As if the Detroit Free Press could do anything else wrong in the mind of Michigan fans, here’s their latest headline on DeShawn Sims and Manny Harris as they head towards the NBA Draft:

*facepalm*

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With the college basketball season wrapping up this week, I thought it would be a good time to bring a real expert in to talk some Michigan basketball. Chris Balas is the senior editor of TheWolverine.com, and he was willing to answer a few questions on this past season, recruiting, and next year’s outlook for Michigan basketball.

TWB: First, a simple question. After the surprise NCAA tournament appearance last year, what went wrong for this team in 2009-10?

CB: Chemistry, No. 1. This team lacked leadership from its upperclassmen, became a bit “cliquish” after having great camaraderie a year earlier and didn’t have a David Merritt or C.J. Lee type glue guy to hold them together. There just wasn’t enough trust.

These guys got better (and pretty good) defensively, but when you’re playing small, you’ve got to make shots. Thirty percent from long range isn’t going to win you many games, and guys like Zack Novak, Stu Douglass and Laval Lucas-Perry who were expected to improve in this area simply didn’t. If they’d been even adequate from long range this year they’d have been a tournament team again.

After this year’s disappointing season, there has been some questions about John Beilein and if he’s the right man to coach this team (a note: I think these people are crazy, but the questions are out there). Do you still think Beilein is the man for the Michigan job, and what will he have to do next season and beyond to maintain his job security?

Athletic Director David Brandon likes Beilein and the way he runs his program — more than that, he also thinks he’s a good coach. They’ll be on a level playing field when it comes to facilities in a few years, which will help (but which is also overblown) — but honestly, only  a few bad breaks have kept a few potential difference makers from being here. IF German Robin Benzing, a projected NBA first-round pick, had qualified, IF Tom Izzo hadn’t decided last minute to offer Draymond Green, IF Ben Cronin hadn’t been injured and had continued to develop … who knows where they’d be right now?

At some point, though, those IFs have to become WHENs. Beilein knows it, and he’s motivated. He’ll get at least a few more years to build his program, and rightfully so. People talk about him inheriting DeShawn Sims, Manny Harris, etc., but conveniently forget that he was also left with several recruits who weren’t capable of playing at this level (and for the record, the thought that keeping Alex Legion (with all his baggage) in the fold would have helped is laughable).

Michigan fans are holding out hope that Trey Zeigler will commit and be able to step into Harris’ role as the go-to wing for Michigan. Do you have a sense of Michigan’s chances to land Zeigler, and how ready do you think he is to be able to step in and contribute immediately?

There’s still a solid chance … had Michigan had a better season, I think he would have already committed. His best relationships are with Beilein and UCLA coach Ben Howland, though MSU’s success has intrigued him and Central Michigan (with father Ernie) is a darkhorse. He wants to play early, he is comfortable in Ann Arbor … if you put a gun to my head, I’d still say U-M lands him. He likes the thought of playing close to family and friends, too.

Zeigler needs work on his perimeter game and especially free throws … he went two for his last 21 at the line, which is cause for concern … but there’s little doubt he’d play as a freshman. They need people with his athleticism, so he’d be playing and learning on the fly the way Manny Harris did as a freshman (though I wouldn’t expect him to have the same impact as a scorer).

Beilein has already put together a solid class in PF Evan Smotrycz and SG Tim Hardaway, Jr. What roles do you see those two having in 2010-11, and what kind of production should we expect from them?

Both will have an opportunity to play. Beilein is looking for added length on the floor, and both fit the bill, though both need to get much stronger. Beilein has talked about adjusting to physical play in the Big Ten – both of these guys had better hit the weight room this summer and be prepared if they want to play significant roles.

I like the thought of Hardaway in the 1-3-1 and his shooting ability, and I like Smotrycz’s skill set at his size, but these guys are still freshmen, and they’ll be vying for minutes against players who have been here for a while. Think Zack Novak, for example – as limited as he might be — is going to give up his minutes without a fight? He’s going to be hard to keep off the floor, whether people want to believe it or not.

Eventually, these guys (and potentially Zeigler) will be the nucleus of some fine teams down the road – at the very least they’ll provide more competition this fall as guys fight to keep their jobs.

With Manny Harris leaving school early and DeShawn Sims, Zack Gibson, and Anthony Wright graduating, Michigan will return less than half of their scoring and rebounding production from 2009-10. What’s your overall outlook for the team next year, and who do you think will step up and replace that production?

