Unverified Voracity Feels Bad For Tommy Amaker
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]
Board updated. Sam Vecenie updates his top 100. Livers lands at #88. Other Big Ten players of note:
- #21 Xavier Tillman. I understand that the basement is the safest place for Tillman's grandma currently. Go to the NBA please sir.
- #24 Jalen Smith. Gonna be really annoying if Aiken rescues a Maryland team that would otherwise have no C and no PG.
- #25 Daniel Oturu. Already said he's staying in.
- #35 Cassius Winston.
- #47 Ayo Dosunmu. Tough decision territory for Dosunmu. He's one of the guys who really could have used the pre-draft process.
- #51 Kaleb Wesson. Wesson is reportedly a goner no matter what.
- #64 Joe Wieskamp.
- #81 Lamar Stevens.
- #82 Aaron Henry. Classic Izzo.
- #90 Luka Garza. Iowa's hit the long-term badass college player sweet spot here.
Aside from the Henry drop this is about the best case scenario for Michigan since it should lead to three of the most dangerous Cs in the league GTFOing while Livers returns unless he's just desperate to exit.
On Livers's level of GTFO. He talked with reporters after putting his name in. Most relevant bit:
ON WHERE HE STANDS REGARDING STAYING IN THE DRAFT OR RETURNING TO SCHOOL
I definitely want the feedback. I want to keep the eligibility. I want to keep both doors open, kind of. The door to keep my name in the draft or the door to keep my eligibility. I definitely wanted to keep the option of eligibility just because, I mean, if things don't work out or they say I need a year of school or it's beneficial for me to go back to school for one more year, I would have no problem with it. It's successful either way because I can get my education and my diploma and then declare for the draft next year. Or, if they like what I see right now, I can keep my name in the draft. It's good to have two options.
The overall tenor of the interview is more balanced than the announcement, which sounded like he was leaning towards a departure. This… er… conference call makes it sound like he's not going to go just to go. If Vecenie's correct in his evaluation that would be a range where he'd return.
The hot takes are materializing. Take cover. One of our Fuegobox™ Hot Takes a couple months back: coronavirus will cancel football season. I don't know why that one has to come true but "Ohio State University will cease to exist" stubbornly eludes us. But yup, contingency plans are being discussed. Some are clearly dumb:
Michael Smith of Sports Business Journal reports that one of the scenarios for playing college football in 2020 consists of moving the season to July, August, and September.
Bruce Feldman immediately debunked this, because it is insane.
Have heard from several power brokers in college sports this morning who think this idea makes no sense and that there isn’t a sensible way it can happen. https://t.co/YPjCqy4NVY
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) March 28, 2020
Leaving aside any coronavirus related issues, you're going to play in Satan's ballsack in July? No, you are not.
More reasonable scenarios involve delay instead of acceleration. China's numbers are likely horseshit but they are further along the curve here than the US and they're nowhere near moving forward with sports:
The Chinese Government issued a new order today restricting resumption of team sports, a heavy blow for pro basketball to return there soon as was planned. China's attempt to restart sports are being watched closely by leagues across the world. Huge issue is asymptomatic carriers
— Brian Windhorst (@WindhorstESPN) March 31, 2020
Brett McMurphy reports that CFB muckety mucks are putting spring football on the table:
Just last week, a Group of Five president suggested going ahead in mid-March and moving the football season to the spring, said a Group of Five AD.
“We could move it to the spring,” a Power Five AD agreed.
Multiple athletic directors said if a fall football season can’t occur, a last-gasp possibility would be starting the season in January or February. It could mean the College Football Playoff’s semifinals from the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl could be held in May, and the national title game from Miami Gardens might be played in late May/early June around the Memorial Day holiday.
In this scenario, the regular season would get played during the NFL Draft and some bowl games might get canceled, an AD said, but at least the season would be saved.
“Would that be the preferred situation?” an AD asked. “Absolutely not, but the lights have to be kept on somehow.”
They're going to do their damndest to have a season because high profile athletic departments blow all their cash annually so that it doesn't look like they're massively profitable. So the amateur sports will collapse without money.
We still care about this I suppose. HBO had a documentary featuring Christian Dawkins, he of the recent FBI probe, which broadcast the Sean Miller and Will Wade calls. Reminder that Will Wade kept his job after this became public:
“I was thinking last night on this Smart thing. I’ll be honest with you, I’m f------ tired of dealing with the thing. Like I’m just f------ sick of dealing with the s---.
