Wisconsin-Michigan postgame thoughts - hell yeah! (update following OSU loss)

As the tide seemed to be shifting in favor of the Wolverines in the fourth quarter, I started thinking about about what emotion would best fit my mood if we lost. Angry? Disappointed? Indifferent?

Then the defense and running game stepped in and finished things of, and I had to reverse my thinking. What emotion fits this win best? Elation? Relief? Bittersweet?

I'll go for the first. Beating Michigan never feels anything but awesome. Dominating Michigan like we did today? Even better. Forget all those what-might-have-been thoughts I was writing yesterday, it's all about the positive right now:

-Undefeated home record for the second straight year
-Still in the running for a winning conference record and the Capital One Bowl or the Outback Bowl
-Still in the running for a 10-win season
-Could be ranked again
-Some big-time players are playing big-time football
-Michigan has a chance to lose five games this year

And make no mistake, Wisconsin dominated Michigan today. I don't care if Henne and Hart had the sniffles or whatever, we were missing five starters because of injury and didn't have a roster full of Parade All-Americans to step in for them. Consider the stats:

-First downs: UW 24, UM 17
-Rushing yards: UW 232, UM 47
-Total yards: UW 477, UM 320
-Interceptions: UW 3, UM 0
-My favorite - Time of possession: UW 38:15, UM 21:45

The thoughts:

-It was Senior Day, and the relatively small senior class carried the day. Paul Hubbard (right) was huge with seven catches for 134 yards. Tyler Donovan threw for 245 yards and a touchdown, ran for 49 yard and a touchdown, and showed some nice dance moves avoiding sacks.

Taylor Mehlhaff made all three of his field goal attempts. Ken DeBauche average 45 yards per punt with a long of 65, and put four inside the Michigan 20. Marcus Coleman and the interior line handled a damn good defensive tackle in Terrance Taylor, who had a lot of tackles but did not stop the run. Nick Hayden (left) had 1.5 tackles for loss and a pass breakup.

-Good to see PJ get back in and try to make a go of it. I expect him to play next week, need to take a lot of get-tough pills this week. Hope Donovan is ready to play, would rather not throw Allan Evridge in there at this stage of the season. Looked like a pretty bad bruise on TD's hand.

-What is it about our punt return team at home against Michigan? They're like magnets for the ball. Nice job by the defense to get a three-and-out after that potential disaster.

-I can't get over the ESPN cameras' preoccupation with the couple hundred Michigan fans in attendance, they just kept showing those idiots.

-Shane Carter showed his strengths and weaknesses on back-to-back drives: watching Mario Manningham go right by him on the long TD pass, then making nice play on the ball for his second interception.

-When I saw the shot of what were presumably Chad Henne's parents in the stands, I thought about how pissed I would be if I was them, to come all the way from Pennsylvania to watch tough Chad wear a coat and call signals.

-The personal foul call on Deandre Levy was terrible, he stumbled and grazed Ryan Mallett's helmet. Later Obi Ezeh went helmet-to-helmet with Donovan, knocking TD out of the game, and no penalty.

-Funny to watch Manningham bitching at Mallett on the sideline, who is he, Terrell Freaking Owens? That's the kind of program they have in Ann Arbor, big-time athletes with big-time egos, just a factory churning out NFL players preloaded with NFL attitudes.

-I jotted down "Not Ike's best game," since he gave up some big plays, then look at the stat sheet and see he had an interception and four pass breakups. He also made a nice play downing a punt on the Michigan 3.

-Mallett was resourceful in escaping or almost escaping sacks. That backward shovel to the tight end was almost one of those back breaking plays.

-Mallett will be good in time, but today he was spraying the ball around like Wild Thing Vaughn. The guy was 11-for-36 - Tarvaris Jackson numbers.

-Best shot: The Badger fan wearing the I Heart Appalachian State T-shirt.

-Really nice effort by Zach Brown running for 108 yards and two touchdowns. Still think he's a career backup, a la Eddie Faulkner, but a damn good one. Nice to know we have depth at running back, a necessity in this program.

