Sawdust And Diamonds
3/4/2021 – Michigan 69, Michigan State 50 – 19-2, 14-2 Big Ten, Big Ten regular season champions
I have now watched a year of pandemic sports, and I can say that the most surreal thing to watch with nobody in the stands is college basketball. This was made plain when I turned on the Baylor-WVU game, which was about 20% full, and recoiled at the strangeness of an audio record of whether things were going well or not. People were furious at certain things. It was a sad (and unwise) echo of the Before Times, and at the same time it injected a fervor into the proceedings. It felt like a top-ten matchup, or at least the ghost of one.
Alone amongst major sports, basketball puts fans directly adjacent to proceedings. Malices at the Palace do not transpire in other sports because there are barriers between athletes and the hoi polloi. Opportunities for portly gentlemen to confront and get absolutely wrecked by Jermaine O'Neal are limited.
This gives a basketball crowd an immediacy other sports lack. When you are close to the court the sport literally vibrates for you, each bounce of the ball resonating in your ears and feet simultaneously.
On top of that, a college basketball crowd puts several hundred dubiously sober students in prime position to mock, taunt, celebrate, wobble unsteadily, and wear varied animal costumes. The reduced number of games relative to the NBA, and the various ways in which you could succeed or fail heightens stakes. An NBA version of this MSU team is wondering whether it's worth making the playoffs just to get obliterated instead of clawing desperately to maintain a 22-year tourney streak. This turns up the volume further until a band-box arena in Vermont with maybe 3,000 people in it feels like a nuclear reactor during Championship Week.
Deleting that leaves you unsteady. The resulting season feels tangibly less real.
eight minutes to tip [Campredon]
When the confetti came down and Michigan paraded around a sign that said "2021 Big Ten Champions" I was happy, of course, but the emptiness of that building—the failure of several hundred people to appear on the court and mill around aimlessly—hit hard. A true and proper title celebration is far from the most important thing the pandemic has taken from us, but it could only be bittersweet to see Michigan be this team, to win this thing, 358 days after the 2020 Big Ten Tournament was shut down and Zavier Simpson skyhooks unceremoniously vanished into the G-League ether.
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You may have noticed that my output on this blog has dropped substantially. There have been more weekdays without a post from me in the past couple months than years-long blocks of time prior.
I have struggled. My weak connections to the people around me have been severed and the few strong ties leaned on unto their breaking point. A lack of reliance on other people has morphed from a marker of rugged individualism into a blank, gray loneliness. Existing addictions—mostly to video games, which I compulsively click at even when I am thinking about how boring this activity is—were exacerbated. Relationships strained. My personal life roiled until there was a sudden break. A look into an abyss, and a turning away from it.
I can't say the roiling has exactly stopped but at least I have a path I can see that leads forward. It is a repeated agony that it buckles and warps, cracks and shudders, rises and descends. Work gets put in and sometimes it seems like it amounts to nothing. But I suppose if Austin Davis can put Luka Garza in a blender, there is no depth that cannot be surmounted brick by brick.
This is a stupid and flimsy thing to latch onto, the actions of college players attempting to throw a ball through a hoop, but since a large part of this years-long slide was sitting on my computer staring at a football game I had no desire to comment on I'll take it and nestle it into place. Belief starts somewhere. An ability to take joy from other people starts somewhere.
Here at what feels like the end, or at least the beginning of the end, of being locked away from each other I have concluded that the only thing to do is get up in the morning and try again.
[After THE JUMP: a regular-ass bullets section! Like nothing even happened!]
BULLETS
The most accurate tweet. Ah yup:
Michigan basketball fans have the highest chill-to-stress ratio of any fanbase in the country. Michigan football fans have the opposite. These are almost 100% the same people. They're a fascinating psych experiment
— Alex Kirshner (@alex_kirshner) March 5, 2021
Celebrations. A brief roundup of things. Moe Wagner's instagram:
Mike Smith:
Mike Smith: "When I was on the ladder (cutting down the net), I told coach Howard I'd never been that high up and close to the rim."
