tommy amaker

Time to get irrationally mad! Lovely of Jeff Goodman to offer himself as a midsummer piñata in the aftermath of Brad Stevens exiting coaching for a head coaching job with the Celtics:

Not saying they can get him, but one name I would look at if I was the Celtics:

Juwan Howard

— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) June 2, 2021

Indiana fans with long memories and an antipathy towards Goodman rushed to point out that 1) Goodman floated Chris Collins(!!!) as a potential Beilein replacement and 2) was one of the chief NBA-guy-to-college skeptics:

Michigan fans have taken the suggestion with their usual aplomb.

Juwan Howard would be a good fit for Bost-
Michigan Twitter: pic.twitter.com/DW4mXMRA4Q

— Noah Neidlinger (@candor_for_sale) June 2, 2021

I think we're good at least through Jace and Jett's respective Michigan careers.

[after THE JUMP: weird guys]

Is this a hockey recruiting post? It's not, you can keep reading. It's just that Michigan's basketball scholarship situation is feeling a lot like trying to pack a whole hockey team in a recruiting class:

Harvard transfer Bryce Aiken, one of the top available prospects, has narrowed his list of potential destinations to four, he tells 247Sports.

Aiken, a 6-foot, 175-pound guard out of New Jersey, is down to Iowa State, Maryland, Michigan and Seton Hall. Aiken told 247Sports that more than 25 schools reached out to him when he entered the NCAA Transfer Portal.

Michigan is two over if they get Josh Christopher. Aiken would make it three and just about requires that a 2019-20 contributor leaves.

Aiken would be a gamble. He missed all but seven games last year—thus his Ivy-enforced grad transfer—and also missed half of his junior and sophomore seasons with a severe knee injury. When he managed to get on the court as a junior he was Ivy Carsen Edwards: huge usage and a butt-ton of unassisted threes. Incredibly, Aiken hit 40% from three and 76% of his makes were unassisted. This was massive volume, too: 7.1 attempts per game. He's also a career 86% FT shooter who was a foul magnet at the Ivy level.

Aiken was a top 100 recruit out of high school—Tommy Amaker's recruiting might be better at Harvard than it was at Michigan—and doesn't have the usual Ivy transfer athleticism caveats. And shooting is shooting. But 1) Aiken has missed a ton of time, 2) transition costs are real, and 3) Michigan's PG minutes are currently set for Brooks and DDJ, who were both dogged defenders last year.

If one of those guys is intending to leave Aiken is an obvious take. If not things get dicey.

This may be moot, anyway. Maryland just graduated Anthony Cowan and has literally zero PGs on their roster for next year unless a couple of combo guards ranked below 200th on the composite count. Aiken would walk into 38 minutes there, and the offense is the same "oh shit someone do something" that Amaker runs.

Side note: how good would Harvard have been if Aiken and Seth Towns were healthy? Texas should hire him.

[After THE JUMP: Xavier Tillman is again exhorted to make millions of dollars]

2/5/2019 – Michigan 77, Rutgers 65 – 21-2, 10-2 Big Ten

There are worse things than being unable to pull away from a stubborn lower-tier Big Ten team. There's a bullet below all about that. Some other ones first:

Rutgers doesn't suck. This leapt off the screen. They're not good, obviously. But previous games against Rutgers were either comical blowouts or really frustrating games where the opponent makes a bunch of garbage to stay in contact. Rutgers made very little garbage—only Doorson's early line-drive bank shot stands out as an eye-roller—and was nonetheless nipping at Michigan's heels for much of the game. Michigan shut off Geo Baker, who was 1/9 from the floor, and Rutgers did not fall into a hole and die.

Omoruyi can play; Baker can play even if he got a dual-barreled blast from Matthews and Simpson; they're put together defensively in a way that prevented Michigan's pick and roll game from really getting going. If they had two guys who could be Just Shooters they'd be a tournament team. But they cannot shoot, at all. The end.

FWIW, it felt like the main reason this didn't push out to a 20 point game was non-Baker players going 4/6 on threes. Only a couple of those looks were wide open (the Omoruyi ones) and their shooting is such that you'd expect maybe two of those to fall.

A flash. Charles Matthews had a swooping layup early on which the big got pulled out of the lane; Baker tried to fill for the charge and Matthews just leapt around him and went up for a layup. I immediately regretted my assertion in the previous basketbullets that Matthews's surrounding cast didn't have an impact on his reduced efficiency. The pure 5-out offense Michigan fielded last year provided Matthews many more opportunities to make such plays.

Matthews then hit a bad idea fadeaway jumper after nearly losing his pivot foot.

Even though this shot was plainly a bad idea on the replay it seemed like everyone on the team knew it was going up. Simpson was not even giving Matthews the option to kick it back out.

In related news…

Letting it come to them. Both Matthews and Poole were much more reserved on the offensive end. One turnover each, and I think Matthews's might have been the steal he nearly brought in but stepped out of bounds on. Other than the aforementioned bad-idea jumper from Matthews neither guy pressed like they had been for big chunks of the year. Their shots were good ideas in the context of the offense.

Simpson is now in the driver's seat, with 12, 7, and 7 assists over the last three games and an offense that works best when Simpson's doing something on the pick and roll. Michigan put up 1.2 PPP against a top 50 defense on the road, and the usage was Stauskas-era balanced: nobody had more than 22%, all of the starters had at least 16%.

[After the JUMP: a pick and roll variant and good vibes from Champaign]