This is the only time (barring significant developments) that I’ll mention Greg Paulus today. He has been offered, wait no he hasn’t, the NCAA would have to grant him a waiver to participate (and they probably would). I think it’s a good idea, because he won’t beat out Tate, and it just adds depth while giving him a chance to continue his sports career, etc. Also, look at all the positive press it got Michigan over the past couple days (before Tate Forcier had to run his mouth about it). “Greg Paulus played basketball at Duke” could be the new “Tom Zbikowski is a boxer” or “James Laurinaitis’s dad is a former pro wrestler.” I guess “Jason Forcier tansferred back after going to Stanford for two years” could be similarly fluffy (and Jason would probably have more of a chance to be effective than Paulus).

If it happens, I’ll cover it. Otherwise, I’m really sick of seeing all the idiotic articles by columnists and similarly stupid writers. These people get paid to put out drivel like that. It’s pathetic, really.

Posted under Football, Personnel

As time goes by, it seems more and more inevitable that SC QB Cornelius Jones might pick Michigan. He’s going to visit this summer.

Removed VA QB Phillip Sims. He committed to Alabama, relieving me of my responsibility of looking for excuses to drop him. I’m comin’ for you next, Heaps.

ESPN recruiting fluff on GA RB Mack Brown. From the article it appears as though he’s more of a speed back than a big back, which I had previously pegged him as. Still, with 2 backs in the class, I wouldn’t be surprised if the coaching staff holds out for Marcus Lattimore or bust (“bust” here meaning “Austin White/Nick Hill“). Additional Brown mini-fluff from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

MD RB Marcus Coker, who was part of the mass offering of DeMatha players last week, has now confirmed that he’s received an offer from the Wolverines (info in header). Still no definitive word on any of the other four guys.

I’d kinda pegged IL TE CJ Fiedorowicz as a Notre Dame lock, but it appears as though he’s favoring Iowa and Ohio State at this point. Michigan doesn’t seem to be in the thick of his recruitment, but he’d be an awesome weapon in the spread offense.

OH DE Darryl Baldwin was scheduled to visit Ann Arbor on Monday, though there haven’t been any (free) reports on whether said visit was positive or not.

Michigan is still showing interest in IL DE Louis Trinca-Pasat. Sun-Times fluff on Trinca and his teammate OL Laken Tomlinson. I’ve added Tomlinson to the board.

It’s almost difficult to NOT read the tea leaves, as each day brings further evidence (in header) that FL S Marvin Robinson is going to commit to the Wolverines, and do so sometime soon. That would (hopefully) open the floodgates a bit for some other defensive recruits to hop on board. Speaking of which, Josh Helmholdt goes over the spoils of the spring game in the Freep, including a tidbit on Marvin:

“I love the Michigan fans and I love the support they give their players,” Columbus (Ohio) Brookhaven defensive end Derrick Bryant remarked. “I was thinking some college stadiums don’t have that many people that come for a regular game and they had that many people for a scrimmage.”

“It was definitely a great environment to see all the people there supporting Michigan,” added Livonia Stevenson running back Austin White…

The recruiting results of Michigan’s spring game weekend could be immediately seen with the Saturday commitment of Flower Mound (Tex.) Marcus running back Stephen Hopkins. Several more players, however, elevated Michigan on their list of favorites following visits this past weekend.

[Torrian] Wilson, a 6-4, 315-pound offensive lineman ranked as the No. 131 player in the country by Rivals.com, named Michigan his leader after finishing up a five-day visit in Michigan. Eagle Lake (Fla.) Lake Region four-star safety Marvin Robinson, the No. 99 player in the country according to Rivals.com, also named the Wolverines as his top team and expects to make his commitment official in the next 2-3 weeks.

The Wolverines were already Robinson’s leader, though the imminent commitment thing is new this week. FL OL Torrian Wilson enjoyed the spring game as well, but it will still be tough to pull him from the Hurricanes. The other two gentlemen enjoying themselves can obviously be nothing other than a positive.