No two guys are going to emerge to replace the scoring Sims and Harris supplied the last two years. It’s going to have to be by committee, and a few guys — point guard Darius Morris, for one — are going to have to make huge strides this summer to pick up the slack. Morris has to become at least somewhat of an outside threat to keep defenders honest – hopefully he’s shooting 1,000 jumpers a day this summer — while Novak, Stu Douglass and Laval Lucas-Perry simply have to shoot the ball better.

The problem, though, is the lack of guys who can do much with the ball off the dribble. Watching the tournament, how many open looks were created by just a little bit of penetration? Morris can provide some and Zeigler might, too, but other than that …

On top of that, one of the big men — Blake McLimans, Jordan Morgan or Jon Horford as a true freshman — is going to have to be at least serviceable. We heard good things about McLimans’ progress, but Morgan would take two steps back with injury for every step forward, and Horford is awfully skinny (though we like his potential down the road).

The hope is that a guy like Lucas-Perry, who can be an unbelievable asset when he’s both aggressive and playing with confidence, can really take a huge leap, your alleged shooters start knocking down their open looks and they become a really tight and close-knit team that overachieves. A lot of that is built in the summer, meaning it’s going to take someone to step up in a leadership role and insist everyone goes the extra mile. We’ve seen Beilen teams in the past that as a whole are better than the sum of their parts — if you’re a Michigan fan, that’s what you’re hoping for this season.

Thanks to CB for taking part in this. For more of his thoughts on Michigan sports, and much more, check out TheWolverine.com.

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A few weeks ago, I took a look at what Michigan basketball’s lineup would look like in 2010-11, with one large assumption: that Manny Harris would be staying with the team. With Manny now off to pursue a pro basketball career, the Wolverines are left without their top two scorers and rebounders from the past three years, and not a whole lot of production from their returning players. With Harris, DeShawn Sims, Zack Gibson, and Anthony Wright departing, Michigan loses 61% of their points, 53% of their rebounds, and 39% of their assists from players who took up just under 42% of the team’s minutes last season.

That wouldn’t be such an issue if the load was spread evenly across those four players (and the rest of the team), but Harris and Sims obviously accounted for most of that production. Now Michigan’s leading returning scorer and rebounder is Zack Novak, who averaged 7.4 points and 4.3 boards per game last season, while Darius Morris is the team’s returning assist leader at 2.6 per game. The scariest part? Morris also is the team’s leading shooter among returning players… after shooting 40.6% from the field last season.

The good news? Michigan is adding two guys with the potential to be high-volume scorers in PF Evan Smotrycz and SG/SF Tim Hardaway, Jr., as well as depth up front in PF Jon Horford. Here’s what next year’s rotation looks like right now:

I hate to say it, but that looks like a team that will struggle to remain in postseason contention of any kind, let alone a squad that will lift the Wolverines back into the NCAA tournament. There is, however, one huge wild card still at play: SG Trey Zeigler, the #26 player in the class of 2010 according to Rivals.com, has Michigan in his final five teams, and many expect his final decision to come down to the Wolverines and Central Michigan, where his father is the head coach. Zeigler could provide something that appears to be lacking in the above lineup, a player who can get into the lane, create his own shot and bear his share of the scoring load.

Even if Zeigler signs, however, there will be huge question marks surrounding this team next season. The lack of depth up front borderlines on dire, with two redshirt freshmen coming off injury-plagued years (Jordan Morgan and Blake McLimans) representing the only returning Wolverines capable of playing center — and that’s a stretch for the lanky McLimans — and two true freshmen (Smotrycz and Horford, who is rail-thin for a 6-9 power forward) as the only other bigs on the roster.

There are equally large concerns with the players who have seen actual minutes with the Wolverines as well. Can Darius Morris round out his game and continue the improvement we saw from him over the course of his freshman season? Will Zack Novak be more effective if he is able to play small forward instead of extremely-undersized power forward? Can Matt Vogrich become a reliable rotation player after barely seeing the floor as a freshman? Will Laval Lucas-Perry do something — anything — positive with any sort of consistency?

Of course, the biggest question, perhaps the key to the entire season, will simply be this: Can this team find their shooting stroke? Michigan finished 2009-10 shooting 41.6% from the field as a team, and just 29.9% from three, in an offense predicated around finding open jump-shooters and knocking down triples. Even if Smotrycz and Hardaway come in and shoot the lights out, this team will still need Douglass, Novak, and Morris to greatly improve their shooting performances from last season if they hope to stay in postseason contention and out of the Big Ten basement.

Manny Harris leaving early may become the ultimate test of John Beilein and his system — he will have to take a nucleus of supporting cast players and true freshmen and mold them into a productive team, somehow, or there will be very serious questions about his job security (whether those questions are deserved or not). Let’s all hope he’s as good a coach as his resume makes him appear to be, or it could be a very ugly 2010-11 season.

