Trey Burke

I suppose this is no longer newsworthy—but another Michigan player nabs a Big Ten player of the week award. Trey Burke with his third of the season.

• Averaged 23.5 points on nearly 60 percent shooting, 4.5 assists and 2.5 steals against Michigan State and Penn State last week
• On the road against nationally ranked Michigan State, finished with 18 points and 63.6 percent shooting with four assists and three steals
• Tallied a season-best 29 points against Penn State on Sunday, shooting 56.3 percent from the floor, including 75 percent from long range, with five assists and two steals
• Earns his fourth career Big Ten Player of the Week honor and third this season

Burke is now averaging 18.6 points per game for the season. If he maintains or betters than average, it'll be the highest for a Michigan player in the 21st century, topping Manny Harris's 18.1 ppg for 2009-10.

Burke is also on pace for the best assist per game mark in Michigan history. He's averaging 6.885 assists per game this season, while Gary Grant averaged 6.882 in the 1987-88 season.

Often overlooked are the remarkably few turnovers Burke commits—only 47 for the season, which translates into a 3.8 assist-to-turnover ratio. That's probably the best in Michigan history. By comparison, Grant committed 150 turnovers in 1987-88, while his assist total was 234.

I know the fan vote won't really affect whether Trey Burke wins the Cousy Award, but this is a another Michigan-Ohio battle, and it's being lost right now—29.8% to 17%.

You can vote here once a day, per e-mail address, through March 7. Spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Not surprisingly, Trey Burke has been named one of twelve midseason finalists for the Bob Cousy Collegiate Point Guard of the Year Award. Here are the twelve:

Keith Appling — Michigan State University

Lorenzo Brown — North Carolina State University

Trey Burke — University of Michigan

Aaron Craft — Ohio State University

Matthew Dellavadova — Saint Mary’s College

Pierre Jackson — Baylor University

Shane Larkin — University of Miami

Phil Pressey — University of Missouri

Peyton Siva — University of Louisville

Marcus Smart — Oklahoma State University

Michael Carter-Williams — Syracuse University

Nate Wolters — South Dakota State University

There's a fan vote component, and you can vote for Burke here.

The player that receives the most fan votes will receive one vote toward the final committee vote. Fan voting will run one month – beginning February 7th and will conclude March 7th.

The five finalists will be announced on March 11.

Jeff Goodman's latest CBS Sports NBA mock draft has Trey Burke in the lottery at 9 (up 18 spots from 27), Glenn Robinson, III at 26 (previously NR), and Tim Hardaway, Jr at  39 (up 7 from 46).

Among players previously ranked, Burke made the biggest jump by a wide margin.

A recurring theme I've heard put forward over the past month or two is that this is THE year for Michigan basketball. Go for broke, because after this year, Burke leaves, THJ leaves, and even Little Dog may leave. Beilein has pulled out the redshirts this year because it is a year to win it all.

I don't disagree that it is a year to win it all for Michigan basketball, and it's worth putting everything into it. However, I'm wondering if it's true that this is THE year. In that spirit, I thought we could take an early look at 2013 Michigan basketball and what the odds are that next year could be "The Year" too.

First off, lets set a prospective depth chart for 2013. This depth chart will assume that we lose the following players for 2013:

That makes our returning curren depth chart as follows:

To these players, Michigan is adding the following freshmen for 2013 (others may be added, but these are sure things):

Ed: No Hatch. He reclassified. Blame Bourbon

This Gives us a 2013 depth chart that looks something like the following:

First of all, lets just come out and say it. That's a damn good depth chart. A little light, but damn good. At any rate, to figure out where we're at for 2013, we should look at lost production and minutes first. Per ESPN:

I am going to discount the top five guys in that list because all put together they average less than 18 minutes per game. That's garbage time that you fill with those guys to reduce the chance of injury to your starters and primary backups and so that they get a chance to play.

PG - 33.7 MPG, 17.8 PPG, 7.2 APG

SG - 33.7 MPG, 16.2 PPG, 2.6 APG

F - 32.2 MPG, 12.1 PPG, 1.3 APG

I know that doesn't cover everything these guys are doing for the team, or even close to it. But if similar production can be put up, it can be assumed that production in other areas, defense, rebounding and general intangibles will be close.

The question is, between the improvement of Freshmen to Sophomore players and the addition of high rated freshemen, do we have it? There is no good math for just how players will perform when their minutes skyrocket (Spike?) or how freshmen will perform (Irvin?), because it varies so much. Therefore, I ask you. Do we have it?

After Wednesday's games, Trey Burke took over the #1 spot on Ken Pomeroy's POY ranking system, leaping over Lousville's Russ Smith and Duke's Marshall Mason Plumlee.  Following another solid performance on Thursday, Trey has added to his lead.

EDIT:  Didn't realize the kPOY standings were paywalled, my apologies there.  Here is a quick snippet of the top five:

An explanation of the award can be found below.

Updated kPOY explanation