. Many things are worth doing because all the parts are fantastic! Each step, each experience, each victory (and even sometimes each defeat) is amazing to experience, both the joy and the pain.
I'm geeking out on this question because it seems to me these days that a LOT of people take this attitude toward a lot of things. It's infected sports to an alarming degree- I used to call it the Drew Sharp effect, after the moron whose attitude toward sports was that if you don't win the championship, you're a failed bunch of losers that shouldn't have bothered. Now this attitude is everywhere.
I say "NOPE". Stop it. Don't be Drew Sharp. Sports is worth it because of the games, the players, the plays, the wins, the losses. Same with life.
Rob
I don't get this at all. How can you not be disappointed? Why is the instinct to say "Oh, well, it's OK, they got close"?
I don't feel good about this. Just like I haven't felt good about any Michigan hockey tournament choke since the last championship. They do this every time, and hell if I'm going to just start saying "well, that's OK, the Frozen Four is good enough." Why can't they just finish one of these tournaments for once? Why is it always like this?
Sure. But good god, this game was the exact playbook of the Michigan Frozen Four. One can admit this team punched above its weight and still be ticked at a missed opportunity in the most gut-punching way. As usual.
above, I'm going to come a lot closer to agreeing with you.
My point is not that I'm not experiencing the emotion of disappointment or getting pissed about some element of the final game. Like that frickin ginger Italian hitting every shot in the world.
My point is that my overall opinion of the season, of the effort, of the tournament is overwhelmingly positive. I refuse to take "Failure" as the word describing Michgan's MBB season.
Especially when I'm more than 24 hours after the end.
Rob
Trust me - I damned DiVencenzo with every epithet I could imagine, including acid-covered comments on his parentage and his predilection for farm animals.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one, either.
I am pissed and angry at Michigan not able to pull these games and hoist the damn trophies. I don't care what the pre-season expectations were, if they got this close they should have closed the deal.
But on the other hand, I also enjoy the effort these kids (and their myriad support stuffs) have put in these games. No one gets on those fields thinking "yah, I am ok with being the second place team today". Somedays it just doesn't work.
My anger and pissiness and sadness don't nullify the joy I got from the success these teams have achieved.
So even though I just swore at ND scoring with 3.7s to go, I sure as hell enjoy and congratulate the team for a great season as well. These two feelings aren't mutually exclusive. It just took me a couple of decades and a couple of kids to understand and accept that.
Forza Azul.
Because as great as Red was, the man didn't know when it was time to hang it up and when he finally did, he left Mel a tire fire. That they made the tournament at all this year is impressive. That they made the Frozen Four is outstanding. Obviously, losing never feels good. Nobody in their right mind would say it does. But right now, we just need to put some steel in our spines and realize how bright the future is.
I have seen it posted that maybe Red hung on because he didn't want Dave Brandon to choose the next coach.
I've seen the same. Maybe it's true, or maybe it's just a juicy rumor that's fun to believe.
But if it's true ... thank you, Red. So very much.
Yeah, if that's true - thank you Red for outlasting Brandon. But the few years he stayed after Brandon got axed - why? I can't imagine he couldn't have told Hackett or Manuel to just go get Mel.
Maybe he just wasn't ready to. One of the hardest things in any career is knowing when to end it. That's especially true of a career that has dominated your entire life.
You don't have a particularly great shot at winning a title even if you DO have a great team with big expectations. This is why overachieving and falling short is little consolation. I prefer it compared to being terrible, obviously, but let's look at history:
2006 & 2016 football: Huge expectations with senior-laden teams, devastating losses
2008 hockey: Dominating season, #1 overall seed, devastating loss in Frozen Four
2013 basketball: Beilein's best team ever, devastating loss in National Championship Game
History shows our odds of a gut-wrenching, devastating, soul-crushing loss in the finals is just as good when we have a historically great team. So what's the point of holding out hope that "we're on the right track"? I'll take literally any championship at all, thank you very much, and your odds at a title are vastly greater if you're already in the Finals, compared to your odds at the beginning of the season, no matter how great you think the team is going to be.
I feel like his mistake was almost giving the ND guy too much credit. He pushed off to go post-to-post, assuming the ND guy had enough control to actually put a shot to the far post. Instead, the ND guy barely had the ability to just get the puck on net, but it happened to find the 5-hole that was now opened up because he was trying to stop a great shot that wasn't coming.
If he had stayed home, given up the wide side of the net that he probably wasn't going to get to anyway, and kept his 5-hole covered, no goal. But that is REALLY REALLY picking nits. Most goalies would react to a guy cruising down the middle of the ice like that by assuming he is going to go top-shelf wide-side. He tried to stop a great shot that never came, and in the process, gave up a goal on the weak shot that did come.