In its 9 years of existence, the Big Ten/ACC Challenge has been fairly one-sided: The ACC has won every single time. 2008 brings yet another chance for the Big Ten to break through in the Challenge. Through two days of competition, the conference are tied at 3 wins apiece (thanks, Illini and Hawkeyes, for throwing your games away). With a couple daunting games left (UNC/MSU, Indiana/Wake Forest), the teams who represented the bottom of the conference last year will have to sweep the ACC in order for the Big Ten to lock up its first challenge.

Sagarin Ratings in remaining games

• #129 Indiana visits #22 Wake Forest, and they’ll be 16.39 point underdogs in Raleigh-Durham.
• #83 Penn State takes on #58 Georgia Tech on the road, in a game in which the Jackets will be favored by 5.13 points.
• #23 Michigan State hosts #1 North Carolina at Ford Field. They will be 10.21-point dogs in the neutral-site game. However, The ‘Heels may be without their star, Tyler Hansbrough (who, of course, they’ve been without for much of this year).
• #46 Florida State goes to Chicago to face #59 Northwestern, and the Big Ten actually has a favorite in this one! The Cats are 7.06-point favorites.

…And that brings us to the game that Michigan fans care most about: the Wolverines head to College Park to take on the Maryland Terrapins at 7:30 tonight on ESPNU.

Maryland sports a #34 Sagarin Rating, and Michigan is #40. On a neutral floor, Beilein’s bunch would be a 2.36-point underdog. In a home game, the Terps are favored by 6.36. They enter this contest on a two-game slide against Gonzaga and Georgetown. Maryland’s best player is the outstandingly-monikered Grievis Vasquez, who leads the team in points, rebounds, and assists. His effective field goal percentage is 45.88%, which is supbar. Georgetown managed to shut Vasquez down, holding him to 1-7 shooting (0-4 3pt).

Michigan State

• Maryland faced Michigan State (on a neutral floor) in the Old Spice Classic, and beat the Spartans handily, by a score of 80-62.
• Michigan State, the only team Maryland has played with a Sagarin rating anywhere remotely close to Michigan’s, Vasquez still only shot 42.86 eFG%, meaning that he is certainly containable (of course, his 17 points were aided by the Spartans sending him to the free throw line 6 times).
• Michigan State lost the game against Maryland by giving up too many good looks from the outside. The Terrapins shot 9-19 from behind the arc in the Old Spice Classic. For the year, Michigan’s opponents are shooting 27.45% from three, including bad performance by UCLA and Duke, and an inexplicable 7-9 from Savannah State. For its part, Maryland’s performance against State was a pretty significant outlier in the young season.
• The Terrapins also managed to shut down Raymar Morgan, who to this point in 2008 has been MSU’s go-to player. Michigan doesn’t rely on a post presence like Morgan, instead shooting the ball from outside a lot, and getting slashes to the basket from Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims (who also posts up a bit).
• Although Maryland shut down MSU’s post presence, they don’t have a lot of size, and it will be interesting to see whether DeShawn Sims can have a bit more success down low (along with Zack Gibson) – or at least use the postup to open up shooters outside.

The Wolverines face a tough test, especially since Maryland shut down a team expected to be far better than them in the Spartans. However, the Terrapins haven’t been without their troubles, and Michigan is a different type of team than Michigan State, regardless of difference in talent level.

Go Blue, beat the Terrapins!

Posted under Football

As SMQ put it… And the rest of college football laughs and laughs.

At this point, it is clear Charlie Weis is not going to succeed as a coach on any large scale at the college level, barring a completely-unforeseen turnaround. This obviously affects Michigan, as the Wolverines play Notre Dame for the next infinity years.

In the more immediate timeframe, this means that Notre Dame commits like Chris Watt and Shaquelle Evans, who had considered Michigan late in the process, will remain off (metaphorical) board. However, even if Notre Dame reels in a good recruiting class for 2009, they are likely to FAIL once more in the next season, and it is more relevant that Weis is stockpiling talent for the next Irish headman (thankfully, not Brian Kelly immediately).

