Per Seth Gordon’s piece in the Sunday Ann Arbor News, Rodriguez is looking for a few good legs: Calling all kickers Three players – Bryan Wright, Scott Schrimscher and Jason Olesnavage – took turns kicking field goals and extra points on Saturday. Even after signing West Palm Beach, Fla., kicker Brendan Gibbons in his latest class, Rodriguez said he still hopes to hold an open kicking tryout after a recent attempt had to be postponed. “We have some solid kickers, we have some coming in, but we’re always looking for some more,” Rodriguez said. “So, anybody on the student body who can kick some field goals consistently, we want them to try out.” God I’d love to see that try-out. Here’s to hoping Sean at MSC has enough leg to get a try-out and make the team. The old Trojan Horse theory to getting insider access to the football program.

If you’re looking for an interesting read, definitely check out Jim Carty’s post last week. One of Carty’s themes is the state of the newspaper industry and in this post he questions the ability of the Ann Arbor News to react to rumored strategy shift (per the scuttlebutt, they’ll communicate a cut back in home delivery on Monday). As exhibit III of the reasons why he questions the ability of the News management to adjust, JC presents a seven failed projects spearheaded by the paper’s brass. Here’s #7: Book project 2: Management wants to do a “game-day” book on Rich Rodriguez’ first game at Michigan. Everyone in the sports department agrees it’s a horrible idea, because Utah could very well beat Michigan in that opener. Management doesn’t care. Utah beats Michigan in the opener. Management decides to make the “game-day” book about the first two games instead! The reporters and photo staff bust their asses to do all the content required for the book. Management runs ads advertising the book. No one will buy it, so management calls the book off. All that work for nothing. Not even a thank you to the staff involved. Umm, can I see a copy of that? I’ve got an uneven couch in the basement. The strong post attracted some equally strong comments, some…

What a great season for John Beilein and the hoops squad. The Sooners were just too much and hats off to Blake Griffin for taking over the game with his aggressive moves to the hole. We seemed to be keeping it together with smoke and mirrors through the first half as Manny sat. Beilein’s system amazes me. I thought the refs were inconsistent. Many coaches will tell you if nothing else, they want consistency from the zebras. At times it seems the refs were letting the teams play, at others times they were calling everything (maybe it was the blood). The foul trouble was obviously a big problem for Michigan but most of the fouls were deserved. One big exception was the last foul on Manny which looked ridiculous to me but oh well. It wouldn’t have mattered: Griffin did a great job taking to the bucket and converting. And they hit their free throws. Here’s a clip of Griffin’s monster dunk, nicknamed the Sooner Boomer: I think that dunk was before he bought everyone two tickets to his personal Gun Show: “Smith. Wesson. Smith. Wesson. Smith…” Exciting days await. Here’s to hoping Harris decides to stick around next year, beef up a bit and make another run at this thing.

Photo: dailyncaa.com An interesting stat thanks to Saline’s Pete Tiernan and his bracketscience.com.   Heading into this season, there are 36 instances of #10 seeds advancing into the second round since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.  Given that they likely face a #2 seed in the next round, you’d think that history would show they didn’t make it much further.  Not so. Since ‘85 #10 seeds are a remarkable 18-18 (.500) in second round games and a stunning 15-18 versus #2 seeds.  Let’s hope #10 Michigan can move that all-time tally closer to .500 tonight against #2 Oklahoma. Mismatch: On more nugget from bracketscience.com, it turns out the Wolverines had a statistical ace in the hole on Thursday, or at least on the bench.  Heading into the game John Beilein was the all-time top coach in Tiernan’s PASE (Performance Against Seed Expectation) statistic (+.865).  The worst?  Clemson’s Oliver Purnell (-.762).  The result of the game just furthered the trend for these two guys.

Today’s second round NCAA tournament match-up isn’t the first time Michigan and Oklahoma met on a big stage at a neutral site.  Historians or fans of eBay Watch might recall that Bo’s men met up with the Sooners in 1976 at the Orange Bowl. Here’s a little from my September 4, 2008 post: The game holds a historic significance as the first non-Rose Bowl invite in Big Ten history (in the modern era). Under pressure from the Big Ten, much due to the dominance of Michigan and Ohio State over the past few years, the Big Ten decided that teams in the 1975 season would be allowed to play in a post-season game other than the Rose Bowl. The lock at the top by concerned the Big Ten, as these rivals cornered the market on recruiting pitches about bowl games. For Michigan fans, the game pretty much sucked and paled in comparison to the masterpiece put on in the 2000 Orange Bowl by Tom Brady and Alabama. Freshman Ricky Leach and the Wolverines lost 14-6 in a defensive battle struggle dominated by OU’s Selmon brothers, Leroy and Dewey, who tallied 23 tackles between them. Here’s a tight recap from the Bentley Library. Michigan’s only score of the game was a touchdown as a result of an OU fumble on their…

AP Photo Many football coaches say you can determine how a game is going to go in the first few minutes.  Just watch the trenches, the pad level, the push…and you’ll have a good idea how things are going to go.   Thankfully that’s not always the case in hoops. The start was a little scary for me.  Clemson starting getting easy lay-ups, dunks, and just looked so much better.  I started wondering if Feinstein was onto something.  Through the first four minutes+ it was very shaky for Old Mich. But then then the guards got a couple good looks from the arc and the defense settled down.  Harris hit a nice three and Clemson started making poor decisions highlighted by that Terrence ‘I think I’m Skiles’ Oglesby who was firing from anywhere below the hash.  (When he was ejected for the elbow I actually felt like that was a loss for Michigan.) The last seven minutes of the game were torture.  I hope that’s just a side effect from our inexperience, and not the system.  I tend to think it’s the former after watching the great Purdue win a few weeks ago.  Most remember the terrible free throw shooting down the stretch in the win over the Boilers, but being a court level, I can tell you we made countless…

Five minutes with John Beilein on WJR with Fab Five,  BO, and Tuesdays with Morrie author and Free Press columnist Mitch Albom: [display_podcast]

Pete Tiernan of bracketscience.com plugged all the key stats of the 65 teams into a spreadsheet, performed his analysis and published the rankings in his multimedia blog ($).  I extracted a few of the Wolverine-relevant categories, again, these are versus the entire NCAA field: Field goal percentage differential versus opponents: Best: Gonzaga (+.120) Worst: Michigan (-.011) Percentage of three-point field goals attempted: Highest: Michigan (.476) Lowest: Washington (.205) Rebounding margin*: Largest: Michigan State (9.9 rpg) Smallest: Michigan (-3.1 rpg) I’m not shocked by any of these stats, but if you handed me just the field goal percentage stat and the rebounding margin before this season, I’d of guessed Michigan would win about 10 games in 2008.  I mean, we shot worse than our opponents and on top of that, we probably didn’t get off as many shots because we didn’t get any rebounds (although I think we do better on the offensive glass because we get some long rebounds). Granted, this is a comparison against the best teams in the country, but still.  Of course when you see the stat on the three point field goals attempted, we make up for our relatively poor shooting because shot for shot, our attempts on average are worth more if they find the net. *If you’re wondering, when Michigan and Michigan State played…