Chesterton Indiana shooting guard Zach Novak (6-4, 215) has committed to Coach John Beilein of the Michigan basketball program. He is the third player committed to the Wolverines.

His local paper does not like to spellcheck. Like, even for the name of the person the article is about. He was an Indiana All-Star as a junior. Novak is a three point shooter who will fit in well with the Michigan team, other than the fact that he is actually capable of making the occasional shot.

Posted under Basketball

The Michigan softball team has raged out to a 17-2 start to begin the 2008 campaign. A Kickoff Classic loss to Maryland and an upset by Drake in the UCF tournament, both by scores of 0-2, account for the lone Wolverine losses so far this season. 10th-ranked Michigan is once again expected to achieve success in the Big Ten as well, projected to finish in the top two, along with the Wildcats of Northwestern.

So what has been the key to Michigan’s success this early in the season? “We have very strong pitching,” said head coach Carol Hutchins, “We have 2 great pitchers that are a true 1-2 punch.” Those two pitchers, Sophomore Nikki Nemitz and Freshman Jordan Taylor, have indeed excelled this early in the season. Combined, they sport a .57 Earned Run Average, and each only losing one game in which she has appeared.

The offense is not lacking, either. Samantha Findlay, known best for her 3-run game winning homer in the 2004 college World Series as a Freshman, has developed into one of Michigan’s most prolific hitters, and looks forward to her final season being the best. Findlay’s 6 home runs on the season has been enough to give her sole possession of #1 on Michigan’s all-time
chart, with a career total of 47.

Despite all of Michigan’s early-season successes, home fans have been unable to see the team in action this season. That will all change on April 5-7, as Michigan will host conference foes Iowa and Illinois. The Friday contest, one of two against Iowa, will also mark the unveiling of the $5.5 million renovation to Alumni Field. “We went from the 5th or 6th best facilities in the conference, to one of the best in the nation,” boasted Hutchins. Students are encouraged to support their classmates, as it will be student weekend at the Wilpon complex.

In the meantime, the Wolverines will travel to tournaments in Louisville, Kentucky and Fullerton, California for a pair of tournaments, prior to kicking of the Big Ten schedule in Bloomington, Indiana.

Posted under Baseball

The Michigan Wolverines battled reigning NL East choke artists New York Mets to a 4-4 tie yesterday at the Mets’ spring training facility in Port St. Lucie, FL. The exhibition game may seem like no big deal, considering it was pre-season game, likely against the Mets’ scrubs. However, Jose Reyes, David Wright, and Carlos Delgado took to the plate for New York’s squad.

Perhaps more damaging for a particular Met was the reputation of pitcher Aaron Heilman. Heilman, a Notre Dame grad, made a bet that he could hold Michigan scoreless for an inning. He failed, and now has to sing “The Victors” in the team’s clubhouse.

Posted under Baseball, Spring Coverage

If you really want to know about tempo-free statistics, you should really head over to Basketball Prospectus. Anything and everything you would ever want to know about the statistical analysis of basketball is there. Since the Big Ten Wonk left his blogspot home and moved to BP, there hasn’t really been a focus on the statistics of Big Ten Basketball lately.

I’m just starting to get into this and I haven’t really gone too deep into the statistics. For those of you who like charts (and/or AJAX filled Web2.0 applications) I compiled some basic tempo free stats online. You can see them here. The conference sheet is sorted by Possessions and the U of M sheet is sorted by effective field goal percentage.

If you want a quick crash course on tempo-free statistics, I recommend checking out the tutorial on Big Ten Wonk.

From looking at Michigan’s stats compared to the rest of the conference, I’m cautiously optimistic. One of the biggest complaints I had from the Amaker era was the frequency of turnovers, which killed any chance of Michigan winning. Michigan this year is number 3 in the conference in Turnovers per Possession (TOPP on the chart). Another complaint is that the games were boring. Michigan versus Northwestern did not even pretend to be a basketball game as both teams pointlessly dribbled or passed the ball around the perimeter until the shot clock ran down. Michigan is 3rd in the conference in possessions behind only Purdue and Illinois. This does not mean they are good, but it’s more a matter of personal preference. I like a smooth, flowing game; the change is like going from Mike DeBord to Rich Rodriguez.