And now, some humor at Weis’s expense:
Tim: charlie weis retained, and there is much rejoicing
Paul: do you think it was because kelly turned them down?
Tim: i dunno. i think they didn’t want to develop a reputation of cycling through coaches before giving the new guys a chance, plus the buyout thing
Paul: so they’re giving them the five years?
Tim: yeah, they give everyone 5 years, with necessary adjustments for melanin levels
Tim: charlie weis just went on a recruiting trip to hawaii. do you think he had to buy 2 seats on the plane?
Paul: hahaha
Tim: i’m just sayin’. the cost of that flight alone might have been worth paying the buyout instead
Paul: he may fit in with the samoan population
Tim: they are at least athletic and fat
Paul: yeah… CW has one of two. that’s closer than he is to most athletes
Tim: hey man, MCL injury
Paul: true

Posted under Football

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Oklahoma	1
2	Texas	1
3	Alabama	2
4	Florida	—
5	Penn State	1
6	Southern Cal	1
7	Texas Tech	2
8	Utah	—
9	Boise State	1
10	Ohio State	2
11	TCU	3
12	Georgia Tech	5
13	Georgia	2
14	Cincinnati	2
15	Oklahoma State	6
16	Missouri	3
17	Michigan State	2
18	Boston College	2
19	Ball State	2
20	Iowa	2
21	Brigham Young	2
22	Oregon State	7
23	Pittsburgh	1
24	Oregon	2
25	Northwestern	—

Changes from Draft: Dropped Alabama below Oklahoma and Texas. Replaced Florida State with Oregon.

The majority of commenters though Texas should be ahead of Oklahoma (and believe me, I think they can make a legitimate case), but I stood by what I thought before. Dropping Alabama seems to now be fashionable (or at least acceptable), especially after the SEC took a pretty major hit over the weekend.

Posted under Football

Matt asks:

Though no BCS title game, if the Heisman comes down to a 2-man race (which it appears with Bradford and McCoy), do you think voters will vote the “I feel bad for Colt since his team got screwed” card?

I can’t really think of an instance where that sort of of logic has come into play. On the contrary, it seems like the Heisman winner typically comes from one of the teams playing for the national title. Of course, the BCS mess is as big as ever this year, and I also can’t think of a time where a team that got screwed to the degree that Texas is (in the eyes of some), all the while having a viable Heisman contender.

At this point, it appears that Sam Bradford’s performance in the Big 12 Championship Game will determine whether it is McCoy or Bradford who ends up with the stiff-arm trophy. Considering the quality of the defense the Sooners face (Missouri is 91st in total defense and 80th in pass efficiency D), I imagine Bradford will get the trophy.

An Anonymous commenter:

If Will Campbell does not enroll early at Michigan, can we take that as a non-commit?

He said he would enroll early and isn’t looking like he is going to… so we can assume he is not committing correct?

This question was actually answered pretty well by WLA-er chitownblue in the same comments thread:

Anon – it would likely mean that he hasn’t made his decision soon enough to enroll early. Nothing more. He never said “I’m going to enroll early, specifically at Michigan, and late if I go somewhere else”. The two (going to Michigan/enrolling early) are two unlinked decisions.

Campbell has stated his intention to enroll early at whichever school he picks. If there is no wind of his enrollment at Michigan by the time we would expect to know about this (and it would probably have to be fairly soon, as students are already registering for Winter semester classes), it shouldn’t be a big deal. The important question is whether it comes out that he is enrolling early at another school. If not, it just means that he won’t enroll early anywhere.

RJ says:

Looking at the video of Breaston in the NFL makes me think that we didn’t use his talents well enough at U of M. On offense Breaston, was never utilized the way that the Cardinals use him now. It seemed like most of the passes he caught were short.

The old staff tried to use Breaston as a deep threat, but they never managed to get him to catch the ball over his shoulder on the go route. He was used over the middle in his time at Michigan as well. Essentially (especially in 2006, where he was one of the most underappreciated members of the team), he played a slot role (with some combination of Edwards-Avant-Manningham-Arrington outside). He would be a great fit in the slot in the new offense as well, despite not being sub-6-foot. I shudder with excitement when I think how awesome it would have been to have him at QB in the current offense.

Griffin Fraley asks in the comments:

On your recruiting board for 2010, where did you come up with the projected star ratings for the players? I’m looking at this link: http://www.fvsports.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=372&ltemid=94

Just curious if you have any other top 2010 lists i can look at.