— Daniel Dash (@DanielDash_) March 5, 2021
This hug got to me:
— ace (@AceAnbender) March 5, 2021
From Marc-Gregor:
[Campredon]
This was the best net-cutting photo but his entire set is amazing.
lol [Campredon]
Easy buckets and turnovers. Hunter Dickinson was so close to a monster game reminiscent of the first half of his season. Three buckets that were nearly back-to-back-to-back on Thomas Kithier looked and felt like the period of time he was putting in 75% of his shots. Going from Cockburn to Kithier must have felt like the first rain after a drought.
MSU didn't want to double because they got obliterated by Iowa when they swarmed Garza, but yeah even a wide open 3 isn't worth the same amount of EV that a virtually uncontested two-foot hook is.
Unfortunately, Dickinson had a spate of turnovers that were almost all unforced: a couple of fumbles out of bounds, a sloppy travel after receiving a post entry, etc. Getting a full-on Dickinson Smash game before the tournament would be nice.
Dickinson has also started to getting into some foul trouble because he's not being judicious enough at certain points. He picked up his second late in the first half when he switched onto Henry and Henry beat him with a jab step. Dickinson put his hands down on Henry for an and-one.
I'm sure this is an adjustment period as Michigan puts him in much more one-on-one coverage against guards and wings. Dickinson did endure a period at the beginning of the second half where everything MSU did was an attempt to put a third foul on him. They did not succeed.
First half ref show. Sometimes an ugly, foul-filled game is ugly and foul-filled because the teams are making it so. This one was not that. The ref show got started with Malik Hall's second foul, which was some harmless post jockeying after Mike Smith got switched onto him. A chintzy moving screen on Dickinson followed, and then we were off.
Bingham got hit on a post entry to Davis. Brown was called for a foul when he was vertically contesting Watts. Johns got a loose ball foul on a 50/50 rebound that fell to MSU anyway. Bingham got another ridiculous loose ball foul when Livers bumped into him a little, again on a rebound that fell to M anyway. Henry got hit for a mysterious foul when Livers tried to back him down. Johns got hit on a Langford screen flop. Wagner's foul immediately before getting elbowed was nonsense.
All of this was garbage that didn't need to be called, and when mixed in with a fairly normal number of actual fouls you had an ugly, disjointed first half. One wonders if there was a directive from the league office to clamp down given MSU's recent foul flurry and the Sissoko ejection.
And then the second half was completely different. Not everything has to be a Monty Python episode, guys.
a rare instance of chasing over [Campredon]
Ball screens: not for you. Michigan alternated between going under screens and icing them (overplaying them so that the ballhandler cannot use the screen) into one-on-one matchups with Dickinson. When Michigan went under MSU pulled up just once, when Henry (a 28% three point shooter) missed short and off line. This is something I probably should have called out in the preview: Henry, Langford, Hauser, and Brown have a total of 5 unassisted threes on the season. They barely shoot off the dribble.
Michigan did go over screens without a post switch a few times and gave up some looks at the rim. Livers in particular got driven past a couple times by hugging up on guys who are <30% three-point shooters. One of these was Henry's admittedly rad dunk. (Livers did offset this with a couple steals.)
Ball screens: for me. On the other end of the floor, Eli Brooks pulled up for three when Langford went under a screen before the first TV timeout. This was repeated by others.
MSU drop coverage was repeatedly exploited by Michigan in two ways: Mike Smith pull-up jumpers and dumpoffs to the roll guy. Turns out it's pretty hard to split the difference between the ballhandler and the roller when you are not easily mistaken for a mountain range, a la Kofi Cockburn. Brooks did put an attempted pass to Dickinson in the sideline when Bingham was out there; everyone else plainly lacked the size to deal.
