When a spike glanced off the leg of Central Michigan libero Lisa Johnson in a recent match, right at the feet of freshman defensive specialist Jenna Coates, the Clarkston grad's reflexes took over, and she did what any recreational player would: She punted the ball over the net.

The play, from CMU's match over Bowling Green on Oct. 15, is a nominee for the American Volleyball Coaches' Association play of the week. To watch it, and vote, go here.

Central Michigan junior middle hitter Kaitlyn Schultz was named the Mid-American Conference Offensive Player of the Week this week.

The Milford grad — two seasons removed from being the second Chippewa ever to earn conference Freshman of the Year honors — recorded a 22-kill, six-block weekend as the Chippewas swept a pair of MAC matches against Bowling Green and Miami (Ohio).

Schultz ranks second in kills (180) and first in blocks (62) for CMU (9-11, 3-5 MAC), ranking among the conference leaders in both hitting and blocking.

The new Central Michigan coaching staff went into the season with the knowledge that it had seven starter-ready offensive linemen to man the five positions — four returning starters, and three more backups who were ready to contribute whenever needed.

Now, the Chippewas (2-3, 1-2 MAC) are down to just six. The Mount Pleasant Morning Sun is reporting that left tackle Jake Olson will miss the rest of the season with a knee injury he suffered during the Eastern Michigan game. He's missed the last two losses, forcing starting right tackle Rocky Weaver to flip to the other end of the line, and pushing Stoney Creek sophomore Eric Fisher into the starting lineup in Weaver's old spot. It appears that reshuffling will be permanent.

Fisher appeared headed for a redshirt as a true freshman, but blew that chance when he was needed as an injury replacement for Olson last year. The 6-foot-7, 295-pound Fisher has played in every game but one this season.

It will be paramount for CMU to quickly figure out the pass protection schemes with the new alignment, if first-year starter Ryan Radcliff is going to survive, especially with the Chippewas going on the road to Virginia Tech this week. In last week's 31-17 loss to Ball State, the Cardinals — who'd had just three sacks in their first three games — had six sacks of Radcliff, including 4.5 by end Robert Eddins, who was the MAC West Defensive Player of the Week for the performance.

Radcliff still threw for 295 yards and two TDs — one each to tight end David Blackburn (7 catches, 89 yards) and wideout Cody Wilson (5-84), a Rochester Adams grad — keeping himself and Wilson among the MAC and NCAA leaders in at their respective positions.

It was the CMU defense, though, that may have let the Chippewas down in their first home loss and first loss to a MAC West team since 2008. The Cardinals racked up 306 yards on the ground against what had been a top-20 rush defense, doubling the total of yards the Chippewas had given up on the ground. Backup linebacker Mike Petrucci (Milford) had a career-high 10 tackles and a sack for CMU.

The Central Michigan University Chippewas, coming off a 13-10 overtime road loss to MAC East preseason favorite Temple, got back on the winning track with an easy 52-14 win over winless Eastern Michigan. The Eagles (0-3) are on a 15-game losing skid, but had a chance to win each of their first two contests, and had given CMU fits in the last few years.

Where would Central Michigan be without Cody Wilson this season?

Well, probably still 1-1 after two Thursday contests — but still, it's clear that just two games into the Dan Enos era, the Chippewa offense — in serious flux after the departure of the record-setting trio of Dan LeFevour, Antonio Brown and Bryan Anderson — is dependent on the contributions of the 5-foot-10 sophomore from Rochester Adams.

Wilson's big play — an 81-yard kick return — set up CMU's first score in Week One's 33-0 shutout of Hampton, and the diminutive wideout made a similar game-altering play — a 70-yard reception — to set up the Chippewas' only TD in a 13-10 overtime loss to MAC East Division favorite Temple.

What's more, Wilson — who accounted for a full half (188 yards) of CMU's total offensive output Thursday — played a bit of quarterback in the Wildcat formation, running it well enough to help set up kicker David Harman's 31-yard, game-tying field goal to send the contest to overtime.
In all, Wilson has 344 all-purpose yards so far this season, on just 21 touches, averaging out to 16.4 yards per play.

