Via WD, every snap of Jake Rudock vs. Michigan. It is quite unimpressive, though I remind you it was debilitatingly cold and windy for the 2013 Crimes Against Manpanda Redux game, and he was a sophomore. There were three long plays in there. The first Kevonte Martin-Manley was WIIIIIDE open and Rudock's pass floated in (against the wind) slowly and inaccurately so KMM had to step immediately out of bounds. The second his receiver made a great play while double covered. The third was the one Avery and C.Gordon botched extraordinarily. The last throw on there was his best.
UPDATE: There's also an every pass vs Wisconsin.
To answer the guy in the thread, yes that is the game that inspired our most depressing shirt ever. My original shirt idea in the discussion that became that shirt was "Fuck it man, let's go bowling".
Transfers are Only Rare in Peace Time. As I partially experienced when they tried to tell me regular courses at La Sorbonne weren't French enough to count as foreign language*, transferring credits to Michigan is a bitch.
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| Transfer to Michigan for Victory! We're for winning the war too! |
Local community colleges like WCC or OCC have transferred often enough that they've smoothed this over, but random Division I schools are at best a crap shoot, and JCs for guys Saban couldn't get through Alabama admissions are right out.
For that reason more than its coaches' tastes (Rodriguez and Hoke both recruited plenty of JuCos before coming here), Michigan has taken extraordinarily few transfers over the years.
With five (Isaac, Lyons, O'Korn, Rudock, O'Neill) projected to be at Michigan this fall, Wolverine Devotee tracked down every transfer he could.
The short transfer list underscores the difficulty with admissions. In the last 30 years the only Michigan transfers not from like academic institutions (Stanford, USC, Georgia Tech, SDSU and Notre Dame), were freshmen from decent Ohio schools (Goodwin and Nienberg), one guy who was at Michigan previously (Evans), one guy from a local academic CC that sends a lot of students to Ann Arbor, and Russell Shaw, who is the lone exception to every conversation ever had about Michigan JCs and transfers.
It also has a bulge in the mid-1940s, when Michigan went all-in on active duty programs. Most notably the university created an intensive Japanese language school that took over East Quad, and was the wartime home of the national JAG program, which we housed in the Law Quad. Michigan gamely used these and the regular training school to siphon talent away from rivals in every sport. That's how we got Crazy Legs Hirsch out of Wisconsin, and Howard Yerges and J.T. White from Ohio State. Iowa Pre-Flight became a quasi-Big Ten team in the era by convincing stars from the region to enlist in the Air Corps.
Via the board there might be two more grad transfers en route before fall. Why is Michigan taking so many guys now (other than new coaches in non-Michigan places always bring in guys they recruited elsewhere to fill gaps?) Well one is grad transfers are a relatively recent phenomenon and are more like a normal admissions process for those schools.
For the rest, my best guess is during The Happening, Michigan had asked Harbaugh what ducks they need to be in what order, and one of his requests was admissions won't jerk him around. This happened at Stanford; in fact the school refusing to accept January enrollments cost him both RGIII and 2015 Heisman candidate Taysom Hill. This is just a wild theory, but "You could eff up our shot at Harbaugh" is probably one of the only football arguments you could ever make to admissions that they'd care about.
There is at least one transfer whom WD missed: 1997 co-captain Eric Mayes, who went to Xavier then transferred to Michigan and walked on, according to a certain co-worker of mine who's probably not ecstatic about me just pointing you to his old blogspot.
* (We acknowledge you read Voltaire in the original, but you weren't doing it to learn French!)
[Jump for Cazzie and a surprising stop in Brady Hoke's Offensive Vision Quest]
Stay in School: There's More Money?
Late breaking diary from freejs on whether staying in school to get into the first round is a better option than taking the early money.
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| No, Caris, it only looks like money. [Fuller] |
Conventional wisdom says an extra year on an NBA contract before you're too old is money in the bank. Well is it?