The result. MSU took 31 midrange shots and hit 10. Game over. Henry and Langford combined to go 3/16. Some of these shots were incredible to watch. Rocket Watts managed to get an 18-footer up with 25 seconds left on the shot clock(!). He followed that up with a 15-footer with 17 seconds left after Dickinson switched on him in drop coverage. It was like the last 20 years of basketball had ceased to exist.
MSU's going to get some guys who can play on campus next year but I don't think a bounce-back is likely, at least not to the Big Ten championship contender level.
Brooks high off the glass. Eli Brooks has tried a wide array of tough shots this year, almost all of which have missed. In this game he was hitting. This shot hit the backboard here and went in:
Okay then. Look at this thing.
Zone blips. Michigan didn't use their zone much, probably because MSU was able to exploit the devolution into man a couple times. Henry would end up with the ball near the top of the key; Mike Smith ended up swapping into man coverage on him, and that ended up with a couple of easy buckets at the rim.
Later when Smith was able to get him to take a jumper it was the variety of jumper he's excellent at—one just outside the restricted circle. With two easy buckets in a handful of possessions (and another crossmatch against Eli Brooks that looked like it was headed the same way before Franz's gumby arms raked the ball out to force a turnover) it was clear that the zone wasn't a great idea in this game.
I think we can look directly at it now. Franz Wagner is now hitting 39% from three on the season. He's now hitting shots that seem like bad ideas, like the secondary transition three he took while seemingly off-balance, and off the dribble:
Oddly he seems like he's a little better a foot behind the line instead of right on it.
Computer says it's locked in. Bart Torvik's Teamcast allows you to project the rest of the season and see where you end up. Michigan's worst case scenario—back to back losses—does not budge them off the one line, or even down to the #4 one-seed. This is not a guarantee, of course, but Torvik has been pretty accurate historically.
Gird thyself. I don't think John Beilein's going to be on BTN much longer.
Hearing Boston College made a "strong" push for John Beilein, but he wasn't much interested. He does want to coach again, but there are expected to be DOZENS of openings in the coming weeks and he'll have his choice.
— Tony Paul (@TonyPaul1984) March 4, 2021
BC is keeping an eye on UM assistant Howard Eisley, a BC alum.
Brian Rauf is reporting that both Archie Miller and Richard Pitino are done at the end of the season. I'm at DEFCON2 for Beilein-to-Indiana. This feels way less bad since it looks like Juwan Howard is a home run hire, but it still feels bad.
Even the Illinois folks. Apparently the controversy about not playing a few of the worst teams in the league wasn't enough to swing the Illini fans away from a visceral distaste for Tom Izzo and company:
A little funny that there are kinda-sorta championship implications if Michigan loses and most of my feed is unabashedly happy that Michigan State is losing. Yes, let the hate flow through you.
— Steve (@IlliniToffee) March 5, 2021
It's earned.
Brian, you have been the voice of Michigan athletics for the past decade. We love you man. I hope you get life figured out.
Same sentiment! But does anyone have life figured out, especially after the last 12 months? If so, drop me a line: [email protected].
I sure as hell don’t have it figured it. Take it one day at a time and try to keep my sanity. I totally get Brian’s sentiment man. Hang in there boys.
Brian. Having 20% people in the stands is not unwise. 100%? yes unwise! 20%? perfectly acceptable.
I don't know ... If the 20% are all packed in the same 1/3 or 1/4 of the stadium and everyone sort of love near each other, don't really respect masks ...
To have seen that behavior live in some places recently. I speak with my experience.
Kinda like Alabama's campus "mass murder/super spreader" celebration after the National Championship back in January. Since then the COVID numbers have drastically fallen in the state because fractions and science?
That was outdoors. The people who cried bloody murder over that were over reacting. Not something I would recommend but the risk is dramatically lower outside
I think that's what they are doing as far as I can see. I commented on a couple threads in the past that I was very surprised that places like Kansas (evidence: Kansas v Baylor game last weekend) and Florida (evidence: the Superbowl) were as open about having fans in the stands. But those states are doing OK with regards to deaths per capita.
