Sponsor Note. It's that time of year again! The time of year when, overcome with some nonsense on the final play of a game, you wander into the street after one or several too many and do regrettable things to BoJack Policehorseman that land you in the slammer. And I cannot emphasize enough: if this happens do you DO NOT CALL RICHARD HOEG, LAWYER.

Mr. Hoeg isn't that kind of lawyer. He cannot get you out of a jam. He does not know any bail bondsmen. He can file incorporation papers for you, which is of absolutely no use when you are being held in the county lock-up for shenanigans that, while delightful in the moment, are certainly illegal.

HoegLaw could talk to you about Michigan's prospects in the NCAA tournament after the precipitating events, and that's not nothing, but really if you're going to call HoegLaw it should be because you want someone to look over a contract, or draft one, or help you when an existing contract goes sideways. These are his areas of expertise.

So I must repeat: if you find yourself in jail, remember this number: (734) 263-1001, because under no circumstances should you call it.

TEN YEAAAARS. Ten years ago today on this here site:

MBB: So… you look good.

Tourney: Thank you, you may have, uh—

TEN YEARS, MAN! TEN! Where have you been for ten years?

MBB: I freaked out… hired Brian Ellerbe. Recruited Avery Queen and Kevin Gaines and Maurice Searight. Got put on probation for kids taking money from a Detroit gambling kingpin. Fired Ellerbe and hired a guy who took a Sweet 16 team that returned virtually everyone and added an NBA lottery pick to the NIT: Tommy Amaker. Recruited Anthony Wright and Kendrick Price and Reed Baker. Turned the ball over on every other offensive possession for six years. The one year I was going to be back everyone got injured and the starting point guard got suspended for some sort of domestic violence thing. Walk-ons started at point guard. Then I hired John Beilein. We have basically one guy taller than 6'5", we still have walk-ons at point guard, and we're here.

It is impossible to overstate how much different the basketball is now. It is very different.

If you'd like a less silly take on Michigan's first bid in a decade, The Athletic's Chris Burke may be your speed. You may remember that those rat bastards announced the field such that Michigan was the very last at large team announced:

A little after 6:30 p.m. ET, a good half-hour after the Selection Show began, Gumbel brought CBS back from break and introduced the South Region. The final quarter of the bracket. Realistically, there were five spots — seeds 8 through 12 — where Michigan could land, but at least two of those were reserved for the remaining mid-major conference-tournament champions and their guaranteed bids.

The 8-9 matchup came and went (LSU vs. Butler), as did the 12 seed (Sun Belt champ Western Kentucky). CBS’ graphic shifted down to the bottom half of the bracket to reveal an Oklahoma-Morgan State matchup at 2-15.

Gumbel kept rolling. “The No. 7 seed in the South, the Clemson Tigers, the seventh team out of the ACC. Oliver Purnell has now led three different schools to the NCAA Tournament …”

Call it a premonition, call it desperation, but as Gumbel read through his Clemson blurb, a buzz grew in the Crisler crowd. Maize Ragers jumped up and down, with shouts of “Come on!” and “Let’s go!” as if it were possible to will Michigan into the bracket. Sims started clapping along. Harris and senior forward Jevohn Shepherd leaned back, Shepherd with his hands on his head.

“… And they will face, coming out of Ann Arbor, the seventh Big Ten team, the Michigan Wolverines.”

I was dying for this whole period.

[After THE JUMP: a different world man]

A different world. That article embeds the last six minutes of the UCLA upset that was the first notice that something might in fact be happening, and it's a trip:

1-3-1 all the time. Nary a ball screen. Kelvin Grady.

OTTER UPDATE. First of all, kudos to whichever kid at the Daily Illini came up with this headline:

Otter Chaos: mascot referendum fails amidst online havoc

Inspired. But you're probably dying to know the events that could cause such a headline to occur. Well:

The Alma Otter mascot campaign hit a roadblock Friday; 52 percent of participating student voters voted “no” to adopting the otter as a symbol of the University.

The question, “Do you approve of making Alma Otter an official symbol of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign?” on the Spring 2019 Illinois Student Government ballot resulted in a 3,510-3,807 vote.

I've come around on the idea of Illinois adopting an otter mascot. All mascots that require several layers of explanation and still make absolutely no sense are excellent. See: The St. Louis Billikens. Alas, it looks like the forces of revanchism carry the day at home and abroad.

A man, a plan, hates Pep, Wilton Speight! Wilton Speight returned to Ann Arbor for Michigan's pro day and was uncommonly blunt about stuff and things:

“I thought with what they asked him to do, he did a really good job,” Speight said of Patterson’s performance last season, his first after transferring from Ole Miss in December 2017. “I know he, and I’m sure Michigan nation, are very excited for the handcuffs to maybe come off and Shea can rip it around the field. I remember that same type of scenario once Jedd (Fisch) left (as pass-game coordinator, replaced by Hamilton), it was like, ‘God, I feel I could do a little bit more.’