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Well, it certainly wasn’t pretty, but Michigan came away with a win today in the first round of the Big Ten tournament, defeating ninth-seeded Iowa 59-52 in a game that probably shouldn’t have been that close. Early on it looked like Michigan would turn the game into a blowout, as the Wolverines opened the game on a 12-4 run and held a 28-13 lead partway through the first half. Iowa would battle back to within eight at halftime and close to within four early in the second half before the Wolverines seemingly blew the game open again, holding a 56-41 lead with four minutes remaining. Again, Iowa would make it a game, closing within five points and having several opportunities to get within one possession before Michigan finally closed out the game.

The difference in the game was the ability of Michigan’s stars, Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims, to get inside and either finish or get to the line: the duo combined for 36 points on 12-27 shooting, hitting 10 of 19 shots from two point range, and Manny knocked down nine of ten free throw attempts. Michigan probably would have been able to run away with this one if it hadn’t been for Iowa’s Cully Payne, who scored 25 of the Hawkeyes’ 52 points, including hitting five of ten three pointers. No other Hawkeye had more than ten or hit a three pointer (in ten tries), so it was essentially a one-man show for Iowa today. Luckily, Michigan mustered just enough offense to hold him off, or the season would have ended on a decidedly sour note.

No player notes for this one, since Michigan has another game at noon tomorrow against Ohio State, and I was watching the game while working on a paper (I know I said I would go to class instead of watch, but yeah, temptation kept me in front of the TV and I had to get some work done today). Harris did a tremendous job of lifting Michigan while getting very little help from the supporting cast: Wolverines not named Harris or Sims combined to go 7-23 from the field, and nine of Peedi’s 14 points came in the first 6:28 of the game. It would have been nice to see Michigan try to get the ball to Sims more — after his initial burst of points and his first sub out, he seemed to get out of sync with the offense and didn’t see nearly as many touches down low. I won’t complain too much, however, as a win is a win, especially come conference tourney time. The team will have to step up the performance, however, if they hope to hang with the co-conference champs tomorrow.

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There’s not a whole lot to analyze about this team right now: heading in to Saturday, few thought Michigan could hang with Ohio State, a team contending for the Big Ten title. They were right. The Buckeyes could roll out five former top-100 recruits and know that they’d get solid contributions from at least a couple of them (in this case, 18-11-7 from Evan Turner, 24-9-4 from William Buford, and 14 from Dallas Lauderdale). Michigan would try to counter with their duo of top-100 players, but with neither Manny Harris nor DeShawn Sims bringing their A-game, the Buckeye run in the second half to put the game away felt like an inevitability.

The frustrating part about this team is that, as far as I can tell, the offense, schematically, is working: Michigan has done a great job of limiting turnovers (just six this game) and getting some decent looks, but their shots just don’t fall (in this case, 17-47 from the field and 5-17 from three). I was arguing with a Michigan fan the other day about whether giving John Beilein an extension was a mistake (he said yes, I said no, for the record), and both of us agreed that this team would be really dangerous if we could just his 35% of our threes. This is not exactly asking the world of Michigan — shooting 35% from three would put a team at 144th nationally — but it’s a far cry from what Michigan is putting up: 29.8%, good for 320th in the country.

That’s what’s so frustrating about this team: in a slightly alternate world, where Michigan becomes just an average three-point shooting team (not crazy, since they shot 33.4% last year and brought practically everyone back), this is a dangerous team vying for another NCAA tournament bid. Instead, we’ve been treated to a lot of games like Saturday: 40 minutes of hoping the shots will fall, but knowing we’ll probably come up short. Can this season be over already?

Bullets:

• For once, Michigan got some decent, balanced scoring, with all five starters breaking double-digits. Unfortunately, when Sims and Harris combine for 21 points (on 5-20 shooting), Michigan has almost no chance of winning. This team got about as good a contribution as they could hope for offensively from their role players, but the stars didn’t step up this game.
• Yes, Darius Morris’ three-pointer was banked in, but he’s still making great strides as a point guard: 11 points on 4-8 shooting, three rebounds, three assists, and just one turnover. If he can continue this kind of improvement in the offseason, Michigan will have a very solid point guard for the next few seasons.
• Novak and Douglass had similar games: decent offensive output mitigated by defensive struggles against bigger, stronger, faster players. See the above picture for an example of why Zack Novak is not a Big Ten power forward, and Douglass was absolutely abused by Evan Turner (who, in fairness, is one of the two best players in the country) when he was forced to guard him.
• The bench, once again, had no impact: Zack Gibson had the only bench points, with two, to go along with four rebounds and three fouls in 11 minutes. Laval Lucas-Perry has mastered the on-court disappearing act, going 0-3 and not recording a single other statistic in 14 minutes. Ant Wright and Matt Vogrich barely saw the floor, combining for six minutes.