-Love how the line kept pounding Michigan - they wore down at the end and paved the way for Brown's scoring runs. That's Wisconsin football. For all the things that haven't gone as planned this year, our time of possession has still been stellar, a testament to the offensive line. The depleted defensive line played very well too, with three sacks and five TFLs.

Great win, really looking forward to Minnesota next week. The Gophers have to be the worst Big Ten team in recent memory and we should score 50 on them, but we've been upset there before and they run that damn spread offense, so anything's possible.

**ADD, 5:41 p.m. - Wow, Ohio State loses at home to Illinois. Didn't think it was impossible, but unlikely. Huge win for that program - the sleeping giant is waking up. What does it mean? Need to think about it a bit, but on first blush:

-Ohio State probably beats Michigan next week and "settles" for the Rose Bowl, not the BCS title game ... although who knows?
-Michigan goes Cap One Bowl, which is fitting, they didn't deserve the Rose Bowl with the lackluster year they've had.
-Ironically, beating Ohio State may push the Illini down to the Outback Bowl. Is my thinking right on this?
-Now it's between us and Penn State for the Alamo and Champs Sports bowls. New Year's Day seems unlikely. Wouldn't mind mixing things up and playing an ACC or Big 12 team in a bowl.

All this could change if Ohio State only falls a few spots in the BCS standings, since conference championship games, especially the Big 12 and SEC, could knock a couple high-ranking one-loss teams down a peg. We might have to wait until the first weekend in December to know our bowl fate, thanks to the domino effect of all these other teams.

More thoughts on this Monday when the updated BCS standings come out. #1 Kansas anybody?

Wisconsin-Michigan halftime thoughts

Before getting into today's game, a reference to two good stories from madison.com

-Andy Baggot on Ron Dayne's contributions to the UW athletic department. Never thought of them in such sweeping terms, but it's compelling.
-Adam Mertz tells us why Ohio State fans are miserable human beings. Good call Mertzy.

At halftime:

-I feel strangely confident, not my usual cautious optimism, but outright confidence. Probably because Michigan doesn't look like it cares about this game - if it did Henne and Hart would be playing, no matter what their boo-boos. I'd feel more confident if that awful 50-50 rule didn't give Mathews the catch that led to Manningham's TD. Seriously, what a terrible rule.

-ESPN's production gives the impression that the crowd is 75% Michigan fans, when it looks like it's closer to 1%.

-Why were we passing every down in the early going? Michigan's run defense is suspect.

-What a terrific catch by Shane Carter. He has run support limitations, but we haven't seen ball skills in a DB like his since Jamar Fletcher.

-What an awful pas by Donovan before Crable bailed him out with the personal foul.

-Instead of berating the officials - he should have been penalized - Lloyd Carr should have benched Crable for two dirty plays. Ol' Lloyd will probably feel silly when he watches the tape and sees both were easy calls.

-Donovan's TD pass to Beckum was one of those "No, no, no ... yes!" calls, kind of like me shooting a 3-pointer.

-Ryan Mallett is going to be a star for Michigan, he's got all the tools and will no doubt have weapons at receiver.

-Nick Hayden is playing really well. It would have been crushing had he gone to Michigan. Matt Shaughnessy is also playing very well against All-Universe Jake Long. ;)

-Great to say Luke Swan walk out without crutches. Paul Hubbard said it would be inspirational if he did, and it was.

-Awesome TD run/dive by Donovan. Just as big was his evasive scrambling and pass to Beckum on the last field goal drive, really stemmed momentum that was going Michigan's way.

-Hope Lance Smith isn't hurt too bad, Zach Brown doesn't look ready for this - although he did have a nice run called back by an obvious hold on the last drive.

Listening to a recap of Dayne's career right now, giving me goosebumps. Those were some great years ...