The only flaw? Finishing.

Both of Wilson's big plays saw him get caught on the doorstep of the end zone, something that teammates teased him about after the opener. Both plays set up a short TD dive by a running back, though, so I can't imagine the teasing was too harsh.

For full disclosure, Wilson did have a fumble after a reception in the first half, one that — coming as it did on CMU's half of the field — could have cost the Chippewas, but teammate Matt Berning took him off the hook by forcing a fumble from Temple quarterback Chester Stewart a few plays later.

Journeyman NFL center Eric Ghiaciuc, the Oxford native, signed a contract with the New England Patriots today, according to several published reports, providing depth along the offensive line as a backup to starter Dan Koppen.

The 29-year-old Ghiaciuc has bounced around after his rookie contract ran out with the Bengals. He'd started 42 of 48 games with the team that drafted him, including all 16 games in 2008. Ghiaciuc was a fourth-round pick in the 2005 draft, out of Central Michigan University.

Ghiaciuc signed with Kansas City as an unrestricted free agent, but didn't make it out of training camp. He hooked on with San Diego near the end of last season, after the Chargers' starting center, Scott Mruczkowski went down with an injury. The Browns had Ghiaciuc on their roster earlier this calendar year.

DETROIT — As the dean of Mid-American Conference coaches, Western Michigan’s Bill Cubit knows as well as anyone what flies in the league, and what doesn’t.

And he’s not necessarily buying the assertion — put forward by the media-voted preseason poll unveiled at Friday’s MAC Media Day at Ford Field — that Central Michigan’s reign atop the league is done.

“It’s hard to beat the champion. I’m a Philly fan, and I’m watching what’s going on there (with the Phillies). Everyone leaves them for dead and all of a sudden — hey, the kids know how to win,” said the fifth-year Broncos coach of the archrival Chippewas, who have won three of the last four MAC titles, and won the in-state rivalry game four straight years. “I told somebody, until somebody beats them, they’ve got the right to say anything they want.”

Understandably, the members of the MAC media contingent were voting with an eye on how many of those “winning” kids returned for CMU, noting the league-low 41 returning lettermen. Most glaring in his absence is record-setting quarterback Dan LeFevour, and not just because his giant picture — which loomed over the entrance to Ford Field for two years, from across the street on the outfield wall of Comerica Park — is no longer up on a promotional billboard.

A sixth-round pick of his hometown Chicago Bears in the NFL draft, LeFevour is gone from the league he’d helped dominate throughout his four-year career, and so are his two favorite targets, Antonio Brown and Bryan Anderson. For that matter, so is his coach, Butch Jones, who bolted for Cincinnati.

For all that the MAC has been a quarterback-driven league — from Byron Leftwich, Chad Pennington and Ben Roethlisberger to Charlie Frye, Josh Cribbs and Bruce Gradkowski — you can’t just vote based on name-recognition at the QB position, Cubit insisted. Just look at his own team from a year ago.

“We had the least amount of starters back, but because you have a quarterback — that’s a media thing, to look at that. I knew it was going to be (a rough year). I was hoping it wasn’t going to be as bad,” said Cubit, who grimaced when his Broncos were picked for a close second behind CMU last year, only to finish a distant third, with a 5-7 record. “Still, we’re about three plays away from going 7-5, and making a bowl game with a bunch of young kids. ... I really think we’re going to be a lot better off, in that respect, but now everybody looks and says, ‘Well, you don’t have a quarterback.’ ”

True, the Broncos also graduated a decorated signalcaller in Tim Hiller — who made it to training camp with the Indianapolis Colts — but Cubit isn’t buying that the Broncos will fall off a cliff without Hiller, especially given the supporting cast inherited by his likely replacement, sophomore Alex Carder.

“We had a deficiency on the offensive line ... and the easiest thing was to put it on Tim’s shoulders. We don’t have to do that this year,” said Cubit, noting the maturity of his offensive line, which will enable the Broncos to be more smash-mouth again. “It’s the surrounding guys that make it (work). That’s probably what hurt Tim last year: Our surrounding guys weren’t as good as the year before. ... I think there’s a little hesitation (in voting), because there aren’t as many quarterbacks returning as there have been in the past. And quarterbacks (that) are going to play well, those teams are going to win, and if they don’t play well, you’re not going to win. But you’ve gotta have some guys around them.”

