Two Good Games of Hoops

Happy National Signing Day! Today is the craziest day in NCAA football. Commits are flipping, fanbases are getting giddy over 4 & 5 star recruits that have something like a 30% chance of panning out. I'm going to wait until the dust settles & cover this tomorrow, and we can all get our hopes up together. For now, let's take a look at a couple of basketball games.

The Heat are currently holding one of the two bottom spots in the Eastern Conference playoff race. If you believe Detroit should make a run for the playoffs, this is a good team to beat. Things have looked a lot more bleak since Brandon Jennings went down, and I'm not sure they can pull off a run to the playoffs. They've been 14-7 (.667%) since starting 5-23, which is REALLY good.

The Pistons got really thin at PG when Jennings went down, but DJ Augustin picked up where Jennings left off. In the 5 games following Jennings' injury, Augustin is averaging 21.8 ppg, 9.1 apg, shooting .522/.458/.929. That's like Ray Allen in 2002 territory, only with three times the assists. Unsustainable, yes, but so was what Jennings was doing. I think.

Drummond seems to be coming around as well, which is probably more sustainable. He had a good two-way game last night, limiting Hasan Whiteside's impact, and played well vs. Houston & Cleveland as well. KCP also had a good game, and they'll need more of that out of him if they're going to take the 7th or 8th seed. Caldwell-Pope had 28 in the Houston game as well, so maybe this is a sign that he's turning the corner.

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The Michigan basketball team is also a team on the verge of being really, really good. They've been hammered by injuries this year, worse than the Pistons have, and have a couple of surprisingly bad losses - to EMU and to NJIT. On Super Bowl Sunday, Michigan played a team also having a disappointing season, MSU.

Although my team lost, this was a sweet way to kick off Super Bowl. The game was really tight, until overtime anyway. MAAR (Muhammad Ali Abdur-Rahkman) and Albrecht shot the lights out, but they couldn't buy a bucket in OT and couldn't get stops when they needed to. Zack Irvin looked particularly bad, going 5-14 and 1-6 from deep. The game started slow, but Michigan caught fire in the 2nd half and managed to force OT. They were used up by then, however, and MSU outscored them 10-0 in the extra frame.

Michigan looks like they might be good in a year or 2, but they need seasoning. MSU had too much experience. For now, let's just enjoy that which is MAAR.