Ahhh, Michigan

Being Badgercentric, I have all sorts of little superstitious rituals that no doubt help Wisconsin sports teams win, or not lose, games. For instance, last year I bought a Pat Richter throwback jersey at Camp Randall, and put it on during the first half of the Capital One Bowl against Arkansas. We didn’t play very well, so I took it off. Forgetting this, I was wearing it for the first half of the Citadel game earlier this year. We won’t be seeing it for awhile.

Another ritual I have is to read up on UW’s next opponent the week before the game. This is done not on the Internet, but on my toilet, on the back of which sits the Athlon Sports Big Ten preview. I love college football (and basketball) preview magazines, have ever since I was a kid. Not sure why, since they usually mean very little once you get a couple weeks into the season. Still, each week I read the preseason predictions for our next foe, go over the usually-outdated two-deep, review their incoming recruiting class.

It was especially hard to read the past two weeks. You see, Athlon picked the Badgers to win the Big Ten and finish fourth nationally this season. Upon first reading that, I said to Jana “Athlon’s has us ranked fourth and winning the league – that doesn’t feel right.” But as Jim Austin would say, “reversal!” – I really thought the ranking and prediction were justified by the talent we had returning. Even though Ohio State and Michigan would be tough as ever, this would be the year we busted through their stranglehold on the top spots, just like we did in the ‘90s. Tomorrow’s game would be one of those two or three Big Ten Games of the Year.

But it wasn’t meant to be. Things got started off on the wrong foot when Jamal Cooper was thrown off the team in August; Kurt Ware’s injury at the time was another setback that turned an area of strength into one of little depth. Then the defense underperformed in the first half against Washington State. Then Lance Smith was suspended for road games. Then we almost lost to UNLV. Then we couldn’t stop the Citadel for 30 minutes. It was apparent something was wrong, and even though we eked out gutsy wins over Iowa and Michigan State, the house of cards was toppled at Illinois and Penn State. The effort was strong last week against Ohio State, but the injuries to PJ Hill, Jason Chapman, Allen Langford, and Eric Vanden Heuvel were just too much to overcome.

So tomorrow’s game is relatively meaningless. (Spoiled fan alert) I suppose we’re still playing for a 10-win season to get to the best second-tier bowl game we can, is that still the Cap One Bowl? Is going down there and getting smoked by Florida something to look forward to? Michigan will be playing Ohio State next week for the conference title, and their epic loss to open the season precludes them from playing for the national title.

Still, I’m as fired up as ever about this game, basically because I loathe the Michigan football program. Their players, fans, coaches, stadium, everything. If I read another “Mike Hart is the toughest player in the country” line from some sports writer I’m going to puke, and wipe it up with my F%$@ Michigan T-shirt. (Actually, I donated that to Goodwill a couple years ago.) Chad Henne’s a meathead. Jake Long wouldn’t know how to spell his own name if it wasn’t tattooed on his arms. Lloyd Carr has been getting a lot of love this season, but let’s face it, no one has done less with more talent among big-time coaches in the last decade. Tressel mops the floor with him.

Their stadium seats 800,000 people or whatever, but it sounds like an SAT testing room. Their fans are as arrogant as they come; I remember sitting in a bar in Ixtapa, Mexico, on New Year’s Day 1998, watching us get trounced by Georgia in the Outback Bowl, and a couple Michigan fans down the bar from us sneering and laughing at our misfortune. In Vegas in September I did the same as Oregon embarrassed the mighty Wolverines.

So yeah, I want to win this game real bad. Will it happen? If I had to bet my 401k, I’d take Michigan. ("Reversal ...")

We can score on their defense, even though PJ is still out. (And BTW, how poorly were expectations managed after PJ was hurt against Indiana? I was under the impression it was a little bruise and he’d be back last week without question.) Lance and Zach Brown should be able to pick up the slack there, and there’s no reason Travis Beckum shouldn’t have a big game.

It seems EVH won’t play this week, but interestingly, it seems that they’re looking at keeping John Moffitt at left guard, plugging Andy Kemp in at right guard, and moving Kraig Urbik out to right tackle, where he started two years ago. This speaks to the play of Danny Kaye and Jake Bscherer, who were both supposedly right on Gabe Carimi’s tail for the left tackle job in fall camp.

