UMFan83

Well Illinois is going to the NCAA tournament and because of the last 2 painful OT losses Michigan almost certainly isnt, so yes. But I have noticed that a ton from Illinois. Gotta be frustrating. Michigan's issue was not the last 2 games....it was what they did before February. Obviously. The last 2 games were an extension of a season long problem. They have lost 6 games this year when they had an 80+% win probability in the second half. 5 of them were Q1 games, and the other was the resume anchor loss to Q4 CMU. Win one of those games and they are probably in the field right now by a hair. 12 of their 14 losses have been by 1-2 possessions or OT. Insane how this team repeatedly falls apart when it matters most. They have true Freshman and a sophomore playing 4 of the 5 most minutes on the team so in a sense I get it, but its still crazy.

A ton of great info from Poles here, read all the way til the end. He seems convinced that he’s gonna get 1sts in 2024 and 2025 for 1.01 and that there are at least 4 teams he’s talking with. Some of this could definitely be negotiating through the media but I’m super excited to see how this plays out https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2023/03/06/ryan-poles-chicago-bears-nfl-combine-draft-peter-king-fmia/?cid=fmiatw

Would you trade Michigan’s end game collapses for Illinois’ seeming need to be punched in the face (almost literally) before they wake up and realize that there’s a game going on? They turned the ball over in their first 4 possessions and allowed Purdue to score in their first 5 to go down 11 points three minutes into the game, had to play catch up the rest of the way and end up losing by 5. I’m looking around the Internet to find Illinois’ first half vs second half point differentials. It’s got to be substantial. Well Illinois is going to the NCAA tournament and because of the last 2 painful OT losses Michigan almost certainly isnt, so yes. But I have noticed that a ton from Illinois. Gotta be frustrating.

If you were asked to design the most excruciatingly painful way for Michigan to lose 2 games with their entire season on the line (and I’m sure many would jump at the chance), you wouldn’t have written a script as painful as what Michigan has just endured No one is going to feel sorry for Michigan basketball after the past decade but man, this really horsefeathering hurts to be in the position Michigan was in the last 2 games and lose them both. Up 7 with 1:49 left against Illinois, up 12 midway through the 2nd half against Indiana. Had the ball in a tie game with the shot clock off 4 times in the last 2 games and couldn’t convert once. Winning either game probsbly puts them in the bracket, at least for now. Now they’ll have to win the big ten Michigan is a NCAA tournament caliber team but fell apart too many times in crunch time, in many cases rather improbably.

Just for fun, lets be optimists and say the Cubs are pretty decent/good this year. Which of these 6 NL teams would you say is most likely to be the weak link that the Cubs can steal a playoff spot from? Dodgers Padres Cardinals Braves Mets Phillies The Cardinals maybe?

I see a batter step up to the plate, my wife asks me a brief question, I answer and look back towards the TV and the count is 3-2. This is wild. Question: are batters still allowed to call time after the pitch clock goes below 8 seconds?

Hmm

Blackhawks turn Kane trade into a social media video production. Interesting to see the process play out though

Calling the trash can a "tub" had me doing some frantic Googling for a few seconds. That story was briefly a LOT more wild than I remembered. Just in the last 10 years we got the Astros scandal and the Cardinals hacking scandal. The MLB knows how to produce a good scandal

Fine but they drafted in the top 10 five straight years before making the playoffs in 2009 and had 15 total picks in the first 2 rounds of those drafts. Whether it was purposeful, due to ineptitude or due to frugality, it had the same affect as a gut rebuild would have

