This Week’s Obsession: Alpaca Teams Outta Nowhere
I admit I didn’t imagine flautists in late March either. [Marc-Grégor Campredon]
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The Question:
Most surprising team to make a championship run, or most surprising player to be really good.
Brian: Cato June.
Ace: Stevie Brown.
Brian: Brown was pretty good as a senior as a proto-viper.
Seth: Ryan Mundy if we're going there.
Ace: All the safeties! Anyway, this basketball team is rather surprising, too.
Brian: I swear to god I will turn this post around and go home right now.
Seth: Brandent Englemon! Charles Drake! Jon Shaw! Willis Barring...I'm sorry what were we talking about?
Brian: I hate us.
Ace: SO, ZAVIER SIMPSON.
Seth: He could play safety.
BiSB: Has a certain Ray Vinopal quality to him.
Seth: They really did ask Don Brown this week if he'd take Z on defense and for a second his eyes lit up like "nickel..?"
Brian: Yeah, I don't think this team is as out there as some other contenders.
Ace: They’re pretty out there! This is a Beilein team that can’t really shoot that well.
The Mathlete: We literally wondered if they were a tournament caliber team during a potential championship season.
Ace: Midway through!
Brian: I mean, it's a weird configuration for a good team but I think that after the UCLA and Texas games the worst we thought was "second round exit," which... uh...
Ace: I’m on the optimistic side of Beilein hoops always and I was so damn worried about RPI.
Brian:
[After THE JUMP: Other things that went very differently than you thought this basketball season would go after Maui.]
--------------------------------------
Ace: The outlook after Maui was kinda bleak. Even just from a scheduling standpoint, and the team didn’t look so hot then.
Brian: Football is different because you don't really get mulligans. Maui in football means you don't get to play for a title.
 |
| Season saved. [MG] |
Seth: Unless it’s Ohio State losing to Virginia Tech.
Ace: What’s the win streak up to now? I don’t think it’s just that this team got to the Final Four, it’s how they got there.
Seth: Back to Maui, they lost to LSU and we were all talking about finding wins that'll let them play in the tournament. We didn't say they had to sweep UCLA/Texas but we said if they didn't they'd have to do something crazy like beat MSU at Breslin or go on a deep run in the BTT, and given Purdue and MSU this year that's not gonna happen.
Ace: Yeah, we were NOT looking forward to MSU. That said, once the defense really kicked in around then, the thought of a very deep run did creep into the back of my mind. And work its way rather quickly towards the front.
BiSB: When an overtime home win over a not-quite-top-50 UCLA team “saves your season,” your version of “saved” does not include a Final Four.
Seth: Then there was the end of the Purdue game. We've lost the track of this question but I'm still trying to think back to when it flipped from "damn we needed to get that feather" to imagining how we match up with Villanova.
Brian: Second MSU win.
Ace: I think the BTT is when it really flipped from “team that matches up well with MSU” to “team that’s flat-out better than MSU.”
Hello, mind-meld.
BiSB: In terms of teams making a realistic NCAA run, this is up there with anything. But I would argue that the 2011-2012 share of the Big Ten regular season title was more surprising.
Seth: In that Big Ten.
Ace: Thank you for bringing up another team. That one is way up there.
Seth: Michigan State and Ohio State finished #2 and #3 in Kenpom. Wisconsin and Indiana were in the top 10.
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| lol this happened and Michigan won. [Eric Upchurch] |
Brian: Hardaway took the most threes on the team and made 28%
Ace: Draymond Green and Jared Sullinger were in the league and Michigan started Zack Novak at the four.
Plus a not-yet-fully-salty Jordan Morgan at center.
Evan Smotrycz played half the minutes.
Seth: ...at CENTER
BiSB: Michigan basically played 6 guys.
Ace: Matt Vogrich was the seventh.
He was a glorified towel-waver/bassist the next year.
Brian: Michigan beat MSU because they shot 71% from two
Ace: Izzo had Draymond and that happened.