The Broncos were picked to finish third in the MAC West, behind Northern Illinois and CMU. The Huskies had dipped the last few years under longtime coach Joe Novak, but have come back under second-year coach Jerry Kill, after a very quick retooling of the program.

With CMU’s recent success — four straight bowl games, capped by the program’s first-ever Top 25 ranking last fall — new Chippewa coach Dan Enos knows he’s probably not even going to have the luxury of even that kind of time.

“Even if ... the perception is maybe you have a little time, or you don’t, whatver — coaches, we put it on ourselves, anyway. As a coach, you never say, ‘Oh, we have some time. If we win four games, five games this year, we’re OK,’ ” said Enos, who came to CMU from his alma mater, Michigan State.

“I think it’s a total positive that we’re at a place that has high expectations, because if you think about what the opposite end of it can be, if there were no expectations, that’d be tough. It’d be tough on the players and the coaches. One thing that our coaches have commented on since we’ve been there is that our football team expects to win. When you take over a football team that maybe hasn’t won ... part of your process is trying to get into the mindset of your players, that they have to learn how to expect to win, and learn what it takes to win. And I don’t think we’ve had to spend a whole lot of time talking with our players about expectations, and what it takes to win. ... The previous two staffs did an outstanding job of building a culture where guys expect to do that.”

Unfortunately, a coach who knows all too well what it’s like being on the opposite end of that spectrum is Eastern Michigan’s Ron English. After an 0-12 campaign in his first season a year ago, the Eagles lost 14 players to graduation, and another 25 to other forms of attrition.

English understands all too well the rebuilding project he’s been handed.

“I was talking to a friend of my family last night. He’s from Detroit, and I said, ‘Look Wayne, if you go to Detroit right now, and you buy one of these old houses, are you going to try to refurbish it, or are you going to knock the thing down and start over?’ You’re going to knock it down and start over,” English said. “That’s really what we did (at EMU), to be honest with you. We said we’re going to take a hit here, but we’re not going to tread water. We’re going to knock the thing down and start over.”

The MAC season kicks off with five non-conference games on Thursday, Sept. 2, and the league season commences with a doozy, when CMU visits Temple, the team tabbed to win the MAC East, on Sept. 9.

Western Michigan
WHAT: Brown & Gold game
WHEN: Noon, Saturday, April 17
WHERE: Waldo Stadium, Kalamazoo
ADMISSION: Donation of canned goods
HIGHLIGHTS: Bronco Insider at WMUBroncos.com
LAST YEAR: 5-7, 4-4 MAC West
THREE THINGS TO WATCH:
1) Finding replacements — The Broncos have to find a way to replace not only record-setting quarterback Tim Hiller, who broke or tied all of Western's passing records, but his backfield mate, Brandon West, a back-to-back 1,000-yard rusher. So far, it looks like sophomore Alex Carder has the leg up to replace Hiller, while Aaron Winchester is the favorite to replace West. The offense wasn't the problem for the Broncos last year, and those two — or whomever else steps in — need to keep it that way.
2) Shore up the defense — Just one year into his five-year contract extension, WMU coach Bill Cubit had to clean house on the defensive side of the ball after the Broncos ranked 101st in the country. Coordinator Steve Morrison and his staff were fired, replaced by Hofstra DC Dave Cohen, whose troops had performed admirably in a 24-10 loss to Western at Waldo last year. The all-new defensive staff also includes former Spartan DB Amp Campbell. The staff will have to craft a new defensive mentality for a group of players who were demoralized by last season's end. It should help that the Broncos welcome in their most heralded group of DB recruits since the E.J. Biggers/Louis Delmas class in 2005.
3) Find balance again — Just once in the Cubit era (2007), the Broncos failed to have a 1,000-yard rusher. West topped the plateau last year, but the coach admitted that the Broncos were a little too pass-happy last year, relying too much on the likely NFL-bound arm of Hiller. Look for the Broncos to go back to basics this year.

