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WILL McCAHILL Whatcha talkin' 'bout Willis? |
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Although I picked Minnesota to win the Big Ten this year, I really, truly never thought I'd see Golden Gophers coach Clem Haskins sitting in front of the big block 'M' in the lounge's backdrop, wearing a matching "Big Ten Champions" T-shirt and ballcap, and wearing the Crisler Arena net around his neck.
Huh? That's right. The net the Michigan basketball team shoots at every day in practice, draped around the Minnesota coach's neck. Just minutes before, his players had won the Big Ten title outright by defeating the Wolverines, 55-54. The Gophers then proceeded to dance around in the half-court circle before taking scissors to the net and draping it around Haskins' neck.
A couple of minutes later, I saw another thing I never really expected to get a gander at. I saw Michigan coach Steve Fisher sitting in front of the same microphone Haskins had just been speaking into, his glazed eyes looking at the table, talking about desperation.
"We desperately need to get ourselves a victory," he was saying. And he wasn't talking about winning a game to secure second place in the Big Ten, or to ensure a high seed in the NCAA tournament.
He was talking about getting a victory to get his team back to .500 in the league.
Back to .500. Think about that.
With three games left in the season, the Wolverines are 7-8 in the league, and they've had to come up with a precipitous late-season slide to get them there.
Fisher said something else last night that, five months ago, would've sounded as if it were coming from a bad episode of "The Twilight Zone."
He had watched his team come up just short, turning the ball over within the last minute and putting Bobby Jackson, the likely Big Ten Player of the Year, on the free-throw line to win the game. Which he did.
"We could play no harder than we did tonight," he said. "We did everything we could to win the game, and we didn't."
Back in the fall, the team in question was picked to win the Big Ten, to be cutting down some nets and dancing around on some basketball court while the players donned caps and t-shirts, grinning ear-to-ear.
But instead of it being Steve Fisher and his highly-touted stars prancing around on the Crisler hardwood last night, it was the Gophers.
It was a logical argument to pick Minnesota to take the Big Ten crown. A team full of upperclassmen, which won seven of its final nine games last season.
But at the time, it seemed almost foolish not to pick Michigan to be the Big Ten's automatic entry into the NCAA tournament. Highly-touted juniors and sophomores with a year or two of college play under their drawstrings. Looked like a great bet.
And yet, I stood on the Crisler floor last night, rubbin my eyes, watching Minnesota cut down the net, then staring at Clem Haskins as he wore it.
It wasn't supposed to be like this for the Wolverines, who are now fighting for their NCAA tournament lives. If they didn't go to Michigan, these players wouldn't even be talking about making the Big Dance. They'd be concentrating on their chances in the NIT, the possibility of being able to call themselves the 65th-best team in the country.
If the Wolverines run the table - getting victories at Illinois and Ohio State sandwiched around a home win over Northwestern - they're probably in.
But should they get in, if they win those three? Nope. Michigan will be 10-8 in the conference, with one quality win down the stretch, and only four wins in its last nine games.
You know who didn't get into last year's NCAA tournament with a 10-8 conference record? Minnesota. And the Gophers had quality victories over Penn State, Iowa and Illinois in their final three games.
If that team didn't deserve a spot, these Wolverines certainly don't.
And that is something I never thought I'd see.
- Will McCahill can be reached over e-mail at wmcc@umich.edu