The most game-changing defensive player of this generation.
BiSB: They played such a short rotation that they broke KenPom. See their 8th most common lineup:
Ace: J-BART TAKEOVER
Seth: You know a Sparty brought up losing to Ohio this week?
Brian: Green played as a 4 next to Nix and Payne so he was just a regular ass power forward in college.
Ace: Well yeah but that’s kinda the problem, right? Also Payne/Green should’ve been DOMINANT.
Brian: Anyway, first Big Ten title since 1986 with 6'4" power forward probably wins for all sports. This year's hockey team has a case but it also has Quinn Hughes so it can't be as surprising. Also the hockey tournament is very very random.
BiSB: Also, Hockey Plinko
yeah, that
Ace: lol, just deleted the same thing.
Brian: If they'd won the regular season title that would have been an incredible shock. Getting in the tourney and winning a couple games is not on the same level. Although I should mention that Michigan was probably one of the worst teams in the country last year except for their goaltending.
Seth: We'd better bring up 1997 then.
Ace: yes, 1997. ‘M’ stands for ‘Mediocre’
Seth: If you're a Michigan fan above a certain age you still hear "four-loss seasons" in your nightmares.
Ace: Four-loss seasons, quarterback uncertainty, unproven coach, lack of a true star running back, no top-flight wideout…
Brian: Michigan was ranked 14th in the preseason AP poll in 1997, FWIW.
Ace: They started a JuCo transfer at receiver!
Michigan!
Seth: Fred Jackson was the OC in 1996.
Ace: Finish your drinks. The quarterback’s most notable moment was bashing through the window at Skeeps?
Brian: Michigan did have Tai Streets coming off a 700-yard season as a true sophomore.
Ace: Streets was good but I’d say he’s way down on the list of #1 receivers before The Bad Times.
Seth: It's not like we believed they'd throw it to him anyway. The cool kids back before the spread were three-wide and shotgun passing fanatics.
Ace: That team did need a historically good defense. It’s not like they blew everyone out.
BiSB: #14 had to be among the lowest Michigan had been ranked in the preseason in quite some time
Brian: I don't know if that's pro-1997 in this conversation or anti-.
Ace: Pro.
BiSB: It was more unexpected than a top-15 ranking would suggest.
Seth: It wasn't really #14 if recall so much as a split between voters who always put Michigan in the Top 5 because it's Michigan, and people who were paying attention and saw a program in decline and sharing a conference with monsters.
Ace: What was the spread of the PSU game? And by then Michigan had proven to at least be quite good. I know it wasn’t M -26.
Brian: We should probably throw in the 2011 basketball team here. From 1-6 in the Big Ten and When Can We Fire This Guy to being one Darius Morris floater from OT with Duke in the second round.
BiSB: Most surprising run to respectability.
Ace: Also had the GTFOOC win over MSU.
Brian: Also the Shawn Hunwick year in hockey.
BiSB: Hunwick has to be a candidate for Individual Alpaca Of The Year.
Brian: Hunwick has the two highest season save percentages in Michigan history and had the North Dakota game. He is the all time alpaca, any sport.
That's the equivalent of Brent Hibbits turning into Moe Wagner.
Ace: I remember seeing him come in early on and seeing absolutely no way he could be good. Too small, way too far out of the net, no way this is sustainable.
Seth: Spike Albrecht's national championship game has to get mentioned for single-game alpacas. How were you feeling when they called two quick cheapos on Trey?
Ace: Not great, Bob.
Different kind of alpaca-out-of-nowhere but McGary vs. Syracuse was so, so fun for a talented player showing off a new trick.
BiSB: I know we expected things from Denard Robinson, but Early 2010 Denard Robinson was beyond anyone's wildest expectations
Ace: That UConn game was face-melting.
also watch Omameh
Brian: Yes, the introduction to Denard period was electric.