I dont think he's saying that, I think he's saying that no other "big city" has seen their teams embrace the tank across sports (baseball, football, basketball, hockey etc) quite like Chicago has in the last 20 years or so I can’t think of another big market team that has done what the Blackhawks did this year, in terms of blatant over the top tanking. I think teams have unintentionally became really bad. Then you have the Bears pulling the almost unheard of move of a new guy bringing in absolutely nothing in his first year, and sabotaging a first round QB with zero help. The Cubs pulled off their 2nd tank in less than a decade and blamed it on the pandemic their owners political party claimed wasn’t real. It’s all rather disgusting. When NY teams perform this poorly, heads roll. But Chicago applauds it. And all the teams are doing it together. The Knicks have been mostly terrible for 20 years, the Nets are good maybe 1/3 of the seasons, the Devils had a bad run for awhile as you mentioned, the Jets are a national laughing stock, the Giants made the playoffs for the first time in 5 years this year, the Mets have made the playoffs 4 times in the last 22 years. The Yankees and Rangers are the only consistently good teams. They may roll heads but its not helping them build good teams. They have a bunch of mediocrity and below average teams because their teams don't gut rebuild. Now look at championships since 2010. New York: 2011 Giants Chicago: 2010 Blackhawks, 2013 Blackhawks, 2015 Blackhawks, 2016 Cubs (all built off the backs of gut tank jobs) I'm mostly writing this as a devil's advocate post just to see how venomous goony's response will be. I hate gut rebuilds. They fail more often than they succeed and you are just pissing way multiple seasons with the hope that something goes right. Chicago does them a lot and it sucks, especially when every team in the city sucks at the same time. I'd kill for one Chicago team that has its horsefeathers together and you can count on being at least good every season like the Yankees. But we're left with this crap. I still think given where the Hawks were when Bowman was fired, this one made sense. I would have kept Debrincat or Dach or both though.

There is a free YouTube documentary being released over the next 3 days called "Last Comiskey" that is pretty cool. Detailing Comiskey Park and particularly the last season. Obviously we're Cubs fans, but I didn't mind the Sox through the 90s. I went to multiple games at Old Comiskey and remember its charm...not to Wrigley's degree but it was a cool ballpark. The last game I went to in that final season I distinctly remember 2 things: it was snowing during the game, and Sammy Sosa was playing RF for the Sox. Thought I'd share in case anyone else has fond memories of going there. Part 1:

Not adding to or detracting to any point made, just thinking about Jersey's comment about all the tanking going on in this city....here are the recent tanks and my rating for how much of a tank they were 2022- - Bears 6/10 - Doesn't seem like its designed to be a long term rebuild, but they went all the way for one season to ensure they got a top pick 2022- - Blackhawks 10/10 - Clearly removing every valuable asset from the organization to rebuild from ground up 2021- - Cubs 5/10 - Traded away virtually all their best players, but have yet to try to completely bottom out 2017-2020 - Bulls 8/10 - Tried to rebuild through high draft picks, but kept good players on the roster that prevented them from having top 5 lottery odds (this could be by design or more likely incompetence) 2017-2019 - White Sox 10/10 - Gut rebuild 2010-2014 - Cubs 10/10 - Gut rebuild Our new issue is teams not wanting to tank so hard and ending up stuck in mediocrity, which arguably is worse. The Cubs are trending towards mediocrity, the Bulls have completely embraced it, the White Sox wallowed in mediocrity for several years before rebuilding, the Blackhawks were mediocre at best for a half decade before pulling the plug.

Strange and funny that reporters keep asking Ohio State players at the combine about whether Justin Fields is just a RB playing QB: Stroud tells the Bears not to draft him and stick with Fields lol Probably my favorite group of Ohio State players ever. Sure mostly because they were all unable to beat Michigan, but also because they are defending Fields.

Also true Bryan Bickell also says hi, though his was just mostly bad (not Seabrook bad) until his diagnosis. Probably a similar situation with Toews and whatevers been going on there the last couple years. Seth Jones? Or are you only talking about contracts awarded with the Hawks were still good? The Hawks still have a $5.5m cap hit on Keith this season, though he provided an adequate amount of value during the first part of his deal.

Making this the Morel mega-thread while we still have mega-threads: :-k

Still a chance according to this Link "At 14-19 and without a conference title to their credit, the Titans are ineligible for the NIT and NCAA Tournament. However, Davis could still break Maravich's record if Detroit is invited to a postseason event such as the CBI or The Basketball Classic, which allows teams with records below .500 to compete." Maravich set his record in 83 games over 3 seasons. Davis has played 143 games over 5 seasons. The idea of the record being broken because a bad team got invited to some 3rd rate tournament just for the sake of allowing the record to be broken would seem very unsatisfying to all involved. But regardless, great career by Davis the son of legendary IU coach Mike Davis. :hello:

