Just like the rest of us: Zoom calls with their teammates and whatever workouts they can do at home.
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I tweeted last night that they would need to play 11 games in 24 days. Feels unlikely to me. Donāt think it would be worth the health risk.
If itās true that we donāt make up those 4 games, then itās feels like a solid blow to our B1G Championship hopes.
Those 4 cancelled games were the 4 easiest remaining on the schedule according to Kenpom win%. The remaining @MSU game was tied with the postponed @PSU game, but every other currently schedule game is harder than those 4.
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MSU seems easy enough to make up to me, just play a B2B home and home the last weekend of the season.
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It sure would be nice if the conference would come out with some language relatively soon regarding a minimum number of games to āqualifyā for the regular season championship. That way if youāre Michigan you just focus on getting to that number, be it 18 or 17 or whatever. Instead, what I fully expect to happen is for the league to wait until the end and then declare a number, with Michigan being one game short but having the fewest number of losses.
I agree that 11 games in 24 days just does not seem possible nor smart to attempt.
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Access may be even more restricted than it was, but was thinking there might be an angle for a story. Would they talk through approaches they might have taken to the postponed games? How often do they meet? Are their dietary habits being scrutinized? Stuff like that. . . Personally, Iād be depressed and sinking into a couch with one of those tins of four kinds of popcorn!
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Michigan sweeps MSU on the last weekend of the season to win the Big Ten outright? SIGN ME UP
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I believe the current protocol is to wait until the end of the season, then whatever rule benefits OSU the most is implemented.
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Correct, access is limited in the sense that no one from the basketball team or AD has spoken about any of this on the record. I feel like the time for cute quarantine stories was a year ago. Iām sure coaches are trying to tell them ways to be positive about the situation but the really tough part for the players Iām sure is how much theyāve done to try to stay clear of COVID and got shut down anyway.
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This thought hit me last night as well. We pick up with ILL and then turn right around and @ Wisconsin. Could be at 3 losses and then we will probably be right back in the mix with everyone else.
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LOL. Just a guess, but I donāt get the sense that Michiganās AD will do what it takes to protect Michiganās basketball season like OSUās AD did there. Strictly IMO, but appearing to be at least somewhat ambivalent about winning is a part of the brand, even if that means disrespecting the time and effort and hopes and dreams of the players that represent you.
The suggestion that the Big Ten did something ābecause itās Ohio Stateā is ridiculous. Ohio State was obviously the most deserving team and they did the common sense thing and changed the rule (which was arbitrary in the first place). From a basketball perspective, thereās no equivalent situation because every team makes the postseason. The only similar situation would be criteria used to determine Big Ten regular season champ and/or Big Ten Tournament seeding. Either way, it would be nice if the Big Ten would announce how theyāre planning to deal with any of this.
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Iām thinking less cute than how much basketball, of any form, they can make happen. Can they do film by zoom, for example. Maybe those stories have already been written and I missed them. . .
no, Warde is hiding in his shell right now, have not shown any leadership in this fiasco.
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To me at least, it doesnāt matter if Ohio State was clearly the best team or not, even though I agree that the eye test was clear and everyone knew it. The point is that Ohio State still pressured the conference to do right by Ohio State, and they did it in public. Not behind closed doors. IMO itās good to respect the time and effort of your student athletes by being an advocate for them. Itās also a good way to retain coaches who want to compete and will have offers elsewhere before long. Itās easy to imagine how good the players and the coaches would feel if their AD went out and said out loud that ``these student-athletes have worked their butts off to compete and made so many sacrifices to do it and so they deserve a chance to stake their claim and itās part of my job as AD make that happen".
I donāt know what Warde is actually doing, so Iām not going to judge him. As a Michigan fan I certainly have built up a sense of dread about how good things can unravel thanks to crappy leadership, and this morningās news does give me a sense that it may be slipping away. But when itās time to evaluate how leadership handled this, I wouldnāt judge only Warde. Itās the relevant institutions as a whole.
My guess is that if he were advocating on behalf of his student athletes, heād be doing it in a very quiet way. I personally think there is nothing wrong with Warde calling a COVID-focused press conference just to say āthis is what weāre doingā, and Iām not alone there. Michigan could hire many expensive PR/comms consultancies and most of them would tell them to do precisely that ā get out ahead of the story, appear to be transparent (even if not genuinely so), and venerate the blameless victims (the student-athletes).
I also think thereās nothing wrong with tacking on, at the end, that advocacy for the basketball team, and citing the football precedent. If AD doesnāt have people in house that can come up with a brand-appropriate of saying all that, then it has done a poor job handing out generous salaries, and, again, can always hire a consultant to help.
(Or they can read this board and get that information for free, from, well, I dunno who but Iām sure someone here is banging on about it and should apologize for writing an essay here and then shut up and go get some work done)
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My point was just that we have no access right now. If we did, there would probably be more pressing questions about the decision making process and everything else going on right now.
Players can watch film on Synergy, they can zoom with their teammates, cook whatever they have in their kitchens, do bodyweight workouts and probably play a lot of video games.
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Whenever I tweet anything about it I get a bunch of Ohio State jokes but wasnāt the Big Ten situation pretty cut and dry given that Ohio State was undefeated and beat Indiana?
If Michigan finishes with a better W/L than Iowa and beats Iowa, I feel like people would revolt if U-M wasnāt named Big Ten champs.
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I see what youāre saying and I would definitely agree that the M AD could definitely stand to take a more public stance in support of their players in a variety of situations, not just covid related. In this specific instance itās a really tough spot. As opposed to OSU advocating to the B1G they would need to publically advocate the health department change their recommendation. Itās not an easy position for an AD to take.
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Agreed ā cut/dry. I did see the reax to your tweet this morning. But to me personally at least that doesnāt change what Michiganās AD should be doing about it.
Thereās not really a case to be made about who should win the Big Ten title right now, though? Right? Still a ton of games to play. I assume thatās why the league isnāt putting anything down on paper and just hope it works itself out.