coachfight!
EVEN THEIR HEADS ARE IDENTICALLY SHAPED
IT'S HAPPENING. Butch Jones! Got fired! Fairly obviously! And his replacement! Is!
KNOXVILLE — Brady Hoke is Tennessee’s interim head coach with two games remaining in the regular season after the school relieved Butch Jones of his duties this week.
YAIIIIIISSS. And his next game is against!
CAJUN BRADY HOKE. Why does this make me so happy? I don't know! Will I be watching this game and rooting for Tennessee? Hell yes! Will this go very very badly and still delight me? Absolutely!
Seeds and tourneys. Soccer got the #13 overall seed in the 48-team NCAA tourney, which comes with a first round bye and a home game on Sunday at 5 against the winner of the Massachusetts/Colgate game.
Meanwhile, field hockey has made that sport's final four with a hamblasting of Northwestern.
The Goal Scorer! @emmatway #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/Bol1z0V3eu
— Michigan Field Hockey (@umichfldhockey) November 12, 2017
The semifinal is Friday in Louisville against Maryland. I couldn't find any TV information, so... I guess it's not televised? If anyone knows otherwise let us know.
Coachfights! It's been testy in college hockey of late, with two-count-'em-two postgame blowups in what's historically been a very chummy coaching fraternity. The unspoken rule about not poaching recruits that Joe Tiller thought was a college football thing—thus giving the world "snake oil" as a college football term—has been more or less real in college hockey since I've followed things. That's breaking down. Denver just poached a top SCSU recruit, and this was the result:
— GOHUSKIESWOOOOO (@GOHUSKIESWOOOOO) November 12, 2017
Clear f-bombs! Exciting! But not PRESS CONFERENCE F-BOMBS!
"I guess my first comment is I want to make it loud and clear that what their coach did...was a fucking classless asshole."
That's Cornell(!) head coach Mike Schafer being pissed at Quinnipiac's Rand Pecknold—who sounds like the libertarian villain in a terrible screenplay by a Salon author—because Pecknold argued with a referee that a five-and-a-game boarding call was embellished. Which seems like a not-great reason to go off.
Baseball's recruiting is on the uptick. MGoFish has an extensive breakdown of Michigan's latest class, which is ranked #23 by Perfect Game and features pitcher Steven Hajjar:
Steven Hajjar, North Andover, MA (Central Catholic); @StevenHajjar
Hajjar is probably my favorite signee, and for a few reasons. Like mine, his last name is confusing to spell and probably gives people fits. He was committed to Maryland as recently as July and flipped to Michigan. He somehow has a GPA of 4.4 and got a 1330 on his SATs. And he is really freaking good at baseball. At the July Perfect Game National Showcase, his scouting report was a perfect 10/10, hitting as high as 93 on the gun as well as a slider that “was very consistent with plenty of depth and biting action” that can get up to 79 mph. His mechanics remind me of fellow Michigan pitcher Rich Hill, who had an excellent postseason for the Dodgers. Unconventional, but wicked offspeed pitches make hitters look foolish. Combine those mechanics with a 6′ 4″ frame and long arms and hitters will feel that the ball is being released from about 50 feet away. Good luck.
It is extremely difficult for northern schools to get all the good croots because of the ridiculous schedule they have to play; Michigan is the only team north of the Mason-Dixon line in the top 25. #38 Indiana, #42 Penn State, and #43 Maryland are Michigan's closest Big Ten competitors on Perfect Game.
Ann Arbor Urban Planning Moment. I generally like Ryan Stanton's work for MLive but I find the framing of this article to be horrendous:
Ann Arbor facing potential loss of hundreds of public parking spaces
The potential loss of those spaces is because the city's lease on two downtown surface parking lots is about to expire, and the owners of that property—First Martin, which is an advertiser FWIW—are likely to put in big D1-zoned buildings. Which was the veritable goal of a decade-long density-encouraging rezoning process. Large buildings have housing, retail, provide tax revenue, and reduce commuting to downtown offices. Surface parking lots... are there.
Incessant parking complaints from the local olds continue to baffle me. I've lived in Ann Arbor for 20 years and gone downtown several times a week at all hours and almost never even think about parking in a structure because whenever I drive up Division most of the spots are open—and that's if it's a relatively high-traffic night and I'm not aiming for something a bit closer. I do tend to avoid going downtown on Friday and Saturday nights but when I do the downside is I am parking in a structure with hundreds of open spots.
The structures get jammed during the day when work commuters arrive, which is only a problem for work commuters. Ann Arbor should ignore the concerns of people who must come downtown, because they will find alternatives like Park and Ride if forced, while keeping might come downtown people relatively happy. Which they should be unless they think parking three blocks away is a travesty.
Etc.: AFC Ann Arbor memberships available for 2018. Jim Hackett and Paul Tagliabue are speaking at the Ford School at 4 PM if you're interested in swim lanes and good coach hirin'. And Paul Tagliabue. Michigan signs five basketballists, talks about them. Hoover Street Rag on Maryland. Z/X Simpson emerging.
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