Right there! via Yost Built (via mgoblog) Strange days. Beilein bested Izzo, the Vest is up Crap Creek sans paddle & we didn’t get screwed in the hockey playoffs. As the minutes turned to hours on the replay review, I was thinking the refs knew the puck probably crossed the line but couldn’t make a definitive call. I was at Fort Fun last year. Good on them for growing a collective pair, talking it out and making the right call. HAGOAL, Go Blue. If you ask any fanbase I’m guessing they’ll tell you their team is screwed by the refs more often than not. Wolverine fans have a little list of the most egregious in our heads and this is always at the top (another hat tip to my pal Steve Sap for passing it along): This is of course a wire photo of Charles White’s phantom touchdown against the Wolverines in the 1979 Rose Bowl. The back official is calling Michigan first down while numbnuts is signaling a USC touchdown. The LA Times described how that ref discussion played went: Referee Paul Kamanski cast the tiebreaking vote, saying that the line judge, Gilbert Marchman, was in charge of forward progress of the ball. Since the line judge was emphatic that the ball had broken the plane of the goal…
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Coach Beilein joins WTKA (Mar-22 audio)
A great interview with John Beilein on WTKA 1050AM this morning in the aftermath of the Duke game and of course the season. He breaks down in detail a few situations in the final minutes of the game and of course talks to the future and how he thinks these guys will respond. Enjoy: [display_podcast] As always – check out all of the WTKA podcasts here!
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Bo says, “Hey Mouse, Look Me in the Eye like a Man!”
Here we’ve got Bo Schembechler flanked by the great Jim Mandich and Rose Queen Pamela Tedesco, shaking hands with Mickey Mouse at Disneyland before the 1970 Rose Bowl: Bo’s certainly thinking, “Look me in the eye, MOUSE!”
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Welcome Back (Spring Practice Video)
Via MGoBlueVideo, some excellent practice clips from today: Welcome Back Kotter:
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Blue Blooded (Michigan 75, Tennessee 45)
If you peeked into the M Twitterverse in the waning moments of the dismantling of the Volunteers early Friday afternoon, you got a tiny taste of how it will feel if once we tip over the Buckeyes on a future Saturday in November. Tiger Blood. ESPN captured this sign in the crowd: And apparently Zack Novak spotted it, loved it, and found Kevin Pollack after the game a retrieved the sign. Rothstein: The fan who made the sign happily obliged, and it sat in his locker after the game. “I just wanted the sign,” Novak said. “I think Charlie Sheen’s hilarious. “That’s an awesome sign, that’s my favorite sign.” The sign will go back with Novak to Ann Arbor, where he said it will hang in his room — likely right over his bed. It’s unknown whether Novak ask for the number of the gal doing the hair flip, or where the dude behind Pollack got his Jalen-Chris-Juwan-Jimmy-Ray shirt. I’d check here. Drawing Blood. You’ve probably heard several dozen times that Michigan didn’t make a free throw in the game, but to reverse paraphrase Patrick Ewing, we didn’t make a lot of free throws because we didn’t shoot a lot of free throws. No one’s complaining, but maybe Smotrycz should have headed to the stripe after this?: Cold-Blooded. What was…
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Hardcore Michigan Hoops (Spartan Nation Radio)
I was back on Spartan Nation radio with host Hondo Carpenter this week talking Hardcore Pawn, Michigan Hoops, NCAA tourney expectations for the Wolverines and the Big Ten, and whether I’d be rooting for the Buckeyes in the tournament*. Dig it: [display_podcast] * No.
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A Special Message from the Fab Five
I found this buried in one of my 20 year-old+ folders, It’s a message, carefully preserved in time, to all the Fab 5 haters coming out of the woodwork straight from Ray “Money” Jackson:
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Beilein, Fisher among Highest Performing NCAA coaches
A fabulous resource for the NCAA tournament is over at Pete Tiernan’s bracketscience.com. I interviewed Tiernan, who lives in Saline, back in 2009 and today you can also find him on CBSSports.com dropping tourney knowledge. One interesting tidbit for U-M fans is the following table. Coach Beilein remains among the top coaches in the NCAA tournament based on Tiernan’s ‘PASE’ (Performance Against Seed Expectation’) metric: Tiernan explains how PASE is determined: PASE is a simple concept. Every seed has recorded an average number of wins per tourney in the modern era. The average top seed wins 3.42 games per dance, two seeds win 2.43 (almost exactly one game less), three seeds win 1.84 and so on. When the coach of a top-seeded team wins four games to reach the Final Four, he overperforms by .58 games. If he wins the championship, he exceeds seed expectations by 2.58 games. Not surprising that Coach Izzo is #1 on the list, and Steve Fisher is firmly in the third slot when you factor in the 1989 and Fab Five runs. Of course many fans have reminded Tiernan of the Ed Martin scandal and question whether it should count: (Many have emailed me to argue that he shouldn’t be on the list at all, given that the tainted Fab Five contributed to his overachievement.)…
