Weekend Roundup, NCAA Tournament Home Game Edition: 3/18/13
/Note: The 13th Annual UMTailgate.com Tournament Challenge is ON. Brackets are here. Don't have the password and think you deserve it? Shoot an email to tourney2k13@umtailgate.com.
For most of the life of this waste of internet space from which I randomly spout snarky bullshit, the Michigan Men's Basketball Team has not been in the conversation for NCAA tournament glory. It would be around this time of year that we would grasp at football spring practice videos, recruiting rankings, and organizing some kind of winter reunion. Not so any more. Michigan is alive and well in the world of college basketball, and has earned the right to not only play in the NCAA tournament, but also host the opening rounds in its backyard. This is fun. It's fun to care. It's fun to really get involved in the tourney, to have a rooting interest beyond your office bracket. Hoping your team won't make an early round exit, dreaming of Atlanta, and rooting for schools that you have never heard of with mascots you can't picture to upset your rivals on the big stage. (Consequently, Go Crusaders!) Going home at lunch on Thursday if only to catch the first moments of the tourney, butterflies in your stomach as you hear the CBS college basketball jingle, quelled only by the desire to punch Buckeye-lover Clark Kellogg in the face.
Ahhhhh...tourney time.
Anyway, here's the weekend that was around the internets that you missed while you were trying to convince yourself that losing early in the conference tournament provides much needed rest for the big dance....
- Greg Mattison signed an extension through 2016, and you may safely assume that he continues to be, along with The Waterboy, the highest paid assistant in the B1G.
- Northwestern has fired Bill Carmody after 13 years of faithful service.
- Michigan fell to Wisconsin on Friday in the Big Ten Tournament, UMHoops recaps.
- The football team has pads on and is running into each other and throwing around a football.......SPRING PRACTICE!!!!! Day one video and some analysis by MNBN.
- Gophers are an 11 seed and will face UCLA.
- Iowa is NIT bound
- Purdue is dancing...in the CBI
- Wonderful opening week tourney primer from UMHoops.
- Black Shoe Diaries lives vicariously through this nice roundup of Big Ten teams in the tourney.
- Jake Long has signed with the St. Louis Rams.
- Times and dates and announcers for the Thursday / Friday matchups. Of note, we've got Lundquist/Raftery/Nichols this weekend.
- Michigan Hockey is still alive after sweeping the Broncos in Kalamazoo, and will head to the Joe for the semis.