The thing is, how are we going to stop them? For all my cracks, Henne, Hart, and Mario Manningham are really good, really dangerous players. The D-line is going to be vulnerable with Chappy out. Jack Ikegwuonu on Manningham seems like a good matchup for us, but he gave up two TDs to Brian Robiskie last week and hasn’t been a consistently lock-down corner this year. On the other side, Aaron Henry is going up against some damn good secondary receivers like Greg Mathews and Adrian Arrington.

To win this one we’ll need a couple turnovers and a big special teams play or two – special teams killed us last year in Ann Arbor. It’ll be interesting to see who’s back on returns.

Unlike Michigan's, our crowd should be a big factor. Good story in the Cap Times today about noise at Camp Randall.

So even though I don’t expect it, we still have a decent chance to pull a mild upset tomorrow and close the home season undefeated, which is important. But if we do, it will only serve to reinforce the disappointment of a season that once had so much promise.

Charter, Time Warner hemorraging customers

Lead story on JS Online today is about how the Charter and Time Warner cable systems are losing customers left and right. Predictably, they don't attribute it to their systems' refusal to carry the Big Ten Network. Conversely, Dish Network and DirecTV are adding subscribers. Score one for the conference.

Matt LaPorta update

Quick baseball break:

A guy I play basketball with was in Phoenix last weekend watching Arizona Fall League baseball, and could not shut up about how nice the weather was. When he finished one of the guys asked him if Matt LaPorta (Brewers' 2007 first round pick out of Florida, trying to turn him into a left fielder) was there.

He was, and the report was that while he looks the part and has a nice swing, LaPorta showed little plate discipline and swung at just about everything he saw. He was especially wild on 0-2 counts. No big deal, don't think we were planning on seeing him in Milwaukee until 2009.

But ... the guy told me that last year Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki and Hunter Pence were on the AFL all-star team, and we know how well those guys played this year.

Here's a Sporting News brief on the matter:

Milwaukee could have another young and powerful bat in its lineup soon. Matt LaPorta, selected in last June's draft, had three homers and a 1.042 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentages) for his first 41 at-bats in the Arizona Fall League. With Prince Fielder set at first base, the Brewers have LaPorta playing left field.

Arizona guys - have you ever been to AFL games? They seem like they're for baseball supernerds, but lots of us in this group qualify for that title.

Bill Callahan Farewell Tour

Jim Austin emailed this to me earlier this week, with the note: "may be blog-worthy is the Badgers match up with the Huskers in a mid-December bowl."

I'm pretty sure mid-December bowls are reserved for the Minnesotas and Northwesterns of the Big Ten, so I'm going to go ahead and post it now.

The situation in Lincoln is interesting. Apparently Cally has made it known he will not resign before the end of the season - Tom Osborne has to be loving that. Funny thing is, when they fired Frank Solich a few years back to guard against "slipping into mediocrity," I could see where they were coming from and sort of agree. But man, has Nebraska fallen.

And consider Callahan's slide: Super Bowl coach with the Raiders in 2002, fired after the next season, and then almost personally responsible for the steep decline in one of college football's most storied programs.

A litlle while back I jokingly broached the subject of Cally and Cosgrove rejoining the UW staff next year. Won't happen, but what if they were to join Brad Childress, Jim Hueber and friends in the Humpty Dome next year? They could turn Tarvaris Jackson into Mike Samuel 2008, or Brooks Bollinger into Brooks Bollinger 1999. They could bring back Brian White to help Adrian Peterson get better. ;)

Of course, this all assumes Chilly is back next year, which my Vikings fan friends would probably cringe at.

The Overkill Killer

I don't watch much NBC, just The Office, really, but it seems that the network's green week is sort of hokey. Did we really need Universal to bring this to our attention? It seems to me that the only people who don't currently have a clue about green living practices would be the ones likely to appear on My Name is Earl.