“I went to him with a f------ strong-ass offer about a month ago. F------ strong. But the problem was, I know why he didn’t take it now, because it was it was f------ tilted toward the family a little bit. But I mean, it was a f------ hell of a f------ offer. Hell of an offer. Especially for a kid who is going to be a two- or three-year kid. I’ve made deals for a lot of players who are as good as him that were f------ a lot simpler than this.”
Dawkins’ on-camera interpretation of the conversation: “They ain’t talking about a scholarship offer, bro.”
The Wade-Dawkins conversation actually begins with some byplay between the two about Jaron Blossomgame, a former Clemson player Dawkins was working with on behalf of ASM Sports Agency leading up to the 2017 NBA draft. Dawkins makes joking reference to Blossomgame going undrafted and coming back to school to play at LSU, which prompts this response from the coach: “We could compensate him better than the rookie minimum. We could give him more than the (NBA) D-League.”
The NCAA has two choices: nuke LSU or give up any pretense that they're enforcing amateurism at all. I predict the latter.
York back. The Flyers GM with the definitive word on Cam York:
Fletcher says Wyatt Kalynuk and his family are still deciding whether he's going to sign a contract this summer and turn pro. Cates, York and Brink all will return to school next year.
— Charlie O'Connor (@charlieo_conn) March 30, 2020
Hockey could hypothetically add another defenseman since they lost three but they added Jay Keranen midyear, which took them up to nine. They'll probably stick with two and attempt to defer the others; would not be surprised if those guys quickly found other homes. That's probably been in the works for a while.
Etc.: Coronavirus edition of Hatin' Ass Spurrier. Your fake NCAA tournament bracket is an insult to brackets. Bailey Johnson on the hockey croots. Samoskevich gets some attention. Brendan Brisson profiled by NHL.com. The Daily looks at what Dylan McCaffrey and Joe Milton have put on film. Fangraphs is in trouble.
What would the main factors be in preventing a resumption of sports without fans in the fall assuming tests evolve as they already have to produce quick results and are easily accessible by say, June?
Seems hard to imagine an end to social distancing before a vaccine or effective treatment becomes available. I can't see how better (or even more available) testing changes that.
I feel like games without fans would be the most likely scenario in which the season starts in the fall. The primary risk then is simply having the team and staff practicing, traveling and playing together and if you're testing regularly to minimize the chance they're spreading infections, the risk would be low. At that point, it's a question of how much risk is too much for amateur sports.
Can't see sports resuming with fans until there's a vaccine which is projected to be at least a year.
If you can't have games with fans, you likely can't have students on campus. While online learning was an emergency measure to get through the rest of the semester, I don't see parents spending that kind of cash for more stay-at-home learning... not for $20K or $50K. That changes the whole "will we have a season" equation. States won't have the money to bailout colleges who will lose all this tuition revenue. I can't see restarting athletics as being a priority to college administrations for several more years.
As a parent of a high school senior, this was the week that I had to tell my son to prepare for no college next year. Not no college sports, but no college period.
Wait, wait, you just wrote this: "States won't have the money to bailout colleges who will lose all this tuition revenue. I can't see restarting athletics as being a priority to college administrations for several more years."
First, they're gonna restart universities next year. There is a 99.9% certainty of that. Because yes, they need tuition money and kids need an education. They will have a plan.
But second, do you know where these institutions can get a lot of money? Football and basketball television deals. It will be a high priority to get athletics earning TV money again.
There is a huge, HUGE difference between 30 person classes of teens / early 20-something-year-olds partaking in essential education and 100,000 screaming people many of whom are above age 50 in a stadium for something that is most certainly not essential (even if lucrative).
By next fall life will mostly be back to normal, except for gatherings of over 50 or 100 or maybe 250 people, and the possible need to carry around something saying you have antibodies or have tested negative recently. But sports and concerts and large conferences and conventions will be last thing to get going as we phase back to normal. For us to feel comfortable doing those things, we'll need a vaccine.
I do hope you are right. However, most of my classes at Michigan were on the order of 200-400 students, as are many of the non small liberal arts colleges. If that means online classes this fall, how many parents are going to pay for that? How many parents are going to send their kid to a dorm with 1200 kids if we are being told it is still too dangerous to be in groups?
I work in higher ed. I would sleep better at night if your 99.9% certainty of returning was even in the ballpark. A lot of universities are made up of up to 20% international students and those students may not be likely to return next year. Remember, Michigan cancelled in person classes through the summer. The college my son might attend, cancelled summer orientation. I don't think we go from no contact in July to 40,000 students on a campus a month later.
There are only a few dozen or so universities whose athletic departments make money. Ironically, the schools who lose money on sports are actually in better situation. I was on a conference call with a variety of colleges (unrelated to athletics) and one school (Big 12) said they are losing $80-$90 million from lost conference revenue. Another school, (Atlantic 10) said they are saving money from athletics during the shutdown.