Information on a few different guys from Phil Kornblut:

USC has offered RB Roy Finch (5-8, 170) of Niceville, Fla. He also has offers from Oklahoma, Alabama, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Southern Miss, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Oregon, Michigan and Texas A&M.

DB Brashaud Breeland (6-2, 200) of Allendale-Fairfax also was at USC’s practice last Thursday night. He’s considering the Gamecocks and Clemson strongly along with Wake Forest, N.C. State, Virginia Tech, Maryland, Michigan and Tennessee.

So, Finch is now moved to “offered” on the board, and it appears as though Bashaud Breeland (first name sic in the quote, as I believe there’s no “r”) has Michigan in an unofficial top 8 of sorts. There was a bit more information in the article, but it was redundant from previous recruiting updates.

Posted under Football, Recruiting

Midweek games don’t mean anything anymore in terms of making the post season, but since they do offer a chance for players to gain experience, coaches to tweak lineups, and the team to gain some momentum, I guess I can keep you informed on the midweek.  This time around it was a pair of 7-inning games at the Fish versus Eastern Michigan.  This was the third and fourth game of the season, both teams entering 1-1 against each other.

I’m going to focus on pitching for these two recaps, as they were the obvious focus.  Several bench guys saw playing time and the lineup was shaken up a little bit to accomodate for those guys.  I’ll touch on offense quickly at the end.

Game one of the twin bill was a close one, seeing Michigan jump ahead, fall behind, then seal the win with a late inning comeback.  Coach Maloney took the doubleheader as an opportunity to get in as many pitchers as he could, starting with Matt Miller.  Miller looked good, going 2 innings with no runs, 2 walks, and a strikeout.

Kolby Wood came in to pitch in the third inning and got himself into and out of trouble.  After hitting the leadoff batter with the pitch, he then threw away a pick off attempt past first baseman Garrett Stephens.  He eventually would strand the runner at third.  In his second inning of work, Wood would also give up a solo-homerun.  The outing wasn’t that bad for Wood.  He did get into some higher counts (41 pitches, 25 strikes), but that’s kind of been his norm.

Enter Mike Wilson, exit Mike Wilson.  In just 1/3 of an inning, Mike induced a pop up, walked a batter, then gave up a two run homer, tying the game.  Short leash for Mike, but the team was in to win.  Wilson’s still nowhere near his 2007 form.

Brandon Sinnery came into mop up the inning, giving up a hit, but not allowing the runner past first base.  His second inning saw some trouble.  After the EMU second baseman reached on a fielding error by Mike Kittle (playing second), Sinnery walked the next batter.  He would strikeout the next EMU hitter, but was pulled for Burgoon.

Burgoon, in his first game back from the minor shoulder injury, did well.  He induced a fly out on 2 pitches to end the 6th, and ran into trouble to start the 7th.  He’d hit the lead off hitter.  The next batter tried the sacrifice bunt, but was unsuccessful, bunting the ball hard back toward Burgoon who wheeled and went to second.  The final batter would then ground into a double play.  Burgoon would get the win.

Want pictures? OK:

Game Two‘s pitching didn’t go so hot.  The first clue should have been that Jeff DeCarlo was announced as the starter.  While I harp on Mike Wilson sometimes for his lack of success, DeCarlo is quite a bit lower on my “trust him to make outs” ladder.  Jeff’s struggled a bit the last year and a half.  He’ll see spot appearances, but he doesn’t seem to be threatening to make too many legitamate starts any time soon.  This game was just a continuation of his struggles.  His 1/3 of an inning went like this: homer, groundout, single, homer, single. His ERA jumped from 17.18 to 24.75… yikes.

Travis Smith then came in to try and stop the bleeding.  At that point, only 3 runs had scored.  Smith would give up another single to put runners at first and third.  A wild pitch later and Michigan was down 4-0 after just half an inning.  Smith’s next inning went smoother, allowing just one walk.  Michigan tied the game in the bottom of the second, just to see the lead disappear on a Andrew Marshall solo homerun for the Eagles (his second of the game).  Smith gave up two more hits that inning, but wouldn’t give up another run.