I started with that list, then added a bunch of other prospects from other sources, assuming most of them were going to end up in the 3-star range. As I’ve heard more about particular prospects, I’ve either promoted or downgraded their rankings. I have also used the Scout.com 2010 instate rankings and Florida 2010 rankings from SoFlaFootball and the Varsity Sports Media Magazine.

For the most part other than that, they’re wild-ass guesses from me.

Bob asks:

Does Michigan have an offer on the table for [Cameron] Gordon? On either side of the ball?

It’s been reported on the premium site that Gordon got offered sometime last week. Sam Webb confirmed it to the non-paying world on today’s WTKA recruiting roundup. This information will be included in the next recruiting update. Since Gordon has been insistent that he wants to play WR, I imagine they said he’d have a chance to contribute there, and switch positions if it didn’t work out.

Posted under Football

Of course, I’m no talent scout, but even the untrained eye can make a few observations on watching a few high school players go against good competition. Also sprinkled in are thoughts from Michigan HS football guru Prepseer.

Cameron Gordon
He won’t wow you with his speed, but I was surprised how good his hands were (especially after hearing they may be something of a liability). He was definitely Inkster’s go-to receiver, and made a few good plays and showed no fear going after the ball in traffic. Defensively, he showed that he can lay a pretty big hit, though he wasn’t a huge factor on that side of the ball. I still think that, if he wants to play receiver at the next level, whichever team he picks will see enough skill to give him a chance there.

Devin Gardner
Watching Gardner play, it’s really natural to think “wow, he should know better than to do that,” until you remember that the kid isn’t a Division-I player yet. Hell, he’s not even a high school senior. He showed good escapability and running skills, though he’s not the easy-strider that other big run-pass QBs (i.e. Vince Young or Terrelle Pryor) have been. At this point, he’s still improving as a passer, though I don’t think he was as bad as many people who had never seen him play before were expecting. Prepseer:

Gardner has blossomed into a 5 star recruit, in my opinion. I don’t kow what his actual Rivals rating is. As a Junior, he may not be rated yet. But, he has a number of BCS offers and I’m thinking he will be a 5 star when rated next year…

I predict he will commit before next season.

I’m not sure about his making a commitment that early (he seems like the type who will at least take a couple visits, if not wait until January or February to make a choice), but you have to like hearing good things like this about a definite Michigan target.

AJ Westendorp
Michigan fans have been talking about this kid a ton lately, thinking he might deserve a scholarship offer. After having the chance to watch him, I’m not sure he’s quite that good, but he’s the type of guy I’d love to have as a preferred walkon if he’s interested. He plays a similar offensive system to Michigan, with a zone-read option game and lots of horizontal passing. He is also a tough runner – he reminds me a lot of CMU’s Dan LeFevour in that respect. He could also throw well on the run. The biggest knock on him is his arm strength – he simply doesn’t have enough to earn D-I scholarship offers. Anything thrown past the line of scrimmage was thrown with a big loopy path, and the deep balls tended to look like ducks, and hung in the air for a long time. His strength actually reminded me a bit of Nick Sheridan, though his game was appreciably better in just about every other respect. Prepseer:

I don’t think he has great arm strength (something that could keep him at the Div. 2 level), but he is extremely accurate and he reads the coverage very well. Several times he would go to the third, even fourth receiver all while eluding the DCD pass rush.

He’s a smart player who would certainly warrant a scholarship if he had a much stronger arm. His coach used to be at Glades Central, and Rich Rodriguez has always recruited the muck hard. Maybe there’s a relationship there that could facilitate a preferred-walkon situation.

MSU Commits Bennie Fowler and Max Bullough
Fowler actually impressed me a lot. He had much better size than I was expecting, and pretty good speed, too. He’s a guy who will have to develop a bit before he is ready to play at the Division-I level, but if you’re Michigan State, those are the guys you have to thrive on. I didn’t think Bullough was anything special, until I looked at the boxscore and realized he was the leading tackler – in any of the state finals games. He looked really small to me, though of course it’s important to remember he’s just a junior.

If happened to watch any of the finals games, be sure to fill in your thoughts in the comments.

