The hot blog groupies ("Hot Blog Groupies" was a much better joke when I could accompany it with a link to Google showing no results, but that's life) should be rolling in any minute now, I guess. A lot of people found the pretty graphs to be interesting, which is good since they took more time than I thought they would. The third down stuff was supposed to be a sanity check/proof of concept for the stats database and my php skillz... but I wanted the graphs to look a certain way (the red/green) not facilitated by the software package I was using. Thus I had fun with line intersection algorithms. Yay.
Anyway, a selection of the blogosphere's finest chimed in with their own analysis. Braves & Birds highlighted several graphs of interest, including Miami's horrific third and short performance. Burnt Orange Nation and Section Six took a look at local favorites Texas and NC State, respectively. Paul W took a look at Georgia's performance. EDSBS's take-home lesson is what it always is: "Jeff Bowden sucks." Aye.
Favorite reaction, though, was that of He Is Manpundit(!), who derided all the effort that went into making said graphs and then... um... made a graph of it:
I won't address the content of the assertion -- dude is outvoted badly -- but I will make fun of his intelligence: he screwed up his axes. They should be reversed. Typical.
You could probably start referring to the "Michigan Basketball is Michigan State Football and Vice Versa" thing as "eerie" if Michigan were to beat MSU tomorrow, officially kicking off a Spartan season of infinite pain, sending the RCMB into a conniption fit, and causing Brent Petway to chang his IM screenname. The good news is that Dion Harris and Jerrett Smith are expected to play, but Abram is still out and blah blah blah Refs Izzo blah.
My opinion? Well... Michigan State is ill-suited to go all Iowa/OSU on us and bomb away from three: they're tenth in the league, ahead of only Minnesota. If Harris can go full speed Michigan will have a shot, but MSU is one of those teams that understands how to guard Sims (remember: the key is to try)--without Harris playing well we're screwed. Officiating will be huge again. Will the refs call this game as tightly as they did the first one? Will MSU refuse to change the way they play? Can Paul Davis look any more like a pale 6'11" Eeyore? Find out Saturday!
One additional bit of basketball news: last-ditch 2006 recruit Patrick Beverly was recently named to the Roundball Classic roster and elicited the following praise from Adidas honcho Sonny Vaccaro:
"Beverley was not even on the top 100 list for McDonald's,'' Vaccaro said. "He was one of those non-entity guys who didn't get a big-time name in the summer. He was good last year, and his high school was good. But the kid was still a mystery. This is a kid from Chicago, not from rural Tennessee or Mississippi. The only one I can think of to compare him to is Dwyane Wade.That list is Arkansas, Michigan, St. John's, and Virginia... plus Indiana, but now that Mike Davis is officially resigning (and not doing so until season's end) you can scratch the Hoosiers off the list. Bonus ewwww note: Four Ohio State recruits are playing in the game.
"Beverley is the best-kept secret in the country. All over America, he is the singular guy who has put himself in an all-star game. All these guys that people recruit and he was going to [Toledo], and now he has a list of major schools that are after him.''
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