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Rarely does a narrow overtime victory over a 3-10 Big Ten team inspire confidence or hope in a fan, but I’d be lying if I said that last night’s performance by Michigan didn’t have me excited, at least temporarily. It may have been Iowa, it may have been meaningless to the Big Ten standings, and maybe it shouldn’t have been that close, but I can’t be angry when I see Michigan pull out a road game in dramatic, come-from-behind fashion. With the way this season has gone, nobody would have blamed the Wolverines for letting up down the stretch, when Aaron Fuller kept making big shots and Iowa held a five-point lead with 22 seconds to play. Instead, Michigan’s big man hit some big shots of his own, and the Wolverines were able to pull out a great overtime victory on the road. The fans may have given up on this team a long time ago (I know I’ve said some things to that effect), but this team continues to fight to the bitter end. You have to tip your cap to John Beilein for that.

If you told me before the game that Michigan would hit over 50% of their threes, I would have expected a blowout victory. Instead, Michigan had to battle with an equally-scorching Iowa squad that was lighting it up from outside and riding the hot hand of Fuller (30 points and 13 rebounds) inside. This wasn’t anywhere close to Michigan’s best defensive effort, but the offense carried the day. We haven’t been able to say that much this season. While you’d certainly hope that the team would play better D, it was nice to see the team find its shooting stroke (at least from the outside).

Player bullets:

• This wasn’t DeShawn Sims’ best effort, as he struggled to hit his inside shots (10-25 from the field), but he hit the biggest shot of the game when the team ran a play specifically to get him an open jumper, and you can’t ask for much more than that from your senior leader. Sims managed to battle through the game despite not quite having it all night, and he ended up with 27 points — to me, that’s the sign of a really good player.
• Manny Harris also struggled from two-point range, going 3-10 on the night, but he finished 4-7 from three (including a few pull-up shots that had every Michigan fan cringing until they went in), pulled down 10 boards, and added seven assists. When Manny was struggling to create his own shot, he was able to find open teammates and help the offense with his passing. Again, it’s great to see your stars finding ways to make the team better when they’re not having their best game — Manny managed to be effective despite not having his bread-and-butter (getting to the hoop) and made some big plays in overtime to help lift the team to victory. Yes, he had six turnovers, but Manny’s good plays offset his poor ones.
• Stu Douglass started hot, hitting two early threes, but then disappeared from the stat sheet until he hit a huge three in overtime. While it’s nice to see him hit that late shot, we need more production from Douglass — three rebounds, no assists, and two turnovers is not what you want from a guy playing 42 minutes at guard.
• Zack Novak put up a nice overall stat line — 3-5 from the field (all his attempts from three) for nine points, four rebounds, five assists, a steal, and no turnovers, but you can’t talk about his game last night without mentioning that he was the main guy guarding Fuller, who routinely abused Novak in the post. It’s tough to put too much of that on Novak — on any normal team, he wouldn’t be guarding power forwards — but you’d still like to see Novak hold his guy under 30.
• Darius Morris has made a lot of progress in the last few weeks, but last night he was a complete nonfactor — 26 minutes, no points, 0-3 from the field, two rebounds, two assists. Games like this make you remember that he’s still a very raw, freshman point guard getting his first taste of Big Ten basketball.
• Laval Lucas-Perry briefly caught fire in the first half, hitting three consecutive three-pointers to help stake the Wolverines to a nice first-half cushion (that completely disappeared by halftime). He finished with his best stat line since early January, scoring 13 points on 3-5 shooting, hitting 4-4 free throws, and adding five rebounds and two assists. I’ll never understand how LLP can have games like this and then completely disappear for a month, but it’s always nice to see him step up.
• Zack Gibson finished with three blocks in just 12 minutes, but didn’t haul in a single rebound, which is somewhat unacceptable for a 6-10 college basketball player. Michigan went with Sims down the stretch, obviously, and it’s way too late in his career to complain about how limited Gibson is — at this point, he is what he is, which is a guy who can block a couple shots, eat up some minutes in the middle, and is a very inconsistent offensive player.

For more on last night’s game, check out the recap from UMHoops.

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Watching Michigan defeat Minnesota 71-63 on the road last night, you could see why this team was supposed to make the NCAA Tournament in 2009-10: when both our stars are on, and the supporting cast, well, supports them, this is a team that can play some really quality basketball. If Michigan doesn’t fall into foul trouble early in the second half (helped, in part, by some dubious officiating) and miss some late free throws, this could easily have been a 15-20 point victory.

