This Month in MGoBlog History: February 2009 - Hello: Denard Robinson...with surprisingly little fanfare

Submitted by Maize.Blue Wagner on February 16th, 2019 at 10:15 PM

Previously:

January 2009

February 2 - Monday

The month is not off to a great start. Hockey loses to ND. Basketball loses to Purdue, badly.

Jay Bilas still can’t get over Tommy Amaker, and thinks Beilein has lost control of the program. Adrian Wojnarowski is commenting about it.

Brian is going to be on WTKA with John U.Bacon to talk about recruiting. He is also going to be taking a vacation until Feb 15.

February 3 - Tuesday

Pre-signing day recruiting update. SC OL Quinton Washington and OK DL Pearlie Graves are still up the in the air. SC DL Sam Montgomery is out.

Unverified Voracity Knocks the Net Off With Its Mind. The CCHA has confirmed that ‘M’ got two bad calls against against them in the ND game.

Hello: Quinton Washington.

A schedule for announcements on signing day. The names to watch for are: Pearlie Graves, Adrian Witty, Denard Robinson, DeQuinta Jones, and Je’Ron Stokes.

Another recruiting update.

Then yesterday Stokes and Robinson were thrown into considerable doubt, Montgomery cut us, the defensive tackle recruits seemed gone, and everyone wanted to slit their wrists—which is completely ridiculous, I know, but it's not like I was immune. It made me morose; I concentrated on other things, like who you should root for down the stretch in college hockey. Recruiting: it's like herpes for your brain.

February 4 - Wednesday

Liveblog post. Updated to say Hello: Denard Robinson, Adrian Witty, and Je’Ron Stokes.

February 5 - Thursday

Tim from Varsity Blue welcomes everyone to the MGoVacation. A number of guests will be filling in for Brian over the next week or so.

February 6 - Friday

Delaware St. has been added to the 2009 football schedule.

Liveblog post for hockey game against LSSU (no content).

Recap of win over LSSU.

February 7 - Saturday

Link to Varsity Blue liveblog post for the basketball game against UCONN.

February 8 - Sunday

Ebay Watch post from Greg Dooley on the 100 year celebration of Michigan football.

Another recap of another victory over LSSU.

February 9 - Monday

Monday Recruitin’ previews 2010. Lots of names out of the past. One I had completely forgotten about was CA RB Brennan Clay from Tate Forcier’s school.   

February 10 - Tuesday

Dylan from UMHoops provides an interesting article about the recent history and now renewed rivalry between ‘M’ and MSU.

MSU game liveblog (no content).  

February 11 - Wednesday

Recap of the MSU game. It didn’t go well.

February 13 - Friday

Fake Unverified Voracity Gives This Thing a Whirl. Jersey numbers are beginning to be revealed for the recent football signees.

February 15 - Sunday

Liveblog for Northwestern game (no content).

February 16 - Monday

Brian is back...in time to report that Steven Threet is transferring.

Brian thanks everyone who filled in for him while he was in Egypt finding ‘M’ hats.

Hockey catchup. It’s been going well. They have won four straight and are up to second in pairwise.

February 17 - Tuesday

2009 Recruiting: Vlad Emilien. YMRMFSPA is Jamar Adams.

2009 Recruiting: Mike Jones. YMRMFSPA is Larry Foote.  

Single mailbag question on college hockey expansion. What will happen if Penn St. wants to join a conference?

February 18 - Wednesday

Unverified Voracity Makes a Table for No Reason. The NCAA is considering seeding the hockey tournament more based on geography than on record.

What does life without Threet mean? Lets go Tate Forcier.

2009 Recruiting: Thomas Gordon. YMRMFSPA is Brandent Englemon.

February 19 - Thursday

Basketball catchup. The team has remained uneven through Big Ten play. They can likely make the tournament still if they finish .500 in conference, but that means going 3-2 in their last five. However, Kenpom only has them favored in one of those games.

February 20 - Friday

Unverified Voracity Says Well Luck, Kid. ND hockey has received bad news because Cam Fowler has decommitted, likely because of academics.

The basketball team stays alive with a win over Minnesota. Brian still can’t get over the concept of an enjoyable basketball game.

February 22 - Sunday

Apparently hockey ref Kevin Langseth did something that warranted a gallery of people who are better at their job.

Iowa Liveblog (no content).

