Sorry folks for all the time off from the site. We had to graduate. I guess it happens. Oh and this happened…
Obama in the Big House for our Graduation
In the meantime with Michigan Football still 118 days away and Michigan Basketball even further away we are going to take some time off.
Enjoy the Yankees coasting through May, June, and July. Watch as the Mets will hit a huge rock in the road and begin a free for all at some point. Most importantly enjoy the Red Sox struggles as their “pitching and defense” leads them nowhere.
As I laid in bed this morning/afternoon to watch the pregame show for today’s NCAA second round games, I was given the treat of watching a feature on Evan Turner. Clearly they had to show 6 to 7 highlights of his game-winning near half court shot that knocked Michigan out of the Big Ten Tournament. Michigan played valiantly in defeat, but that buzzer beater was a microcosm of a season that left us with more questions than answers.
I’m sure any Michigan fan reading this post doesn’t want to reminisce about this season while watching 65 better teams compete for a National Championship. Instead, I think it’s more fitting to look ahead to next season, and give us fans a glimmer of hope.
Right now, Michigan will be losing its 3 tallest rotation players in Deshawn Sims, Anthony Wright, and Zack Gibson. Currently the incoming recruits are Tim Hardaway Jr, a wing player, and Evan Smotrycz, a tall and lanky player who should be a perfect power forward for John Beilein’s system. Because big men Jordan Morgan and Blake McLimans redshirted, we will count them as incoming players as well. Manny Harris still hasn’t decided if he will return for his senior season. If he does, Michigan still has two scholarships to give out to this recruiting class, and if he leaves they will have three.
The Wolverines seem to have focused these last two scholarships on two prospects in Trey Ziegler and Jon Horford. If Harris stays and these two guys end up coming to Michigan, then the Wolverines will have an explosive stable of guards that are capable of scoring the basketball. They will still be left with a lot of questions for big men in trying to replace Deshawn Sims’ post production. Regardless of is Harris stays, the loss of Sims will most likely have the bigger impact on next year’s team.
For the sake of simplicity, I am going to predict that Michigan will sign Horford, lose out on Ziegler, and get Harris back for his senior season. Manny’s jump shot and defense are not NBA ready, and he would greatly benefit from another year under the tutelage of John Beilein. This would leave the team with Darius Morris, Laval Lucas-Perry, and Stu Douglass to play point guard and shooting guard. They would have Harris, Hardaway, Zack Novak, and Matt Vogrich on the wing, and then Smotrycz, McLimans, Horford, and Morgan in the post.
This would be a deep team with lots of shooters and more size than last year’s team. The key issue going into next season would be whether the big men can step up to collectively try and replace a large portion of Deshawn Sims’ production. It will immediately be an improvement if we can start the first game without Zack Novak as the team’s power forward. I respect and admire the effort Novak brings onto the court on a nightly basis, but he is not a Division 1 power forward, especially in the Big Ten. He will be much better suited to play on the wing. If he and Harris were to start at the 2 and the 3, Michigan would have one of the best rebounding lineups in the Big Ten.
There are still a lot of NBA Draft and recruiting questions that need to be answered before we can start thinking about next year. This team will be anxious to rid themselves of the memories of this season, and next November cannot come soon enough.
Barring exile on a deserted island, some sort of coma or a long stint in jail (none of that white collar stuff though, I’m talking the real thing) it’s unlikely that any of you have missed an entire March Madness Tournament.
Neither have I. (End of post right? Great blog entry ACo, really broke a sweat on that one).
What kind of self respecting sports fan do you think I am? But! Compared to how I usually watch the tournament, having multiple games going, checking my bracket after every loss, devastated by a buzzer beater gone wrong, my experience with the NCAA tournament last year could be equated to not watching it at all.
That’s what happens when you spend four months in Sydney, Australia. You see, everyone on my program lived in this hotel/apartment style building. And what self respecting person pays for hotel internet? No, we didn’t have to pay, but when you have 200 Americans all on the crappy hotel internet at the same time, your bandwidth is bound to be pretty slow. It doesn’t help that the whole country has serious internet troubles in general. This is, of course, the same country that barred their indigenous population from voting until 1984 (!!). Slow internet is clearly the least of their worries.
As a die hard North Carolina fan and a a Michigan student, it was by far the worst tournament to be out of the country for. My team was favored to win, my college was making it’s first appearance in like 50 years (exaggeration) and the Final Four was being held basically down the block! I on the other hand was forced into some of the most makeshift television watching scenarios known to man (or at least to a spoiled college student married to his computer like myself).