I studied draft years 2003-2013, and as the tables and charts show above and below** (props to our own LSAClassOf2000 for turning my sleep addled tables into these graphical displays), there is a distinct difference between length of the careers that start in the first round and those that start in the 2nd.
…and then Charts that say nope. The question is did he show all first rounders vs second rounders? Because one and done dudes are going to have long and lucrative careers by being good at basketball, a talent that also gets them drafted in the first round. To discover this you'd have to plot guys who left with eligibility and went later in the draft versus guys of similar ability who played another year of college (and went anywhere). There is no general answer, but it does seem from early results that the end-of-first-round types Michigan tends to produce from guys Michigan can usually recruit are better off staying until they're sure they're in the first round, because that first round contract makes you harder to get rid of.
What about the guy who built the place?
A reader I remember sending to Bolivia for screaming "Denard is gonna be amazing!" too vehemently before the 2010 spring game posed this question:
Choose one player, past or present, to add to men's basketball team next season?
If "anybody" you're in a Bill Russell/Wilt Chamberlain argument so let's assume he meant Michigan player. Lots of people said we need a five then answered Webber, even though Juwan was the center of those teams. Really if you answered anything except Cazzie you are wrong and need to not be so young and uneducated about your Michigan basketball history from long before I was born.
Before it became the Center that Martin Rebuilt and Brandon Took All the Credit For, Crisler Arena was known as "The House that Cazzie Built."
I know we need a center most, but imagine what Beilein would do with a 6'5 Jordanesque two. It's no contest.
Also retroactive over-half-a-decade later apology to white_pony_rocks for his trip to banned land. YOU WERE RIGHT. TELL YOUR SISTER… YOU WERE RIIIIIIIIIIGHT!
/dies.
So run the ball DOWN the field? /scribbles. Brady Hoke's Tour d'Offense that took him to Tennessee and TCU last week had him pop up in the last place you'd expect him.
After Oregon's players and coaches emerged from their closed practice came a surprising face: Former Michigan head coach Brady Hoke.
You mean Oregon State. Hi Gary, sorry we never got to…
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| Sorry about that beer, Matty. I'm off to discover what "blocking someone" is. [Upchurch] |
Hoke has been in Eugene for a couple days, continuing a tour around the country.
Huh. Eugene is definitely Oregon. Maybe it's about how they're adapting nose tackles to multiple fronts…
Hoke looked to be joking with head coach Mark Helfrich and offensive coordinator Scott Frost.
Helfrich: Hey remember when you had DENARD ROBINSON and you put him under center?
Hoke: Yeah hahahah.
Frost: What about that time you started Shane Morris over Devin Gardner because in four years you never considered Gardner's legs more than a sideshow?
Hoke: Heh heh yeah guys. Ha ha. Pretty funny right? That was pretty funny. [takes out notebook] So would you say it was funny because…?
I wish him luck.
What's a 5-star Wing? Diary from TaiStreetsMyHero attempted to answer the "Caris or Jaylen Brown?" question posed to the board with something besides the obvious "dude I'd feel so happy to have either!" As we do when 5-stars drop in football, he created a comparison of similar blue chips.
He found high variability centered far below what LeVert is now. If you figure Brown's a one-and-done, the smart bet is Caris. Again, I'd be so happy…
I did not expect the last two words of this headline.
OT - Dog Shot in HEAD with crossbow…
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…will survive.
Etc. I finally created a glossary for all the MGoJargon and added it to the "About" bar; discussion thread is here. If Harbaugh was allowed to open his mouth and say whatever's on his mind…oh right he does. Favorite Carr game (mine: 1997 Penn State). Godfather II poster is a work in progress, misses point of Godfather II I think. Instant replay is flawed because humans operate it badly.
Your Moment of Zen
Buntin came to Michigan because it offered the quickest route to playing time. Ollie Darden came because Buntin gave Strack's program credibility. And Cazzie agreed to come here over offers from everybody in large part because Darden and Buntin.