Central Michigan
WHAT: Spring game
WHEN: 5 p.m., Saturday, April 17
WHERE: Kelly/Shorts Stadium, Mount Pleasant
ADMISSION: Free
LAST YEAR: 12-2, 8-0 MAC West, GMAC Bowl champs, No. 23 in AP poll
LIVE BLOG: Morning Sun coverage here.
THREE THINGS TO WATCH:
1) Finding replacements — Dan LeFevour, Antonio Brown and Bryan Anderson were three of the most accomplished offensive players in Mid-American Conference history, and all three are now gone. Of the players in line to replace LeFevour, only sophomore Ryan Radcliff has attempted a pass for CMU. Considering the Chippewas' conversion to a more pro-style offense under new coach Dan Enos, replacing the two record-setting wideouts may be a bit simpler. Kito Poblah and Cody Wilson (Rochester Adams) are the top two returning pass-catchers.
2) Adjusting to a new system — Even with a subtle tweak, going from a more pass-happy to a more option-oriented attack, the Chippewas have been primarily a spread team through their last two coaches. Players insist that the plays under Enos are largely the same — just with different terminology — but there's still the matter of making the transition to a more power run game, with linemen in three-point stances, and the quarterback under center. Tight end David Blackburn was on the field about 20 percent of the time last year, but will be on close to 80 percent of the snaps under Enos.
3) Overcoming youth on defense — With the offense in transition, it'll be up to the defense to keep the Chippewas in games. Led by star linebackers Nick Bellore and Matt Berning, the defense still has a solid core of last year's championship unit. The challenge will be mixing in the younger players on the line and in the secondary without much of a drop off. The backfield lost four key contributors, while there is just one senior and one junior among the defensive linemen.

Eastern Michigan
WHAT: Spring game
WHEN: 2 p.m., Sunday, April 18
WHERE: Rynearson Stadium, Ypsilanti
ADMISSION: Free
LAST YEAR: 0-12, 0-8 MAC West
RADIO: WTKA-AM (1050).
THINGS TO WATCH:
1) Getting back to competitive — The Eagles won Jeff Genyk's last game as coach two seasons ago, but dropped all 12 of their games last year, under first-year coach Ron English. There were some near-misses — like a last-second loss to Northwestern on a late field goal — but the Eagles lost seven games by more than three touchdowns, and gave up 459 points. Even English admitted that the Eagles didn't play very hard last year.
2) Shoring up the defense — The Eagles did rank tops in the nation in one statistical category — pass defense — but that was only because they couldn't stop anybody's run game, giving up 277 yards per game on the ground. Just one season into his tenure, the defensive-minded English turned over seven bodies on his staff, including most of the defensive crew. Phil Snow is the new defensive coordinator.
3) Older and wiser — The Eagles were simply undermanned at times last year, when they had to use 25 first-time players, including nine true freshmen. One of the youngsters thrown into the fire was quarterback Alex Gillett, who started three times after senior Andy Schmitt went down with a knee injury. He comes into the spring in a battle with giant-sized redshirt freshman Devontae Payne.

Confidence is contagious.

So is hitting.

Still trying to erase the memory of last year’s 12-win season — just the second losing season in 31 years — the Central Michigan University softball team continued its torrid offensive pace, pounding out five home runs in a sweep of host University of Detroit Mercy on Wednesday.

With the wins — 9-0 in six innings and 8-0 in five — the Chippewas matched their win total from the entire 2009 season (12), and have now posted 10 wins in their last 11, including five in a row.

“I think we’re playing Chippewa softball, which means we're playing with heart, and we’re playing with pride and we’re having fun at the game. And when you play that way, good things happen,” said CMU coach Margo Jonker, whose team now has one fewer home runs (16) than it did all of last season. “It’s a product of, right now, they’re loose at the plate, and they’re letting the ball travel deep in the zone, and not being overanxious. We’ve got the potential for power, but we’ve gotta be loose and relaxed, in order to make it happen.”

