Daily 4: Anthony Davis, Michigan vs. Maryland, Red Wings, and Donatas Motiejunas,

1.  This is a Detroit sports site, but there’s a certain level of respect owed to a dude not named LeBron James who puts up 59 points on your team. Watching the unibrowed Anthony Davis score at will on the Pistons was like partaking in a guilty pleasure, like if I were to stumble in on my wife watching, say, Snapped on ID… (Where do you think I was going with that sentence???) Anyway, I ask her why she watches that crap while internally feeling a little concerned she might one day murder me. But when she’s willing to change the channel, I’m all like, “Oh, no no no no, you don’t have to change the channel, baby. My buttercup. I’ll suffer through this for you.” And I’ll admit here, because I know she won’t read this: It really does suck, but it’s also kind of entertaining to watch.

Here are some shitty highlights you might find interesting:

Relevant Side Note: Davis is about to have a $23 million contract clause triggered. That’s interesting.

Relevant Side Note 2:  Davis wasn’t the only athlete to put the ball in the hoop a lot against a Michigan sports team on Sunday. In women’s college basketball, Rachel Banham of Minnesota scored 52 points against Michigan State, breaking the Big Ten scoring record. 

Relevant Side Note 3:  Michigan State Lady Spartans still won behind Aerial Powers’ career high 40 points. Aerial Powers, no relation to Kenny or Austin (I don’t think), might be the best name in all of sports. Check that – it’s the best.

Relevant Side Note 4:  Michigan State wore pink uniforms for breast cancer awareness. It’s the third time this season they have worn the pink uniforms, and they’ve worn them in past years, so it’s nothing new, but you don’t often see the green and white in pink on SportsCenter so, yeah… I digress.

2.  Unranked men’s Michigan basketball lost a close one to No. 6 Maryland, 86-82. Down by as many as 16 in the first half, Michigan battled back to make a game of it in College Park, even leading at times in the second half. Michigan had a chance to tie the game with 18 seconds left in the game, but Derrick Walton Jr. got whistled for an offensive foul to give up the ball. The Terps knocked down their free throws to ice the game and add a blemish to that really nice John Beilein 80-plus points record.

Michigan had dropped its only other three games on the road against ranked teams by double digits, so with that in mind, a four-point loss on Sunday after losing to unranked Ohio State by 10 five days ago is a small moral victory if you believe in those sort of things.

3.  On the back-end of a back-to-back, the second one in seven days in New York, the Detroit Red Wings lost, but picked up a key point against the Rangers in forcing overtime. This was a great game aired on NBC Sports Network. The Rangers had a goal in the third period overturned and Jimmy Howard, who had a solid game for once this season, stopped a penalty shot with five and a half minutes remaining. Unfortunately, the Rangers would find the back of the net and it would count at 3:01 in sudden death OT. But hey, a point! Highlights here.

4.  That Pistons-Rockets Donatas Motiejunas trade… uh, yeah, it may not be a trade after all. The Pistons are struggling to find doctors who can give a passing grade on the big man’s physical because of lingering back issues. If Motiejunas a.k.a. Donuts a.k.a. DMo can’t pass a physical, the trade is void. The Pistons have an extension on getting him cleared or they can re-negotiate the deal, like take out that first round pick and make Houston throw in a chiropractor. Meanwhile, Marcus Thornton and Joel Anthony are just chillin’.