Only two pitchers had a higher ERA than Jeff DeCarlo heading into this game, one was Kevin Vangheluwe (the other is team high 27.00 by Losorelli in one appearance).  He would come in relief next.  He, like DeCarlo, wouldn’t make it out of his first inning of work.  His inning:  single,  bunt single, 3-run homer, walk (I think I’d pull him here?),  single (definitely here, bullpen slow to warm up?), fielder’s choice, strikeout, single.  Five of his baserunners would score, one of his -luckily?- scored because of an error making it unearned.  The ERA jumped from 19.18 to 23.63.

Speaking of that error, it was the first batter Matt Gerbe would face, grounding a ball to shortstop.  Toth couldn’t field it cleanly, leading to a run.  Matt did get the team out of the inning with another ground ball on the next batter.  Gerbe would finish the game (3.1 innings), including two 1-2-3 innings in the 5th and 6th.  In the 7th, Gerbe allowed of a leadoff single then walk.  After a sacrifice bunt and a hit by pitch, he would induce two groundouts, one of which scored a run. Michigan lost 11-5.

So this game went much worse from a pitching perspective, but I think if you’d told me DeCarlo was starting and Vangheluwe would throw in relief, I would have expected some bad to happen.  Take away their 8 earned runs, and this is a totally different ball game.  It’s hard to defend the home run ball, and EMU had 4 in this game, accounting for 7 runs.  Those hurt.

Offensively, game one was really bad.  We managed 5 hits, 2 by Fellows, 2 by Toth, and one homerun by Mike Dufek. Beside those three, the rest of the bats never got going.  The good news was we only struck out 3 times in the game, a season low (previous season low was 4 Ks at EMU in the second game of the season series).

Game two went a a little bit better, but still wasn’t great.  No one really stood out as above the average, eight different Wolverines each registered one hit.  LaMarre had a home run, and Chris Berset had a double of his own.  Toth stranded 3 runners; LaMarre had 2 (team total of 7).  We also struck out only 6 times, which is two below the season average.  I’ll take that.

Burgoon and Berset both returned to the team in this doubleheader, and it couldn’t come at a better time.  Burgoon restores a little bit of order to the bullpen, giving us a solid option to close or set up a closer.  I think we’re headed to a closer by committee.  No one has really dominated since early in the season.  Berset brings better play to the catcher’s box and into the lineup.  He went 1/4 this weekend with a double and a walk.  As I said in the CMU recap, I think this is Berset’s team to take over.  He has the chance to create be the spark over the next few weekends to turn around the poor play.

Other Notes:

• Kevin Cislo sat the doubleheader out, just making one pinch hit appearance.
• Non-everyday players Garrett Stephens (1B), Mike Kittle (2B), Nick Urban (RF/2B), Coley Crank (RF), Tim Kalczynski (3B) all made extended appearances on defense
• Coach Maloney on the season (I’m becoming less hopeful on the pitching):

“I think game one here today is an indication of what I thought this team would be. Coming up with a clutch hit like Dufek’s home run, making some great defensive plays and scrapping together some runs when it mattered most to win a ballgame. What I didn’t anticipate from this team was the way we played in game two and that has been all too familiar a scenario for us this season. We have not pitched well enough. I am still hopeful, as crazy as it may sound, despite watching us that we will turn this thing around. I know that these guys are better than that. I am hoping that at some point, they just let go of themselves so they can compete like I know they can.”

• The Daily – Live Blog.
• Tim & Paul in the Trike-ening.  Paul didn’t center his weight over the front tire, therefore reducing his normal force and decreasing the coefficient of rolling friction (You sound like you were a Michigan engineer – Paul).  Timmy Kal let him know his flaw, but it was too late.