Sophomore shortstop Molly Coldren — the winner of Michigan's Miss Softball Award in 2008 — got the Chippewas (12-7) loose early against the Titans (2-8), bashing her fifth home run of the season, a two-run shot for a 3-0 lead in the top of the first inning of Wednesday’s opener. The Pontiac Notre Dame Prep grad had three all of last season.
The power didn’t stop there.

Christina Novak’s sixth-inning grand slam closed out the scoring in the first game, while Brittni Merchant’s second homer of the season — a two-run shot to dead center field — got it started in the first inning of the nightcap. Redshirt freshman catcher Brogan Darwin’s first career homer — a two-run shot to left-center — gave CMU a 4-0 lead, while Amanda Patrick’s three-run homer down the right-field line capped the day’s scoring binge for the top offense in the Mid-American Conference.

The stark contrast to last year’s .235 team batting average, and 2.8 runs-per-game production is marked (this year's team is batting .278 and averaging 5.4 runs per game), begging the question of whether last year was really that bad, or this year is that exceptional.

“I think it’s a combination,” said Coldren, who leads CMU with a .373 average, five home runs and 19 RBI after remodeling her hitting stroke in the offseason. “Of course, our hitting last year wasn’t as strong, but this year everyone just feeds off each other, and when one person hits well, the next person will hit well, and it just kind of keeps going. Last year is kind of just tucked into the back of our mind, that we don’t want that to happen again.”

Three CMU pitchers — Kara Dornbos, Sarah Patterson and Courtney King — combined to shut the Titans out on just three total hits in 11 innings of work. Patterson got her first career win in the nightcap.

The wins also put Jonker just nine shy of the 1,000 plateau. The Chippewas’ next outing is the home opener against Oakland University on March 31.

Keep any eye out for a full feature on Coldren's resurgence in the print edition of The Oakland Press.

Entering the final day of the regular season on Thursday (March 4), any team in the top half of the Mid-American Conference's West Division could still claim all or part of the division crown, depending on how the night's games shake out.

At least old rivals Eastern Michigan and Central Michigan — both 8-7 in the league — have their destinies in their own hands when they meet at 6:30 p.m. at EMU's Convocation Center. The game will be televised on Fox Sports Net Detroit.

Ball State (also 8-7) can earn a share of the title with the EMU/CMU winner by beating host Western Michigan Thursday night.
The loser of the EMU/CMU contest could fall as far as eighth, while the winner could be as high as the No. 2 seed in the upcoming MAC tournament at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.

CMU, which beat the Eagles the last two meetings with EMU — in last year's MAC tournament, then again with a 62-49 win in Mount Pleasant earlier this season — owned a share of last year's regular-season division title as well, its third since 1998. A win Thursday would let the fourth-year coach Ernie Zeigler's Chippewas (14-14) finish over .500 both overall and in the conference for the first time since the Chris Kaman-led Chippewas won the MAC and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament in 2003. That's a good sign for a program that's only had nine winning seasons since joining Division I in the 1972-73 school year.

For coach Charles Ramsey's Eagles (16-13), it's hardly the only big news on the Ypsilanti campus. The EMU women have already secured the No. 2 seed in the MAC tournament, while the EMU men's swimming and diving team — the perennial class of the conference with a MAC-record 28 titles, including the last three in a row — will help host the conference championships at Jones Natatorium, starting with prelims on Thursday.

Meanwhile in Mount Pleasant, the eight-time MAC champion CMU wrestling team — ranked in the top 10 in the nation — will host the MAC championships at Rose Center this weekend, March 6-7.

(Grabbed your attention, didn't it?)

While the football team at Central Michigan University grabbed the lion's share of the attention in the fall — and rightfully so, with its third Mid-American Conference title in four years, and the conference's first bowl win in years — the Dan LeFevour-led gridders weren't the only ones doing the unthinkable.

In addition to its own on-the-field history (earning the program's first-ever MAC title, by winning both the regular-season and tournament crowns), the women's soccer team grabbed the national academic championship for the fifth year in a row by posting the highest team GPA of any Division I team.

"Obviously, this fall soccer season we did really well, but we always thought as coaches that we could do both, while maintaining the high level and standard in the classroom," said second-year CMU coach Tom Anagnost, a one-time USISL all-star with the Michigan Bucks.