Posted under Football

Recruiting Boards: 2009 & 2010

Removed:
2009 FL CB Josh Robinson. Teammate of Vladimir Emilien commits to UCF.
2010 FL DT Todd Chandler. Commits to Miami of Florida.
2010 PA LB Mike Hull. Committed to Penn State a while back.

QB Devin Gardner of Inkster is likely to be one of Michigan’s top prospects in the class of 2010. His Vikings played East Grand Rapids in the state finals on Saturday, and we’ll hopefully have some video soon.

Some fluff from Sam Webb in the Detroit News:

His attendance this summer at the prestigious Elite 11 quarterback camp, sandwiched by camp visits to Michigan, Notre Dame and Michigan State, all helped to better hone his skills. “I’m stronger, faster, and my throwing motion has gotten better,” he said. “(The motion) is way higher than it used to be. Most of (the improvement) is decision-making, though.

There’s lots of talk about how awesome the coach at Inkster is. I’ve heard the same thing from lots of sources (many of them about 2009 WR Cameron Gordon) about Greg Carter. He seems to be a good disciplinarian and teacher of the fundamentals, and one of the best coaches in the state. More from Gardner:

“I think I can fit into Michigan real easy,” he continued. “They run the exact same offense that we run right now. I already knew the spread offense, but I’m learning (more). I’m doing everything better — way better. If I go to Michigan, I wouldn’t have to adjust that much.”

That sounds promising, but Gardner also has nice things to say about Michigan State and Ohio State, so don’t get too excited just yet.

I never really thought Michigan would have a great chance with 2010 CA RB Malcolm Jones (Michigan isn’t recruiting California as heavily anymore, the school is a traditional USC pipeline, etc.). I didn’t even realize, however, that he has an older brother at USC:

Sarkisian attended Friday night’s Oaks Christian High School playoff game. The Trojans have not yet offered a scholarship to junior tailback Malcolm Jones, the younger brother of USC safety Marshall Jones. Several Pacific-10 Conference schools already offered Malcolm Jones.

So he was already included on the board only tenuously – he’s now a candidate for removal at the next sign that he won’t be interested in Michigan.

2010 OH RB Erick Howard was going to move to Seattle but didn’t end up doing so, a factoid that, until recently, had confused the hell out of me. Well, now it’s a little more clear:

Howard’s mother, Ruth, wanted him to move to Seattle with her so he could spend time with his sister, who had just given birth to her first child. Howard resisted but followed and respected his mother’s wishes…
He missed his friends and teammates. He begged his mother to let him return… She was reluctant but eventually gave in.

…and now that makes a little bit of sense.

”Now, I always carry a pencil and I go to all of my classes trying to be as prepared as I can,” he said. ”I’m working toward stepping it up and being a better student and earning a scholarship to play football in college because my dream is to play in the NFL.”

So he’s trying to succeed through football, etc., etc. He was the district player of the year, and Michigan may get involved with his recruitment down the road.

2010 FL OL Jose Jose might be similarly unlikely to end up at Michigan (he loves the hometown Miami Hurricanes), but he is certainly a prospect that Michigan fans may find intriguing. Luke Stampini of SoFlaFootball.com brings the video:

2009 IL OL Commit Michael Schofield is playing in a high school all-star game in Hawaii. That rules.

Luk Stampini of SoFlaFootball.com on Pahokee 2010 Slot De’Joshua Johnson:

When De’Joshua told me before the game he was going to be the starting QB, I didn’t believe him. He does like to joke around a bit. After watching him play, he looks to be the best QB Pahokee has put on the field this year. Accurate passer, and when you have the athletes PK does, that’s all you really need to be as a QB. He doesn’t have the little things true QB’s have like knowing when to throw the ball away or when to tuck and run.

Verrry interesting. Might he be the type of guy Michigan tries to bring in to play slot, but giving him a chance to try his hand at QB first? It looks like some of the problems with his game at QB are a matter of inexperience at the position (aside from the fact that he’s 5-9, of course).

