Wow i didn’t even realize we played last night. I thought the game was tonight. I know a Friday game would be odd and rare but I thought it was. Plus playing sat then Monday I thought Thursday away was a quick turn around.
I’m not surprised we lost but I am surprised how badly we lost. I really like miles and Nebraska. I root for them a lot on the side. I think it’s cause i was very impressed with their atmosphere, particularly since their not a big program. Sounds like they were packed and active again per that Quinn tweet. If I was a player choosing between programs I’d certainly lean towards a rowdy environment like that. I don’t understabd the Michigan kids lack of interest. They have a great program with a great coach that plays an exciting brand of hoops. The maize rage should be backed in there.
Honestly I’m writing this off as a bad matchup and tough scheduling. To play 3 of the top big ten teams back to back like that I’m such a short time is exhausting. I thought they might win still because this team has been pretty resilient and has been good at rising to the occasion and playing consistent. Oh well, time to settle in and they must take care of upcoming games against what I think are underrated opponents. As bad as the big ten has shown, i still think northwestern, Iowa, penn st and minny are tough games. They will look like poor losses even though their not imo.
While the student section is light years ahead of the old days (pre-MR) when they were crammed into the corner, they can still do better. Also, I didn’t know student tickets were $15. I just figured they were more expensive.
I’m not so worried about the loss last night because I think that the way this past week played out was ideal for Michigan’s development this season. Win at Sparty, gut out a tough win at home versus the Terps, lose at a tough venue to a style (small ball switches) that the team will need to solve prior to the NCAA tournament.
Still have to take care of business against Rutgers on Sunday, though. Thiam, their 5-man, is definitely slender and athletic enough to warrant switching onto our guards and forwards, so I expect a similar defensive gameplan to the one Nebraska deployed.
Either the MAAR+Poole backcourt needs to come to fruition or Simmons will need to step up against switching defenses. I think Dylan nailed it on leaving Poole out there to grow through the mistakes. He’s your best answer to that type of defense, so his growth the next two months will be a big factor.
I still fully believe mental drainage from the schedule played a big role. However, in games like that, I’d love to see the defense just turn a game ugly and win it on that end. You can do that with Zavier out there to mitigate his offense.
I know it’s not part of “what we do” but am I crazy in being totally surprised JB didn’t make more of an effort to get Moe the ball down low last night? I just kept thinking that it would happen but they never even really looked at it.
Hit on that in the story over at The Athletic. Basically switching forces you to try to attack one-on-one matchups and removes flow. The mismatch in the post is the most obvious one and it is something every defense preps for. Nebraska was doing a great job fronting the post and helping on the back side which takes away the post but should leave something else opened.
Missed the last 30 minutes of game time yesterday, is this in reference to Nebraska’s lineup or did we play some MAAR at 1 and Livers at 5 lineups?
Our student section isn’t necessarily bad when looking at all of college basketball, it’s just so damn cookie cutter. There’s absolutely nothing that sets it apart from anything or gives a boost to home court advantage. Attendance wise (AKA why the upper deck student section hasn’t been full in 4 years) there’s a couple things that hamper it more than just being a football school. They should really consider putting ticket costs into tuition and having every game be free for basketball and hockey. Have promotions and give out T-Shirts, glasses, foam fingers, whatever to the first 1,000 students. The themed nights are cool, continue those while still doing generic stuff for other games.
The second thing is Michigan’s choice to make over 42% of its students from out of state. People who weren’t already Michigan fans going into college simply aren’t going to care very much about the secondary sport. At UNC there’s a law capping out of state people at 18%, creating an engaged and full student section even on winter break against crap teams in down years. I really do think that’s one of the biggest issues with the students. They’re “eh, I hope we win” fans instead of “losing this game will ruin my day” fans.
Yeah, the extra week off should be completely offset by having the earlier two games. I still don’t get how in the world we’ve had to play this mess of a schedule.
It truly doesn’t make sense even if it is for TV purposes. Big 12 has always done the Saturday and Monday turnarounds but then they won’t play again until that weekend.
I can’t imagine putting student in student-athlete during this Michigan stretch. You’re fully concentrated on Purdue then a road game at your rival. Turn right around Monday and then go right on the road Wednesday. I’m fully of the belief the mental fatigue is getting to them over physical fatigue.
It’s a shame the way the TV contracts have/had always worked because I think the Pac 12 does it right. Thurs-Sun playing two consecutive road games or home games.
“It started early,” NU forward Isaiah Roby said. “They were yelling at each other. You could see that, and we were feeding off it and the crowd was feeding off it.”
The out of state factor is something that is greatly overlooked and is probably one of the biggest. The out of state students tend to not even care about the football team. It’s more that the football comes with the tailgate.
Sure seemed like Braska helped the mismatched post perfectly; helping but not totally leaving the corners exposed. Would’ve liked to see some more off-ball action, while their perimeter defenders were distracted by Wagner vs Watson. Either that, or needed MAAR/Z to penetrate just enough to cause the corner defender to collapse far enough from Livers/Poole/Matthews.
Curious, though: do you think that Moe is pretty bad at establishing position against smaller defenders? And do you think our 1-4 are pretty bad at getting the ball to Moe? I know it’s never been a major part of our offense, but it was hard to watch.
No one yelled at anyone. They were trying to get on the same page and it wasn’t happening, and of course they had to yell to be heard over the crowd. Any yelling was just confusion. At least that’s what I saw. And part of it was that we tried some new lineups - and those combinations really didn’t know where each guy was supposed to be - on both ends.
Sure but there’s a lot of factors involved. The out of state kids from Michigan are often just people who go to Michigan because it feels like a good backup to an Ivy. Kids going to Xavier and Villanova are people who are specifically seeking out that atmosphere of school. I would also bet that a decent amount of these private schools don’t have a significant out of region student population like Michigan does. Everyone who goes to Xavier is from Michigan, Ohio or Kentucky. So it’s out state, but it’s not the same cultural difference as bringing people from Cali or New York.
And then, that’s all those schools have. So they fill the college football niche.
Along with the fact that most of these great schools have been better programs than Michigan for a significant amount of time. If Michigan had the success of Nova (or were even as consistently good as Xavier), I would bet the fan interest would be better.