Where Michigan is crashing and burning is shooting the ball. They have the worst effective field goal percentage (eFG%) in conference. eFG% even appropriately weights the benefits of 3pt shots and it still doesn’t bring them up. Michigan is shooting about 46% when the median is 50%. There could be a silver lining on this horrible showing. Michigan is 4-1 when their eFG% is greater than 50%. It isn’t ridiculous to think that once Beilein gets his players in and really gets the freshman and sophomore class shooting well this team will contend.

Beilein has stopped a lot of the bad the Amaker left him. He just needs to get his players playing his system and things should look up. If Michigan shoots well, they can beat some good teams (see Ohio State). I think most of the pain from this season is coming from square pegs meeting round holes.

I’ll try to dig a little deeper through the week and look up some defensive numbers. The spreadsheet is saved on GoogleDocs, so if anyone wants to put together the team table for their (or any) team, let me know and you can be added as a collaborator.

Posted under Basketball

The injury Chad Kolarik sustained in the third period against Lake State on Saturday is hamstring-related, according to Antoine Pitts of the Ann Arbor News.

Kolarik is expected to be out until the final round of the CCHA playoffs, assuming his rehab moves along according to schedule. Kolarik is certainly going to be scratched in Michigan’s next two series, against Michigan State and Ferris State.

Last time against State, Kolarik had an assist and was +1 on Saturday. He didn’t take a penalty either night. According to the stats, he was not a huge factor in either game, but he is certainly an important player for the Wolverines. He is tied for 2nd on the team in +/- (with Mark Mitera), and is second in points with 43.

Will Kolarik’s absence hurt the Wolverines? Michigan would like to sweep State, though his absence will probably be one of the factors that prevents that from happening. Ferris, despite being a lower-tier CCHA team, managed to sweep Miami this weekend.

Even without Kolarik, Michigan should lock up the #1 seed in the CCHA tournament. The first-round bye will give Michigan a chance to get some rest, and Kolarik should be able to return by the Championship round.

Even without Kolarik, Michigan should be able to have enough success to lock up a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament, and are still likely to get the overall #1.

