john beilein is breaking bad

This is fine. [Patrick Barron]

Welcome to our roundtable article, where the staff of MGoBlog talks about whatever's going on in the Michigan world. Today it's the destruction of civilization and everything in it worth keeping. It has swear words in it.

THIS FEATURE HAS A SPECIAL SPONSOR JUST FOR TODAY

Say, you know who can get you a quick and painless mortgage and isn't Dan f'ing Gilbert? Matt Demorest of HomeSure Lending. But this other company who just stole Beilein from me will also be my real estate agent you say? Well Matt can now do that too! He'll also handle your loan personally, get you through the parts that can get really complicated, and is not, to my knowledge, some Spartan who recently swooped in to steal the Hall of Fame coach of your favorite basketball team just to stick it to you. Matt wouldn't do that. He just moved into a new office at 2100 S. Main Street--in shouting distance of Crisler Arena—and people in the neighborhood would probably really hate him if he did something like that.

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sits silently, occasionally forgetting to breathe

Alex: They better hire from outside the family.

Seth: Maybe we need to establish real quick what words are appropriate on MGoBlog.

BiSB: FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK

Brian: We're PG-13 so this would be an appropriate...

Seth: Well FUCK.

Ace: The worst(?) part is the Cavs fucking suck. And they’re owned by Dan Gilbert! Collin Sexton is the living embodiment of every Beilein nightmare about a point guard!

Alex: Beilein must have just wanted to leave. The Pistons job was a better one.

Ace: I have to agree with Alex after reading the Woj article.

Brian: My wife just moaned "oh I'm so sorry" and seems physically hurt. She doesn't even care about sports.

Ace: The lottery is Tuesday night. As in tomorrow.

Beilein didn't want to move himself and his wife far from Michigan, and the Pistons' borderline playoff roster with little financial flexibility to make changes made staying in-state less appealing. Cleveland's rebuild status, with point guard Collin Sexton and a 14 percent chance -- along with New York and Phoenix -- to earn the No. 1 pick in Tuesday's NBA draft lottery appealed to Beilein.

One would think knowing whether that 14% chance at Zion pays off would be rather important!

Unless, as Alex mentioned, Beilein was ready to go.

Alex: It’s one of the worst jobs in the NBA.

Seth: AND HE HAS TO WORK FOR DAN GILBERT.

Ace: Who famously never holds onto anyone for a long time, even LeBron.

Seth: I live in Metro-Detroit. I don't know a single happy person working for Dan Gilbert.

Alex: There’s a strong, strong chance he gets fired without making the playoffs (although I guess you can get to the eight seed in the east with a buttcheeks team, as we’ve seen very recently).

Brian: They have Kevin Love until he's 86 and their main asset is the fact they have a bunch of contracts that are up in two years, so they can go... woo free agents to Cleveland?

Alex: It’s pretty close to a blank slate.

Brian: Which worked once in the very specific case of Lebron.

BiSB: (I'd like to also point out that the Pistons being Not-Terrible for the first time in a while actually HURT them, which... damn that's really Pistons).

Alex: They might have to attach assets to get rid of Love.

Ace: Barring Zion, and even with him, it’s an extremely tough path. The rest of the draft kinda sucks, too. Cavs can’t really take Ja Morant.

Alex: Zion is probably going to spend multiple years in the wilderness whether it’s Cleveland or somewhere else.

Seth: The only mindset I can possibly square this with is "I'm the greatest basketball coach alive and I can bring my coaching greatness to win with coaching in Cleveland and retire a god," which is a very sports coach mindset.

Brian: Maybe he just did this so he can draft Poole third overall.

Alex: The only mindset I can think of is “I want to leave Ann Arbor now.”

Ace: This probably doesn’t say great things about how he feels about next year’s team.

Seth: I like my Beilein as Daenerys theory better than Brian's Beilein as Michigan Basketball Twitter theory.

image

GoT apologists: "Beilein has been dropping hints that he'll leave on a Monday in May to coach Cleveland for 8 seasons!"

Ace: If he thinks he can win it all here, I have to think he takes another shot.

Brian: I don't even know man. Even if he doesn't love the outlook for 2019-20 if he wants a title over the next five years Michigan is 10000% more likely to do so than Cleveland

Alex: Well, next year’s team wasn’t going to win it all, but it was going to be a good team.

Seth: *extremely naïve young child voice* Maybe he just thinks Yaklich is ready?

Alex: That’s the thing: what’s the ceiling for him in Cleveland?

Ace: Sure but the NBA is a new challenge and he’s accomplished everything at the NCAA level except a national championship.

Alex: Working for a dipshit owner and drafting in the lottery every season until he gets fired in December after starting 5-22?

Brian: Kind of a big "except"

Ace: Fair, but he’s still staring down “greatest coach in program history” or “greatest coach in program history.”

Brian: I simply cannot fathom this decision and will never be able to. It is beyond me.

[After THE JUMP: There are crazier ideas]



when the walk-on hits [photo courtesy Sam Mousigian/Michigan Daily]

We've seen this game before. A freshman Nik Stauskas shooting Florida out of the gym from the same spot; Texas becoming so overwhelmed the Longhorn Network tweeted a shruggie. Enter this into the canon:

THE MODERATOR: Coach, an opening statement?

BILLY KENNEDY: Felt like we ran into a buzz saw.

