The Victors | Project OSPREY

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same…"
—Rudyard Kipling, "If—"

Tuesday, 11 February 2014
(№ 15) Michigan 70-60 Ohio State (№ 22)
18-6, Big Ten 10-2

Sunday, 16 February 2014
(№ 21) Wisconsin 75-62 Michigan (№ 15)
18-7, Big Ten 10-3

The bad news from both games is that we fell behind early. The good news from both games is that the valiant Wolverines fought back instead of rolling over. At Ohio State, the valiant Wolverines got off to a sluggish start that looked all but identical to the losses to Indiana & Iowa. Halfway through the first half, though, Michigan came alive & slowly but surely first caught up & then pulled ahead of the home team. Hosting Wisconsin, we fell too far behind & waited too late to begin the comeback rally. At one point, freshman guard Zak Irvin, a sniper from three-point land, put up a shot that clanked off the rim; the pesky Badgers proceeded to take the ball down the court for two points. The valiant Wolverines were nine points behind when Irvin lofted his shot. had he made it, the deficit would have been cut to six. Instead, between his miss & the Wisconsin make, our hole grew to eleven points. I count this as a five-point swing, from a potential six points down to eleven points. That is when I concluded that the cause was lost, that the victory 'twas not to be. After this, the valiant Wolverines went on a run & eventually closed to gap to three points (!), but the pesky Badgers responded with a run of their own. The game ended with a very solid thirteen-point margin of defeat.

How to get the valiant Wolverines to start each game with vim & vigor, instead of needing to confront an early deficit to be spurred into action, this is the puzzle facing head coach John Beilein & his assistant coaches. This '13-'14 squad is composed of extraordinarily talented student-athletes, but it does suffer a paucity of experienced leadership: graduate student forward (center) Jordan Morgan & redshirt junior forward (center) John Horford, jointly nicknamed "Morford" or "Michigan's two-headed center," are the only upperclassmen (or beyond, in Morgan's case) on the roster.

Next: At home to complete the season series with in-state rivals Michigan State. The dastardly Spartans dropped out of the top ten, from № 9 to № 13, after their surprising home loss to the unwelcome Cornhuskers. In this week's poll, the valiant Wolverines dropped to № 20, the pesky Badgers climbed to № 16, & the hated Buckeyes fell slightly to № 24. The fifth ranked Big Ten club is the tenacious Hawkeyes, who inched up from № 16 to № 15. Michigan & Michigan State, tied atop the conference standings, both lost at home over the weekend; the dastardly Spartans can tune up against the ill-starred Boilermakers (winners over the weekend against their in-state rivals, the wily Hoosiers) before next Sunday's "Pure Michigan" showdown.

Go Blue!

Operation AXIOM | Liberty & Union
Five years ago to the day, 17 February 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009, A.K.A. "the Stimulus Bill." The widely quoted cost of the stimulus was "$787,000,000," though this is most likely inaccurate, a lowball estimate. Five years on, how well has the American economy recovered? What are the fruits of all that reinvestment? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force participation rate fell, between January 2009 & January 2014, from 65.7% to 63% (Freudian slip: I initially mistyped labor force as "labor farce.") The labor force participation rate has decreased every single year of the Obama presidency, meaning a smaller percentage of Americans are either working or looking for work: labor force-link. If the economy was growing as rapidly as the administration & its allies/accomplices in the press would have us believe, then the unemployment rate would actually be increasing, as more & more Americans rejoined the labor force in search of work; the unemployment rate continues to drop not because of the paltry numbers of jobs created, but because more & more American are classified as "discouraged workers" & thus not counted as participating in the labor force at all. President Obama's not-terribly-stimulative Stimulus Bill—a nightmare of unreconstructed Keynesian malarkey—was passed, five years ago today.