And it's not like the girls have been slacking, as the pressure to repeat has mounted: Since capturing the first academic national title in 2005 with a GPA of 3.62, the Chippewas have barely done worse than that, posting GPAs of 3.73, 3.61, 3.70 the next three years, before posting a 3.73 this fall. No player on the team had less than a 3.0 this fall.

It's a high standard to maintain.

"There was a lot of stress put on academics when we committed, and when you hear that, you have pressure to get good grades. Everyone that’s been recruited has always been a top GPA person — but when you hear that, it’s just a ton of extra stress and pressure," Lake Orion junior defender Jenna Hill said in a video posted to CMUSportsZone that you can watch here.
"Obviously, it’s important to us to keep the streak going. ... It’s always in the back of your mind for all the girls, like ‘Were you the one that broke the streak?’ It’s been five years now, and we want to graduate being all four years the best GPA in the nation. You don’t want to look back and see that one year — your last year or your third year — that you broke that streak. It’s tough, but it gives you even a little bit more incentive to do even better."

Over that five-year span, the Chippewas have led the conference with 18 academic All-MAC selections, including a league-high seven in the fall. Goalkeeper Shay Mannino became the program's first National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) All-American, earning third-team honors. Royal Oak grad Claire Horton, a sophomore, is the only other player with Oakland County ties on CMU's roster.

When asked at his introductory news conference if he'd bring along any Michigan State recruits — likely by an overzealous (or hopeful) Central Michigan fan — new Chippewa head coach Dan Enos ripped off a quick response: "I don't recruit other people's commits."

He did, however, qualify that he "had a good idea where all the uncommitted players were."

After only three full weeks on the job Enos has proven that to be more than true.

While coaches at programs like MSU, where Enos helped assemble a star-studded list of commitments, and U-M, where Rich Rodriguez is recruiting for his life, the last 48 hours before Signing Day are just for polishing a largely settled assemblage of talent, and maybe adding a cherry on top, it's different for a guy like Enos. Battling attrition the whole way — CMU's top-ranked recruit, Montague QB Cody Kater, decommitted, along with Southfield WR Montrel Robinson and Ohio ATH Dwight Macon — Enos has more than held the ship together for this year's recruiting. He's scrapped to find adequate replacements for those players who were headed there more for the coach than the school (and now are gone), plus added a few cherry pick-ups of his own.

Since taking the reins of the CMU program on Jan. 12, Enos has picked up five new commitments, three of them in the last five days. Novi Detroit Catholic Central ILB Michael Kinville — a tackling machine who anchored the Shamrocks' state-championship defense — signed on last Thursday, followed by speedy Grand Rapids JC cornerback Anthony Hollis on Sunday, and Lancaster (Pa.) Catholic QB Kyle Smith on Monday. While Kater led Montague to two state titles, the pro-style Smith hails from the cradle of QBs — Western Pennsylvania — and finished as the state's career record-holder for pass yards and TDs, ahead of the state's luminary alumni like Joe Montana. (Not a bad addition, when you're trying to replace a record-setting QB like Dan LeFevour, who's on his way to the NFL after finishing as the Offensive MVP in the Senior Bowl over the weekend).

Those three added to a pair of earlier commits brought in by Enos: Inkster WR Deon Butler (who joins teammate Johnathan Taylor in heading to Mount Pleasant) and safety Avery Cunningham of Winton Woods HS in Cincinnati.

The quintet of new additions gives CMU 20 potential signees, heading into Wednesday's Signing Day festivities.

Enos' old employer, Michigan State, had been stuck on 20 since adding two-star DB Darqueze Dennard from Georgia midweek last week, but tacked on one more Monday, getting a commitment from Kinville's Shamrock teammate Niko Palazeti, Catholic Central's battering-ram running back.

Michigan has been quiet for a week, as well, holding out hope of adding one or more of three four-star defensive backs to a class that already has 26 bodies in it. U-M is waiting for last-minute decisions from S Sean Parker, CB Rashad Knight and S Demar Dorsey to round out a class that started with skill-position players on offense, and has finished strong with defensive quality and quantity.

