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…
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eBay Watch: Blue Get Bombed in the Bronx
1950 was a special season in Michigan football history. Many M historians know this is the year that the Wolverines defeated Ohio State 9-3 in the epic Snow Bowl. That classic win earned the Blue a trip to Pasadena where they defeated Cal 14-6 on two late touchdowns. All’s well that ends well, but things didn’t start well and included a trip to New York. The next edition of eBay Watch features this ticket stub from the Army-Michigan game held October 14, 1950 at Yankee Stadium: You can see the full auction here. Army was riding a twenty-two game winning streak heading into the game and dropped the Wolverines 27-6 in front of 67,076 fans including General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Gazing soley at the boxscore you might have figured the Victors prevailed or at least kept the score respectable: The New York Times commended the Wolverines effort that day and reported that Oosterbaan’s men put a bit of a scare into the Black Knights, scoring early and threatening often. In the end Army was too tough, capitalizing when they needed to pull safely away. Army’s streak eventually ended later that season in a 14-2 loss to Navy. While the football squad took a bit of a beating in a hard fought battle, the Michigan Marching Band made a few headlines…
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Ultimate Michigan Football Highlight? You Decide
You like me have likely been suffering through ESPN’s tournament for the greatest sports highlight of all time (which inexplicably contains an entry with no actual footage and may have never actually happened: Babe Ruth’s called shot). I typically hate these things unless there’s some Michigan-related element to it (see Legg’s goal winning the ESPY). To make a bit interesting I rolled my head through the greatest highlights in Michigan football in the past 40 years or so. Several came to mind and I’m certainly missing some of your favorites. My favorite? See the pic that leads this story. I was in the upper deck in Spartan Stadium on the same side of the field and saw the whole thing. My head almost exploded when I realized what I had just watched. Here’s a poll and get your takes and feel free to add your own entry: {democracy} Here’s what I could find on the YouTube. Thankfully I witnessed each of these in person except for the great Wangler to Carter game winner and of course the Harmon ditty:
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Must See: Expanded Wangler to Carter
Check out Brian Cook’s AOL Fanhouse post on the new montage put together by the talented “expressfan”. It’s not just your same old Wangler to Carter. He’s got clips from the Bo and Brandstatter on Michigan Replay talking about the play and about broadcasting legend Bob Ufer. Plus, he thankfully includes a great clip of two plays prior to the famous pass when Michigan threw the ball right into Indiana coach Lee Corso’s hands to kill the clock. In one of the Ufer recordings (not provided here) you hear him talk about this but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. It’s hilarious. Here’s the YouTube and don’t miss Cook’s take on the Fanhouse:
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Relief: Beilein and crew down Wildcats
Congrats to the Coach Beilein and the hoops squad as they got off the schneid by taking down Northwestern 78-68 for their first Big Ten win. No word whether Coach Rodriguez did the mid-court shot at halftime. Apparently Beilein’s inspirational highlight DVD helped. Coach Beielin asked team manager and local guy Pete Burak to suit up for the game, but he didn’t play. Pretty cool. Seriously, what are you supposed to do about that? And in case the Indiana blow-out wasn’t out of your mind yet, the IU Blog Inside the Hall runs a little film session on Eric Gordon demonstrating the super frosh’s ridiculous range. The set? You bet: Crisler arena.
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Hoosiers Breeze in front of Coaches Carr & Rod
This is midway through the first half – this is real Made it up to the game last night and it wasn’t as close as the 78-64 final score. – It’s a little frustrating to sit and watch. The offense pretty much looks for an open three and then clanks it off the rim. The good news? It seemed like they were getting good looks at the rim before then tossing the brick. – The highlight of the game was DeShawn Sims’ three-quarter court heave to end the half. The place erupted and that was nice to see. – Newsflash: Eric Gordon is amazing. Michigan kept it relatively close near half because Gordon was on the bench with three fouls. – A few local AA-list celebrities at the game including: * Coach Carr with wife Laurie at mid-court. He got a huge cheer when they showed him on the screen. * Coach Rod with a few new staffers (see pic). Both coaches spent some time with Florida grad and supreme hotness Erin Andrews. * Joe Dumars courtside checking out the talent. * Sam Webb of WTKA. – As far as the arena, it was at best 40% full with large portions of the Maize section empty. Four of us walked up to Crisler without tickets. A few different fans handed…
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We Score Every Play! Really
Today mgoblog published some great stuff, including a link to the 2005 West Virginia playbook. A lot of the plays involved a wiggle, and waggle and the quarterback taking it to the house. It’s TOO EASY! Run, Ryan Run. Elsewhere: I added a few Big Ten Blog links on the right toolbar. If you’ve got some other suggestions let me know. All these seem to be updated fairly frequently. Funny, after reviewing these I learned quickly that other Big Ten blogs like to talk about Michigan about as much as I do. But sometimes they’re just not very nice about it. A few examples:
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Michigan’s First Night Game | The Debut as a Nocturnal Eleven (1944)
On May 1st of this year the athletic department published a press release announcing that the 2007 game at Illinois would be played at night. The presser also listed the history of Michigan’s games in prime time. It all started in 1944 with a game under the lights at Marquette and the Blue didn’t play another for nearly 30 years. Digging further, I bought an archived copy of the 1944 Chicago Tribune which published a piece covering the game. The article provided a summary of the game and provided a glimpse at sports writing back in the day. Written by Charles Bartlett, the Tribune piece reads more like a play-by-play than a modern game summary. Here’s the headline and a small taste of Bartlett’s writing style: Call to Marquette Sports InformationI contacted the Marquette sports information department. One of the challenges in digging up data on this game is that Marquette stopped playing football in 1960. Michael Whittliff of MU suggested I try looking at the library’s collection of yearbooks. Expecting to find nothing, a review of the 1945 ‘Hilltop’ yearbook paid off big time & yielded a game photo: In case you can’t make it out, the clowns on the yearbook department added the caption “May I have the next Waltz, please?” under that photo. Bentley Museum Comes ThroughGreg…