Not that big a deal, though, can't hurt. Tonight's episode was okay, gave me enough giggles to come back next week (that's what she said). My favorite parts:

-Michael to Jim: "You know what hypothetical means?"

-Dwight's weapon hiding folder: Mr. A Knife

-Dwight: "Better to be hurt by someone you know accidentally than by a stranger on purpose."

-Dwight's serial killer nickname for himself: The Overkill Killer. Perfect!

-Dwight to Michael: "Can you smell the trees in the nature?"

-Michael about the dead tree: "This little guy might be Dunder Mifflin paper someday."

-Dwight aiming his rifle scope at Michael: "The safety is ... on." For some reason this is how I picture Polzin when he goes hunting.

-Phyllis to Jim: "Hey Michael, I mean Jim."

-Michael: "I have the freshest air around - AC."

-Perhaps the best exchange was the one between Jim and Michael over the credits that went something like this:
Michael: "That's what she said."
Jim: "Who said?"
Michael: "I never know. It helps relieve the tension, like when things get hard."
Jim: "That's what she said."

Third straight episode where Jim's weaknesses are exposed, that seems to be a theme of this season. But this week's seemed forced - his character would never have proposed a mass birthday party that eliminated multiple breaks from "work." Jim's evolution into management is not a particularly attractive storyline, but it could exceed expectations.

Badgers don't lose to Division III opponent

The UW basketball team beat UW-Eau Claire 74-35 in exhibition action tonight, which doesn't seem too noteworthy, except for the fact that Michigan State and Ohio State, the consensus # 1 and #3 teams in the Big Ten this year, lost to non-Division I opponents in the last five days. Granted, Grand Valley State and Findlay might be better than the Blugolds, but still, take care of business guys. Didn't we learn anything from Appalachian State?

Tonight's broadcast on the Big Ten Network was delayed by another almost-shocker, as Michigan State struggled to put away Michigan Tech away (Tech's penalty kill was terrific tonight), and Izzo was in midseason timeout calling form. When the game finally did come on:

-Trevon Hughes was the star of the night. He is much more of a pure point guard than Kam Taylor, and while last season his play vacillated between wild and tentative, he seems more even keel thus far. We'll see how he holds up for 38 minutes against Dominic James or Travis Walton, but I'm optimistic.

-Joe Krabbenhoft also looked very good. He seems to have come to grips with the fact that we recruited him to come to Madison and shoot the ball, and tonight he did so in a variety of spots on the floor.

-Conversely, Sunday night's stars, Michael Flowers and Jon Leuer, were quiet tonight. Yesterday Flowers talked to the press for the first time since his two-week leave of absence. He sure as hell doesn't look like he's coming back from anything medical, which only lends credence to those rumors about him thinking about transferring to Winona State ... although that really doesn't make sense either, given the timing. But he's out there playing hard as ever, no worries about him.

After playing almost flawlessly in his debut, Leuer looked like a freshman trying to figure things out. Like you'd expect.

-Leuer does seem capable of playing the 3 spot, even on defense, which means Bo can throw a 6-10, 6-11, 6-11 lineup out there. A far cry from the 2003 team, with 6-5 Alando starting at the 4.

-The backup bigs had a terrible 90-second run where they had several passes clank off their hands.

-Again not taking many outside shots, which they shouldn't have to against a team at that much of a size disadvantage. Good discipline to work for the inside shot.

-JP Gavinski's haircut makes him look like a skunk - to the skin down the middle. Goofy kid.

-Keaton Nankivil and Tim Jarmusz each looked more comfortable on offense tonight, scoring on nice inside moves and hitting outside shots.

-Butch airballed a 3 late in the second half. His 3-point shooting has not progressed to the point I thought it would.

-Landry had a vicious open-court dunk in the second half, he's a great athlete - not quite as shifty as Alando, but every bit as explosive.

Next up: IPFW on Sunday. Gesundheit.

Rush Propst - gone at Hoover

I know a lot of you liked watching Two-A-Days, MTV's high school football show about the boys of Hoover, Ala., so if you missed it, you might be interested in this news:

Rush Propst, Hoover's coach, has resigned.