BiSB: And the Notre Dame game the next week
Ace: Talk about a running style that’s alpaca-out-of-nowhere, too.
Brian: uh
this is a bad one
but Brady Hoke's first year
BiSB: Similar Sophomore leap for Trey Burke, too
Ace: Burke showed a lot as a freshman, though. That was the more unexpected bit to me.
I’m pretending Brian’s thing didn’t happen.
Seth: I think we've burned all the roundtables from HTTV 2012 after the Hoke Poops Gold year but just in case I'll go through my storage room again.
Ace: PRETENDING IT DIDN’T HAPPEN, I SAID.
BiSB: Ace is already texting in all-caps.
Seth: Okay well one thing that happened in there: J.T. Floyd.
BiSB: The Hoke: it appears with a quickness.
Brian: Remember the point at which his first recruiting class had Damien Harris and George Campbell in it?
Ace: Why are we doing this I wrote these hello posts?
BASKETBALL
JORDAN POOLE
slackbot: 
Ace: JOHN BEILEIN AND LAWNMOWERS
Brian: I'm just saying as far as Alpaca events go, Brady Hoke Outrecruits Saban is a good one. And a bad one.
Ace: PONCHOS AND WATER BOTTLES
Brian: A temporary one.
Ace: 
Seth: J.T. Floyd y'all. The guy who wasn't on the screen in the All-22 on any given coverage play to "here's this list of 1,000 yard receivers he's shut down."
Brian: I still appreciate Junior Hemingway after the Sugar Bowl.
Ace: Okay, I’ll give you that.
BiSB: Late Season Jack Rudock needs a shout-out here
Ace: Yooooooooooo, yes.
Ace: Mike Hart? Can I get a Mike Hart?
Brian:
attn: Alanis
re: ironyyou gotta check out Ace adopting Brady Hoke's texting approach to protest Brady Hoke
Ace: ugh
Nobody asked “who dis?” at least, so I’ve got that going for me.
Brian: <deletes half-finished sentence in huff>
BiSB: I would have preferred "can you type a little louder, I can't hear you," but "who is this" was acceptable.
Seth: The thing about Mike Hart: he was juuuuuuust below a four-star. He's between Brandon Minor and O'Maury Samuels in my all-time recruiting database, but people remember his a "3-star" because Rivals and Scout made their databases searchable.
BiSB: He also ran for a billion yards in high school. Just against crappy competition.
Ace: I mean we were excited about The Run but David Underwood was the clear starter and then this hilariously slow dude was running for a gazillion yards. I don’t think we were seriously considering “most productive back in school history.”
Seth: Underwood got hurt. And Jerome Jackson/Pierre Rembert got the next chances.
Ace: I know.
BiSB: It was certainly unexpected
Seth: Funny thing about that year is the other freshman, Max Martin, was pretty good too.
Brian: OK top five alpaca individuals for me
- Hunwick
- Rudock
- Simpson
- Early Denard
- Hart
Ace: Replace Z with End-of-Senior-Season Derrick Walton for me.
Seth: Wilton Speight?
Ace: …nah.
Brian: ah crap yeah Walton is better. How did we not mention him already? He's #2.
Ace: A very good question. That was an unbelievable run.
BiSB: Praise be unto Maverick Morgan
Seth: Should mention last year for our team list. After that blowout loss to SMU [Edit: I got my SMU games mixed up so let’s change this to when they lost at home to Ohio State because I wrote up that gamer] I can’t say I was ready to wonder if this team was going to hang a Big Ten Tournament banner and send Wilson to the NBA. #TYMM
BiSB: Brian, please leave Simpson off of your list. And then send him the list.
Possibly expand the list to 20 or 30. Include every Michigan point guard for the last decade. And still leave him off.
Ace: You know who really came out of nowhere? Dani Wohl.
sorry sorry I’m trying to delete it
but not really, forward to Zavier, please
Brian: The others merely adopted nowhere. Dani Wohl was born in it, molded by it.