At this point, I think we know enough about the virus. And together with a concerted vaccine program, we can started opening things up. A 20% full sports arena is a worthy effort in this regard.
that's just a lovely piece of writing.
i've struggled with some of those same things. i never expected to feel the abject loneliness of the lack of connection with complete and utter strangers - i'm still marginally connected to the people i love, but beyond that, all are unknowable ciphers.
but go blue, or whatever.
i say that uncynically. this year's basketball seasons - both of them - have brought me real moments of joy, but i experience them alone, whooping in delight but hoping that i'm not annoying my neighbors as i do so. i experience this dichotomy of feeling practically simultaneously, feeling self-conscious and silly before the sound has completely left my mouth. i never felt that way, watching those events live, or, strangely, at home but pre-covid. i can't tell if it's because the unrelenting grimness of life in these times has beaten me completely, or if it's because i'm old and tired. it's probably both of these things.
anyway. i wax. nicely done, brian. thank you.
I hope you get it figured out Brian. I am someone who has done a lot of stupid stuff and should probably be dead. I was very close to suicide twice but I have finally come out on the other side. It wasn’t easy and it even included a job change that was scary but in the end totally worth it. It can get better.
Wow. Thanks for sharing your struggle. I'm glad things have worked out.
If your username is a tribute to the "Community" character - I feel obligated to point out that that sitcom has saved my life, so I'm glad to see it represented here.
a blank, gray loneliness.
Reminds me of Michigan weather January to March each year.
Ironically this was the sunniest February that I can remember, by far.
Brian, although we've never personally met, I have followed you religiously for 13 years. Please know that while you may sometimes see your work as meaningless, I can assure you that that could not be farther from the truth. You have given thousands and thousands of people an incredible source of entertainment. You created something where people can interact with each other and express all sorts of opinions, share information, debate, and create friendships. Many many gifted people will spend their whole lives trying to accomplish what you have done. Try to recognize that you've been given many gifts and thousands of people who you will never meet greatly respect and genuinely care about you!
Hear Hear theytookourjobs, Hear Hear!
MGoBlog is fucking legendary. Full stop.
Brian's writing is what got me hooked on the site since Flight Aware: RR version. Loved his content, analysis & humor. I immediately directed my M-fan coworker to the site and he has become a longtime regular contributor whom many of you would recognize.
I too have mostly quarantined for the past 12 months, especially having a couple members of my family with potential high-risk health history. I am so ready to break out of these shackles. But many good things have come out of this time; I won't bore you with details.
I appreciate all your work, Brian! (although I know you don't read this) ;-)
The thread title misregistered in my brain as Diamonds and Rust (instead of the Joanna Newsom song) and I spent the entire thread looking for Joan Baez connections. Would we say Juwan Howard burst on the scene already a legend? An unwashed phenomenon? The original vagabond? Is Eli Brooks calling from a phone booth in the Midwest? Did Sparty spend the night before the game is some crummy hotel on Washington Square?!
Damn. Judas Baez. Joan Priest.
Who's the Guard on the Half Shell?
Brian
your writing skills are incredible and the fact you use them to talk about my favorite subject (Michigan sports) is such a bonus. Truly this blog has been a blessing, even during the rich rod years.
I too have struggled mightily this year with anxiety. It is such a motherfucker. How unbelievable is it that we can’t control our own thinking??
Either way we all get up and we all keep going. You unfortunately have an added burden. You bring joy and happiness to thousands. Sorry. Please stick with it and kick the shit out of what you are dealing with.
Great piece of writing and appreciate the sentiment on human interaction. Last week I reached the pivot point at which the opportunity to work from home indefinitely even post pandemic (and a new home with a trout stream at that) was emotionally outweighed by the desire to be able to buzz by colleagues' offices for the informal five-minute chats that used to give me some tangible idea of what they're really working on and really feeling.
I've been accurately called and introvert and, with jest, a misanthrope -- but turns out even charter members of the He-man People Haters Club need some social stimulation.
