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Weekend Sports Recap: Basketball, Hockey, and Volleyball
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Michigan beat Arkansas Pine-Bluff 67-53 on Saturday, but it was another ugly performance by the Wolverines. Michigan trailed Arkansas Pine-Bluff for a decent part of the first half and was tied at halftime. The difference in talent finally took over in the second half and Michigan pulled away to win rather comfortably, but to say that this team is struggling is an understatement. Michigan shot 42.9% from the field today and 25% from three-point land. The defense was also pretty bad in the first half, though it got turned around in the final 20 minutes. One positive to take away from Saturday’s game is that Michigan’s free throw shooting greatly improved, as it went 13-16 from the line, but that was about it.
Over half of Michigan’s points came from Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims. Harris scored 18 points and Sims had 19. Sims also had 10 boards, and though he wasn’t great, he played very well compared to what we have seen out of him lately. Harris got half of his points from three-point land, going 3-4 from behind the arc. That was nice to see considering he had been struggling from three-point land. The same goes for Stu Douglass, but he did not play better at all. In fact, he went 1-7 from the field, with all of those shots being threes. It seems like it is more of a mental issue with him right now, so hopefully he gets hot during a game and gets some confidence back.
Michigan’s next game is on Wednesday when it travels west to play at Utah. Tip off is set for 9 p.m. ET and the game can be seen on CBS College Sports.
Hockey
Although Michigan outshot Ohio State 45-20 on Friday, the Buckeyes actually won 5-3. Michigan came back from a 2-0 deficit to tie the game up, but OSU scored a couple more goals to take a 4-2 lead. Michigan cut the lead to a single goal late in the third period, but Ohio State scored an empty-net goal to seal the game and win 5-3. Michigan bounced back on Saturday with a 2-1 victory. Bryan Hogan played much better and had a shutout going until OSU scored with 11 seconds left in the game. That gave the Buckeyes a slim chance to tie up the game, but Michigan held on for the victory.
A sweep for Michigan would have been ideal in this situation, but at least it got one win in Columbus. That means Michigan still has a chance to finish the first half of the season with a wave of momentum since it plays Notre Dame next week. The Fighting Irish will come to Yost on Friday and Michigan will head to South Bend on Sunday afternoon to finish the home-and-home series. In this series I just hope that Michigan gets a split, though a sweep isn’t necessarily out of the question. The Fighting Irish are only 7-5-4 on the year, so it’s not like they are unbeatable by any means.
Volleyball
After completely dominating Niagara on Friday, the volleyball team suffered a scare but made a comeback to beat Ohio and advance to the Sweet 16 on Saturday. Ohio won the first two games against Michigan, but the Wolverines fought back and won three straight games to eliminate the Bobcats. Next up for Michigan will be a match against Stanford, the #4 overall seed. Stanford only beat St. Mary’s 3-2 to move on to the Sweet 16, but it will have the benefit of hosting Michigan at its home arena. (A full bracket can be found here.)
Friday Quick Hits: Brandon Graham Voted Team MVP Again
- Brandon Graham was voted Michigan’s MVP for the second straight year. He is the first defensive player in Michigan history to win the award twice. In the last four years, there have been two repeat winners — Graham and Mike Hart.
- Other awards handed out last night at Michigan’s football bust went to Zoltan Mesko, David Moosman, Mark Ortmann, Stephen Schilling, Stevie Brown, and Mike Martin.
- Graham is a finalist for the Ted Hendricks Award, which goes to the nation’s top defensive end.
- From the sounds of it, Rich Rodriguez gave a pretty emotional and passionate speech at last night’s football bust. I haven’t found a video or transcript of the speech yet, but I will post a link when one becomes available.
- Greg from MVictors attended the bust and posted his notes from the event.
- Greg also recently interviewed Angelique Chengelis and touched on a variety of topics.
- AnnArbor.com got a couple recruiting analysts’ opinions on Michigan’s football class for 2010.
- Michigan is hosting the first and second rounds of the NCAA volleyball tournament. Michigan takes on Niagara tonight and will play either Notre Dame or Ohio on Saturday if it is victorious today.
- The hockey team will be in Columbus tonight and tomorrow to play Ohio State in a very important series. Michigan played great last week and needs to keep it up while it has some momentum.
- It seems like Mike Milano got off pretty easy in a legal sense despite being found guilty of misdemeanor assault.
- Mark Mangino resigned from Kansas after being under fire for how he treated his players. Chances are he was going to be fired if he hadn’t resigned.
Wednesday Quick Hits: Witty Still Hasn’t Qualified
- One of Rich Rodriguez’s partners in the project that resulted in him getting sued is a banned Clemson booster who has racked up five felonies for breach of trust with fraudulent intent. He allegedly stole money Rodriguez and the other investors, which could help explain how Rodriguez is a victim in this. The reason Rodriguez is getting sued is because, according to the bank that is doing the suing, he is “the financial strength behind the loan.”
