Report: Billy Donlon To Northwestern
Number of coaches in this picture still at Michigan: zero. [Bryan Fuller]
Michigan will now have to replace two assistant basketball coaches this offseason. Scout's Brian Snow reports that Billy Donlon, the de facto defensive coordinator, is departing Ann Arbor after one season with the Wolverines to be an assistant at Northwestern, where he has several long-running connections:
According to Scout.com's Brian Snow, assistant Billy Donlon has accepted the position of assistant coach at Big Ten foe Northwestern.
"For me, I think it comes down to, from what I've heard, is that Billy has obviously known Chris Collins for a long time," Snow told The Michigan Insider. "Both grew up in the Chicago area and I don't necessarily know how far back their friendship goes, but they've known each other for a long time. They're very comfortable with each other, [Donlon] is comfortable with Chris, he's comfortable with the area so it's kind of a homecoming for him. He's looking for someone who he has a longstanding relationship with."
Donlon has deep ties to the Chicago area, Wildcats head coach Chris Collins and the Northwestern program. Donlon's father, Billy Donlon Sr., was a longtime assistant for the Wildcats from 1987-94.
Losing Donlon is a serious hit to a team that has some major question marks on defense after DJ Wilson entered the draft early. While Donlon's impact didn't immediately show up in the stats last year, it became apparent as the season wore on and the defense improved dramatically. The most obvious stylistic shift was in Michigan's ability to prevent three-point attempts. They ranked ninth nationally in 3PA/FGA after never finishing higher than 109th under John Beilein, and even that was a bit of an outlier.
We'll see what names emerge as replacement candidates; things have been quiet on that front even after Jeff Meyer took an assistant job under LaVall Jordan at Butler, and now there's another seat to fill. Here's hoping some of Donlon's teaching sticks regardless, as Michigan's best chance of being a decent defensive team next year is to continue creating a three-point gap.
I said it because they were in the tournament. Thus, a tournament team.
Meaning that they're more like Maryland football than Rutgers football.
I'm not acting like they're Duke, I'm just saying they're not Rutgers basketball.
Damn, Rutgers sucks at sports.
Matta had a top notch assistant known for defense. Sanderson is from OSU so why not?
Also fits Meyer's role as a big man/post player coach replacement.
Beilein's team's have ALWAYS been mediocre to bad at defense. Granted, there was stretch in the middle of the season, starting with UCLA and ending with Nebraska in which we were as bad as we've ever been.
Part of that was bad luck on opponent threes (which is never something a coach is going to admit because you don't want to give your players an excuse) and a big part was a lack of focus and simply putting bad defenders on the floor for a lot of minutes (Wagner and Robinson). Sometimes you spend a lot of time on defense because your players don't know how to play defense (Wagner in particular).
Hard to tell if there were also transition costs to moving to Donlon that they experienced for a while before sorting out by the end of the season. But let's also not pretend that Beilein is capable himself of rolling up his sleeves and fixing a defense. He's never really done it before and there's a reason he hired Donlon to do it this year. And any further improvement on defense may depend on Donlon's replacement.
One thing is for certain: your personnel matters a lot for defense, regardless of scheme and coaching, and with Robinson and Wagner likely to both get a lot of time, the defense is probably reverting back into the 100s overall.
Beilein's defenses were terrible under the 35 second shot clock.
You nailed it there. Beilein's not exactly a motivator of effort. Other than guys like Novak, Douglas, Morgan and McGary that naturally have super high motors, we don't show a ton of focus and effort on defense.
You're right that defensive scheme isn't that complicated. So if you 1) recruit offense-first players and 2) don't motivate them well enough to play defense and 3) don't spend enough time on it to instill the focus, you get the kind of defenses Beilein typically has. All three of those have been the rub, and admittedly number 1 is probably the biggest contributor. Shot clock has nothing to do with any of that. Sounds like last year we started to correct the time issue.
But also, it is surprising that Beilien's defensive coaching philosphy took so long to focus on preventing three pointers. For a guy that's built his offense on the efficiency of three pointers, you'd think his defenses would have focused more on it in previous seasons.
and athlecism/timing/bounciness are pretty important for rim protection, which is his role as a 5.
Those are physical attributes that you have or don't have. So he'll never be elite, but yes, if he gets smarter and focuses on every possession, no reason he can't be as good as Jmo was, and we'd certainly take that.
Billy was on a year to year contract and that it was well understood by Beilein that he was not going stay around for too long.
Also, salary increase was brought up, but Billy made it clear that money was not an issue. So the discussion did not even get to size of the increase.
Still, sucks to see him leave. But Beilein found him. He will find another good candidate.
Wish him luck. Beilein will have to find a replacement for two coaches, and it might be rough. But he seems able to find diamonds in the rough on the court, so I have faith he'll figure something out off the court.
...call up Steve Fisher and see if he'll come out of retirement for a year.
Or go check in at UVA and see if one of their coaches would come.
(I'm joking)
I would look into former head coaches that want to give a year or two for one of the positions. Jeff Fisch style. Save on some cash since they're getting buy-out money and then use those savings to hire an Associate HC and a big time assistant coaching hire.
You can't be serious about Steve Fisher. My god.
You really can't read "I'm joking?"
If the rumors are true that Thad Matta was forced out, you could add him as a defensive coach and our inbounding would improve dramatically.
We could add John Thompson III if we wanted defense.
Problem is, we'd still lose 42-38 despite holding the opposing team below 30% from the field.
It was a joke, I wouldn't look too hard into it.
I'm sure JTIII is getting paid rather handsomely from G'Town and can probably get a job at Fox Sports or ESPN next year if he really wanted to work.
Being an assistant at Michigan really doesn't do anything for him if we're going to take it seriously.
If we're going to be serious about this...I WOULD start by looking at all of the fire head coaches and then looking at their assistants and finding the ones who haven't found another job. Maybe you do find someone's #2 that you can add to your staff. Those guys are a least worth looking into - while their HC may have failed...that doesn't mean an assistant couldn't have been a quality defensive coordinator or big man coach.
Nonsense! We cannot allow a three point gap!
much of a setback. Coach B has made some impressive hires over the year leading me to think...he'll do the same again. Jimmy King/Juwan Howard would be def!
I love Beilein....But is he an a-hole behind closed doors or something?
This sucks, I was hoping Donlon would be our next coach. Turning it around on defense is what saved the season last year.
Seems like he knew this was coming. He may already have somebody waiting in the wings as a replacement.
He may have his ups and downs recruiting players, but he's pretty good at "recruiting" assistant coaches.
Sayonara
I talk with him last week at the PDC camp my son was at, I was not impressed. Coach B can do better, good luck to you sir at NorthWestern.
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