The story of the game was the performance of DeShawn Sims, who was benched just a minute into the game and finished the first half with just six points, then exploded in the second half for 21 points on 10-12 shooting. To say that was the whole story, however, would be to shortchange the efforts of the whole team — Michigan managed to take a one-point lead into halftime thanks to some very solid man-to-man defense, which they kept up throughout the whole game, and the team received very solid performances from Manny Harris, Darius Morris, and Zack Gibson (!) on the offensive end.

Before I get to the player bullets, I thought I would introduce a new feature to the game recaps: stealing a little thunder from UMHoops, I decided to head over to StatSheet and see what other charts they had. I like the one below, which is essentially a bar-chart box score, which is nice for visualizing the overall impact of each player.

Player bullets:

• John Beilein didn’t like what Sims was showing on defense early, leading to a lengthy first-half benching, but Sims responded exactly how you’d want a senior to respond: by playing like hell when he got another opportunity. Even though Minnesota had a big size advantage in the post, they had no answer for Sims, who showed off his entire array of post moves and threw in a couple mid-range shots and a three-pointer for good measure.
• You can’t talk about Sims’ performance without mentioning the effect Manny Harris had on his game last night. Manny wasn’t shooting particularly well (5-14 from the field), but he was able to consistently get to the basket, leading to a lot of free throws (8-10 on the night) and opening the lane up for Sims, who Harris found with several great passes in the second half. Manny finished with seven assists and only two turnovers, playing within himself for most of the game and creating offense for himself and the team.
• Darius Morris is really getting better with every game, and this may have been his finest performance as a Wolverine. He finished with five points (2-3 shooting), three rebounds, five assists, a steal, and just two turnovers, and for the most part was able to handle Minnesota’s full-court press like an experienced point guard. He had a couple really gorgeous plays, including a highlight-worthy behind-the-back dish to Harris on a two-on-one fast break. Morris is responding really well to the extra minutes he’s earned, and we’ll likely see him for 30+ minutes a game from here on out.
• Although he had a few really ugly shots and only finished 2-7 from the field, Stu Douglass played a solid all-around game, dishing out four assists (to zero turnovers), adding five steals, and scoring a critical second-half bucket on a beautiful backdoor cut. That last play was really nice to see from Douglass — he was able to earn himself a layup (and an and-one opportunity) by playing smart and having the confidence to look for his own offense.
• Zack Novak didn’t have much of an impact on offense, in part because of more foul trouble, but he was his usual gritty self on defense, hitting the floor multiple times for loose balls. His hustle appears to be infectious — Douglass dove for loose balls a couple times, and even Laval Lucas-Perry made a really nice play on the ground to get control of the ball and call a quick timeout for Michigan. When you see a player put in the kind of effort Novak has all season, it makes the rest of the team want to step up and match that level of intensity, and Michigan did a great job of doing that last night.
• When Zack Gibson came in early to replace Sims, and immediately got called for traveling at the three-point line, I must admit I immediately called for Beilein to put Peedi back in. After that snafu, however, Gibson put in a great game, scoring eight points (on 3-3 shooting, including two threes) and hauling in two rebounds in just nine minutes, mostly in the first half. Without Gibson stepping up like he did, Michigan likely goes into the half with a deficit. Instead, Gibson provided an unexpected lift to the team, and Sims was able to build on his success in the second half.
• Anthony Wright and LLP both played somewhat sparingly (13 minutes for Wright, 11 for LLP), and each finished with zero points. Besides one bad turnover by LLP when he couldn’t handle the Gophers’ press, neither had much of an impact — positive or negative — on the game. Frankly, during a game when Michigan’s other role players really stepped up, that’s fine by me.

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As the season wears on, it’s getting tougher and tougher to write these game recaps. I think, for the sake of my sanity, my mind has stopped allowing me to get emotionally invested in Michigan basketball games. On Saturday afternoon, as Michigan’s deficit hung somewhere between 16 and 20 points for what felt like an eternity, my friends and I took entertainment in seeing which referee would make the most animated call (Ed Hightower, of course, emerged as the champion). We left when the clock ticked below eight minutes. Call me a fair-weather fan if you want, but at some point, you have to cut your losses and move on with the rest of your day.

Despite the score, the team didn’t play particularly bad, at least in the first half — Wisconsin simply didn’t miss, shooting 15-22 from the field (and a ridiculous 9-13 from three) in the first 20 minutes to open up a 49-26 halftime lead that would not be relinquished. For the latter stanza, Michigan seemed resigned to its fate, as DeShawn Sims (15 first-half points, 2 second-half points) and the rest of the team (12-20 on field goals and 2-2 from three-point range in first half, 5-19 — including 0-9 from three — in second half) cooled off considerably.

