Hail to the Victors!

Well, it wasn't such a good weekend for the University of Michigan Wolverines football team (37-21 loss at Wisconsin), but they'll head into their yearly showdown with archrival Ohio State on Saturday afternoon (Noon, ABC) with a chance to win the Big Ten outright and book their second trip to the Rose Bowl in two years.

The basketball team, however, got their season under new coach John Beilein off to a flying start, demolishing Radford 82-55 on Friday night and outshooting a game Brown team 72-57 yesterday afternoon. It was the young guys leading the way for Michigan as freshmen Manny Harris and Kelvin Grady along with sophomore DeShawn Sims stepped up and paced the Wolverines to a 2-0 start. It gets tougher for Michigan though with a trip to national championship contender Georgetown on Thursday, followed by their trip to Anchorage for the Great Alaska Shooutout during Thanksgiving week. I have to say, I'm pretty impressed so far with the way Beilein's young team is picking up his high-pressure 1-3-1 trapping zone defense and the Princeton-based movement on offense. Harris is going to be a star and an all-Big Ten performer before his career with the Maize and Blue is over and I really like the speed and decision-making of Grady as well. The way we talk about the backcourt of Ohio State and Michigan State and Indiana now is the way we'll be talking about these two guys in the coming years, I'm sure of it.

Looking forward to the game Thursday night as it'll be the young squad's first test against a good opponent away from Crisler Arena and to the Michigan-Ohio State battle for the Big Ten championship (and trip to Pasadena) on Saturday.