- Cornerback Adrian Witty retook the SAT again in hopes of qualifying. He doesn’t know when the results will be out, but even if it was tomorrow and he did qualify, it’s probably too late for him to see any real playing time. Realistically, if he ends up on campus at all, the chances of him being redshirted are probably close to 100%. To miss all of fall camp and not arrive until after the season would leave him extremely behind.
- Mike Patrick and Craig James are the announcers for Saturday’s game against Western Michigan. The last time Patrick announced a Michigan game was the 2008 Capital One Bowl (Lloyd Carr’s final game). While he has an interesting personality, I hope Patrick is able to correctly say the players’ names this time around. If I had a nickel for every time Adrian Arrington was called Adrian Harrington, I’d be rich.
- Click here for a coverage map of Saturday’s 3:30 games. Even if Michigan’s game isn’t going to be shown on ABC for you, I believe it will be shown on ESPN or ESPN2.
- It obviously could still change, but the predicted weather for Saturday looks very promising.
- Although Inkster got beat by Ann Arbor Pioneer last Saturday in dramatic fashion, Devin Gardner played extremely well. Gardner seems to continually be improving, at least he is in Rivals’ eyes. Gardner is now the No. 53 in the 2010 recruiting class, the top player in the state of Michigan, and the best quarterback in the country. That is quite a list of accolades. (Highlights of Gardner from last Saturday can be found at mgoblog.)
- Lloyd Carr was recently interviewed by FOX 17, and it was interesting to see how uncomfortable he got when the subject turned to Rich Rodriguez. I don’t know if this was shot before the whole practicegate thing happened or not, but Carr’s demeanor definitely changed when Rodriguez was mentioned.
- The Toledo Blade looked at the friendship Elliott Mealer and Kevin Koger had even before coming to Michigan because of their days of playing AAU basketball.
- Someone on mgoblog posted a hilarious picture made in Microsoft Paint that shows how David Cone lost his number to Denard Robinson.
- John Kryk, who wrote a book about the Michigan-Notre Dame rivalry, analyzed the presentation of the Free Press’ investigation article for The Wolverine.
- UMTailgate was featured in ESPN SportsCenter’s Blog Buzz segment.
- WolverineHistorian uploaded highlights of Michigan’s 38-0 win against Notre Dame from 2003.
- Michigan’s volleyball team is ranked 7th in the nation after upsetting Nebraska, which was ranked 3rd, and beating Kansas State, which was ranked 22nd. This is the highest Michigan has ever been ranked in its history.
- The Pac-10 is officially part of the Alamo Bowl starting in the 2010-11 season.
- The Motor City Bowl is now known as the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. It was originally going to be called the Little Caesars Pizza Pizza Bowl, but one “Pizza” was removed, making it sound a little less cheesy.
- Iowa running back Jewel Hampton is out for the season because of a knee injury.
Monday Quick Hits: Rodriguez Provides Updates on Grady, O’Neill
- According to Rich Rodriguez, Kevin Grady will stay on the team if he takes care of all his probation responsibilities by when camp starts on August 9.
- Rodriguez also confirmed that Dann O’Neill left the team and doesn’t know if the offensive lineman will transfer to another school. The consensus was that O’Neill lost the love for the game, so I would be surprised if he transferred for football reasons.
- There were worries about a few incoming freshman and whether or not they would qualify, but Rodriguez said there’s “likely only one” who might not make the cut.
- Geena Gall and Tiffany Ofili both won individual national championships this past weekend. Gall finished first in the 800-meter for the second straight year and Ofili won the 100-meter hurdles for the third consecutive year.
- Aside from not even having accurate rosters, NCAA Football 10 appears to have mangled teams’ ratings as well. They seem very inaccurate, and as usual, many teams (Michigan included) are very overrated. Like I said last week, the game does not look like something worth $60 this year.
Friday Quick Hits: Michigan Defeats Alabama, Moves on to Face Florida
- Michigan beat Alabama with relative ease last night, winning its opening game at the WCWS by a score of 6-1. The Wolverines will take on Florida tonight at 9 p.m. on ESPN2. Florida beat Michigan 4-0 way back in February and is 61-3 this season.
- The Michigan men’s golf team has advanced to the NCAA match play finals after finishing sixth in the stroke play round. Only eight teams are still alive for a national title, and Michigan’s next step in reaching that goal is to beat USC, which finished tied for third in the stroke play round.
UPDATE: Michigan beat USC before losing to Texas A&M in the semifinals.
- Ben Ballantine, a 6-7 pitcher from California, has committed to Michigan.
- Michigan’s second annual BBQ at the Big House is tomorrow.
