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A quick piece of good news from the struggling University of Michigan basketball program. They beat 15th ranked Connecticut 68-63 on Sunday in Ann Arbor. The Wolverines were led by Manny Harris, who had 18 points and eight rebounds.
Maybe this team will be making a run for the NCAA tournament after all? It’s still an uphill battle.
Sometimes it’s easy to think that the Red Wings’ management team is just shopping around for pity, working the refs out whenever they can. Why? That’s been a part of hockey for a long, long time. And the Wings have done it so well for so long. Then there are other times, like today, when it’s hard to discount the hockey conspiracy theorists. The Wings lost a game in the shootout when a puck that wasn’t called a goal by the goal judge was eventually deemed a goal by the NHL’s Committee of Knowledge in Toronto. I’m not going to rant too long about this. The Wings got a point on the road, they’re getting healthy and it’s looking like they might have enough steam in their engines to hang around in a playoff seed until April. But only time will tell. Here’s some blurry web video from Yahoo! Sports. I’ll try to post something later with better quality if I can find it.
In one of the more confusing statements to come from a franchise with a history of confusion, Detroit Lions GM Martin Mayhew hasn’t ruled out bringing second-string QB Daunte Culpepper back for another season. Anyone that’s followed the team this year has got to wonder why. Culpepper did nothing to distinguish himself in the past year. Surely, a more qualified backup could be found through free agency. This is just another in a long line of bad blows to Michigan-based businesses. Longtime University of Michigan merchandising partner M Den host lost its status as the University’s official merchandising partner. The new partner is a Dallas-based company, eSports. eSports will take over the store inside Michigan Stadium and run a new Web site, the address of which I will not publish on this blog. After 17 years, M Den loses status as official store of U-M sports | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press Wings fans should be neither surprised or dejected at the loss of “Mister October” Marion Hossa. Hossa’s one-year stint with the Wings proves that desire alone will not propel a player, or a team, to an NHL championship. Instead, those championships are won by a combination of talent, grit, perseverance, a lack of injuries, and some damn good hockey luck. I’m not sorry to see Hossa go. For a 30-year old veteran, he surprisingly crumbled in the Stanley Cup Finals. Things had been pretty quiet around the Motor City Sports Blog offices the past week. The brouhaha over Sidney Crosby’s snub of Nicklas Lidstrom, as well as the fact that our Winged warrior came up one game short of the cup, has worn off. And the Tigers have been playing great, with a seven-game winning streak (aside from a blown lead and a couple of flops on the road). The Lions and Michigan Wolverines are making all the right noises in their march toward incompetence. And aside from the draft, nothing really much from the Pistons. My bet was on Joe Dumars giving Michael Curry another year, and a better, more motivated roster, to prove himself. There’s going to be a lot of speculation about who should coach this team. My concern is that this group of players, who won a great championship in 2004, has a chip on their collective shoulder. In every year since 2004, they have come up short. But they still talk the talk and walk with the swagger of a championship team. The sad truth is that they’ve fallen quite a bit since their 2004 win. Is this group of players coachable? Can they dredge up the humility they need to recalibrate their collective work ethic and make at least one more serious run at a title? And can they do this in a conference that’s going to be dominated by LeBron James for the next few years? Pistons fire Michael Curry | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press Can we just stop the madness? Every year, we hear some delusional Lions player or coach come out and talk about the fighting spirit of the team and how this is a breakthrough year. The year … to the Super Bowl, winning 10 games, or maybe winning the NFC North. This year, it’s Quarterback Daunte Culpepper’s job to do so. If you wonder why I’m so cynical about this, you must not have lived in Detroit for the past 10 years, where our football team has gone from perennial 7-9 also rans to consistent 3-13 overachievers. I don’t know what my prediction is for this team, but I can guarantee you that by Thanksgiving, it doesn’t matter if the Lions win or lose. Steve Yzerman, Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille were teammates on the 2002 Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings. And now they’ll join the Hockey Hall of Fame together. The induction ceremony is on Nov. 9 at the Hall in Toronto. Yzerman, Hull and Robitaille become Hall of Famers | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press Why does it seem ironic that Pavel Datsyuk, whose unfortunately-timed playoff injuries helped bring down the big red winged machine, wins this year’s Selke (Best Defensive Forward) and Lady Byng (Most Gentlemanly Player) Trophies? And Nicklas Lidstrom was certainly stiffed by the league’s voters in his efforts to bring home a fourth-straight and seventh-overall Norris Trophy, given to the league’s best defenseman. When there is no joy in Mudville, there is certainly no joy in Mudville. Pavel Datsyuk wins Selke, Lady Byng trophies | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press We doubt this will have the same results that Ken Holland’s now-legendary benching of Goalie Chris Osgood this winter: Tiger Manager Jim Leyland has finally laid down the law and benched slugger Magglio Ordonez for poor performance. Ordonez has only managed two home runs and 22 RBIs this season. None of the reports of the benching have included comments from Ordonez, though it is rumored that he will use this time to express support for Venezuealan dictator Hugo Chavez. Tigers bench Magglio Ordonez | detnews.com | The Detroit News |
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