UPDATE: Knight chose Rutgers over Michigan early Tuesday morning.

Eastern Michigan added a third OL to its still-small class of reported commits, nabbing Lincoln Hansen from Cornhusker country in Omaha, Neb., on Monday.

For those interested in all things recruiting — and that's probably you, if you've gotten this far in this post — the Big Ten Network will be airing a 90-minute show, starting at 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

Check The Oakland Press print edition on Thursday for a full list of all the local signees, as well as who officially signed on with each of Michigan's five Division I-A programs, and check back on this blog for full analysis in the days to follow.

There's no mistaking the weird little love-hate triangle between the football programs at Michigan State, Cincinnati and Central Michigan.

It started with Mark Dantonio leaving Cincy to coach at MSU. Spurned by MSU in its coaching search, Brian Kelly went from CMU to replace Dantonio at Cincinnati. When Kelly left Cincy for Notre Dame before the Bearcats' bowl game this year, the Cincinnati hierarchy again robbed CMU, grabbing Butch Jones as Kelly's replacement. CMU, in turn, took Dan Enos — who'd been a Dantonio assistant at Cincy, then MSU — as its new head coach.

And it hasn't stopped with just coaches.

First there was the whole tiff about Trevor Anderson's transfer from Cincy to MSU, to follow Dantonio, when Kelly showed his stubborn side, to get even with MSU.

Now defensive end Jibreel Black, a Cincinnati native, has started the triangle spinning again. He initially committed to his hometown Bearcats, then re-opened his recruitment when Kelly left to coach in South Bend. Black took a recruiting visit to MSU two weekends ago, appeared to recommit to UC, then took a visit to Ann Arbor this past weekend, giving a verbal to the Wolverines after the weekend. Since Black had initially given a verbal to Indiana, then switched to Cincinnati, and now U-M, it's fair to say it's probably not a done deal until he actually inks a National Letter of Intent on Feb. 3.

While the numbers for U-M's class went up with the addition of the three-star recruit, CMU's went down over the weekend, when one of its key commits — Montague QB Cody Kater — decided to renege on his earlier statements that he'd stick with CMU. Instead, he chose to follow Jones to Cincinnati, giving the Bearcats a verbal commitment on Sunday.

He'll hardly be the lone Michigander on the Bearcats' roster next year. After leaving CMU, Kelly kept the pipelines open to Southeast Michigan (much to the chagrin of Cincinnati-area prep coaches), nabbing players like Marine City QB Brendon Kay by continuing to work the contacts he'd made over the years as he built Grand Valley and then Central.

Last year's roster had a dozen players from Michigan on it, including a slew from suburban Detroit. Safety Aaron Webster (Birmingham Groves) was the lone returning starter on defense to start the historic season, while Southfield-Lathrup grad Chris Jurek was the starting center. A year earlier, John Goebel (Milford/Birmingham Brother Rice) led the Bearcats in rushing TDs. It's almost a given that Jones will continue to pillage Michigan to supplement to the fertile recruiting ground he now finds himself in.

Outside the drama, Michigan State also added to its strong recruiting class, nabbing three-star DT Anthony White from Fort Scott, Kan., while Western Michigan continued to add Florida players, with West Palm Beach safety Johnnie Simon.

It's not uncommon for two teams to come out of a single game with a huge win at this point in January.

With big-time football recruits often sitting court-side, key basketball match-ups take on double importance as the Feb. 3 signing day gets closer.

Both U-M and MSU walked off the court with huge weekend hoops wins — MSU won a first-place showdown with Illinois Saturday, while U-M got a non-conference upset by knocking off No. 15 UConn on Sunday — but the two schools' football teams didn't leave the first recruiting weekend of the year empty, either.

• Mark Dantonio and the Spartans hosted a baker's dozen recruits for the weekend, and landed a verbal commitment from three-star linebacker Justin Wilson from Western High School in Davie, Fla.