Slingbox was a stretch. It took the patience of a buddhist monk tolerating it cutting out every 15 minutes, usually in very important game situations. NCAAsports.com was even worse. There was just no way the computers were going to be an option for watching the games. One of my friends went as far as Skyping with his brother, who in turn pointed his computer at the TV broadcasting the game. Surprisingly enough this worked for quite a bit. But watching the games on someone else’s time isn’t really a legitimate option. What about sports bars? We scoured the city asking if they’d play the games. Kind of tricky when the games start at 4am and go until noon. Not exactly peak sports bar times. My only real triumph came when my friend and I were desperate to watch the Michigan game. We sucked it up, went to an internet cafe and watched the game on one of their computers, paying by the hour. They weren’t too happy with the loud Americans dressed in Maize and Blue disrupting the other customers.
In the end, Michigan played good basketball, my Tarheels blew away the competition, taking home another National Championship, and I even won a couple hundred bucks after winning one of the pools I was in. I struggled through some of the worst internet connections I’ve ever experienced and some of the most inconvenient tip-off times possible. But would I have had it any other way? Hell no. I mean seriously..Look at the picture below of the beach I went to 5 days a week. I think missing the NCAA Tournament is a worthy sacrifice for the trip of a lifetime.
At least that’s what I kept telling myself as I watched cbssports.com gamecasts slamming my laptop against the wall.
Who would have thought that a porn star would lead so many people to our blog (inadvertently, of course).
Because our traffic has jumped up significantly the last couple days I figured I’d direct the new faces to the key spots on the blog.
Make sure to check out all of the top tags which tell you a little bit about ourselves and organize all of our posts in their necessary sections.
Although we’ve been slacking on the posting daily, make sure to check out the Random Player of the Day. You’ll probably recognize a few athletes that you haven’t thought about in years.
We’ve been off our grind and I don’t have any excuses. Hopefully the influx of new readers will get us back to posting. I’ll try and get the crew to get the NCAA chatter going. Until then, keep enjoying the games.
An interesting thing happened today in the STW world. No it wasn’t the start of the NCAA tournament (although we should be talking about that). Porn star Joslyn James launched her websites of Tiger Woods text messages, or what we call “sext” messages. Heck, it was the inspiraiton for the name of our blog! Lucky for us, our traffic has gone up significantly today as a result of the launch of her site.
We were curious, considering her site name is so similar to ours, whether she considered naming her site the same as ours before realizing it was taken. Regardless, I’m just happy that I was able to beat her too it.
We’ll try and post a bit more in the coming weeks. We’ve been lazy and occupied with work (and drinking). Awesome first day of the tourney…let’s hope it stays like this.
I like the move, although I don’t think it’s going to make or break the Jets season. With our offensive line, I think he can be affective, at least more affective than he’s been the last 2 years. Also, I’m sure he’ll be a great influence on Leon and Shonn, helping them develop into better running backs.
More importantly, this gives me a reason to wear my Nugent jersey on Wednesday on St. Patty’s Day. I’m going to cover Nugent’s name and put Tomlinson on the back.
Tomorrow is the first day of the Big Ten Tournament, and this represents an opportunity for all of the underachievers in the league to make a 4 game run and try to make the NCAA Tournament. Michigan is one of these teams, and they square off tomorrow against Iowa at 2:30 pm. Michigan swept Iowa this season and this is the third year in a row that the two teams are squaring off in the tournament’s open round, with the Wolverines winning both times.
It is anybody’s guess as to which Michigan team will show up this weekend. They have showed that they are capable of playing with any team in the conference (besides the mauling that occurred at Purdue), but have faltered late in many of these contests. It’s extremely unlikely that this team would put together 4 straight strong performances, especially with the lack of confidence that they’ve showed.
Simply put, Deshawn Sims and Manny Harris are going to have to play great at the same time in order for this team to do damage. Michigan really is a tough team to beat when this happens, but unfortunately it’s been a rare occurrence this season. Whatever the case, HB and The Berg will be glued to the TV set tomorrow, and for every game that follows until the Wolverines falter. Win or lose, we still have March Madness to look forward to, and it doesn’t get much better than that.
I’ve heard a lot of talk among Yankee bashers and Cashman critics about how painful the loss of Damon and Matusi will be. Both players were outstanding during their careers in pinstripes and for those with a short memory, their play in the World Series undoubtedly carries some weight in your hearts. Matusi won the MVP after tearing through the Phillies pitching staff. Damon had key AB after key AB and his double steal was as heads up of a play as you are going to see in baseball. Yes they were great Yankees, yes they were as influential as anyone in the World Series, but I am one who strongly believes Cashman made the right move in letting them both go.