Ace: Nine years ago, guys. I know that’s shameless but it constantly blows my mind.
…
(nobody responds for like half an hour)
…
Ace: Please don’t read anything else on that site.
Seth: I want to throw out a mention for the Rich Maloney baseball teams of 2006-2008 that got me momentarily into Michigan baseball.
Ace: I did seriously look for a Carol Hutchins team to mention but none of her success is ever surprising.
Seth: I'll end with a single-game performance: Lloyd's last Citrus Bowl.
Ace: Also: Lloyd getting carried off by Marques Slocum.
Seth: The enduring vision I have from that game is a weird one: Adrian Arrington catching a ball behind his hip. We were so conditioned by that season to expect only the worst things that going offense for offense with Urban Meyer feels like an alpaca even if it was really that team finally healthy and coached enough to do what they were capable of.
burn this after you read it
I remember when he started at shooting guard in 2012-13 to start the year and after like 2 games was immediately stapled to the bench in favor of Stauskas and eventually skinny Levert
the amazing thing is that, aside from the A & M game, this team hasn't played that well in this tournament.
I was a believer during the ugly stretches of the season becuase that Beilein February Surge is real.
"hasn't played that well in this tournament" on OFFENSE!
On D they've been "May just win the ncaa tournament" AWESOME!
that half the game.
I remember the Big Ten being pretty good in 2012 but when you mention it that way . . . dang. Also, that was back when you actually played most league teams twice in a season.
I forget how crazy that first B1G basketball championship was. Part of the reason is that I was more fairweather regarding basketball in that era. Though Morris and Burke were certainly drawing me in.
1997 was the first year in many where the season began and I didn't have real hope of a national title run. Nevertheless, I followed the season with more intensity than any before from the very beginning (helps to have some job money to buy tickets), and it was delightful. Even now, though, the offense doesn't look that impressive when you look at the players. Anthony Thomas was not yet a dominant back, and Chris Howard was pretty average. Tai Streets was good but not great, overshadowed in the post-Bo era by guys like Howard, Alexander, Toomer, Terrell, Walker, Edwards, and Manningham. Our OL was pretty good, but the offense spent a lot of time running into a wall of bodies.
But the defense.
In non-Michigan-sports, I have one that is waaay out of left field: Ryder Hesjedal, riding for the clean Garmin cycling team, winning the 2012 Giro D'Italia. Shocking and thrilling.
Seth noted the SMU blowout loss as a reason that nobody expected last year's team to make a run. But he mixed up his years. We actually blew SMU out last year the day after blowing out Marquette at which point we earned out only top 25 ranking of the regular season.
We did get blown out by SMU the year prior, but that SMU team was really good and we were not.
At least spell it right. Ruddock.
I feel like 5 years from now we'll still be talking about Maverick Morgan in the context of a player getting much better mid season. I also predict that at some point I will have completley forgotten who Maverick Morgan was and will have to google who/what Maverick Morgan is. I have already forgotten what team he played for and it happend like 13.5 months ago.
I never knew who Maverick was/is, who he played for, etc. Literally never heard of him outside of the context of him calling last year's M hoops team "suburban" was it?
But if his comments had the effect Mgoblog legend has ascribed them, he is absolutely one of my favorite opponents EVER!!!
So this year I'm watching the first msu game with a good friend who has no connection to M sports aside from our friendship and he comments (at a point in the game where we had Livers, Poole, Brooks - basically all the floppy fro guys - on the court, along with Mo & Duncan) "this looks like an inner-city team vs a suburban Catholic school."
So... Maverick isn't alone there!
White collar.
This year's tournament success feels attributable as much to a really favorable draw as anything. Put those offensive performaces against Houston or FSU against anyone from the top four seed lines and Michigan is watching from home this weekend.
I think the offense and defense work toegether, and that when they're struggling on offense they just lock down that much harder on the other end. And causality flows the other way as well, in that they sometimes are struggling a bit more on offense than they would if they weren't so committed to shutting down the other team.
