nba draft makes me forever alone

Turner waving goodbye to MSU [Patrick Barron]

Baker back? Interesting roster development for basketball after last night's Toledo game:

We’ll see what happens,” said Baker on if he would apply for a sixth-year.“Potentially.”

“Absolutely,” he said on if he would come back to Michigan. “If I got it, I’m back here.”

Baker played a total of 18 minutes as a freshman; bizarrely these all came in late February or later. Usually this would not be grounds for a redshirt, but who knows these days. The NCAA is in its Security Guard Meme phase. It could happen.

Grimace dot emoji. Sam Vecenie's latest Big Board has Jett Howard 20th and Kobe Bufkin 24th. Hunter Dickinson is 83. No commentary on any of them, so nothing to quote. But maaan this thing where the NBA grabs Michigan players before they have their AA-type season is getting old.

The guy who did the thing, nope. DJ Turner ran a 4.27 40 at the NFL combine, which is sort of impressive:

The Athletic had a piece on guys who rose and fell based on said combine and DJ Turner did not come up at all. I mean… I think… he's a corner? Right? One Michigan player did show up:

A lot of tight ends had big days, including Darnell Washington, who put on a show that will only help fans of his game build a case for his value and potential as a receiver. Sam LaPorta is an all-around football player that does a lot of things well and had a great day of testing. And even a prospect like Luke Schoonmaker continues to become more interesting because he’s a tight end who has shown he plays in-line and his testing numbers hinted there might be more to tap into as a receiver.

And fair enough:

Ben Herbert hive grows ever stronger. Rivals has a piece on Turner and Mazi Smith moving up in draft evaluators' eyes. If Smith blows it out of the water at pro day—which is likely—he'll move up further.

[After THE JUMP: CJ Stroud and words: never again.]

[Marc-Grégor Campredon]

What was all but official is now official:

Though we held out some hope that he might return to make a run at a lotto spot, Diabaté was going to find some NBA team that wanted an Extreme athlete even before the combine testing numbers showed just how far that extremity goes.

The talented big was Michigan's best freshman and best defender, earning a starting role just a few weeks into the season. There he proved a crucial defensive presence down low, with the best block rate of any Michigan four since DJ Wilson. Though Diabaté's debut season was up-and-down, his highs keyed road victories at Iowa and Ohio State, the latter when Hunter Dickinson wasn't available. At the very least, Moussa's presence was the difference between losing the tournament streak and a fifth straight Sweet Sixteen. Add a strong likelihood of many years of "That was our guy!" pointing in the future, and ça en valait la peine.

Diabaté was always going to leave before he came close to his vast ceiling, but it's a bit of a bummer that he only had time to scratch its surface. Hopefully he will get picked up by an excellent franchise that's committed to seeing him reach his potential, and Michigan fans will get to exclaim—in French of course—that yet another champion came through Ann Arbor.

His departure does finally begin the process of clearing up Michigan's roster situation for next season. They await word on Caleb Houstan, who if he stays in the draft (IE, if some team promised to draft him), I expect Michigan to reactive their portal activity. We should know soon.

Bonne chance, notre ami!

Take shot? Why not? [Marc-Grégor Campredon]

We didn't have to wait until the official list after all:

As expected, Houstan is going to get a draft evaluation. Unlike with Moussa Diabaté, who's likely to get some late 1st or early 2nd round interest based on his potential, the wind with Houstan feels like it's blowing towards a return. Houstan's freshman campaign saw him plummet down draft boards—he's currently 64th (one spot below Ron Harper) on ESPN's big board, but hanging on in the 40s to NBA Draftnet's matrix thanks to a few rankers who'll put him on the 1st round bubble. Many of those rankings also come with admonitions to return to school.

Houstan's defense developed far more than most fans realize over the course of the season—this was a subplot of the Sweet Sixteen run—but offensively Houstan still has holes in his game everywhere but shooting while set. Houstan may also be waiting to see what happens with Diabaté, especially if Moussa returns and the draft evaluations come back telling Houstan to bulk up to a four. Meanwhile, Michigan will have to wait with them to figure out their forward situation. Doubtless their pursuit of Terrence Shannon, who projects to play at least half his minutes at Houstan's old outpost.

lifetime contract now

please don't listen to dickie v

it only takes one team to seriously alter the roster outlook

It's the biggest baseball game in ~60 years

I bet you can guess what I've embedded in this post 

Rasheed does live in the sky and nobody can tell me different 

It felt awful. It felt stupid. It felt ancient. It felt self-inflicted.

Georgia Tech must be defeated 

sometimes I think amateurism should be abolished, and sometimes I think professionalism should be abolished