My point earlier is that universities are going to be so gutted if things are not back to normal in the fall, not athletically, but academically and from an enrollment perspective. Getting that in order is the first priority. If there aren't 100,000 people in the stands for football, who is supporting the rest of the sports?
While a reduction in sports activities may benefit some schools more than others from a purely "operating income" standpoint in the short term, it means very little for their overall fiscal health.
Many university athletic departments have debts in the $50M+ (a few years ago, UM was north of $200M). Revenue-generating activities are critical to helping to pay that off. In fact, many schools depend on incrementally higher revenues annually in order to make the debt-based financing in their long-range financial plans work.
While I honestly think college football will be lost this season, the reality is that - in doing so - it could spell financial catastrophe for many universities who simply have way too high debt thresholds.
Little chance the season is lost. Within three weeks the idiot tube will begin to change the narrative.
Even if you have easy access to tests that produce quick results, you're still going to have to do quarantines any time someone tests positive. That means anyone that the positive person came into contact with since they could have become contagious is going to have to sit out for a while. Even if you're doing daily tests and keeping teammates separate as much as possible, you're going to have random chunks of teams sitting out until they definitively don't have it. Never mind if you don't do daily tests and might need to quarantine a whole team for two weeks in the middle of the season or something.
I don't know if this correct, but I am guessing it's something similar to what China is currently experiencing with basketball but on a much larger scale.
I won't pretend to know how many people participate on an individual basketball team between players, coaches, trainers, medical teams, etc. Multiply that by two, add in a handful of refs, and the likelihood that someone is asymptomatic and may unknowingly transmit the disease to others is - potentially - high.
Comparatively, I also don't know how many people participate on an individual football team between players, coaches, trainers, medical teams, etc. It's definitely more people and many more teams than Chinese basketball; and, all of a sudden, you have that many more people being exposed to possible asymptomatic persons.
Moreover, there will also be a lot of possible epidemiological and ethical considerations:
- Epidemiologically, I spoke with a good friend of mine at the WHO last night who indicated that simply due to the sheer size of the United States as well as the variant levels of risk-reduction adopted geographically, there may be lingering, isolated epidemics across specific regions for months to come. As such, for teams located in those impacted areas, they may be at a distinct competitive disadvantage when - or if - fall football comes around.
- Ethically, will people tolerate the semblance or appearance of "risky" physical contact just to play a sport? The NCAA is already perceived as being a money-hungry institution (errr...is a money-hungry institution). From the outside looking in, sending a bunch of 18-21 year olds to play each other across the country or even across state lines sort of epitomizes the desire to make money at the potential expense of others' health. Moreover, I can't but help wonder what the liability may be both financially and simply in terms of goodwill. If universities knowingly agree to play and people get sick (Athletes, coaches, or whomever) the lawsuits and loss of institutional integrity could be sky high.
I realize that was long-winded, and it's certainly only one person's opinion. Who the hell knows right now?
Time to open wine. ;-)
i think oturu has the best upside of any BIG players in the draft. i think he is more athletic than tillman and plays a lot harder than smith.
also, texas would be stupid to hire amaker. yes, amaker has success in the IVY because, as you point out, he has recruited better talent. that won't be the case in the big 12. he would likely become about the worst X and O guy in that league, like he was in the BIG.
There are no Xs and Os in Big 12 basketball. Kansas does not win 29 straight championships if anyone (else) knows how to coach in that league. The Big 12 gets a lot of outstanding athletes who can jump out of the gym but they do not know the intricacies of the game.
If they move the football season to the spring then they must have the NCAA Champion play the XFL Champion.
Aaron Henry projected higher than Luka Garza??!?!?!?
. . . The NCAA hasn’t already given up all pretense of amateurism?
I was gonna say- didn't this already happen a year ago? LSU told the NCAA to get lost and Will Wade just coached there and is presumably further encouraged to pay players. I can't believe the NCAA did nothing to LSU. They basically opened the floodgates
So, what, end the 2020 season in June 2021 and then start the 2021season like normal? Is that enough of an off-season for these guys to recover?
I finished watching that HBO documentary last night. I'm a little surprised there wasn't a board post here unless I missed it. It's pretty clear after watching that why Beilein left. Everybody is cheating except him and nobody cares.
The FBI came off looking really bad (classic case of entrapment and them trying to create a crime, meanwhile Dawkins is laughing at them and just accepting piles of cash from them while the FBI investigators live it up in Vegas. As a taxpayer, it's pretty disgusting to watch.) Granted, the story was told from only one side of the issue.