Houston was a terrible draw. They were by far the best six seed with a 17 kenpom rank and they had been playing like a top 10 team for about the last two months of the season (per the fancy stats).
That was always going to be a tough game and the goal was to survive to get to what looked like a relatively easy regional with Xavier being a pretty weak 1 seed.
Yes, A&M beating UNC was fortunate, but we trounced them by 100 and would have beaten anyone that day (yeah, yeah, maybe we wouldn't have played that well against UNC but you can only beat the teams in front of you).
Florida State beating Xavier and Gonzaga was also somewhat fortunate, but they beat Xavier and Gonzaga and were playing great so I'm not convinced those other teams would have been a more difficult challenge than FSU was anyway. Especially if Killian Tillie was still hurt for Gonzaga. They probably would have been an easier team to play than FSU without him.
So yeah, we had a favorable region overall which we knew from the start, but really only the FSU game might have made a difference anyway.
Houston is indeed the toughest team we've played so far (and we needed an answered prayer to beat them), which is kind of my point. In an already weak region we managed to dodge the three best teams while looking like poo on offense for 3 of 4 games. We're pretty dang lucky to be here.
I think this is a reasonable take. This Michigan team is certainly good enough to make the Final Four regardless of match-ups, but its entire half of the bracket being blown up by the end of the first weekend made things more favorable compared to how the other half of the bracket played out.
It's worth recalling that in the Houston game, for all our terrible shooting, we had the ball and the lead (61-60) with a minute to go. That presents about a 65% win probability. What happened over the next 56 seconds was basically a worst-case scenario - we missed four consecutive shots (two of them layups) and were called for two dodgy fouls when battling for rebounds, allowing them to take that 63-61 lead at the foul line. Finally we caught a break with the two missed FTs with 3.9 left, but that arguably evened out our luck after what had happened before (and Davis was shooting out of his mind from the stripe before then).
So yeah, we won on a buzzer-beater, but if you'd predicted a 64-63 win with a minute to go in regulation, that wouldn't have surprised people. It's just the way that last minute unfolded that was unusual.
Those fouls were phantom.
Keep in mind too that the committtee had a choice between putting Michigan or Michigan State in Detroit with Kansas and Duke. We had one of the weakest one seeds ever in our bracket, but we also had to travel across the country and were meant to draw tougher first and second round opponents. Gonzaga and Ohio State were in this bracket too--they were good but also both pretty vulnerable.
My point is we had a good draw for a three seed and that was fair recompense for getting a bit duked in our placement--Michigan should have been a protected seed and wasn't because they ran out of Midwest spots for all the good Midwest teams. UNC was the real terror in this bracket and A&M got them on a good ol' fashioned crazy shooting night, which knocks out better basketball teams from the tournament all the time.
OK, regarding the 2012 B1G title again.
First, recall this epic post.
I remember when that went up. I thought the content itself was cool. But the best part, to me, was the feeling I got reading it about the program. The feeling that playing a really good OSU team wasn't just an automatic sacrifice, that our team belonged in the same conference as the elite. That for the first time in over a decade we were truly, consistently (we'd already made the NCAA tournament twice) relevant in basketball. Not that we were at the level of MSU or OSU, because I didn't think that was possible, but that we mattered. We were there too. We had a real program.
It was a great feeling.
Also a great feeling: beating those programs on the regular, winning B1G titles and tournaments, and going to Final Fours. What a ride.
Should mention last year for our team list. After that blowout loss to SMU I can’t say I was ready to wonder if this team was going to hang a Big Ten Tournament banner and send Wilson to the NBA. #TYMM
It was the other way around - we blew out SMU in the preseason NIT, and people thought we were headed for big things. Then we had that brutal stretch in the middle of the season.
The loss to SMU was the previous year.
Interestingly, if you read the recap of that SMU victory, it sounds a lot like an article from later in the year. Last year may not have been an alpaca but a Bactrian camel - high, then low, then high again.
