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| Tony Ding / Associated Press |
Michigan has two games this week, on the road to Illinois and at home against Indiana. If Michigan wins one of those games, they will own the entire Big Ten Championship to themselves. Losing two first round draft picks to the NBA Draft and with All American Mitch McGary playing only a few games before going down with a back injury, many thought Michigan would struggle to even make it to the NCAA Tournament. We know now they are Big Ten Champs but like a tired 8 year old, they don't want to share anything!
Congratulations to the team and John Beilien and Staff for a wonderful coaching job!
Speaking of Michigan State, what is going on this year between the schools in Ann Arbor and the one in East Lansing. It's like Freaky Friday!
Michigan historically has been known as a football school. Michigan State on the other hand is known as a basketball school. Michigan Football this year started fast and ended very poorly. Michigan State Football started shaky, won the Big Ten and ended up as Rose Bowl Champions. MSU has also recently owned the head to head match up between the two state rivals on the football field. It is completely just the opposite of what we are used to.
Michigan State has been a basketball school since Magic Johnson and the coaching of Tom Izzo. Michigan Basketball has seen success in spurts but due to many factors, never were a consistent program competing at a high level every year. This year Michigan started out shaky with a true freshman point guard and an All American spending more time on the bench injured then on the floor playing. Michigan State started out strong as one of the top teams in the nation until they got hit with the injury bug as well. Now MSU is limping to the finish line of the Big Ten season and Michigan is coming off a Final Four and now are Big Ten Champions after sweeping the Spartans this year. Again the complete opposite of what we usually see or expect.
It feels pretty good right now, but not so good during football season. Let's hope both Michigan programs can figure out how to be successful at the same time and a consistent power in both sports.
2 comments:
Are you serious? Michigan basketball was better than State in the 80's and most of the 90's. If not for Izzo (the Ellerbe/Amaker era + sanctions sure helped him) we would be better than State in basketball. Despite all that, we still have 14 B1G titles to MSU's 13. Plus we still lead the all time series 97-76.
The KEY to Michigan BB success is putting GRIII in positions to contribute offensively. When his shot is on, let him shoot, but when it isn't, work him under the rim, slash cuts, ally oops, pick and rolls.. The games we stuggled happened when shooting was cold and we never adjusted.. The only way a cold shooter gets hot is to keep shooting, I get it.. but that doesn't help when the score is getting away from you. We need to adjust and put up points ESPECIALLY when our shooting is cold from outside the arc. Lavert's attacking the rim has been what kept us in several games this year.
GO BLUE! lets win the last two and close the r.s. out in style!
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