Hoops season rapidly approaches so next up on eBay Watch we’ve got a beautiful wire photo from 1957 featuring multi-sport letterman Ron Kramer trying to block a shot against Purdue: It’s a wonderful shot and offers a view of basketball inside Yost Field House in the 1950s, with digital scoring?. Michigan defeated the Boilers 66-54 on this February day thanks in large part to captain Kramer’s 17 points. And those hops are not just the result of the camera angle: Kramer was a high jumper on the track team and was known to trot over from the football practice field and smoke fools at the high jump in meets. He finished that basketball season as Michigan’s all-time leading scorer. Kramer is best known for his exploits on the gridiron of course, but I’ve heard that he had an unbelievable gift as a cager. His exploits on and off the field/court/track are chronicled in the book, That’s Just Kramer!
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The Grind, Beilein audio and Wildcat mix-tape
After the Penn State loss, I’m guessing most M fans would say a NCAA tourney bid is not going to happen in 2009. That’s of course a 180 from just over a week ago, but we were warned by a few folks this season might go this way. Shots aren’t falling and the team is struggling, Coach Beilein talked with Sam Webb and Andy Evans this morning on WTKA about where the team is at, what he’s doing to get things back on track, and how he & Pittsnogle faced a similar slump one year at West Virginia: [display_podcast] . The situation is even worse than Brian at mgoblog suggested just earlier this week: Moving forward, the last two games have blown whatever margin of error Michigan had in their effort to make the tournament. Even if you assume wins home and away against Northwestern and away against Iowa—potentially dodgy but absolutely necessary to make the tourney—you have to find three wins in these games to get Michigan to .500 in conference: Home: Penn State, Michigan State, Minnesota, Purdue Away: Ohio State, Purdue, Minnesota Yikes. One of those assumed games is Saturday’s tilt against Kevin Coble and the bomb-dropping Northwestern Wildcats who showed Michigan State a little something called style last night at Breslin. A few highlights from the action,…
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Buckeye B.J. Mullens is Duncish and Gaumless (YouTube)
Just posted on YouTube, a quick interview with Ohio State center B.J. Mullens this week on the upcoming Michigan game. Interviewer: Let’s be honest, give me your thoughts on the University of Michigan.Mullens: They suck. I mean come on. We’re going to go up there and beat them pretty bad. That’s a rival and that’s how it’s going to be.Interviewer: Do you give a damn for that whole state?Mullens: No. Not at all. So that’s fine, I don’t have an issue with a Buckeye trashing Michigan or vice versa, even dropping a “sucks” here and there. But the final question inadvertently produces a great moment in the history of this rivalry: Interviewer: In as many S.A.T vocabulary words as you can, your opinion of Michigan.Mullens: Boo. Isn’t that grounds for an NCAA investigation? A cow could have scored as well on that question. I love it because you know the interviewer is a Buckeye grad, yet he inadvertently delivers a perfect Stuttering John question. Update 1/17: Good question from Biggie Munn, ‘what in the hell sport did this raj cat play that he did not lose to um in 4 years?‘. Midway through the interview, Raj offers that he “went four years and never lost to Michigan”. The best I can tell Raj was in the homecoming class and his…
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The Vague Anxiety and Bill Frieder
That's that alpha and omega of my recollection, so thankfully I have a copy Craig Ross's tome, Obscene Diaries of a Michigan Fan, published in 2006. If you enjoy the tone, feel and prose of blogs like mgoblog and even this site, I suggest you get a copy of this book. I had a chance to meet Ross, a local attorney, author and raconteur, for lunch in December. I'm a good way through it and it's fabulous. Ross takes a good portion of chapter four in discussing cheating in college hoops in general, and takes a look at Johnny Orr, Bill Frieder, Ed Martin and Steve Fisher through this lens.
