What could have gone wrong for the Wolverines in the past 80 or so hours did go wrong.
If the choke job at Wisconsin didn’t send most of the fair weather duds jumping off the bandwagon, the mostly comatose showing against Purdue (69-59) certainly did–at least until the duds get wind of a good battle transpiring Tuesday evening when Michigan State plays at Crisler.
Though a good battle seems quite unlikely.
Manny Harris, who was suspended against Purdue because of what Beilein called “an unsportsmanlike act” during Friday’s practice, might not suit up for the MSU game Tuesday (might not know for sure until Monday).
Talk about another buzzkill.
I mean it was horrible enough to see Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan so excited and carefree during the postgame interview with Charissa Thompson after his team scratched and clawed (hate that description, but it is the Kohl Center Badgers we’re talking about) back from a double digit deficit in the second half against Michigan. Maybe I haven’t seen enough joyous Bo Ryan postgame interviews, but he was amped, and I thought he might even cop a feel. At that exact moment I kind of liked Bo Ryan a little bit. His confidence and relief was inspiring. But then my attention shifted back on Charissa, and while she may not be Erin Andrews caliber, she’s deffffinitely cop a feel worthy. Not that I condone that kind of stuff. But anyway, I quickly forgot about Bo Ryan and now dislike him again.
Boiler Lay-up Drill
Then Saturday just hours prior to the Purdue game I’m wandering the internets while I should have been reading scholarly articles for my classes, and find out that Manny Harris is suspended. I talk myself into believing that the other guys will step up and give Purdue a tough game. Well, it started off nicely enough as DeShawn Sims was getting clean looks and just basically ballin’ it up. Then the lack of firepower caught up with the Wolvies, and the Boilermakers completely dominated.
After watching Michigan pretty much struggle to get clean looks the entire game while all Purdue had to do was move the ball around with very little dribbling and come away with super easy looks (lay-ups baby) for guys like JaJuan Johnson (majoring in organizational leadership and supervising) and E’Twaun Moore (same major as Johnson) I realized that more than ever that the Wolvies just don’t have strength or height to consistently compete with most of the superior teams in college hoops. And Manny playing wouldn’t have made a big difference today–teams (except UConn *oddly enough) now know how to attack Michigan’s soft defense and for the most part guard them as well. Sure the offense would have looked better with Manny, but the interior defense (perimeter too) is just awful at times. Too awful to win games against good teams. Novak and Wright trying to guard faster, taller players just isn’t going to work. Pretty much hasn’t worked all season. Novak’s a tough player but it’s a shame he has to play out of position on defense so often. Same for DeShawn… he can’t even depend on any minutes along side 6’10 Zack Gibson because Gibson is only good enough to play when Sims is not in the game.
*More after the jump — click Read More.*
*UConn beat #1 Texas on Saturday
Oh, and for the record, Chris Kramer also is majoring in organizational leadership and supervising.
Starting the Offense at Half Court
Throughout the whooping I became even more disgruntled whenever I thought of the possibility of not having Manny’s services for the MSU game. No doubt just like the Purdue game it is going to be difficult to win even with Manny in the lineup, but going against the uber-athletic Spartans without him is a disaster waiting to happen. As we saw against Purdue, Michigan’s offense seemed to get pushed farther and farther from the basket as the game progressed. Not until Purdue inserted some of their seldom used subs did Michigan find some lanes and easy looks at the basket. And anyways, teams usually begin to coast while they have a big lead at home—the game wasn’t really as close as the final score indicated. There’s no question MSU would like to crank out a nice 30 point shellacking against the Wolvies.
Run-on Sentence Warning
Hopefully more about Manny’s screw up in practice will be revealed soon, but all I really care about is seeing him on the floor Tuesday night because, essentially, Tuesday is the VERY LAST time these Wolvies will have a shot at beginning to make a serious run, and an upset over Sparty just might be what ignites this team.
Kelvin Grady?
Some slightly positive news: Point guard Kelvin Grady might rejoin the team as early as this week probably in what Beilein says is a scout team role. Kelvin is currently a receiver/running back for the football team.
Kelvin is extremely quick with the basketball and not a horrendous shooter, however part of the reason he left the hoop team in the first place was his less than spectacular defense, which got under Beilein’s skin to no end. It didn’t seem like a significant loss for the team from Beilein’s point of view, I mean, Beilein didn’t seem that worried about losing an experienced point guard that had some obvious skills to offer. Somewhat puzzling when you have to think Beilein had to have some reservations about the point guard situation (no experienced pg’s returning) coming into the season anyways. Kelvin probably would have helped some this season!
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