Hey -- it was nice just to make the tournamen... wait, what?

Photo from Detroit News.
For the first time since 1998, the Michigan Wolverines are in the NCAA Tournament. And for the first time since beating Davidson that year, the Michigan Wolverines are winners of an NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament game. Michigan started and ended the game slow, but that 30 minutes in the middle was good enough to hang with the best teams in the country. Not beat them, but hang with them for sure. Manny Harris is a beast, DeShawn Sims played well inside on both ends, and "Who the hell is" Stu Douglass provided some spark from three-point land, not to mention his head butt of Oglesby's forearm.

Next up is Big 12 favorite Oklahoma. All pressure is off Big Blue at this point, which should be scary for the Sooners. When this team plays loose, they play well.

In the meantime, Michigan hockey is coming off their utter humiliation of the Western Michigan Broncos last weekend, and play Alaska in the CCHA semi-finals tomorrow night, then the Northern-Notre Dame winner the following night. Back-to-back CCHA Championships. WOOT!

It's Great, To Be, A Michigan Wolverine

First a quick update: I predicted a 30-24 win for Florida. Final score, 31-20 Florida. Very close, but I ended up on the wrong side of the line. Fail. I thought Florida was the best team in the nation, and Alabama found that out.

Meanwhile, up in Hell East Lansing, Travis Turnbull put the finishing touches on a weekend home-and- home sweep of Sparty, netting a hat-trick in a 5-3 comeback win at Munn. Caporusso put the finishing touches on by scoring the game winner with 1:36 to go in the game. This is one night after a 6-1 drubbing in front of the Yost faithful. Michigan is ranked #14 right now, not where they want to be by any stretch, but MSU is unranked, far from the Sparty hockey teams of the last few years. Miami is the class of the CCHA, but Red has the boys working their way up to greet them. They are off until the GLI fires up Dec. 27. Speaking of working their way up the ranks...



Pure awsomeness. Michigan beats the #4 team in the country for the second time this season. First it was then #4 UCLA, now Dook. Too bad this one doesn't count for the Big Ten-ACC Challenge, it would have tied it up. Beilein has these guys playing well, both offensively and defensively. DeShawn Sims scored 28, and Michigan outrebounded Duke 35-34, something that was missing and probably cost them the Maryland game the other night. I'm not going to go into the details of this game beyond that, I just want to mention one thing. College basketball fans "storm the floor" waaaaaaay too much. The fans will run onto the court for anything any more. But I think for a team that hasn't been to a Tourney in 10 years, has been the fourth or fifth best team in the STATE for many of those years, to beat the #4 team in the country, to beat DOOK, at home, well, I think this one was OK.



As the local Kalamazoo sports guy Andy Pepper said, "After the football season these guys endured, I'm surprised they didn't take the hoops home with them."