The boxscore from Saturday night listed him as Michael Albrecht, but the Michigan faithful know him as Spike.
The 5-11, 170-pound guard from Crown Point, Ind., who was nobody’s star recruit, came off the bench to sink a pair of 3-pointers in the first half of Michigan’s 61-56 win over Syracuse.
More likely to be confused for a team manager than player, Albrecht actually had TSA officials at the Fairfield, Conn. airport laugh at him a year ago when he told them he was heading from prep school to an official visit at the University of Michigan.
“(Assistant coach Bacari Alexander) always says the TSA guys won’t be laughing at you now,” Albrecht said.
His only other scholarship offer came from Appalachian State. Michigan assistant Jeff Meyer saw Albrecht play in summer league games while he was recruiting his teammates Mitch McGary and Glenn Robinson III.
“He’s not going to pass the eye test,” Meyer said. “But I tell you what, for what we need he is a piece to our puzzle and he fits.”
Coach John Beilein said he watched some 300 clips of Albrecht from high school, trying to convince himself he was doing the right thing offering him a scholarship.
“I would watch them over and over again,” Beilein said. “People were going to think I’m crazy for taking this young man. At the same time we said this is exactly what we need in today’s age, a four-year player that’s just going to work his tail off.”
Now Albrecht is charming the college basketball world. He is a perfect 5-for-5 from 3-point range in the tournament. Beilein thinks his effort is part of what makes college basketball so great, and what it has over the NBA.
“It is that mystery of the young kid, the altar boy, the choir boy like Spike, the 18-year-old kid that hasn’t played well coming in and making big baskets that makes this game so great,” Beilein said.
Georgia Dome crowd: With the new configuration for Saturday's semifinal games, attendance at the Georgia Dome was 75,350, the second largest ever for an NCAA Final Four. The 2011 Final Four had 75,421 at Houston's Reliant Stadium. Unlike at the 2002 and 2007 Final Fours in Atlanta, the court was installed at the center of the floor, as opposed to one end of the floor, with a curtain closing off thousands of seats in the other half of the Dome.
With the new court position, as well as the additional temporary seats installed extending down to the court in front of the football stands, helped make it the third-largest crowd at a sporting event ever at the Dome. The 2008 SEC championship game between Florida and Alabama is first (75,892) followed by the 2006 Chick-Fil-A Bowl between Virginia Tech and Georgia (75,406).
TV Ratings for the two games were their highest in eight years, with a Nielson rating of 9.4. That was the highest for a Final Four since the 10.5 rating in 2005, which also featured teams from both Kentucky and Michigan. (Illinois played Louisville in one semifinal and North Carolina and Michigan State in the other.)
Quotable: Louisville junior guard Russ Smith was asked what it would mean for the state of Kentucky if Coach Rick Pitino added a national championship at Louisville to go with the 1996 championship he won at Kentucky. "I don't think anybody in the state would hate him," Smith said. "He won a title for Kentucky (and would have) won a title for Louisville, so everybody should love him."
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