The bottom of the league is littered with teams that were good in the 10's and are rebuilding. You are right that good teams can retool and be good again later on Teams like Boston and Pittsburgh seem to be perpetually good. But the Hawks under Bowman could never do that and instead found themselves in a positon where they were nowhere near good enough, had little draft capital, not many prospects, and a poor cap situation. The gut rebuild was the best path forward in their mind. Do I think they should have kept Debrincat and Dach and other young players? Yes, but even with them it was going to be a multi-year rebuild imo. The bad teams previously being good doesn’t mean anything. The top of the league is littered with teams that have been good for a decade+ with the exception of a year or two. The tear down is easy. The rebuild is the problem. The devils spent two decades in mediocrity and are only just now finally good again. When Davidson says it’s going to be a long process, he’s probably underselling how long that will be. I agree, its going to take forever and it sucks. But there's 2 situations we're talking about: being a good team and balancing the future and the present to stay competitive, and being a good team with declining results and not much to fall back on. The Hawks were trying to be the former but I feel like Bowman put us in a position where a massive rebuild had to become the route forward. Maybe the Hawks could have kept their young guys, cut bait elsewhere and hoped to get better quicker but the margin for error is a lot less. If we fired Bowman before he could have executed that ridiculously bad offseason, we probably have better route to retool, but he massively set back the franchise several years with his moves. Just my 2 cents...

I just didn’t see a path forward after Bowman epically botched the 2021 offseason in a way that almost seemed like he was sabotaging the team. Rebuilds in hockey suck as hey have the strictest salary cap by far. You can’t just buy a good team and you can’t just cut players with bad contracts and save money like you can in the NFL. When a team finds itself in the position the Blackhawks were in, the most obvious path to contention is it tear it down and spend multiple years building it back up. Except nobody has ever done it. Good teams generally take a year or two to step back and reload. But rarely do they bottom out and start over. It takes a decade to rebuild a winner. You need a lot of good hockey players to win a lot of games. The bottom of the league is littered with teams that were good in the 10's and are rebuilding. You are right that good teams can retool and be good again later on Teams like Boston and Pittsburgh seem to be perpetually good. But the Hawks under Bowman could never do that and instead found themselves in a positon where they were nowhere near good enough, had little draft capital, not many prospects, and a poor cap situation. The gut rebuild was the best path forward in their mind. Do I think they should have kept Debrincat and Dach and other young players? Yes, but even with them it was going to be a multi-year rebuild imo.

I just didn’t see a path forward after Bowman epically botched the 2021 offseason in a way that almost seemed like he was sabotaging the team. Rebuilds in hockey suck as hey have the strictest salary cap by far. You can’t just buy a good team and you can’t just cut players with bad contracts and save money like you can in the NFL. When a team finds itself in the position the Blackhawks were in, the most obvious path to contention is it tear it down and spend multiple years building it back up.

Eh. To be fair, if the refs had any idea what a goaltend is, the game wouldn't have even made it to overtime. There was some wonky stuff called on both sides, though none more blatant than that goaltend. I'm sure you can point to several " if that didn't happen then..." calls in a double OT game. The fact is Michigan had a 7 point lead with 1:49 left in a game they desperately needed to win and they lost. Sucks. I know most here are either Illinois fans or Michigan haters so I'll end my sob story there lol

Basketball is a stupid sport for really stupid people. That was probably the roughest Michigan basketball loss I've felt since the Elite 8 loss to UCLA. And of course the dude that Michigan admissions wouldn't let in is the one that beats them

that's freaking depressing. I imagine he will start out a bit slower too with no spring training....possibility this throws off his season at least a little.

First 3 seasons: 450 games, 16.7 WAR Next 3 seasons: 295 games, 1.2 WAR I realize there are better metrics to look at that will diagnose the issues better but just throwing basic WAR out there to illustrate how big his decline in play has been. Realize there's been injuries and swing changes and other factors at play, just curious if there is a comp out there of a player with a similar career arc suddenly finding their form again. I'll let our resident baseball wizard TT, who is probably the biggest asset that Brock acquired in his purchase of the site, chime in with some fancy numbers.

Counterpoint: great time to get a glimpse at some of the organizations "rising stars" and lesser-knowns. Meh, its hard (at least for me) to parse through what is relevant and what is not relevant when it comes to Spring Training performances. Because of that I really don't care to watch spring training at all. I check back in this thread every 4-5 days to see whats going on