Michigan is playing tonight with house money and that is a great feeling to have. They have gotten hot at the right time and being lead by senior point guard Derrick Walton who continues to make his mark on the Basketball World.
You can talk about plane crashes, white collar smack, or even the lose at home to a poor Ohio State team. Those are just temporary motivation tools, tonight and hopefully on Saturday, this team is playing for itself. A few months ago we were talking about them not making the tournament and now they are in the Sweet 16. This team shouldn't be here and I hope they enjoy every last second of the ride they have been on.
I haven't watched any Oregon games the past year, but I did see some of their last game against Rhode Island. The second half was a very hectic, almost non-organized back and forth down the court. It wasn't pretty basketball by any means and I'm hoping we see them panic again after losing their best player and big man Chris Boucher.
When Oregon plays within themselves they want to play very much like Michigan does but run a little bit more. Shoot a bunch of three's, get in transition, and get some easy buckets at the rim. This game will be more like Oklahoma State then Louisville for the Wolverines. Michigan will have to play great transition defense. I like the match of Coach B and his staff tonight. They really made a great in game adjustment against Louisville and I hope we see them out coach the Oregon crew tonight.
I don't know if Michigan will win tonight, but as a Wolverine fan I sure have enjoyed the ride the last couple of weeks!
- Michigan's Pro Day is on Friday and all 32 teams will be in attendance to look at a host of Wolverines eligible for the NFL draft.
- Friday is also the first Spring Practice. Will be great to start hearing who might make an impact this Fall.
2 comments:
Bob,
I am super excited for the game tonight as well! I totally agree that this has been an amazing, unforeseen ride for us Michigan fans this year and I am very happy to have made it thus far. However, I would have to disagree with you that we should not have made it this far. Towards the beginning of the year, I saw real talent in our players, especially from DJ Wilson when he went to work in the post and on defense and obviously in Derrick Walton Jr. as he is our biggest returning star. However the reason we did not seem very good early on is because our players really all just wanted to shoot threes all game. This is why we would often lose and when we won, we won big (90-60 vs. Indiana and 86-57 vs. MSU for some examples). But since then, while still shooting more threes than most teams, we have really found our rhythm and figured out when the three ball is really an appropriate shot. While sometimes I still get frustrated with the standing around that can occur on the offensive side, our defense has really stepped up, especially in some of the Big Ten tournament games, and when we are not standing around on offense, we really seem to flow. So while the talent has always been there, we have figured out what we need to do to win as of late and that is why we have won 12 of our last 14 games and why we are right where we should be. Go blue tonight!
What a great run.... Excellent end to the season. BUT DAMNIT do i hate to see someone take a 3pt shot when we're down by 1....
Personally, I would have tried to get a screen set to get Irvin the ball on a curl at the elbow, where he's probably 80%+... or drive to the damn hoop. I'll take our chances at the line with two shots to tie it.
Great season boys.
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