WTKA Roundtable 2/27/2025: What if it's a Fetish?

Feb 27, 2025

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Things Discussed:

MBB's shooting woes: they're at 27% going back to the last Rutgers game, Roddy Gayle is 1/24 in the Big Ten.
It's a cascade: missed threes are creating runouts and Michigan has a massive difference between their transition defense (324th in the country) and their half-court defense (18th).
Sam: Roddy's making them in practice.
Tre Donaldson was their guy to get "bad buckets" but we think that opponents are taking even those away by packing the paint.
Seth: Rutgers is a get-right opportunity because they'll need to help down low and that should create looks.
RU preview: Dylan Harper is back, needs to be doubled. Their centers are two freshmen and a JuCo who was ruled out for the season at one point.
Michigan's defense in the half-court has been really good, but MSU was getting a ton of offensive rebounds. Craig thinks that was mostly Vlad, and that there was an improvement against Nebraska. Also issues with the guards not boxing out MSU athletes. Will be critical against Rutgers.
Dusty May retained: IU people are like "he didn't do a good job negotiating." Brian: I wouldn't be surprised if May's the Michigan basketball coach ten years from now. He turned down Louisville too; Michigan is his vibe.
Sam: Where's Dusty in the conference now?
Seth: the money isn't the matter. What's interesting is they mentioned NIL and program support, and then we heard from TMI's interview with Warde Manuel that 25% of the House settlement's $20.5 M is going to men's and women's basketball (don't worry; football can make money in other ways). That's a lot for a school like Michigan. It tells you what Dusty's priority was: he wants quality of life, and a commitment to being a basketball school.
Is Michigan tired? Craig says kids don't get tired. Seth says
Officiating talk part 1: Paul Szelc is the only ref to ever T up both John Beilein and Dusty May. What was the technical for? Sam heard it's for waving him off, but Szelc was 65 feet away on the other end of the court and Dusty was making the sign for a goaltend (he was correct). Incredible that this happens when Izzo is hurling abuse at them all game. Seth: Paul Szelc has conclusively demonstrated he's not going to give Michigan a fair shake, and should not be assigned Michigan games anymore, end of story.
Officiating talk part 2: The awful replay rule got more awful because they can't call an obvious foul they missed that caused the ball to go out of bounds, so now their only option on review is to make the call worse. How is this not fixed when everyone has hated this rule since 2018. At the very least give the officials an option to wave off the review because they missed a call. It's absurd that we spend this much dead time to make the game worse.
Baseball: lost some close ones, by 2 runs to potential #1 Arkansas and their 14-to-1 walk ratio at TCU was "suspicious" to Craig.
Hockey: 11th in the Pairwise, so close to the Bubble. They're 70% to make the Tourney, finish regular season at #10 Ohio State and should get a home series vs PSU if they get points off OSU this weekend. Future: next year unknown because they're being quiet and might make a big splash from the CHL. The big class arrives in 2026-27.