Parick Barron
At halftime of an eventual 71-69 win over Illinois of late January last year, Izzo explained to ESPN sideline reporter Allison Williams: "We had guys not catching the ball, but I've got some weird guys in there right now." In the hall of Tom Izzo excuses it ranks primarily for catchiness—certainly not for originality. This past December, in a press conference explaining his team's loss to Texas Southern, he blamed himself for going easy on his tired kids, then blamed early foul trouble for Valentine and "not enough bodies left."
We love to carp on Izzo's alibis, mostly in wonder at his acrobatic rationalizations. We feel justified in doing so because we're two years removed from a national championship appearance and the best freshman class since thatone, and Michigan's spending a fifth of its minutes with Andrew Dakich on the floor.
If you're looking over the list of dudes you can draft for your daily fantasy teams, or are subjecting yourself to the "okay, let's have some fun with this" brand of basketball Michigan's playing these days, you've seen the going get weird. The difference in Ann Arbor is Beilein's entire career here so far has been the going getting weird, then the weird turning pro.
State, meanwhile, hasn't had Javon Bess since regulation of Michigan's visit to Breslin. If Izzo just happens to lose to a team led by freshmen Beilein plucked last April from Rice and Dayton, I'm sure the old knob will mention that in a delicious presser.
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