Posted under Hockey

Excuse me if this is shitty; it’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these.
9:06PM The tipoff is won by Michigan. Coleman actually does something worthwhile, drawing a foul in the post. He then ruins it by going 1-2 at the line.
19:10 1H Michigan comes out in man defense, Iowa gets an offensive rebound and nails a three. Ron Coleman travels on the way back up the court.
17:33 1H Manny Harris makes a strong drive to the hoop, and bricks an ugly pullup jumper. Udoh goes over the back on the rebound.
17:00 1H Michigan forces Iowa to throw up a shitty three at the end of the shot clock, and Udoh finishes at the other end with a dunk. Then, the other way back down, he fumbles a rebound, ball to Iowa.
15:55 1H Manny Harris plays weak defense on an Iowa drive to the hoop. If he just stands his ground, it’s a charge.
14:57 1H Michigan’s defensive rebounding has been awful. Fortunately, “dribble” was not near the top of Iowa’s agenda, whereas “walk” was. Commercial break.
9:14PM Back to the game.
14:33 1H Kelvin Grady banks one in. As bad as Michigan’s shooting has been at times this year, it is refreshing to see players who look like they have a fucking clue on the offensive end of the court. Michigan compensates with giving an easy dunk to Iowa.
13:27 1H DeShawn Sims airballs a wide open 3-ball on the fast break.
12:52 1H Michigan scrambles because Manny Harris tries to go for a steal. Ekpe Udoh has to go out for a block attempt in the corner, leaving nobody in position to get a rebound if the shot is missed. It isn’t.
11:36 1H Really bad call by the officials giving the ball to Iowa on an out-of-bounds call. Michigan deserves to lose it, I guess, based on the shitty idea by Manny Harris to get in the air under the basket. Commercial Break.
9:21PM Back to the action.
11:25 1H Michigan goes for the trap, and gets good pressure on the ballhandlers despite not forcing the turnover.
11:00 1H Shot clock low, Freeman hucks one and gets lucky. Anthony Wright tosses it out of bounds. It seems Michigan can’t just make one mistake, but rather must compound said mistake to put selves in a hole.
9:30 1H Gibson gets whacked on the offensive glass. No call. They can’t get a defensive rebound to save their lives.
8:32 1H I think this is a makeup call. Manny Harris is nominally fouled going for the rebound on a shot that would have ended Michigan’s chances.
8:12 1H Todd Lickliter takes the ball away from Jevohn Shepherd, who is trying to save it out of bounds. CJ Lee looks the gift horse in the mouth by immediately traveling. They can’t even utilize Iowa’s mistakes to their advantage.
6:57 1H Seemingly a bad call on an Iowa travel. Oh well, Michigan needs all the help they can get. TV Timeout.
9:30PM The action starts again.
6:42 1H Michigan turns it over immediately again. They haven’t scored in 7+ minutes.
5:43 1H Many Harris is stripped going up for a 3, Tony Freeman returns the favor by turning it over on the fast break.
5:27 1H After a quick TV timeout, DeShawn Sims finally gets Michigan back on the board. Kelly answers with a 3 for Iowa.
3:45 1H Terrible call giving Michigan the ball on a play out of bounds. TV Timeout.
9:38PM Back in the house. Holy god is Iowa’s stadium empty. It’s like 10 times worse than Crisler.
3:36 1H Michigan finally hits a 3 (after 7(?) attempts). DeShawn Sims gets Michigan back within 9.
2:54 1H Deshawn Sims gets the rebound after Iowa forces a 3 at the end of the shot clock. He is fouled on the play. Michigan has some signs of life. Michigan returns the favor, with Ekpe Udoh fouling on the rebound of DeShawn Sims’s hookshot.
2:06 1H Iowa gets an easy dunk with 1 second left on the shot clock. At least Michigan is defending well enough to force them to use all the clock. Sims brick a three on the other end.
1:25 1H Johnson airballs a trey for Iowa. Manny Harris Harris is whacked on a left handed runner, and Zack Gibson pulls it down while abosorbing a foul. He’ll shoot two.
0:53 1H An Iowa player performs the funciontal equivalent of airballing a layup, hitting glass and not coming close to anything else. Harris fouls on the rebound. Michigan eventually gets the ball back for the last shot of the half.
0:09 1H DeShawn Sims with a… curious… shot with 7 seconds left on the shot clock. Iowa boards, and runs back to brick one last three pointer of the half.

Michigan trails 27-16 at halftime.

This is painful to watch; second half not being blogged.

Posted under Basketball

The Blog that Yost Built (consistently excellent. If you care about hockey at all, I’d suggest visiting it regularly) has uncovered newspaper reports detailing Kevin Quick’s alleged reason for getting dismissed from the Michigan hockey team.

In happier hockey news, the team took 3 points from Miami over the weekend, returning them to the top of the CCHA (now with a guaranteed CCHA playoff bye), and the country. They face off against Lake State for 2 games in The Old Barn this weekend.

Sadly, no more WOLV games until the CCHA playoffs. I’ll keep you updated.

Posted under Blog News, Hockey

Highlight.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkQihjmvExI&rel=1]
Big games against Miami this weekend. Tonight’s is on CSTV, and tomorrow’s contest will be covered by FSN Detroit.

Posted under Hockey, Video

Hockey highlights from Saturday.
Recap of Rich Rodriguez press conference, including an exclusive (and brief) interview with new DC Scott Schafer.
Recruiting season recap, once all remaining recruits sign (either here or elsewhere).
A bunch of stuff about the 2008 Football team.
2009 Recruiting kickoff (yes, already).

Posted under Blog News, Hockey

For those of you who aren’t fortunate enough to be able to make it out to Yost tonight, WOLV will be covering the Michigan v. NMU game, available for free online at MGoBlue (the link is in the schedule sidebar). The link will go live ~half hour before the game starts.

Highlights will be up tomorrow or Monday.

Posted under Blog News, Hockey