- Michigan and Ohio State jointly announced that they are no longer going to print sports media guides in order to cut costs and begin to “develop new media initiatives.” Wisconsin separately announced that they are also going to stop printing media guides.
- Former Michigan and Lions player Terry Barr passed away on Thursday at the age of 73.
- The Austin American Statesman’s Kirk Bohls has the right idea when it comes to the USA Today Coaches Poll: Current coaches shouldn’t be part of the voting process. They don’t have the time to put together an accurate poll, and even if they did there would still be a clear conflict of interests. (HT: Dr. Saturday)
Tuesday Quick Hits: Super Regional to Be Televised by ESPN
- The schedule for the Super Regional in Ann Arbor is out. Michigan and Baylor will play on Friday at 8 p.m., and the first game on Saturday will get underway at 2:30 p.m. If a third game is necessary, it will be played at about 4:30 p.m. on Saturday. All three games will be shown live on ESPN and ESPN360.com.
- The Michigan men’s golf team advanced to the NCAA Finals for the first time in 12 years.
- Rich Rodriguez really doesn’t care if votes in the USA Today coaches’ poll are made public.
- A punter/kicker from Indianapolis is going to Michigan as a preferred walk-on. (HT: MGoBlog)
Monday Quick Hits: Lacrosse Wins Another Title; Softball Advances
- Congratulations to the Michigan men’s club lacrosse team for winning its second consecutive MCLA national championship. Michigan took down Chapman by a score of 12-11 on Saturday night to finish the season with a 20-0 record and another national title. I think it’s time for lacrosse to be made a varsity sport at Michigan.
- The softball team is on its way to an NCAA Super Regional thanks to an undefeated weekend in Ann Arbor. Michigan beat Miami (Ohio) on Saturday morning by a score of 11-3 in the completion of Friday’s suspended game. Later in the day, Michigan beat Notre Dame 2-1 thanks to a rally in the final inning. In a rematch with the Fighting Irish on Sunday, Michigan won 4-0 to win the Ann Arbor regional and advance to the Super Regional round. Michigan will host Baylor this weekend in a best two-out-of-three series. The winner will advance to the College World Series.
- The baseball team’s season is over, as it failed to finish in the top six of the Big Ten, meaning it did not qualify for the Big Ten tournament.
- Redshirt freshman offensive lineman Kurt Wermers is no longer on the team. News of Wermers’ departure began to spread in the last week or so, and Rich Rodriguez confirmed it on Sunday.
- Rodriguez also addressed Kevin Grady’s status with the team and said, “Until I get all the facts and then I sit down with him and find out what’s going on, then at that point we’ll make a decision.” As I said on Friday, I think Grady should be kicked off the team. Aside from the fact that Grady is already on his second chance, he showed complete apathy toward his probation requirements. I don’t know why that is, but it’s not like he simply forgot to do one thing; he basically didn’t do anything his probation required.
- Staying on the apathy theme, Rodriguez also said this on Sunday:
“Guys that maybe are not doing all of their responsibilities and the things they’re supposed to do to be part of our football program may not be back,” Rodriguez said.
That seems like a hint that we should expect a few more departures this summer. I just hope that if players do leave the team, it’s nobody important.
- The reason Rodriguez had a chance to talk with the media is because he was at the Brian Griese/Steve Hutchinson “Champions for Children’s Hearts” golf tournament. The tournament was the last part of a charity weekend that included a football reunion, bringing hundreds of former players and coaches back to Ann Arbor. In all, $650,000 was raised this past weekend, bringing the total to approximately $1.3 million in the last three years.
- Charles Woodson played a big part in raising money, as he donated $120,000. He will have his name added to the golf tournament next year, joining Griese and Hutchinson.
- The Free Press has a list of the people that were scheduled to play in the golf tournament on Sunday.
- Steve Hutchinson is going to be back in Ann Arbor this fall to watch a Michigan game in person for the first time since he played here.
- Greg Robinson broke down some of his players for the Free Press, allowing us to learn that Troy Woolfolk has moved from cornerback to safety.
- Ron Zook + Twitter in the middle of the night via text = entertainment.
Thursday Quick Hits: Softball Sweeps OSU to Clinch Big Ten Title
- The design for Michigan’s basketball practice facility may be approved in July if everything goes according to plan.
- The softball team swept No. 11 Ohio State yesterday to up its winning streak to 20 games and to clinch at least a share of the Big Ten title.
- All 25 of Michigan’s varsity athletic teams exceeded the NCAA’s APR.
- Apparently Michigan players have e-mailed Terrelle Pryor to tell him he can’t throw and he’s overrated. I’m guessing Stevie Brown wasn’t one of those players.
- Former Michigan football player and coach Henry Fonde passed away on Sunday.
- Larry Foote signed with the Lions on Wednesday.
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