Ohio All-State teams:

Division 1
WR Michael Edwards (Cle. Glenville) 6-1, 180. 2009
OT Marcus Hall (Cle. Glenville) 6-6, 305. 2009
RB Erick Howard (N. Canton Hoover) 5-10, 210. 2010
LB Scott McVey (Cle. St. Ignatius) 6-1, 215. 2010
LB Jordan Hicks (Lakota W.) 6-2, 210. 2010
LB Jewone Snow (Canton McKinley) 6-2, 237. 2010
DB J.T. Turner (Massillon Washington) 6-2, 180. 2009

Division 2
OL Andrew Norwell (Cin. Anderson) 6-7, 275. 2010
DB Courtney Avery (Lexington) 5-11, 170. 2010 (QB)

Division 3
RB Fitzgerald Toussaint (Youngs. Liberty) 5-10, 195. 2009
DB Isaiah Bell (Youngs. Liberty) 6-2, 215. 2009

So, all of Michigan’s commits from Ohio were first team all-state in their divisions. Also: Fitz was the co-offensive Player of the Year in Division III.

Interesting comment from Black Shoe Diaries on Jelani Jenkins’s recruitment:

I have no concerns in this area whether we get Jenkins or not.

I’m sure it’s intended to sound so flippant, but it really comes off as though PSU fans couldn’t care one way or the other whether they land Jelani Jenkins. I’m sure Michigan fans don’t feel that way, and want Jenkins as the cornerstone of the 2009 LB class, not some cherry on top of it.

The new format for recruiting posts is still something of a work-in-progress, so feel free to comment on it.

Posted under Football

With the season over, there’s obviously going to be a shift in the content of the blog, as there are no game or opponents to talk about.

There are a few season-wrapup posts that I’m planning on making, and some reasons to be optimistic (or otherwise) going into 2009. On top of those, I’ll look at the similarities and differences between Michigan’s 2008 season and some struggles by other programs in the recent past.

Once all that is through, it’s time to delve (even deeper than normal) into recruiting. For the sake of consistent content, I’m going to start mixing 2009 and 2010 recruiting updates together, and having a singular “Recruiting Update” post that fills both categories. I’m also going to change up the style of the posts as well, so there is more information in the posts instead of “player name – brief with link” repetition.

The new recruiting posts will be published as they fill up, rather than being locked into any particular day. My prediction is that this will lead to more recruiting information. In addition, there will be more recruiting posts that are a little more than just updating the statuses of particular players.

And of course, as always, I welcome your mailbag questions, so send them in to the e-mail address on the right.

Posted under Football

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	—
2	Oklahoma	—
3	Texas	—
4	Florida	—
5	Penn State	1
6	Southern Cal	1
7	Texas Tech	2
8	Utah	—
9	Boise State	1
10	Ohio State	2
11	TCU	3
12	Georgia Tech	5
13	Georgia	2
14	Cincinnati	2
15	Oklahoma State	6
16	Missouri	3
17	Michigan State	2
18	Boston College	2
19	Ball State	2
20	Iowa	2
21	Brigham Young	2
22	Oregon State	7
23	Pittsburgh	1
24	Northwestern	1
25	Florida State	7

Oklahoma over Texas because: Against common opponents, the two teams were approximately equal in victory against Baylor and Texas A&M. Texas was more impressive against Kansas by a slight margin, and Oklahoma was more impressive against Oklahoma State and Texas Tech by HUGE margins. The Sooners’ schedule was also much more top-heavy, giving them a more impressive resume at this point.

Other potential problems: I’ll admit I didn’t go through and strictly resume rank at this point, though I may make something of an effort to do it over the next day or so. I don’t like having Alabama at the top, but because I haven’t done all the legwork in comparing resumes, I think it would be disingenuous to move them down at this point.

Everything else seems fairly straightforward to me, so comment away.

Posted under Football

Posted under Football

We’ve all seen glorious Facebook quiz that Marques Slocum put together. Luckily for us, the glorious union between Marques ‘Grand Marques’ Slocum and Facebook has not been severed. Rosey saw this pop up in his newsfeed and passed it along to me. For those of you with a login, login now and look at. For those of you who aren’t down with social networking:

Click for largeness

There are so many layers to this group. It’s like an onion that when peel away the layers it makes you laugh instead of cry. When my buddy sent me the link, I wasn’t signed in, so I couldn’t see all the info. The first thing I said to him was “Oh God, please let this be made by Marques Slocum.” He apparently heard my prayers because when I signed in, there was his name under creator. I couldn’t be more happy right now.

Posted under Football