Dude...Lloyd's Last Game, Citrus Bowl. I remember when ESPN had their bowl selection show, they confessed that they would start out with the games they felt were "locks" (and move to competitive games); obvious outcomes, so let's get the duds out of the way first.
Michigan v. Florida was the *second* game they previewed, it seemed in their minds so probable to be a lopsided loss. The Wolverines had other plans.
Don't know if I've ever enjoyed a game as much as that one. Even when it was close, you just had this sense that there's NO WAY ON EARTH Michigan is losing this game -- and that is a rare, rare feeling for a lifelong Michigan fan who's been hurt so many times before and since.
tim biakabutuka at OSU 1995 may be my all-time single player/game alpaca event
Excellent comment. I'll even see that particular game and raise you Biakabutuka, writ large. Guy was coming in after Tyrone Wheatley -- how could things possibly be better? Well, they were, if ever-so-sadly briefly. That was like Barry Sanders coming in after Thurman Thomas for OSU (NTOSU).
in the last 25 years and perhaps ever, right? Sigh...can we haz an elite RB please? Ever?
(I actually think Higdon could be elite this season).
EDIT: I am sort of correcting myself. A-train was a little more successful with 3900 career years (to Tim B's 2500). Tim B had a higher average and was probably a better player but was limited by injuries, IIRC.
Tyrone Wheatley: 1993 Rose bowl win over UW; 15 carries / 225 yds including touchdown runs of 88, 56, and 24 yds in a 38-31 victory. He would have had more carries ......... but he was cramping!
NFL: 4962 yds rushing over 10 seasons including 1@ 1046 yds and 1@ 936 yd seasons
Ron Johnson: Ran for 347 yds against Wisconsin in 1968. It was the 2nd UM game I had seen on TV; the first being the 1965 34-7 Rose Bowl victory over Oregon State.
NFL: 4304 yds rushing over 7 seasons including 1 @ 1182, 1 @ 1027, and 1 @ 902 yd seasons
I''d probably have Wheatley and Hoard higher, and maybe Ron Johnson.
Touchdown Timmy's 313-yd game came at home, not at osu
The 1997 hockey team was probably the best of Red's era, but they ran into a hot goalie in the Frozen Four and lost to BU.
The 1998 team had like a dozen freshmen with no expectations as Brandon Morrison et al decamped en masse for the NHL. No expections and the darkest of dark horses.
With the Frozen Four in Boston facing #1 Boston College, no one gave us a chance, yet on a bit of a fluky goal in OT, Michigan won the natty.
Even though Red coached for almost 20 more years, it was also his last.
You had me right up until you used the word "natty."
At the very least, Steve Fisher was an Alpaca. He went from assistant coach to National Championship winning coach in 6 games. After losing twice to Illinois by double digits in the regular season, the team beat them in the Semis.
Glen Rice had a great season, but he took it to another level in the tournament. As a sophomore, he averaged 0.1 threes per game at 0.250%. As a junior, he hit 1 three per game at 0.429 percent. Fast forward to his senior year and all of a sudden, he is GLEN RICE. (2.7 made 3's per game at 0.516 percent.) Yeah, the line was a little closer back then, but 51.6% from three is awesome at any distance.
https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/players/glen-rice-1.html
Send this to Z as is. Show him you put him on the list and took him off because you realized others were better. That outta light a fire.
Also - was there a Mario Bros 3 reference in there?
Man I remember being such a Vogrich fan that I was annoyed at freshamn Nik Stauskas for no fault of his own for like the first quarter of that season. This also explains my now wonderfully dated MGoName...
Oh, the memories.
last Citrus bowl. Man if he would have ran that offense during his time as the Michigan head coach. Sad.
Michigan basketball double digits BETTER than Michigan State. HAPPY.
Michigan 24 Ohio State 12. My Alpaca,Baclava and Maccalava.
so anally circuituous, so entertaining with all the right details.
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