#1- Age. Damon and Matsui are 36 and 35 respectively. While many Major Leaguers have a few more years under their belt at those ages, I’m willing to bet these two don’t quite have hte same stamina. Matsui for one should never see the OF again. He is strictly a DH. His knees are simply gone. Meanwhile Damon lost the top end speed he had for most of his career. This was most notable on defense where balls we were accustomed to Damon catching simply went off the top of his glove or he made an extremely awkward attempt to catch them by diving or gliding into the padded fences. Damon also declined in SBs last year going from a solid 29 SBs to a meager 12. To offer extended contracts to either of these players would have been a mistake, which leads me to…$$$.
#2- Money ($$$)- Cashman seems unwilling to work with Scott Boras anymore. The Yankees think they do (and well they do) own the free agent market. Their offers set the tone for what players are worth and what kind of money they could get if a high market team like the Yankees were to be interested. Johnny Damon’s agent Scott Boras, however, thinks that it is he who dictates the market. His scheme of puppeting teams against each other and waiting out for the highest offers until teams get desperate has admittedly worked in the past. The Yankees, like many other clubs are over this tactic. Teams are simply willing to go with other players just to avoid the Scott Boras drama. As Yankee fans we saw this when Alex Rodriguez re-signed without Boras and we saw that Damon was not going to be able to play hardball with the Yankees. Asking for a 2 year deal around 8 million a year was outrageous. All along Cashman knew he had better options. In a suave trade, Cashman landed the likable, gregarious, and talented Curtis Granderson for just $5.5 million in 2010. Granderson is and will be a better player than Damon in 2010. Everything about Yankee Stadium suits his game. This was a no brainer for Cashman and the Yankees.
Mastsui signed for 1 year and $6.5 million in Anaheim. Honestly, I think this was right around what the Yankees could have given him and it would not have been the worst thing in the world to bring back a proven lefty bat who can hit lefties and righties effectively all the while handling the New York media. The Yankees opted to sign former Yankee Nick Johnson to take Matsui’s role as the DH. Johnson signed for $1 million less than Matsui at $5.5 million. I’d imagine their contributions would be similar with Matsui hitting for slightly higher power, Johnson getting on base more, and both seeing their share of the disabled list. This move is what it is. Johnson isn’t neccesarily an upgrade over Matsui but his contributions will be enough to not make us weep over the loss of Godzilla.
#3- Plain Frustration (Declining Skills?)- I don’t know if this was brought in the meetings between Cashman, Levine, Girardi, the Steinbrennars, and whoever else, but there were a few things Matsui and Damon did that just drove me nuts at certain points during the season. Could these frustrations be one of the reasons these two former LFs are out of town? Doubtful, but I certainly am looking forward to not seeing them on a nightly basis.
Damon- Also mentioned earlier but why when he runs after fly balls now does he seem like he first can’t find the ball and then when he does he runs zig zagged after it before the ball landing at the palm of his glove only waiting to be popped out? Every ball hit to left field looked like an adventure and at many times was. Forget about balls that were hit to the warning track. Johnny had no shot at these. These shots would ricochet off the wall leading to many extra base hits and embarrassing face plants for Johnny. I will miss his charisma out their in LF (not his throwing arm). He ingratiated himself with the fans and carried himself with a sense of humor.
While batting, Yankee fans were many times left wondering how this man could have ever had generated enough power to hit a home run, let alone a single. He would constantly flail at pitches out of the strike zone, going through periods of slumps where he looked completely over matched. Then out of nowhere he’d get good wood on the ball, knocking the ball out of the park. I could not tell you how many times I watched a Damon AB only to be completely astounded that he was a quality Major League Baseball player. His swings would look t-ballesque and uncoordinated. But that was Johnny, and he was instrumental in winning the Yankees a ring, and despite the crappy divorce, Johnny and his double steal will always be revered.
Matsui was only an offensive player by his last year in pinstripes. Girardi knew immediately that Damon was our only semi-suitable option in left field. Mastuis knees could barely get him to first base nonetheless to liners down the line. But what really began to raise my ire about Matsui was his seemingly routine 4-6-3 double play anytime there was a runner on first with less than two outs. Any two seam fastball or breaking pitch on the outside of the plate would spur a routine double play. It became clockwork at the tailend of Matsui’s tenure in pinstripes. Posada seems to have this same disease. So between the two of them and the constant double plays the momentum killing innings bottled up. I grew tired of them. Matsui was a clutch hitter no doubt but I will not miss his ginger strides up the first line attempting to beat out the famous Mastsui 4-6-3 DP.
Prediction- Grandy, Winn, Gardner & Johnson outdo the production of Damon and Matsui in 2010. Good moves all around by Brian Cashman.