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Interview: Pete Tiernan of bracketscience.com
This week I sat down with Pete Tiernan, founder of bracketscience.com, a website with a comprehensive database that allows subscribers to slice and dice historical NCAA tournament data. Tiernan also provides statistical trends, charts, tips and strategies for busting up your pools. Over the past several years he’s contributed a column to ESPN.com insider$ and in 2009 will be featured at CBSSports.com. Tiernan holds two degrees from Michigan and taught for a while within the English department. His ties to the M basketball program run deep as his dad, ‘Boom Boom’ Tom Tiernan, laced them up for the Maize & Blue back when they played at Yost Field House in the early 1950s. We met in downtown Saline at the excellent Brecon Grille and over a few pints, he was kind enough to answer questions about Beilein, Michigan, tourney trends, the selection committee and more. We close with a cool story about his son who played for the Grand Valley State team that shocked Michigan State at Breslin last year. Enjoy: MVictors: Michigan basketball is becoming relevant again thanks to John Beilein. Let’s cut right to it, how does Beilein’s tournament coaching record stack up? Tiernan: Michigan made a very good choice. John Beilein is the top overperforming active coach of the modern tournament era. There’s a statistic that I have…
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Robinson spills the beans
Come on Rumeal! The star guard on Steve Fisher’s 1989 NCAA champions basically confirms that guys on the team were paid, from Mark Snyder’s post (with a surprisingly tame headline!): “You got nine pros and none of them left school early? If you’re taking care of players the right way, you understand the process to make it work. Otherwise, a player’s got to go out and look for help, it’s going to happen…” like with the Martin scandal. OK – so he doesn’t specifically say what that means but [cough, clear throat] maybe by “taking care of players the right way” he means furnishing them with Cottage Inn vouchers. Later he added, “Coaches have a lot of pressure to recruit the best players, and they have to turn to alumni for help. Alumni can’t help their school? I guess you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.” Robinson said he thinks they should call his team, with nine players that went to the pros, the Fab Nine.
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Michigan Basketball: 1,000 to 1
Another great win this weekend for Beilein and crew, and if things keep falling as expected it’s very likely the Wolverines will find themselves somewhere inside the bracket this March. ESPN bracket guru Joe Lunardi projects Michigan as a 9th seed right now with obviously a lot of schedule to be played. I checked out a couple of sports betting sites to see if any future odds were posted on the tournament. Sure enough, they’ve released the futures on the 2009 NCAA tournament here. I can’t tell when it was last updated, at the top, it reads January 31, 2009 – so I’m not sure what that means. Michigan is a +10,000 moneyline longshot to cut down the nets in Detroit, meaning your $100 college basketball bet would win you $10,000. So you’re saying there’s a chance. Let’s say the team improves and they end up a 6 or 7 seed who is to say they can get hot and get through? They’ll then be playing practically at home at Ford Field. If you’ve got a few bucks and a few stones, you could be laughing all the way to the bank in these hard times. Other odds of interest:+250 – North Carolina+1600 – Duke+1800 – UCLA+2500 – Michigan State, Purdue+5000 – Ohio State
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If You Will it, It Is No Dream
A quick dump, twenty minutes after the OT win: I always love the IU vs. Michigan game because of the hoops tradition at the two schools and probably more so because I attended IU for two years at the end of the Knight era. I’ve seen a couple of dozen games at Assembly Hall including a few real beauties. What a classic. I actually missed the first half due to the early start. When I tuned on BTN, they were flashing the first-half stats. All brutal obviously; everything in IU’s favor and Michigan was shooting horribly. After the first few minutes of the second, I saw Michigan firing (and firing, and firing) and missing. A disappointing, two-steps-back loss seemed imminent and I chalked this up to one of the drawbacks of Beilein’s system: we’re going to win some we probably shouldn’t and vice versa. But those M men grinded away, never stopped firing, stepped up the defense and seemed to get open looks constantly. Obviously, a lot of this is on Indiana. While Michigan hit some clutch shots (Sims turnaround jumper in overtime was money), the Hoosiers couldn’t seem to get a hand in the face of most of the threes and rest assured they will be shooting some free throws tomorrow after failing to convert when Michigan nearly collapsed…
