Maize n Brew gives you your daily (or semi-daily) rundown of all the Michigan Football, Michigan Basketball, College Football, and College Basketball news you need to get through the tedium of your boring desk job. For good measure we'll throw in a little irreverent information, comedy and commentary to help you salt away the time until the clock strikes 5pm. We're on a Facebook and Twitter drive, so be our friend or follow us! If you don't know what that means, you're old. If you want Maize n Brew in 140 characters or less, follow us on Twitter! Or you can friend us on Facebook for more links.
Things You Should Read Right Now
A Little Clarity on the NCAA West Virginia Issue from The Charleston Gazette - Mitch Vingle of the Gazette gives us a little more detail on what's happening with regard to the NCAA investigation in Morgantown. As previously reported by Mark Schlabach, the NCAA has been at West Virginia over the past 45 days, interviewing and investigation the program. Regardless, West Virginia remains fairly confident they (and as a result, Rodriguez) are free from violations:
WVU officials identified this as a concern back in September of 2009, when the UM-Rodriguez story first broke. The Gazette's Dave Hickman caught up with athletic director Ed Pastilong, who indicated then his big house was in order. He suggested he and then-compliance man Brad Cox almost babysat Rodriguez's practices, almost obsessed over record-keeping. So when the news broke, they double-checked their records and smiled.
"We looked into it,'' Patrick Hairston, WVU's assistant for compliance, said. "We're very comfortable no NCAA rules were broken."
( Emphasis mine - Ed.)
Long and short is West Virginia did what Michigan should have been doing all along, monitoring the program to ensure records were being properly kept. As a result, there won't be any "piling on" due to some "just uncovered" malfeacance at West Virginia. West Virginia looks like they kept their nose clean, and whether they like it or not as a result they kept Rich's clean too. As for the underlined portion.... Oh. Look there's a bus. Come're Rich....
NCAA investigates Rich Rodriguez from time at West Virginia - More on what we reported yesterday. Of note, David Brandon said that nothing in the West Virginia investigation appears to be a surprise or unknown to the Athletic Department.
"There is nothing new that would cause me to change my position," Brandon said in a statement released by the university, "Rich will coach our team this fall."
More on this from AnnArbor.com, just nothing new.
Michigan Basketball
Basketball Awards Banquet Honors Sims and Harris - The roles were reversed this year as DeShawn Sims was selected as the Team's MVP and he in turned shared the award with Manny Harris. Nice ending to a rough year. All the awards follow:
2010 Michigan Basketball Celebration Awards
Bill Buntin Most Valuable Player Award: DeShawn Sims, Manny Harris
Rudy Tomjanovich Most Improved Player Award: Blake McLimans
Wayman Britt Outstanding Defensive Player Award: Darius Morris
Steve Grote Hustle Award: Zack Novak
Thad Garner Leadership Award: Zack Novak
Travis Conlan Sportsmanship Award: Stu Douglass
Bodnar Award for Academic Achievement: Matt Vogrich
Gary Grant Award for Most Assists: Manny Harris
Loy Vaught Rebounding Award: DeShawn Sims
Award for Outstanding Free Throw Shooting: Manny Harris
Sixth Man Award: Zack Gibson
Iron Man Award: DeShawn Sims
Charge Award: Zack Novak
A couple of things worth pointing out here are the 6th man and Defensive awards. First, Honky Magic/White Moses/Zack Gibson certainly deserved the Sixth Man Award. One of my regrets on the season is that we didn't see more of Gibby. He always seemed to make something happen and was easily my favorite player on this year's team. We'll miss you Zack. Second, my new favorite player with Gibson's departure is Darius Morris without a doubt. I saw flashes of what the kid was capable of against Northwestern and toward the end of the season. Morris really turned into a good defender by the end of the year and is certainly going to be scoring option No. 1 on the 2010-2011 squad. It was nice to see him get a little recognition as well.
John Beilein talks at the Basketball Awards Banquet: Change will make us better 'for the future' - Change isn't so much a question about the future. It's a question about the present. Over the summer Beilein will have to replace two assistant coaches (Jerry Dunn and John Mahoney) and how to replace most of Michigan's scoring with the departures of DeShawn Sims and Manny Harris. there are some things that look good for the coming season, however. Transfer Jordan Dumars will be ready to contribute and (hopefully) redshirt freshman Jordan Morgan will be recovered from knee and shoudler surgery and provide some depth beneath the basket. One interesting thing in this article of note, until now I was under the impression that Dunn and Mahoney were leaving of their own accord. This was the first I'd read that indicated they were let go. No word yet on who is under consideration (if anyone at this point) to replace them.
Other Michigan Comings and Goings of Note
Taylor's Perfect Performance Leads to Big Ten Weekly Honor - Our congratulations to Jordan Taylor on her perfect game and Big Ten Player of the Week honors! Her perfect game pushes her to a 16-2 record on the season.
Wolverines Launch Three Home Runs to Down Rockets - The baseball team is rollin' right now. The Wolverines downed Toledo 8-4 to improve to 19-11.
Trey Zeigler to announce college plans Wednesday - It'd be nice if he came to UM, but I'm not holding my breath at this point.
Dhani Jones says he's displeased with Rich Rodriguez - What is it with former Carr players spouting off to the media as pros? Do they think criticizing the program right now helps? Dhani, we love you. BUT seriously dude, if you're gonna criticize at least talk to the coach first. No matter what people want to assume or believe, the cupboard was bare of defensive and offensive talent when Rodriguez took over. None of us are happy about the past two seasons, but bus throwing shouldn't happen until after year three.