Posted under Baseball

Per ESPN’s SportsCenter, Rich Rodriguez has indeed decided to continue the saga of Greg Paulus by offering him a scholarship to play quarterback for the Wolverines.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – for Michigan, this is probably little other than a depth move. For Paulus, it’s a chance to get back into football in hopes of making the NFL, extend his college days, and hope to contribute for the Wolverines in case of injury.

Will Paulus accept the offer (and will he be eligible to play in ’09?)? That remains to be seen.

Posted under Football, Personnel

There weren’t too many people at the Fish near the top of the first game today. Understandable, but unfortunate since the game was awesome and the weather was perfect. Anyway, Tim and I were in the stands and one of the sports marketing reps asked us if we were going to be there for a while; we responded “yeah.”  She asked us if we wanted to do a tricycle race.

Hell yes.

The gauntlet was cast. Tim and I, friends for years, were now bitter foes.  As we walked out onto the warning track by the Michigan dugout, the adrenaline started pumping, and I could feel my heartbeating in my ears.  We mounted our ignoble steeds and prepared for what could only be a death race.

There was no play by play announcing for this race; it would have only served to take away from the pureness of the act, but if there was, it would sound a little something like this:

AAAAAAAND they’re off!

…Well, one of them is off. Paul is still sitting at the starting line spinning his front wheel.

Tim is nearing the turn as Timmy Kalz gives Paul some obviously sage advice as he gets 20 pounds of aluminum and rubber to stop spinning and start moving.

Paul is pedaling furiously, finding his rhythm and a first wind! He’s making up ground at a ferocious pace.  He gets to the turn with a nice line, and HE’S AROUND. HE’S COMING DOWN THE STRETCH *cough*Tim crosses the finish line*cough* AND HE’S STILL GAINING GROUND ON TIM. THIS COMPETITOR HAS A HEART OF A LION.

Paul leans in and CROSSES THE FINISH LINE and crashes into Tim’s tricycle, which luckily Tim had already dismounted. In fact, Tim is already back in his seat.  Damn, that Paul kid is slow.

In case that didn’t do it for you, here are some pictures (note: there wasn’t a professional photographer for this; lame, right?):

Posted under Baseball, Photo Album

Spring practice is over, having officially ended with a final practice on Tuesday (yes, after the Spring Game). The players will continue working with Barwis as long as they’re in town, but organized practices have come to an end.

Shall we recap what we know from spring, then?

• Ryan Van Bergen, who was taken off the field on the Med Cart Saturday, should be fine.
• Maize n Blue Nation provides a handy chart of the individual stats from the spring game. Tate Forcier, for the record, graded out with a passer efficiency rating (not a perfect metric, but them’s the ropes) of 270.80. Michigan’s total last year was 95.13, and Steven Threet led with a 105.26 rating. Standard caveats apply about our own defense maybe just being terrible, no contact on QBs, and simulating situations rather than a scrimmage.
• VB Spring Game Recap.
• VB Spring Game Photo Gallery.
• MSC and MGoBlog recaps.

BTN Highlights:

Football news, other than that of the recruiting variety, should slow down in short order around here, unless something significant happens. Focus will shift slightly to baseball, general athletics, and other pursuits.

Posted under Football, Spring Coverage

Per MGoBlue:

Steady rain in the Ann Arbor area all day today (Tuesday, April 14) has forced the cancellation of Michigan’s scheduled contest with Toledo and changed Wednesday’s (April 15) game with Eastern Michigan to a pair of seven-inning contests beginning at 3:05 p.m. No makeup date for the Toledo game has been announced.

So that’s two games versus EMU today to make up for the lost game yesterday.  Just what we need, more innings of midweek pitching.  I say that only half facetiously.  We do need to get some guys work.  I haven’t seen anything about starting pitchers, but I’ll throw my guesses out as Brandon Sinnery and Kevin Vangheluwe.  Kolby Wood threw a few times this weekend, but could be available.  The pitcher I’d like to see get this start is Mike Wilson, just to get him an easy start (7 innings puts less pressure on the starter to go deep into games).  It probably won’t happen, but its an idea.