• Manny Harris continues to slump — and kill his 2010 draft stock — with some ugly shot selection and a broke jumper. He scored just 11 points on 4-11 shooting, and just doesn’t look like himself. It’s tough to tell how much of Manny’s woes are mental and how much are physical, but it’s clear that he’s not playing on the same level he was early in the season, and this team can’t afford to have one of its two stars not playing like one. I guess the positive here is that Manny may have no choice but to come back next season.
• DeShawn Sims did all he could in the first half to carry the team, dropping in 15 points on an array of fallaway jumpers and inside post moves, but was likely discouraged by the lack of support from his teammates — with only two second-half points on five shot attempts, it didn’t look like Peedi was working as hard to get in position like he was earlier in the game. It’s tough to blame him on this — after that kind of first-half effort, only to see those results, I’d be discouraged too.
• The (only) bright side of these past few games, Darius Morris has made some encouraging progress at point guard, where he has now earned the starting spot. Morris was efficient in all facets on offense, scoring eight points on 3-4 shooting and dishing out three assists against only one turnover. Since he doubles as Michigan’s most athletically gifted perimeter defender, expect to see Morris get even more playing time as the season wears on.
• The rest of the team was nowhere to be found. Zack Novak and Stu Douglass combined for three points on 0-5 shooting. Those two players comprise 40% of this team’s starting lineup. That wouldn’t be so bad if this team had any bench production, but only Laval Lucas-Perry scored among the reserves, with four points on 2-3 shooting. You can’t expect your team to be competitive if only five players score in a game. You just can’t.

I haven’t even bothered to check if this team has a chance at postseason play (and when I say postseason, I mean the NIT or that other random postseason tournament that nobody watches), but at this point, I’d like for this season to mercifully end as soon as possible, so we can regroup, assess what went wrong, and gear up for next season. This team is clearly ready for this nightmare to end, as DeShawn Sims is the only player you could say has remotely lived up to expectations, and he’s an outgoing senior. Hopefully John Beilein can get this team to put together a few decent games down the stretch, Manny will reaffirm that he’s coming back, and we’ll move on.

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The normal basketball recap will be a bit abbreviated today, because, in the interest of full disclosure, my friends and I left the game with about ten minutes left when it was clear that Iowa had attempted to sneak a D-II team into Crisler Arena dressed as the Hawkeye basketball team. Instead, I’ll give my thoughts on an interesting weekend of Michigan sports.

After a week of practices that turned a lot of heads in the NFL, Brandon Graham earned MVP honors in the Senior Bowl with five tackles, two sacks, one TFL and a forced fumble. The week began with Graham projected as a late first/early second-round NFL draft pick, but his outstanding week has almost certainly solidified him as a first-round pick and one of the top defensive players available. I think Graham had to overcome the (patently false) perception that he was a decent player on a bad defense, and he exceeded the expectations of everyone who hadn’t seen him play at Michigan to show that he is, simply, a great football player. The only thing holding Graham back is his size — at 6’1, 263 pounds, Graham could be either an undersized 4-3 defensive end or a big, pass-rushing 3-4 outside linebacker. Personally, I think his future is with his hand on the ground, but a lot depends on what team grabs him in the draft. Either way, Graham showed this week that he is one of the elite prospects in the draft this season.

In basketball, Michigan beat Iowa 60-46 in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score would indicate. I’m really not sure how much can be taken away from this one — Iowa is now 2-7 in the Big Ten, with their wins coming against Penn State (winless in conference play) and Indiana (3-5). Michigan scored the game’s first 13 points, held Iowa scoreless for nearly seven minutes, and kept the Hawkeyes without a field goal until almost ten minutes had elapsed. We spent half the game joking that Iowa guard John Lickliter — son of head coach Todd Lickliter — looked like he had been given his spot on the team as a Bar Mitzvah gift. It was one of those games.

DeShawn Sims carried the scoring load early, and finished with 20 points (on 9-18 shooting) and 12 rebounds (including nine offensive boards), as nobody on the Hawkeyes could really check him on the block. Manny Harris also finished with 20 points, but that number is deceiving — most of his points came in the second half, and he shot only 6-16 from the field and turned the ball over six times.

