Today you could actually see how some of these guys perform when they have confidence. The problems this season were mental more than anything.
Stu has athleticism and skill level to be a very good Big Ten guard. Stu's biggest obstacle is Stu, kid doesn't know how good he is.
-Manny Harris has been extremely inconsistent all year
-Team turnovers have been bullets to the knee all year
-Novak has been as equally useless as Stu
-Darius Morris needed to grow up faster
-How do we have 2 coaches with funky systems that have done nothing but win in their entire careers, and then they come here and suck!?
FYI -
We were something like 5th lowest in the nation in TOs / game before the BigTen Tournament.
Not turning the ball over and generally playing good defense are the only things that kept this season from being 2007-2008 esque.
but he has been playing out of position. Hopefully next year he can play a more natural position and we'll see his game develop.
Thanks for the correction, for some reason it always seemed like we were careless with the ball, maybe it was just me.
Hopefully he can do that next year.
i don't know. as brian points out frequently, players typically make the biggest leap between their freshman and sophomore years. i don't know how much better stu or novack are going to get.
With Smotrycz, Hardaway and hopefully another wing coming in, Morris/Vogrich a year older and Akunne regaining his eligibility, those two won't be guaranteed minutes if they don't produce.
I put this stat in another topic, but Epke Udoh had worse numbers than Zach Novak both his freshman and Sophomore years. He seems to have made the jump just fine (albeit after a year sitting on the sidelines).
They played JB's system today and it almost paid off. I think I can count on one hand how many times they took a rushed/bad 3 with less than 10 seconds off the clock. Too bad they waited until now to do it.
Stu Douglas will go down as one of the most famous Wolverines of alltime. From now until forever, that buzzer-beater will be shown in B10 Tournament commercials. Not what he wants to be famous for I'm sure and I'm not knocking him, it happens.
This is the Stu we would have seen all year if Beilein hadn't miscast him as a point guard.
I do not believe that Stu's ineptitude was Beilein's fault.
All I know is that for much of the year Stu was asked to play a position he's never played at any level of basketball. I'm not surprised his shooting seemed to suffer. I fully expect him to bounce back next year w/ Morris running the point from day one.
from the end of the game. Don't blame it on Stu. Unfortunate design coming out of the time out. You cannot let the potential national player of the year dribble the ball across midcourt and launch that kind of shot with momentum. The coaching staff needs to step up and assume responsibility. Outcomes have always told me you need to guard the ball coming from out of bounds in the final seconds. Life is about learning from our mistakes. I am proud of our teams effort today and hopefully we can learn and move on.
I think a big reason why Stu struggled this year was because he was asked to run the point and run the offense. As we saw today and have seen in the past, he's must better coming off screens and knocking down shots. He wasn't able to do that this year for several reasons:
Lack of experienced PG to run the offense.
Manny Harris' inconsistency sudden lack of the drive and dish that he had previously been so good at.
Fluctuating confidence level.
I'm confident that Stu will continue to be a major role and a positive one in his final two seasons as a Wolverine - the skill set is there and I thought he made great strides on the defensive end of the game this year.