Speight was asked how difficult it was to feel hemmed in. During the 2016 season with Fisch, Speight threw for 2,538 yards and 18 touchdowns to seven interceptions while completing 61.6 percent of his passes. He played only three full games the next season under Hamilton but the offense seemed less fluid. Speight had to sit out the rest after suffering broken vertebrae in the Big Ten opener at Purdue.

“It is what it is,” he said. “The same guy in 2016 and 2017, I didn’t change who I was. It was definitely a little bit different. That’s why I was able to get back to my ways in 2018 and let it rip. I’m very excited for Shea to do the same thing.”

Speight also asserts that Harbaugh is not capable of subterfuge and that if he says Gattis is the guy then Gattis is the guy. I'm encouraged. I did not fully comprehend that hiring Pep was more or less hiring a Schottenheimer because of his time at Stanford. In retrospect: yep, Stanford is functionally an NFL team in terms of "should I hire this offensive coordinator." Gattis is emphatically not an NFL type.

The last decade means nothing I guess. Early lines for football are all six points or more in Michigan's favor, even, you know, that one:

.@betonline_ag released early Game of the Year spreads for the 2019 #cfb season. Michigan is a comfortable favorite in its 5 big games:

6-pt favorite at Wisconsin
6.5-pt favorite at Penn State
6.5-pt favorite vs Ohio State
8.5-pt favorite vs Notre Dame
14.5-pt favorite vs MSU

— Scott Bell (@sbell021) March 19, 2019

I find this baffling. Not only the OSU game but Notre Dame. ND ranks near the bottom of Bill Connelly's returning production metric, I guess, but Michigan isn't much further up the list at 68th. That the betting profile of a national title favorite, and Michigan feels more like, uh, Michigan.

The last decade means nothing! Beware your 5-12 upset pick:

Since then, though, there's been a sudden and abrupt switch. The last four years have produced:

2015: 0
2016: 2
2017: 1
2018: 0

The 3/16 conversion rate is *half* of the old conversion rate of 12 seeds. Is this a small sample size issue? Maybe! But maybe not.

— Kyle, Optimism Fan (@kyleinmke) March 19, 2019

People complained about bad teams getting good seeds and now the committee has largely fixed that. Ironically this has deprived tourney watchers of Cinderella Sweet 16 runs from the 12 spot because those teams are now a few seed lines higher and get tougher teams if they do get to the second round. Which they're not.

Bodes well. Always love to get some high school basketball stats that have a percentage next to them. That's a rarity but this article has Jalen Wilson numbers that are very encouraging:

After shooting 33 percent from long range on a combined 127 attempts as a freshman and sophomore, Wilson hit 41-of-105 3-pointers last year (39 percent).

The Michigan signee has upped that number to 40.5 percent while again increasing his attempts, knocking down 55-of-136 shots from behind the arc this season.

40% on 241 threes is a good sample size and likely indicative of a guy who can translate that to college since he's 6'8".

It's one thing to cheat and win. Josh Pastner has gone 8-10, 6-12, and 6-12 in ACC play in his three years as Georgia Tech's head coach. Incredibly, even this level of accomplishment has induced the following:

Georgia Tech has been served by the NCAA with a notice of allegations regarding alleged recruiting violations committed by former assistant basketball coach Darryl LaBarrie and Ron Bell, the former friend of coach Josh Pastner. The NCAA’s enforcement staff found two of the three allegations to constitute severe breaches of conduct (Level I violations), which are the highest level of violations in the NCAA’s structure.

Who could have predicted such a thing?

This could actually happen? Mark Walker, the congressman who's introducing a bill that would strip the NCAA's tax-exempt status unless it allows athletes to profit from their name and likeness, on the prospect of passage:

The NCAA should worry, because Walker isn’t alone. He says he has met with House Democrats such as Bobby Scott (Virginia), Cedric Richmond (Louisiana) and Hakeem Jeffries (New York) about this bill, and Walker expects bipartisan support. “When we get ready to drop this thing on Thursday, we’re going to have overwhelming support,” Walker says. “It isn’t just going to be a Republican thing.”

Walker's thinking on this matter was formed by some guys close to home:

The one-time pastor moved to North Carolina in 1992, just in time for some peak Tobacco Road hoops. About that time, he noticed what the Fab Five were doing at Michigan and, specifically, what the members of that group weren’t getting out of the deal. “They literally changed the face of the sport,” Walker says. And he’s rihgt. The Fab Five changed the way basketball players played and dressed across the country. And they moved a lot of merchandise without an opportunity to profit until they reached the NBA. Which was fine for Chris Webber, Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard—not so much for Jimmy King and Ray Jackson. “Everybody [else] was getting a piece of that pie from a profit standpoint,” Walker says.

I'd imagine that would pass the House. Beyond that, I don't know. But go this guy.

Etc.: Neal Patrick Harris loves the Gandy Dancer? Baseball is going shag carpeting on the ol' lips. Dual efficiency takes are meh. Quinn on Moe Wagner. Weather and [sex]. More on the implosion of Minnesota hockey attendance. The frustratingly almost of the latest NCAA lawsuit .