Other than that, it was your standard performance on offense from the Wolverines: nobody else finished with more than six points (Douglass and Novak), the team shot poorly (36.2% from the field, 26.9% from three) but came up with a lot of their own misses (15 offensive rebounds out of 27 missed shots), and the only consistent offense came when Harris and Sims were creating for themselves. Michigan dominated on the defensive end, however, holding Iowa to just 17-55 shooting and allowing just nine offensive rebounds, which allowed the Wolverines to rout the Hawkeyes.

One final thought on the game: Zack Novak was in foul trouble for most of the game, finishing with four fouls, and when he was replaced by Anthony Wright it really showed on both ends of the floor. On offense, Novak gets his hand on seemingly every miss that comes into his area, and even if he doesn’t pull down the offensive rebound he makes the defense work to get the ball back. Wright tends to hang out by the three-point line and occasionally throw up a brick. On defense, Novak has solid positioning and displays the same tenacity that makes him a great offensive rebounder for his size. Wright appeared lost on defense and doesn’t rebound as well as Novak despite a considerable height advantage. In short, let’s hope Novak stays out of foul trouble from now on — this team can’t afford losing him against a competent opponent.

I was actually able to catch both hockey games against MSU, as this was the rare weekend when both Michigan hockey games were televised. Michigan salvaged a split, losing 3-2 on Friday at Munn and taking a wild 5-4 decision Saturday night at Joe Louis Arena, but the team was robbed of a chance for a sweep thanks to a very untimely whistle in the opener (from TBTYB):

So now Michigan has a man-advantage with just over two minutes to go and a chance to pull off a huge comeback on the road. Just after the penalty expired, Chris Brown was standing in the slot. The puck hit him and bounced down, through the legs of Drew Palmisano, and into the net. Like, straight through the legs of Palmisano. We’re not talking pinballing. We’re not talking the puck died between his legs but was still loose and someone jammed it in. It hit Chris Brown, bounced down, went right through Palmisano into the net.

Shegos somehow missed this and blew the play dead within milliseconds of the puck going underneath Palmisano. The whistle may not have gone until the puck was in the net (I’m not sure), but thanks to the most retarded rule in sports–the play is dead when it’s dead in the referee’s mind, not when he blows the whistle–you can’t review it.

That’s a missed call. You can see from the behind-the-net cam that the puck was never even remotely covered. And the guy who is widely considered the best ref in the conference–as if that’s not like saying someone is the prettiest ugly girl (by the way, there were options in the crowd tonight….for as many good-looking girls as there are supposed to be at Michigan State, they must have found every fug in the bunch during the crowd shots tonight….holy buckets)–completely blew it.

The same “intent to whistle” bull has cost the Red Wings a couple games this season as well, so sadly I wasn’t even remotely surprised when the goal was waived off. It was a terrible call, and I don’t want to exonerate Shegos in any way, but that rule is a black eye for hockey at every level it’s enforced — one of these day someone is going to get sick of answering angry emails and actually change the damn thing, and I hope that day comes as soon as possible. The controversy of the third period overshadowed a completely lackluster effort from the Wolverines — they couldn’t get any sort of offensive rush into the zone or set up a power play until the game was nearly out of reach. The goal that put MSU up 3-0 was vintage Bryan Hogan of the worst kind, a juicy rebound on a routine shot that was hammered home by (argh) Corey Tropp.

Saturday’s game was just crazy. Michigan appeared to put the game out of reach with three goals in the first period — A.J. Treais drove the net hard and knocked home a rebound to get the first goal, Chris Summers netted a laser from the point for the second, and Brian Lebler’s wrister gave Michigan a 3-0 lead heading into the first intermission.

Then State scored four unanswered goals. Michigan gave up an inexcusable shorthanded tally at the beginning of the second period, and Hogan allowed another rebound goal halfway through the period to cut the lead to one. State tied the game up just 50 seconds into the third period, and I think I speak for all Michigan fans when I say that I was resigned to a loss at that point. When Dean Chelios netted the go-ahead goal with a little under seven minutes to go, I almost shut off the TV. When Michigan took a penalty shortly afterward, I almost threw the remote through the TV, which probably would have been an effective way of permanently shutting it off.

Good thing I didn’t. On a seemingly innocuous play in the Spartan zone, Carl Hagelin made a great effort to force a turnover and took two shots on Drew Palmisano. The second shot bounced off to the side, where Matt Rust was able to hammer home the rebound. Just two minutes later, Chris Brown refused to budge from the side of the net, and whacked home the game-winner past both Palmisano and a Spartan defenseman on a great, gritty play.

This weekend’s series was a microcosm of the season for Michigan: very inconsistent play, a lot of chances, some soft goals allowed, and a weekend split. The Wolverines now are in great danger of missing the NCAA Tournament — Brian thinks Michigan probably needs to win eight of nine (or, of course, take the CCHA Tournament) to get a spot in the tourney. With Michigan’s shaky goaltending situation, I don’t really see that happening.

