CHARLOTTE — Ashley Varterasian and her family were trying to be creative. The 27-year-old Haslett native and Michigan fan knew she had good seats for the NCAA tournament games at Time Warner Cable Arena so there was a chance she’d get on television.

She thought about what had been big in the news lately and figured something with Charlie Sheen’s "Winning" and "Tiger Blood" could be popular. Then she found a picture of Michigan guard Zack Novak bleeding from his head.

So the slogan came up ‘Novak has Tiger Blood,’ not knowing the junior had a small obsession with Sheen and finds him “hilarious.”

“I think it’s hilarious,” Varterasian said Saturday. “If I would have known, I would have done the sign a lot differently, but I think it is just as cool.”

So did Novak, who saw the sign after Varterasian and two other Michigan fans started yelling at him as he was going to do a post-game radio interview. Novak said he wanted the sign and said he dispatched Michigan sports information director Tom Wywrot and team graduate manager Will Vergollo to retrieve it.

She didn’t receive anything for the sign — she didn’t ask — but joked Saturday she would have liked a picture with him and the sign or an autograph.

“I would definitely send her something if I got a hold of her,” Novak said. “If she wants something, it’s not going to be worth anything.”

The sign isn’t dead yet, either.

Varterasian and her family actually made two signs — and plan to bring the second one to Sunday’s game against top-seeded Duke. All of this, for her, ended up being better than the sign her family was originally thinking of making.

“We started thinking about the Fab Five and Jalen Rose,” said Varterasian, who graduated from Michigan in 2006. “But we switched over to Charlie Sheen and we found that picture of Novak bleeding.

“So it worked out perfectly.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein