WTKA Roundtable 7/14/2022: Santa Ono's Curling Team
Things discussed:
- We flaked completely and didn't talk about Moeller, who was supposed to be the top of the hour. We'll make it up, because as soon as we got off air we realized there's probably an entire hour of stuff we wanted to talk about there.
- Welcome Santa Ono! He's not going to suddenly change NIL; he does seem likely to be a guy with a more long-term vision during a period of huge transitions, and could help them with the transfer problem. Michigan is an old institution with a lot of institutional momentum; you're not going to change everything about it in a week.
- Baseball assistants reviews.
- Three new linemen: Really like the two ends—these are the kinds of guys Michigan's been winning with.
- Acheampong: we like guys you need to teach football because they don't have bad habits.
- Etta specifically: remember when they turned down Justice Finkley? They didn't turn down Etta—he has the length they're looking for to play outside->in.
- Herring: Michigan sees him as a guard only and they need tackles, but you don't turn down a guy like that.
- Sam: In good shape with Nyckoles Harbor because he can stay a receiver here and therefore keep doing track.
- Hoops talk: Big Ten lost a lot of centers, IU and Illinois (also needs a center) look tough, but high floor for Michigan with Hunter and a ton of spacing. Lose a lot on defense, but they have shooting at the 1 and 4 to make up for it on the other end. Kobe Bufkin is the mother of all X-factors. Llewellyn comp: Jones or Smith? Seth: This is the year we're going to say "Frankie, what were you THINKING?!?"
- Hockeytalk: Looks like they're going to keep Mel, recruiting still going well, couple more 1st rounders. Also a high floor with the best goalie but too much youth to be a 1 seed.
You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream.
Segment Two is here. Seth was on early here. You can watch the video here:
The Usual Links:
- Helpful iTunes subscribe link
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- What's with the theme music?
A bunch of Elvis impersonators gone to seed.
Are we going to make a run at Chris Parson, 4* QB who just decommitted from FSU?
Reading the article doesn't give me any suggestion he'll be a target, esp. since we haven't offered him, according to 247.
https://247sports.com/Recruitment/Chris-Parson-135031/RecruitInterests/
He might be a 4-star recruit, but he doesn't have any offers from top 10 programs. Ole Miss and Kentucky are his highest ranked schools, insofar as the final 2021 rankings go.
To be fair, we haven’t offered any QB in this class outside of Dante Moore so I wouldn’t take that as an assumption that we won’t target a QB at all. We went all-in and it didn’t happen. Now it’s time to expand the board.
As far as his offers, Michigan isn’t exactly in a good spot recruiting QBs. An under-the-radar guy or a guy without “top 10 offers” is the most likely addition at QB.
My goodness.....not talking about Moeller....looks like the Michigan nation is par for the course undervaluing a cherished member of our program... starting with those on the Roundtable....at least this overlook is in line with how Moeller has been viewed by the the majority of fans, who, didn't even realize that their best living Michigan coach was Moeller, better than Carr, and yes, better than Harbaugh. Seth, I implore your Roundtable to have the next one DEDICATED to speaking only of Moeller and his time. All of it, including the Excalibur meltdown, and how they fired him when Bo was out of country. It is well deserved.
Hey man check out the top bullet point on this post: https://mgoblog.com/content/wtka-roundtable-7142022-santa-ono%27s-curling-team#read-more
Delighted you-all see Michigan contending in bball. I had it who knows someone close to the team (fwiw) that they let Frankie know early that they were bringing in someone to run the offense, so Frankie would have had to wait another year to get a chance to run the show. To the person who told me this it suggested that the faith wasn't quite there for a sometimes-erratic Frankie, and that hopes may in fact be high for Llewellyn. Let's see how this plays out.
Always seems like forever before we get hoops again!
We will definitely miss Frankie's defense this year and it seems incredibly short-sighted by him to bail on a team that only has three guards.
With that being said, the crew here at this site had a lot more confidence in his ability to be an everyday lead point guard that I did. His shooting makes Xavier Simpson look like Steph Curry. He also had never really shown much of a feel for being a facilitator as he was much more of an attack first guard. It will be interesting to follow his career going forward. I am disappointed we lost him but I don't think the drop off between Frankie and the point guards we have this year will be notable other than on ball defense. Frankie was fun to watch but that doesn't mean he's actually good at being a starting point guard
Frankie was a competitor and good enough to offset his outside shooting, but we will be totally fine.
Waiting for the Michigan Curling T-shirts LOL!!
Sam: agree we need to adjust the transfer rules. Let’s face it. Kids can go to OSU and take online classes, and they’re not the only school. We need to adjust to match the times and be more lenient with transfer credits.
For as much as I’d like to see M Football benefit from more generous exceptions for athletes when it comes to U-M admissions and transfers, these aren’t policies for which the athletic department has any jurisdiction, so to speak, and the institution calling the shots probably sees athletic interests as low in priority when it comes to making changes.
And I don’t think it’s crazy to say that is both unfortunate for the football program and also rightful and well prioritized by the university.
As someone who has worked in higher Ed for almost 20 years, there is a zero percent chance that admissions will look at the fact that a kid wants to transfer from Ole Miss as any kind of indicator that they’re likely to succeed academically. Schools like Michigan use lots and lots of data points to predict success in determining admissions criteria. Being good at football is almost certainly not on their list.
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