Michigan played a near-perfect first half before settling into remarkably productive cruise control in the second. They scored 99 points, the most Texas A&M has allowed this season, on an astonishing 1.38 points per possession. They shot 64% on twos, 58% on threes, and 88% from the line. Eight different players made a three-pointer. One of them was CJ Baird, who started the season as a student manager.

"It was kind of hard to see," said A&M's Admon Gilder. "Because I was just wondering when they were going to miss."

After both underperformed last weekend, Moe Wagner and Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman led the way. Wagner was the star of the first half, pouring in 14 of his 21 while seemingly gaining confidence with every shot, the most spectacular a running left-handed bank after his patented behind-the-back dribble. Abdur-Rahkman scored 16 of his 24 in the second half, teaming with Charles Matthews (18 points, 13 in the second half) to drop the hammer on an A&M squad trying to cover a 20-point deficit with post-ups. Two more Wolverines, Zavier Simpson and Duncan Robinson, finished in double figures.

"We knew that we could pick and choose our spots on offense," said Abdur-Rahkman. "And we didn't shoot too well in Wichita, but we knew that we were confident coming into the game that we could hit get our shots off. We just picked and chose our shots, and we took them."



Abdur-Rahkman led the team with 24 points and 7 assists. [Mousigian]

Meanwhile, Simpson made life miserable for self-proclaimed "unstoppable" Aggies point guard TJ Starks, who made the freshman mistake of giving Michigan's best defender extra motivation. Starks, who'd averaged 19.6 points in his last three games, finished with five on 2-for-11 shooting, a lone assist, and five turnovers. Simpson equaled his mark's point total with a career-high five steals in the first half and added one more in the second for good measure. The Aggies mustered only 28 points on 32 first-half field-goal attempts; Michigan had little issue letting them work post mismatches in the second on the three-is-greater-than-two principle.

Last weekend's Wolverines were just good enough to get through last weekend. Tonight's Wolverines were great enough to beat any team on any day. It didn't take long for them to get into a groove and ooze confidence; Wagner talking trash after an in-your-eye three, Matthews flashing a rare smile after a tough bucket, Simpson eyeing his man with pure disdain after a particularly obvious flop, the whole team running back on defense as Abdur-Rahkman let loose a three-pointer. (Yes, it went in.)

It reached the absurd in the late going. Abdur-Rahkman went behind the back on a fast break pass to Wagner for an emphatic dunk. Austin Davis threw down an alley-oop. Baird sent the bench into hysterics with his three-pointer.

The swagger is carrying over.

"I think we're a very confident team, and I think that's all that matters," said Wagner. "We've been playing within ourselves all year and not looking at the opponent too much. Looking at the game plan, trying to execute that, and I think we've been believing all year we can beat anyone if we play our best basketball. So, Yep."

Michigan will face the winner of tonight's Florida State-Gonzaga matchup on Saturday. No matter which team advances, the Wolverines will enter the game knowing they can—and should—win. Given how they've played over the last month or so, they're not wrong.

[Hit THE JUMP for the box score and more photos.]

Bracket Watch: Getting Late Early



Regarding NCAA hopes, Michigan is backed into a corner. [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

After taking only one of three winnable games to start Big Ten play, Michigan has put themselves squarely on the NCAA tournament bubble, and it will be difficult to recover from many more slip-ups.

Michigan is one of the last four at-large teams to make the field in the Bracket Matrix, which is updated as of last night. Of the 28 brackets that were updated yesterday, the Wolverines make only 11. As SI's Michael Beller points out in his first edition of Bubble Watch, they've left themselves with little room for error:

Michigan (11–5, 1–2) is in a similar spot [as Northwestern], without the pent-up frustration of never having made the tournament. The Wolverines did their best work to date out of conference, knocking off SMU and Marquette. But they’ve already lost to Iowa and Maryland in league play and are just 2–4 against likely or potential at-large teams. Michigan is not going to be the brand of team that can afford too many losses to teams without at-large hopes, which may end up describing both of their opponents this week, Illinois (11–5, 1–2) and Nebraska (9–7, 3–1). 

That home game against Nebraska is as close to a must-win as you'll get at this point in the year. In addition to tomorrow night's game in Champaign, Michigan gets Illinois at Crisler next Saturday, and a sweep of the Illini would be of significant help; they're the last at-large team in the field on the Bracket Matrix.

Michigan needs to turn it around now because their conference schedule is brutally backloaded. They're favored on KenPom in five of their next eight games and underdogs in five of their last seven; incidentally, five of the next eight are at home and five of the last seven are on the road. Because of the number of coin-flip (or close) games, KenPom currently projects Michigan to finish 9-9 in conference, which would likely put them right on the bubble with a little work to do in the conference tournament. As esteemed Maize Rager and numbers-cruncher Crisler Spidey points out, however, 8-10 is currently more likely than 10-8:

Yikes. 9-9 is now the median at 21%, and 8-10 is more likely than 10-8. Remember what I just said about exceeding expectations? That's because these are the current expectations. The Wolverines have a huge week coming up with a road game against fellow "First Four Out" team Illinois, followed by a home game against conference wild card Nebraska. I really think they need to win both to stay alive. Kenpom claims they have a 38.2% chance of winning both. There have certainly been flashes of greatness from this Michigan team, but they have yet to piece it all together for 40 minutes since the 2k Classic. Now would be an excellent time for the proverbial light to go on.

Yikes, indeed.

[Hit THE JUMP for some less depressing stuff, I promise.]