If you take that documentary, and combine it with the Stu Douglass interview by Ace, and look at who is leaving (UofM players to finally get paid) and who is staying (MSU players, maybe getting paid more than the D-League?) and it makes the case that Beilein ran a clean program and Izzo is as dirty as dirt can be.
I just watched it last night as well. FBI comes across like a bunch of buffoons. And its comical to watch Miller and Wade at press conferences denying stuff when you know they're lying their asses off! But NCAA don't care so why should they. Would love to see the Angry Elf get implicated somehow.
re: bryce aiken - take a look at those turnover numbers. yes, he was being "coached" by tommy amaker, who...well, let's just say he doesn't exactly preach ball security. but if he cuts them by 25% he's still a disaster with the ball in his hands.
i already spent six years watching that shit, and that was enough, thanks. hard pass.
To answer your undoubtedly rhetorical question: Harvard would have been a Sweet 16 team had both Aiken and Towns stayed healthy. Remember: neither of them was even the most highly ranked recruit on the Harvard squad this year. That honor went to Chris Lewis, son of Mo Lewis. Have a look at him working against Maryland's Jalen Smith on back to back possessions at about the 4:30 mark in this recap of the Crimson v Terps from earlier this year:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
The number of cases is flattening, but I wonder if that's just because we can't keep up with the testing. The number of deaths is still following an exponential growth curve, and that's after California and New York issued safer at home guidance about three weeks ago. I thought sports might continue without fans, but football teams have 85 scholarship players and walk-ons. We're being told not to have gatherings greater than 100, or 50 or even 10 people. How do you even conduct practice under those conditions?
We need to throw everything we know at this virus. Wash your hands, physical distancing, take your temperature daily, wear a mask, flush with the toilet seat down (seriously, I just read about this today) track who has it and who they've come in contact with, and finally, test, test, TEST.
I think it's pretty clear that our limiting factor right now is the testing capacity. Testing capacity is ramping up significantly, but I suspect it's doing so at a slower rate compared to how quickly the virus is spreading.
I just don’t see any possible way college sports - or sports generally - can happen without a vaccine. Remember, the NBA had one positive case and shut the whole league down.
One player sick on one team shuts an entire league down. How does M play a game if Zach charbonet (to pick a name) tests positive. How does the team he played the two weeks prior play any games - knowing they were in close contact with a positive test. It would be a total disaster.
Totally agree in theory, except for a few things:
- Snarky response: We could have the coaches & athletes individually do a 14 day quarantine prior to returning to campus to ensure nobody's sick. Then we totally isolate them as a group from the rest of the entire campus. Totally different living facilities, cafeterias, online "classes", etc. Don't think we could do it? Hell--the SEC & OSU football teams, Kentucky/Duke/Kansas basketball teams already seem to do this anyway!!
- Cynical response: The NBA freaked out when this virus thing was totallly new. It's possible that by July/August, the entire country has "pandemic fatigue" & decides to relax things a bit not for health reasons, but just due to economic & political fatigue.
- Hopeful response: Hopefully by summer we have a pretty reliable antigen test. If there are just 1-2 major strains, maybe players & staff could test for them. If positive, it means they've already got immunity & are exempt from future quarantine or testing protoccols.
- Radically aggressive response: In order to make sure players & coaches don't get nailed mid-season with a positive test/team outbreak described in #3 above, I could see an SEC or OSU type of squad intentionally getting infected simply to guarantee no single player/staff will have to worry about test results for the duration of the season. It'd be dangerous for some of the coaching staff & players with any underlying immune issues. But for the most part these kids are all world class athletes under the age of 25 years old & would only have mild or moderate cases.
If football were played in the spring, I'd have to assume the NFL would need to push back their combine/draft to late June/early July. Otherwise, how on earth would CFB teams be able to play any meaningful conference championship or CFP games during or after the NFL combine/draft happpens in April?
You think CFB has a problem with top draft prospects, "shutting it down" & not playing in end-season games to keep themselves healthy now? Imagine the number of players who will "shut it down" if they've ALREADY been drafted & inked their contract? Wouldn't it violate NCAA rules if they already inked deals? Or if not, wouldn't NFL teams require players to stop doing "risky" physical activity outside of reporting for that NFL rookie mini-camp, etc. to be eligible for their signing bonus/contract pay to kick in?
Even if the NCAA allowed it & the NFL team made the pay guaranteed no matter what even if the kid continued to play CFB a few more games, I think a huge % of kids would get the ultimate "senioritis" at that point & just focus on the NFL.
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