As an actual introvert the whole Covid remote work thing has been great. I wish this lack of human contact could continue forever.
There are dozens of people at work and in the real world who try to force themselves into conversations with you all day long. Now, it's all gone. So very liberating. Those informal 5 minute chats when I'm trying to get shit done were especially annoying.
I think you partly missed my pivot point. I also used to begrudge these kinds of interactions (especially when imposed on me) but have come to miss them. But you truly may, in fact, be more an introvert if you've not reached that point. Or just have shittier colleagues ;-)
You think you miss them until they continue again on a regular basis. Then you'll wish you could take this comment back.
I'm sure you're correct, which is why it's so odd to feel that way.
Thanks for this read, all the reads and the open candor, Brian. MGoBlog has been one of my small escapes during the pandemic. I can relate to the strain and stress it has wrathed on relationships, productivity and mental health. This really is unlike anything pretty much anyone alive has ever faced. The last 60 days has been especially difficult as I think pretty much all of us have reached our breaking point with the pandemic "ballot fatigue".
Thank you so much for what you and your staff do, when I know there is a mental hurdle to get just about anything done these days. Hopefully you know this site has helped a lot of people get away from some tough realities, if only for a couple minutes a day. It really does makes a difference.
Some day soon, we'll all get past this. But for now, we all just have to take care of and be patient with ourselves.
Thanks again, Brian. Glad to hear you are feeling somewhat better, if only incrementally for now.
Very well said - and I second all of this!
Brian and MGoBlog have helped me get through one of the hardest years of my life. THANK YOU.
Like others have expressed, I hope Brian (and really the entire MGoBlog staff) understand how they've helped contribute innumerable positives to this crazy, misbegotten year. We all sort of recognize that in a time of stupendous uncertainty, mortality, and disruption sports are both trivial as well as essential, and the writing and coverage of sports through that lens has been invaluable. I say with deep sincerity that whileI've not always agreed with people here, I genuinely value the environment this site has fostered and hope it brings as much relief and enjoyment as it does for me. And I hope you, and any others, struggling with the fallout from the pandemic receive the support and care they need.
Michigan basketball fans have the highest chill-to-stress ratio of any fanbase in the country
Dunno . . . I was irrationally stressed about yesterday's game from the time the Illinois game was lost, and continuing for almost the whole first half. I had fears of getting swept by this MSU team and finishing in second place.
But it's true that the team has, on the whole, made being a fan pretty easy this year. Those monster 2nd-half runs do make things chill.
Always appreciate how open the mgostaff is. You all do an incredible job.
Personally speaking, the content this blog regularly puts out has helped me get through a hell of a year. Thank you for putting in so much hard work!
Hopefully we're nearing the end of the pandemic and we can all begin to safely reestablish some of those lost connections.
We're all in this together. Hope you and your family have a nice weekend. Hang in there Brian.
Cheers
It's been a while since the old zone defense days of the early Beilein years, but this zone to man thing looks odd to me and I can't tell if I just haven't seen enough zone recently or if I'm crazy. They get way out on the perimeter when the ball goes to the wings. As in, Langford gets the ball on the extended elbow and Brooks is right up in his face almost going M2M (he might actually be doing so) which then leaves a huge hole behind him around the FT line where another MSU guy slashes in so Smith has to chase down the lane and either gets caught 1 on 1 with a guy 4 inches taller than him or leaves the top of the 3 point line wide open if someone rotates over. And if the ball starts at the top of the key with a pick, both guards collapse hard on it which requires Livers and Wagner to come up to help on kick outs. It just seems like the whole zone gets pulled up towards half court and starts to look more like a 2-2-1 type deal with Dickinson setting the back line on his own. Making poor shooting teams shot over zones is a great approach, but I haven't seen this zone actually force that much.
got driven past a couple times by hugging up on guys who are <30% three-point shooters.