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Brian has already covered this in his latest Unverified Voracity, but I figured I would chip in my two cents on the piped-in music at Michigan Stadium, in the wake of Maize n Brew Dave posting his suggestions for what should be played over the PA (in short, a lot of 80s metal). Brian makes a couple great points in his post: it’s impossible to make 100,000+ people with widely varying ages and musical tastes happy with piped-in music, and what the music takes away from more traditionalist fans in gameday experience far outweighs what it adds for those who support it. Personally, I initially enjoyed the new music — the first time “Lose Yourself” came on over the PA, I got pretty excited. Then came a bombardment of “Sweet Caroline” (seriously, anyone who plays that song at a game, party, bar, wedding, etc. should have flesh-eating beetles inserted into their ears), “Don’t Stop Believin’” (ditto), and Bob Seger, played at 1000x the recommended volume for sound quality. So, yeah, the musical choices aren’t really adding anything to the game, except to please the (admittedly sizeable) Rick’s-going, fist-pumping portion of the student section.

Here’s my biggest problem with the piped-in music: it kills the crowd noise. This sounds crazy, as it was intended to have the opposite effect, but I can’t count the number of times last season (especially on defense) when the student section began making noise, only to be drowned out by the 657th playing of “Welcome to the Jungle” or some other beyond-played-out song. With the band playing, the students have set cheers, and the band has over a century of experience in knowing how to work the crowd into a football frenzy. I come to Michigan Stadium for the team, the experience, and yes, the tradition. Axl Rose is not part of that tradition. “Hawaiian War Chant” is. Let’s end this experiment while we can still say it was just that, an experiment, and a failed one at that.

[Steps off soap box]

In other, more directly football-related stuff, Markus has a great post over at Maize n Brew with some in-depth research on the correlation between defense and winning in the Big Ten (hint: having a good one helps), and how Michigan should go about developing their D. At The Fifth Quarter (the blog, not the crappy 18+ bar), JB breaks down Michigan’s needs on offense and defense for the recruiting class of 2011. I agree with him for the most part, except that I think Michigan needs, at the bare minimum, four offensive line prospects next season, after securing just one lineman in this year’s class.

On to hoops, where Burgeoning Wolverine Star, continuing his streak of not-at-all-depressing posts, ponders the future of Michigan basketball without DeShawn Sims. If you think our depth up front is poor now, you may not want to click that link. Hopefully, Evan Smotrycz can come in and immediately contribute as a power forward, and Jordan Morgan or Blake McClimans or Jon Horford (2010 recruit and brother of Al) or anyone 6’8 or taller can play a passable center. Ben Cronin being irreparably broken really, really hurts. For the lighter side of Michigan hoops, check out the WLA’s article, “The Ineffable Lightness of Laval Lucas-Perry,” which contains a Ghost reference and therefore I must link to it.

Michigan has a huge series with Michigan State this weekend (game one is tonight at 7 at Munn, televised on the BTN; game two is tomorrow night at Joe Louis Arena, on FSN and FSN-HD), and both The Blog That Yost Built and MGoBlog have the requisite previews. The Big Picture, courtesy of Brian:

This is the biggest series left in the season for many reasons. One: it’s Michigan State. Two: a sweep puts the MSU-UM pairwise comparison back in play; anything short of that and Michigan basically can’t win it unless the two teams meet in the CCHA playoffs. (And even then Michigan will probably have to get three points this weekend.) Three: Michigan can drop two, maybe three games in the eleven they have left and still have a reasonable chance of a bid without a CCHA tourney championship. Aside from the Wisconsin game, these two are the toughest left on the docket.

A weekend sweep would be huge for Michigan, with a win and a tie being the only other outcome that won’t cause me to die a little inside.

Finally, John U. Bacon uses the recent episodes involving Jack Johnson (whose GM, Ernie Lombardi, had some very harsh comments regarding Red Berenson and the Michigan hockey program) and Manny Harris (the suspension) to show how Berenson and John Beilein put integrity above all else, including victories — a very good read, and one that makes you proud to root for our programs. Brian (man, I link to this guy a lot — he must be popular) nabs a screenshot from The Wire (the greatest television show ever made) of a corner kid rocking a Michigan baseball jersey while selling drugs to Herc. I’m going to go ahead and say this is great, because The Wire is awesome, and ignore the connections between drug dealing and wearing a Michigan jersey, especially since this is a TV show. In reality, we all know juvenile delinquents root for Ohio State and Michigan State, anyway.

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