Move It Back

You'd best head elsewhere for something informative on the Illinois game, since I was forced to miss it. Lo siento. Joey has a bit. UI's Scout site has an interesting article, too; The Chicago Tribune gets all Peter Gabriel up in here:

Michigan's Daniel Horton was a human sledgehammer Tuesday night at Crisler Arena and he did seemingly irreparable damage to Illinois' hope of winning its third straight Big Ten championship.

Update: Maize 'n' Brew gets all astronomical and wins the Michi-blogosphere race to say something about, you know, the game. Hurray quasi-delegation.

Anyway, college basketball is totally weird. This is the only conclusion you get from last night's Horton explosion. Partially because said circumstances prevented me from watching the game; partially because it just is, especially when games devolve into three-point contests more often than not. Michigan took 47 shots last night, twenty of which were three pointers. Nine went in. Michigan won by eight. Earlier, Michigan went down in flames against Iowa and Ohio State when said opponents rifled in over 50% of their threes. This... is not so good.

Paranoid anecdotes not sufficient for you? A quick glance at Big Ten Wonk's statistics reveals that over a third (34.3%) of all shots launched in the Big Ten are (high-variance, probably ill-chosen) threes. By comparison, fewer than 20% of shots in the NBA are three-pointers. No doubt there are a multitude of reasons for this--lack of dudes like Lebron or Kobe who can drive with impunity, the tendency of college teams to pack the lane--but foremost among them is the three point line, which is almost close enough to make any two-point shot a bad one. Let's leave the kiddie line in high schools and obsolete the term "NBA three." Please.

Also! Apparently the Izzone got punked... or at least they would have gotten punked if they could execute simple instructions. Behold, they said "Go Blue," sort of:

More like "GO BL... um... U/O thing... undefined potential letter," but that's not the fault of the enterprising Maize Ragers who set the stunt up in the first place. Michigan State students: incapable of holding things in the air. Figures, since they were probably all as drunk as the guy who thought that screwing around with the seven-foot guy who never plays was a good idea.

Big Ten Wonk is all over this, scoring the Interview of the Century with one of the planners. And speaking of that MSU game, Critical Fanatic highlights some of the dumber things said during it and titles his post "Someone Please Hire Rick Majerus," which I'm wholeheartedly behind. He's unpossible.