For all those Michigan fans still pining over the much publicized demise of their football program, they finally have something good to talk about: Evidently they’ve got a decent basketball program again!

(Pyleoflist is dead on. Playing the role of Luke Skywalker: John Beilein.)

Just 16 days after being embarrassed in New York by Duke, Michigan beat the very same team on their home court, 81-73, in front of a crazed Crisler Arena and second-year coach John Beilein, who exorted his team to do anything possible to avenge their earlier loss an, finally, earn a win over a top-5 team. Done and done.

There’s three incredibly interesting subplots about the Wolverines victory: 1) It’ll bring up all those questions about Mike Krzyzewski taking senior point guard Greg Paulus out of the starting line up (doesn’t it seem like he’s been there for about 10 years?), 2) It puts in focus the threat of playing in early season tournaments, particularly if they put you at risk of playing a team you’ll see further down the schedule and 3) It raises the question of whether it’s ever to early to storm the court. Michigan did, even though the season is barely two months old.

For our money, Krzyzewski’s making the right moving in minimizing Paulus (the kid is an egomaniac who can’t shoot, take your chances with Nolan Smith). The other two questions, well, they’re a lot tougher. Clearly, both Duke and Michigan were ready for what the other team was going to do. The difference is that Beilein was able to get more out of his players with a pre-game speech ESPN re-played a full three times during the game. Kryzewski never seemed to be ready to attack his players, and as a result they looked dazed defensively in a number of spurts.

Then again, they had plenty of trouble with Michigan’s trapping zone defense, even though they’d seen it practically two weeks ago. A lot of that has to do with perimeter shooting — Duke was 7-of-33 from behind the arc — but they seemed to passive and didn’t attack the hoop enough. The Blue Devils only shot six free throws. Michigan shot 21. That can change a game, you know.

It also doesn’t hurt that Michigan has a legitimate stud in Manny Harris, whose probably their best offensive threat since Jamal Crawford. Sure, forward DeShawn Sims led the team in scoring with 28 points, but Harris is a threat. He had an off day and still scored 17 points, and a lot of Sims action came from Harris helping create in the lane.

And hey, there’s another bonus from this Michigan win: Now there’s no way that we’ll be stuck watching a fraudulent Duke team take an undefeated run into ACC play. There’s nothing worse than a Duke team that gets up to 17 or 18-0 because they based around a core of mediocre talent that’s played together for three years and they’re playing against teams full of freshmen. It’s nice to see the table turned once in awhile, isn’t it?