I’m hoping we get some carnage as Michigan tries to avenge the loss at home last week.  The season series is tied at one a piece, each won by the visiting team.

Update: Miller started first game (just 2 IP).  Paul and Tim went head to head in the Michigan Baseball Tricycle race.  No word yet on who one.  I’ll have them recap later.

Michigan State Weekend

Also in that link from MGoBlue, the start time to Friday’s game has been moved to 3:05 from 6:05pm.  No audio will be available, which blows, but they will have live stats.  Their press box at MSU’s new McLane Stadium (named after Spartan alum and owner of the Astros, Drayton McLane) is just nearing the completion stage, so it appears they don’t have audio installed yet.

Posted under Baseball

Tate Forcier, Denard Robinson, and Nick Sheridan looked to be the only quarterbacks on Michigan’s roster by the time fall camp rolled around, however, recent news abounds that Michigan may add some transfers to the rotation, if only to build up a bit of depth.

First comes Jason Forcier. The former Wolverine and Stanford grad is looking to continue his education in Ann Arbor. Forcier the elder, who backed up Chad Henne for a couple years before Golden Boy Mallett removed any and all hope of future playing time (ha!), is the oldest brother of Tate, the odds-on favorite to be Michigan’s starter this fall. Under normal circumstances, he would be ineligible to spend 2009, his final year of collegiate eligibility, at Michigan. However, he may appeal to the NCAA to use the Mundy Rule (under which Michigan starting safety Ryan Mundy became West Virginia starting safety Ryan Mundy). The rule has since been repealed by the bureaucracy we all know and love, but the NCAA will look at individual cases to determine their merits. In Forcier’s case, he started out at Michigan, then managed to earn his degree at Stanford, and wants to return to Michigan for a post-grad degree (and likely a future in coaching), in addition to helping his little brother adjust to college life. If he is also granted the privilege of playing for the Wolverines, that would be a bonus, though a significant one for both Jason and the Wolverines.

The other transfer news, which was something of a hot topic yesterday, comes in the form of a potential switch by Duke basketball player Greg Paulus. Paulus was among the nation’s top QB recruits in the class of 2005 (in which he was also a 5-star point guard recruit). Paulus visited Ann Arbor for Michigan’s final spring practice on Tuesday, at which time he talked to coach Rod about potentially coming to Michigan as a QB (the Green Bay Packers have similar designs on Paulus). I’m not clear on Paulus’s eligibility status, as he’d be not only transferring schools, but also sports. However, as someone who’d be playing organized football for the first time in over 4 years, it’s safe to say he’d only be adding depth to Michigan’s sparse backfield.

So what’s the most likely outcome? I would assume Jason probably ends up in maize-and-blue either way, be it a uniform or the sweatsuit of a grad assistant. If Paulus wants to come to Michigan, depending on the eligibility status, it must be assumed that the Wolverines wouldn’t hesitate to take him, especially considering they have several scholarships available to hand out for 2009.

What say you, Michigan fans? Are you for these potential moves? Against them?

Posted under Football, Personnel

Posted under Football, Recruiting

…of course, it’s for a road game. This is actually fairly old news, but when the Wolverines travel to Iowa City on October 10th, they wont take the field until nighttime, according to Kirk Ferentz at his press conference last week:

Ferentz said Iowa will be playing three night games during Big Ten play: at Penn State (Sept. 26), vs. Michigan (Oct. 10) and at Michigan State (Oct. 24). 

Members of a certain subset of Michigan fans are undoubtedly saying “How come they’ll play 3, and we aren’t even willing to play a home night game once!” Stay calm, fans (and stop with the idiotic petitioning), it will happen sooner or later, and you’re wasting your breath for now, as the earliest Michigan will play a home night game is when the stadium renovation is complete for the 2010 season.

Posted under Football