Grantland- Behind the Scenes with South Dakota State University
Grantland has a write-up of Jordan Conn's time embedded with SDSU (Jackrabbits). It's primarily about their team, but it's also about Michigan. You can find it here.
The offense features continuous high-screen action, with quick passes around the perimeter and frequent handoffs near the top of the key. It's run best by a team with a tough, penetrating point guard and plenty of shooters who can stretch the court and punish help defenders. In other words, it's run best by the 2012-13 Michigan Wolverines.
I hope we can beat those guys. No more Cinderalla stories at our expense.
It's a nice article and all, but boy did the SDSU coaches badly blow their assessments of Michigan's players. Stauskas never puts the ball on the floor? McGary isn't skilled, just a lunk of a football player in a basketball jersey? No wonder they lost.
To learn about Nik
Eh, what do you want them to say? While, as we all know with Stauskas, "he's more than just a shooter," you'd rather have him beat you off the dribble than get a decent look at a spot-up three because your defenders didn't close out hard enough, fearing the drive. And he didn't really say "never puts the ball on the floor," he simply told the scout-team version of him to look to shoot first.
With McGary, up until this weekend, I think most would have thought of him that way.
To be fair, I'm not sure I would have disagreed with the assessment! Until this past weekend, both displayed some glaring weaknesses in their game that magically disappeared the past two games.
Weaknesses yes, but anyone who watched any Michigan hoops this season knew that Stauskas is dangerous on the dribble and that McGary is raw but remarkably skilled for a big man.
Well, he's more dangerous than your typical 3-point shooter. But let's not kid ourselves, he's still out there to shoot first. And he hasn't had that many big games scoring-wise lately, either from the inside or from the outside.
When a coach is trying to get a severely-outmanned team to pull off an upset, he will often try to convince his team that the other team's players aren't any better than theirs. I have no problem with this, but it really should stay in the locker room.
...my distinct impression is that Grantland sure was hoping for the upset so they'd have an inside account of Cinderella's triumph. Oh well.
Well can you blame him?
The last paragraph is especially well written,
The ending was great, as they just lost to Michigan they could hear Akron in the adjacent locker room, whooping & hollering, full of hope, thoughts and fantasies of victory and advancing. Just moments earlier, SDSU's were crushed, they were, earlier that evening, jumping up and down, excited, ready to win.
I also liked the nearly-morbid thought of, for 67 of 68 teams in the tournament, it ends the same. You lose, you go home. There's only one that makes it out.
Just not the same kind.
What gives?
Click the word "Here" Its blue
Link is the "here" in the OP's final sentence.
OT, but I can't think of you the same without the Roger Sterling avatar. My brain just doesn't read your words the same way.
Edit: Apparently you've addressed this after looking at your post history. T'was news to me. Carry on.
Big project just wrapped up at work, getting a bigger tax refund than anticipated, and Michigan advanced to the Sweet 16 - Butterfield's swag is back, and consequently Roger will be back shortly.
Fun read. At first, SDSU's eagerness to face Michigan rather than St. Louis, MSU, or Florida caught me a little by surprise, but I'm sure that was directly related to the way Michigan limped into the tourney.
This quote by the SDSU coach should be mandatory pre-game reading for Michigan's players so they come out in "slap the floor" mode: "And offensively, you're going to get whatever you want."
It was a pretty damn accurate assessment going into the tourney, a fact that should piss every player off. Fortunately the team D'd up much better in Auburn Hills and hopefully that carries over to Arlington this weekend!
I'd love to read VCU'S version of this story
March 26th, 2013 at 12:42 AM ^
Thank you for posting this.