This was my issue with the Illinois game and some other situations earlier this year where Brooks and Brown (Johns too oddly enough) get up in guys' faces 35 feet from the basket. It doesn't usually have negative returns (plus it's fun to watch Brown live in an opponent's shorts) but in these types of situations there are quite a few blow byes that allow the guy a 10 foot downhill head of steam to the rim. Against guards that are a little iffy with the basketball it works well, but there are guys they should probably not try that on, especially after getting beat a few too many times.
I don't know how or for what reasons Brian has chosen to isolate in the past year, but I have heard him say on the pod that he's seen virtually no one for the whole year. My suggestion is to relax your quarantine a bit and get with people, even if it's just standing outside talking.
We all have made our own rules on how sequestered we choose to be. I feel like I'm more on the opened up side of things, but I do follow the mask rules etc. My wife and I have several couples/groups of friends who are less nervous like us. We try to get together with at least one of them each weekend. They come to our house, we go to theirs. We hug, shake hands, socialize, eat, drink, watch a basketball game. My wife especially needs this. She's a hugger.
Some people on here probably think this is reckless behavior, some don't. My point is we all have to weigh the dangers of getting exposed to the virus v. plunging ourselves into potentially life threatening depression by hiding from all social interaction. We are social animals. Even the more anti-social among us (and I consider myself one) do need some face to face human interaction.
Oh, and let me add that if you're interacting with people only online for hours of the day, that is actually worse than no human interaction at all.
Yeah, I'm not necessarily a huge fan of the broad "podding" language I've seen people throw out during the height of the pandemic (when I knew people who considered everyone at the bar part of their "pod"), but I agree that complete isolation during this time was never healthy. Our street largely agreed that we'd wear masks around each other but would meet for playdates in yards, happy hours, etc. And I was lucky because I have 2 small kids and a dog and a very walkable neighborhood, so I was usually out (with a mask) multiple times a day, seeing and interacting with others and it helped put into perspective that we're all sort of stuck navigating this as a people. It's good advice, to the degree you feel comfortable, of interacting with others in a physical way even if, weirdly, it's from 6 feet away.
I know quite a few people in town who have been like this. One friend has not visited her parents for a year because she's terrified of giving them Covid, even though she hardly interacts with anyone else, either. Another passed up a chance at getting the vaccine at Walgreens because she won't go inside a drugstore. At some point you have to be rational about things and consider what harm you might be causing to yourself via this level of deprivation.
In a way it's a crazy social experiment to see how different people react to a threat/public panic. The fear response is so powerful for some. My personal rubicon is I will not wear a mask outdoors while walking my dog or riding my bike, but some people are still doing it a year into this. The other day I saw a guy walking down a near-deserted beach all by himself, with a 25 mph wind blowing, and he was wearing a mask. That's just completely irrational, and you wonder when or if somebody that gripped by fear will ever take the mask off in public again.
What's it to ya if they don't?!
I'm sure I've posted about this several times, but the extremes of masking are darkly amusing:
- Statistically vulnerable people sitting maskless in a crowded indoor space for prolonged periods (restaurants with probably so-so air circulation).
- People insisting on masking when outdoors on a breezy day and several feet from the nearest person.
I don't get it. The book on COVID-19 has been out for a long time. We should have fully shifted the focus from disinfecting surfaces to ... avoiding bad air. There's a *huge* difference between a tight space and a basically infinite space (outdoors).
You know that it's been quite cold out for the last few months, right? Wearing a mask even when no one is around doubles as a scarf, it keeps my face very warm. People (very few) wore masks before the pandemic, they will wear them after it. I don't understand people who have to project their own insecurities, especially during a pandemic. Why do you feel the need to see someone minding their own business and label them as irrational and fearful? Doesn't seem constructive to me.
An excellently crafted article as usual. This site is full of gifted writers, and I appreciate all the work. Simply the best site on the Net.
When I started reading, this article struck me as much more subdued than it "should" have been, given that we just clinched a regular-season title. I figured maybe that's because you saw it as a given, but then I read about the personal stuff, albeit cryptically referred to. I hope it gets sorted out satisfactorily and you gain some peace. Thanks for keepin' on despite whatever's up.
