Get a grip, son. Seriously, get a grip. The word “projection” comes to mind when you start throwing around terms like that.

You’ll never convince me that Manny’s elbow was anything more than an attempt to clear space. It’s an offensive foul because he made contact with his opponent while doing so. Anything more is excessive. Your attempt to surmise the mind-state of a 19 year old kid is laughable. I’ve watched Manny Harris for two years now, and he’s not exactly a tidal wave of emotion on the court. Sure he had been bottled up that game, but please leave the psychoanalysis at home. It has no place in determining a foul on a “basketball move,” which it most certainly was.

Also, I have watched Beilein’s teams since he started and WVU and I know a former player of his from Richmond. Any assertion that he encourages or even tolerates this type of action is ludicrous.

The sky is not falling. At least not in terms of having a clean, hardworking team.

And Manny looked like a sociopath to you? You’re a prosecutor’s dream. He looked confused and a little freaked out, like “Oh my God, did I just kill him?” Probably because Kramer played possum for a good 2 minutes. I probably would have too, though. Also, I think the cut on the face was probably from Manny’s elbow. If that’s the case, he just barely caught Kramer with the elbow. If he really wanted to take him out he could have let his elbows swing out more.

Manny was wrong and should have gotten a foul. I doubt that this is an ejection at Crisler, which is probably more an indictment on the refs than anything else.

Kramer owns that space because he established himself there within the rules; Harris has to find a way out of it given the fact that Kramer established position while Harris’ feet were fixed.

We’re not talking about a brush-back pitch in baseball c. 1950. We’re talking about college basketball.

I actually liked Beilein’s attempt post-game to to rationalize what Harris did (i.e., the three ways to “clear space.”) What Coach B neglected to mention is that even mild contact via any of those three methods (clearing below, mid and above the body) leads to an offensive foul if the defender has established himself in that space before the offensive player’s movement.

If indeed Coach B has schooled Manny in the proper response to in-your-face D such as Kramer practiced, then he taught him the drop pivot. I’m confident he has done so.

Manny was aggressive with the elbow because he lost his composure. I watched the replay umpteen times. I listened to Jay Bilas on ESPN mount his high horse about what a disgrace this was. Yada cubed. Context counts here. Everyone seems to focus simply on the act, which is bad enough in itself.

In isloation in a game in which Harris was in sync with his shooting I would give him the benefit of the doubt. He was, however, obviously rattled by the D and frustrated, as the entire team has become as their season has fallen apart. The context of the game leads me, and most reasonable observers, to conclude that his reflex was to get Kramer out of that space hard.

I’m sympathetic to Manny. But he has lots of other ways to deal with that stifling D. As I wrote earlier, I don’t believe it was a conscious act. It appeared visceral. But his expression after the fact said it all. He didn’t care about what he did. I though briefly I was watching a sociopath. It was disturbing in a way similar to watching what happened on the ice last weekend, though what happened there was obviously visceral for the initial act and then completely premeditated and conscious for the subsequent slash/kick/whatever.

Coming on the heels of the Novak abomination (WTF was that about anyway… and against a mediocre tOSU team?!) this is really gutter stuff for Michigan basketball. When Beilein gets all of his guys in the program I hope that we won’t see this sort of thing. A month ago I never would have guessed this would happen. But it’s embarrassing for anyone associated with the university. And it’s completely deflating after initial promise in the wake of the Fisher/Ellerbee/Amaker clusterf&*# that basketball became ages ago.

I don’t like seeing Michigan fans attempting to justify it. Purdue has played stifling D on everyone else this year. So has Illinois and Wisconsin (the latter to little effect.) And so do they year in and year out. You never, ever see this sort of high hard elbow to the face happen in the conference. When there’s hard contact to the face there’s inevitably a very penitent offensive player dropped quickly to the floor to help the defender and make clear the contact was incidental. I defy you to find a comparable instance this decade in a Big Ten game of what Harris did yesterday. It’s a several-sigma event.

You’re deluded if you believe this was an accident. The proper response for all Michigan fans is simply to say that the two incidents that Michigan basketball players initiated this week were unacceptable under any conditions for a program that has any shred of integrity. And that’s it. End of story. We all should have learned at least that much last week watching the pitchfork-wielding rubes up the road in the wake of the hockey game.

To soft-pedal this or outright excuse it is simply to become a Spartan, in both the pejorative, historical Greek and literal (best-case) Lansing sense.

What Novak did was maybe thuggish on a comparable to Tropp (though far, far less severe; it was more along the lines of what Conboy did, though I think even less severe than that, if only slightly). What Harris did was not realize how close the defender was (he was clearly looking the other way), and accidentally clip him in the nose on a FUNDAMENTAL basketball move. That isn’t called a foul 70% of the time, is called flagrant maybe 5% of the time, and is absolutely not an ejection unless there is clear intent (and it was in fact clear that there was no intent). The nosebleed wasn’t even actually a nosebleed, the skin on the outside of his nose was cut, and if anything, Kramer’s acting job of flying to the floor.

He chose to clock Kramer. Check that, ’cause a conscious thought process probably didn’t occur. Instead, he instinctively clocked Kramer, who was obviously inside Manny’s head by that point.

And yeah, Kramer’s feet came off the ground. Deft acting job, as was the spontaneously gushing blood out of his nose.

I’ve been watching Big Ten basketball for many years. Novack’s puerile elbowing at the end of an embarrassing performance in Columbus and now Manny’s short fuse are giving the program a very bad name. These are two very serious and inexcusable acts. It’s akin to Georgetown in the late ’80s / early ’90s… except the Hoyas back then were actually a good team providing a home for wayward boys who didn’t know how to behave competitively.

This is as shameful and embarrassing to Michigan as the thuggish MSU player’s slash on the ice last weekend. Any attempt to excuse what happened yesterday at Purdue is ridiculous. Look at Manny’s face immediately after contact… a clear “Who, me?” sheepish look. No reflexive attempt to go to Kramer’s aid.

Thug. Ejection. Cause and effect. You guys are homers in the worst way if you don’t come clean about it.

The team is reeling right now and are frustrated. A mediocre OSU team eviscerated them the other night. Still, they were hangin’ tough with a very good Purdue team on the road. A little poise in the face of tough D was all the situation required. And Harris snapped. When else in the conference has this sort of thing (back-to-back) happened within the past decade?

Embarrassing day to be associated with Michigan.

The kid put his face out there and he got bowed…it is a physical game and it happens…it makes us look bad so soon after a real intentional elbow in the other case.