Six more of the visitors were players who had already committed to MSU, which has the 34th-ranked class so far, according to Rivals.com. The Spartans lost out on two more of their weekend visitors — three-star Cinncinnati Wyoming DE Jibreel Black chose to stay in town, committing to the Bearcats, while Warren, Ohio, DB Mike Dorsey gave a verbal to West Virginia — MSU is still in the running for the final three players who came to East Lansing. Still uncommitted are a trio of three-star players: OL Alex Lewis, from Phoenix (offers from Air Force, Colorado, MSU and UNLV), OL Eric Franklin, of Youngstown, Ohio, Cardinal Mooney (Pitt, MSU, Purdue) and Chicago St. Rita DT Bruce Gaston Jr. (Purdue, MSU, Wisconsin).

Three more players are slated to come to East Lansing this weekend, including: Westland John Glenn ATH Jeremy Langford (already a verbal commit to MSU), Buford, Ga., DT Jerome Davis and DE Rashad Frazier of Middletown, Ohio.

• U-M had 10 players in for official visits this past weekend, and came away with a verbal commitment from Davion Rogers, a three-star linebacker from Warren (Ohio) Harding, who changed his choice Sunday from West Virginia to U-M. He joins high school teammate D.J. Williamson in the 2010 class for the Wolverines, which is ranked No. 19 by Rivals.com.

A day later, another weekend visitor — three-star linebacker Jake Ryan of Westlake (Ohio) St. Ignatius — gave his verbal to the Wolverines.

Bigger than those two grabs — which gives U-M four incoming linebackers and 13 of 26 commits (not counting those listed as athletes) on defense — was the news that the jewel of Rich Rodriguez's recruiting class, Inkster QB Devin Gardner was set to start classes on Tuesday as an early enrollee. Along with six other early enrollees, Gardner will have a leg up on the rest of the recruiting class, giving the nation's top dual-threat QB recruit a shot to truly compete for playing time, come the fall. While that's key at a position that's been in turmoil since Rodriguez hit Ann Arbor, it's just as important for another reason. It finally puts to rest all the rumors that Gardner, who committed last April, might be wavering on his choice, after another shaky U-M season on the field in the fall.

“I start on Tuesday,” Gardner told AnnArbor.com's David Birkett after the Michigan-UConn basketball game. “I don’t know what the holdup was, but it finally got done.”

• Western Michigan was the only one of the state's other three Division I schools to land a commitment after the weekend's visits. The Broncos added three-star RB Dareyon Chance of Ft. Lauderdale Cardinal Gibbons to their class (No. 95-ranked class by Rivals) of 18. Coming off a disappointing, third-place finish in the Mid-American Conference's West Division, the Broncos have continued to depend on a haul of out-state recruits. Only four of WMU's 18 commits are from Michigan, headlined by Grand Rapids Junior College OT Marcus Cann.

• Eastern Michigan's winless season in its first year under former U-M defensive coordinator Ron English hasn't done anything to help recruiting, as the Eagles only had six known commits entering the weekend, according to Rivals. EMU did get some good news Monday, when Bellwood (Ill.) Proviso West WR Julius Shelby gave the Eagles a seventh commit on Rivals' list. Line coach Kurt Anderson has been the primary recruiter for more than half the Eagles' recruits so far, the former U-M lineman drawing on his ties in Illinois to bring in four players from his home state.

• On the job as CMU's head coach for just a little over a week, Dan Enos likely hasn't had time to do anything other than select his staff and try to hold onto CMU's current class. The most important of those committed players — QB Cody Kater, who led Montague to back-to-back MHSAA Division 6 titles — has initially said he's staying put. If the three-star QB — who will be in the running to replace record-setting Dan LeFevour — does sign with CMU, it'll be a testament to the continuing work of Enos and Max Glowacki, who was retained as the Chippewas' recruiting coordinator.

CMU's most recent additions were a pair of two-star teammates from Miami Southridge, ATH Jermaine Kelson and WR Lavaughn Whigham, giving No. 23-ranked CMU a class of 19, which is ranked No. 90 by Rivals. More important to CMU, however, is the fact that 12 of those players are in-state recruits. Like Butch Jones before him, it was expected that Enos' contract would have an incentive clause that pays a bonus every year that more than 60 percent of the CMU roster is from Michigan.