MGoBlog: The MGoPodcast

Things discussed:

• Atrocious basketball: IU was the worst gut punch until Wisconsin. No silver lining. Every close game they've lost.
• Effort? Got crushed on the boards by a team that doesn't offensive rebound. Very hard to watch this team. Guards and wings not boxing out. Some of that's youth.
• Wisconsin ID'd Michigan's weaknesses and exploited them, and a lot of that is effort.
• Also without T-Will who's a top-500 defensive rebounder, and Tschetter is terrible at it. Tarris Reed should have been getting way more minutes at the four. Issue is the athleticism: Tschetter had those two free throws he missed because he couldn't get up for a free dunk.
• Could not match up athletically with Wisconsin when Baker/Dickinson/Tschetter out there together, and that has to be a five-alarm fire.
• Next year? Dickinson talking like he wants to return but don't think he knows yet.
• Officiating: The worst game since the 1970s.
• Will M-MSU be played? Michigan is going to let MSU decide there. It's at least nice to put the rivalry aside and remember Little Brother and Big Sister are truly siblings. We skirt the edge of what we think has to happen to have this stop happening.
• HOCKEY! Got 5/6 points from MSU despite playing without 2/3 of their best defenders and 1.5 games without the best player in hockey. Love what we saw from Nazar's return. Officiating is a major problem for this conference—we think someone came down from the league office after the first game was an embarrassment to the conference because they called a minor (not a matching minor) when the chippiness started. Then they of course screwed it up again by refusing to call an 87%ile major (the way they're called) at the end of Game 2, allowing MSU to tie.
• Given all the things they've gone through this season, they really might be special in the postseason. Unfortunately it's the worst postseason in sports.
• Take off the interim tag? MLive says his current deal has an end-of-season evaluation so that's when it's happening.
• ND won't pay for an OC—that's wild! Utah's Andy Ludwig and Kansas State's Collin Klein are good choices.
• Ohio State cancels their Washington series because USC is gonna be on the schedule. New Playoff structure needs to look at how they structure things to get schools to play good games because right now the incentive is to just play meatballs. Hopefully the middle schools in the Big XII and ACC and Pac 12 want to play Michigan more because we'd love to have a series with Arizona, Colorado, Oregon State, Wake, etc.