I first read something about this a couple weeks ago in SI, which reported that Propst was under fire for pressuring teachers to change grades for his players and for using an ineligible player. He was also apparently adulterous and supported a second family in another town. His staff has also been accused of spying on one of its rivals. He resigned a week ago.

To all these improprieties alleged and proven I say "Nooooooo, really?"

On the MTV show, Propst seemed like he was an actor portraying a high school football coach on a TV show or movie, sort of like Jon Voigt in Varsity Blues (it's playing a lot on Showtime nowadays). His ranting and raving, while certainly seen in other coaches and probably not a total act, appeared amped up for the cameras.

As for grade tampering ... don't want to make too many assumptions, but how could those clones read anything or see the chalkboard with their identical brown-hair-hanging-in-their-eyes haircuts?

What bugs me about the accounts of his resignation speech is that he seemed to fixate on the affair that he had while glossing over the competition-related misdeeds. It reminded me of a couple years ago when Jim McGreevey resigned as New Jersey's governor and the big news was that he was gay, not his questionable appointments and involvement in extortion scandals. Typical American story control - throw out salacious sexual details and the more substantive issues get pushed to the side.

Interesting Wikipedia write-up of the first season: Alex, easily my least favorite Buccaneer, was arrested last summer, and is engaged to marry that freshman cheerleader he started dating at the end of the season. Isn't she still in high school? Max was the only kid to earn a D-I scholarship, "despite many references to college football throughout the show," as Wiki notes. Repete walked on at Auburn, Cornelius plays at Troy (underrated), and Goose stopped playing football to actually pursue something that will help him later in life, chemical engineering. God bless him.

The Last Dance

Quick book review:

A couple weeks ago I read The Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four by John Feinstein. Feinstein is one of my favorite authors, always has been. Season on the Brink was the first real book I read for pleasure of my own volition, and I've enjoyed many of his follow-ups, from A Season Inside to A Good Walk Spoiled to Forever's Team to the book about the Army-Navy football rivalry, the name escapes me. Probably read about 10 all told.

The Last Dance was not one of his better efforts. It is framed by the 2005 Final Four, which featured North Carolina's collection of high school All-Americans, Louisville, Illinois, and Michigan State. Stories from the last three schools account for approximately 1% of the book, which is too bad. Illinois was the best team in college basketball that year, certainly a more compelling story than UNC (Hooray for Roy Williams! Ol' Huckleberry Hound finally got his title - with Matt Doherty's players).

But Feinstein apparently didn't have a career's worth of anecdotes about Bruce Weber to dust off and turn into a book. Instead, we get what is basically a story about the recent (last 30 years) history of the North Carolina and Duke basketball programs, which is interesting, but there have been soooo many other great stories to come out of the Final Four that there was really no need to repeat the "Dean Smith was hung in effigy" and "People weren't sure if Coach K was a good hire" stories that any fan has heard 100 times already.

Lots of good stuff in here, including interesting views on how Final Four refs are chosen, a John Wooden feature, Bill Bradley's FF memories, a bit on the old Vermont coach, Tom Brennan, criticisms of the selection committee and its process, many, many complaints of how the real college hoops media is now treated at the FF, and more. But Feinstein goes back to his familiar too much, would liked to have seen more original non-Tobacco Road, and in a broader sense non-ACC, material.

Still, if you're a college hoops nerd you should probably read it. Anyone else read it yet? What did you think?

One last thought on the book: Wisconsin is mentioned in there quite regularly - the 2000 Final Four (Jon Bryant represent!), losing to Georgia State the following year (good part on Left Driesell), and many mentions about how Carolina knocked the Badgers out in the Elite Eight in '05. No Shining Moment for us, but it infers we're a legit program.

Just remembered: The Army-Navy book was called A Civil War, excellent. Also Play Ball, A March to Madness, and the Last Amateurs. Also wrote some good fiction books that I'll introduce Will to in about middle school. Just bought Next Man Up, and planning to get The Punch.