February 23 - Monday

Update on the hockey situation. Now tied with ND for second in Pairwise. The big fight right now is to get the regional in Grand Rapids.

Update on the basketball situation. They lost at Iowa in overtime. Now they have to win two out of three, and that doesn’t look likely.

Unverified Voracity Goes for Superlatives. There is concern that Rodriguez is falling behind in the spread offense race. Likely that’s due to personnel, but scrambling to improved the team might not lend itself to further innovation.

February 24 - Tuesday

2010 Recruiting Primer. This...will not happen:

Offensive line: Moderate, but only because offensive line never goes below "moderate." With nine recruits in the last three classes and a hidden gem or two amongst a wide array of four-star sorts Michigan doesn't need a huge influx of players. You always want three guys at OL, though.    

2009 Recruiting: Adrian Witty. YMRMFSPA is Denard Robinson.

Unverified Voracity Can’t Do That. That is adding a ninth conference game to the football schedule. The math doesn’t work out.

February 25 - Wednesday

A whiskey company is trolling ‘M’ with a large billboard in Columbus.

Mailbag. How to get Frozen Four tickets. Will Brandon Smith be ok if he needs to start? The Big 10 did have some nine game schedules in the early 1980s and of course it favored OSU. Are the CCHA refs always this bad?

Hockey picks up commits from Canadiens Alex Guptill and Derek Deblois.

February 26 - Thursday

2009 Recruiting: Justin Turner. YMRMFSPA is Marlin Jackson.

Unverified Voracity Wants to Kiss You, Sam. Brian shared more about the Threet transfer on WTKA.

Some clarification: I've heard this from a few different people, all of them on the Threet side of things. I didn't post anything on it because it didn't seem quite strong enough, but when I was LIVE it just sort of came out and there it is.

February 27 - Friday

Basketball win over Purdue, so Muppets! (#5)

Purdue game column.

Here we are again. The freshmen from Indiana are less floppy-haired but the kids from Detroit are still inexplicably faithful and sometimes brilliant. Michigan has an opportunity here, has two cracks at ending its decade wandering in the desert. At some point last night when Michigan led big I remembered that Raftery and company were doing the game and thoughts wandered to what it would be like to hear CBS' fey but iconic "this is college basketball" music and see Michigan and its double-digit seed show up and hear Raftery and Gus Johnson say something along the lines of "this is Michigan's first tourney appearance in ten years."

A few quick hockey updates.

 

Comments

jmblue

February 17th, 2019 at 11:40 AM ^

I forgot all about that basketball situation (at Iowa) where Beilein benched Manny Harris for the overtime, which we then lost - putting our NCAA chances in jeopardy.  That was a bold move by Beilein, sitting his star player in crunch time, especially considering that Harris had been an Amaker recruit.  It must have been delicate in the locker room after that.  Fortunately, the team responded well and played its way into the tournament.

That whole season seemed to be played on a knife edge.  

stephenrjking

February 17th, 2019 at 4:33 PM ^

Wow, a surprisingly newsy February back in 2009. 

Right off the bat I dug into that Bilas bit and saw stuff from Jim Carty. Jim Carty! Part of the old Ann Arbor News crew. I did a web search and it turns out that he left journalism to go to law school; he’s now an attorney. So is Antoine Pitts, the old Michigan hockey beat reporter whose most notable accomplishment was his bizarre feud with recently-passed M hockey color man Jim Hunt. Glad those two have landed on their feet. Doc Cnock has, uh, not had such a smooth post-News career. 

Then there’s Brian’s mailbag about possible B1G hockey. He was pessimistic, but thought it would be good. It wound up happening, and I think there’s regret. 

Speaking of hockey, kinda sad to read about how good the team was. The season ended with a thud. 

befuggled

February 17th, 2019 at 7:34 PM ^

All attention early on was on Tate Forcier, who had enrolled early. Arguments about whether Denard was really a quarterback aside, Tate was certainly the better quarterback until Rodriguez discovered Denard's legs and Tate stopped going to class.

stephenrjking

February 17th, 2019 at 9:09 PM ^

Brian was always a big hockey fan. We crossed paths every blue moon or so on USCHO waaaay back in the day. 

And the streak was still going strong. And the basketball team had been a black hole for a decade. 

These factors go together. I expect Michigan to have serious hockey ticket sale issues in 10 or 20 years because basketball is blotting out the sun. Same thing happened to MSU hockey a generation after Izzo got there and they became a perennial power.