Wishing you the best. Hang in there.
Interesting to hear open discussion of how tough it was to talk about Michigan football at times.
Setting aside the rather significant outside circumstances, this is something that I've thought about before. I am, obviously, frequently verbose on this board. There are times that things just easily flow in writing. There was, I think, some chuckling about my insta-essay-response to the Penn State loss, but the truth was that it was not difficult or lengthy to write and was ready to post in perhaps 15 minutes, some time before the game column was up.
But that stuff is easy. The thing is, I don't ever have to respond to anything. If a game stinks and isn't interesting, I can say "this stinks" and that's it, or, just as commonly, say nothing at all. When there was no sports to talk about and this place was ultra-toxic with *waves hand at all that* last year, I didn't need to post at all.
But that's because it's not a job. It's not always easy. Being a professional fan of a team that is sometimes not fun to watch is... very challenging.
Anyway, this was a good win. There are moments where things are good, and yesterday was one of them.
Brian (and Seth and Ace and Bry Mac and Dave and Rob F, etc) hope things are ok. And your families. Hang in there.
**
Good game. Big Ten champions. In the "wait for him to get his guys" year. Juwan is rather working out. MSU is struggling. Isn't that just a shame.
Go win it all.
I have been following MGoBlog passionately almost since the very beginning, since 2005.
And I am not a young kid with nothing going on, looking to fill a void. I have options.
I am here, and have stayed here, because of the excellence. It's is assuredly NOT a meaningless exercise on your part.
You built something outstanding, from scratch. I am witness to that.
That's a ray of warmth worth holding on to when the world feels cold.
MGoBlog is one of the few (only?) team specific cfb blogs that is still free standing. Brian had offers but he had the courage and the confidence in his and his colleagues’ ability to make it work. I forever grateful that this didn’t get roped into SBNation or something similar. This place is special
With respect to the weird first-half fouling, that felt like one of those games where the refs went in with the mandate to "not let it get out of control" (tm) despite little evidence that these teams were out for blood quite yet. And so it created a half where everyone was pissed and then the refs looked at each other at halftime, wiped their hands, and hung a big "Mission Accomplished" banner because nobody got into a fight.
I think we'll see a similar situation at Breslin, especially if MSU comes out ornery.
As for MSU's offense, it felt like an Izzo special. He'll absolutely incorporate modern concepts when he has faith that the guys running the offense will follow through, but if they don't install that confidence in him (and I honestly don't know if he's trusted a team less than this one), he doesn't quite know how to get them to function within their deficiencies. Like, even in the two big upsets they only hit 8 threes total (on 23 attempts) but shot 90 2's. It was some incredibly inefficient offense that was enough because they were able to smash their opponents enough to cause awful offensive performances from both.
I would be remiss if I failed to point out that, back in the day, NHL teams would occasionally go over the boards (with skates on!) after unruly fans. Some amazing fights are on YouTube.
Personally witnessed one of those back in the old IHL at a Muskegon Lumberjacks game at LC Walker Arena in the 80s. Players and coaches from the Flint Spirits went into the crowd. I think by the time it was over, the entire Muskegon police force was in the building. Luckily, that night, my buddy and I got seats by the penalty boxes on the other side of the arena and we didn’t become part of the brawl.
Brian; thank you for your honesty. I have always enjoyed your views when you are on WTKA.
Your comments on waking up each morning and trying again reminds me of the movie line Tom Hanks said in Castaway is that you never what the wind will bring in. The survival of how that character endured four years of isolation is an example of what some people struggle with in life.
Allow me to give you one tip of advice; exercise induces endorphins in the brain which causes more positive thinking and attitude. Go for a daily walk, maybe at a nearby park. Get that fresh air, even if it's colder than you would like. You'll get a small sense of accomplishment.
Thank you for this successful website. It keeps us fans together and a sense of community and that's big.
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