Caleb Love De-commits
Per 24/7, Caleb Love will no longer be joining the team.
Bye Bye Love
Bye Bye Happiness
Hello loneliness
I think I'm gonna cry
Bye bye love
Bye bye sweet caress
Hello emptiness
I feel like I could die
Bye bye my love goodbye
UM bball and MSU football in a race to the bottom.
Yeesh.
Sad, but my thought too. Could be those years where the rivalry slows down since both sports could be uncompetitive. Hopefully our hoops team can change that narrative
Honestly just wishing Juwan the best. He should take the next NBA offer that comes through. It’s obvious this school doesn’t gaf about basketball and doesn’t deserve a good team. Just a shame.
Basketball has always been the poor relation vis a vis football at Michigan.
Juwan should go back to the pros. The program has a Titanic-like trajectory currently and I am not sure it is going to get any better.
At least he doesn’t have a fully guaranteed $95 million contract.
I disagree Sal, we can be good at both. In fact, we were the premier state program with Johnny Orr...and then we fell on our sword with the cleaves and Webber things, and opened the door for Sparty.
both have been pretty damn good the past decade
Probably would have been in his best career interest to have pursued the Lakers when it opened up a year or so ago. Not sure if he was a legit candidate but if he was he should have gone for it.
Michigan's priority is football and always will be football. The basketball team in the modern NIL era is going to suffer mightily for it
Exactly what they shouldn’t care about is education and take any kid that plays a sport because no one cares about a great education. Just close the school
Love is a good student and would be a model student athlete we'd be lucky to have. WTF are you taking about?
We are one season away from the Sweet 16 and another from the Elite 8. The basketball fan base here so hot then cold. Also many of the complainers on here don't have a clue about basketball or the way College sports or basketball is run now. Not saying you in particular but it is so old seeing all these people talk like they know anything about basketball and rip Juwan and how NIL and the transfer portal is Juwans fault. Michigan has put in more NBA players in the last 10 years then any other Big Ten school. Juwan can't help it if he develops players that become NBA players or gets 5 stars that are one and done. When JB was here everyone wanted 5 stars and not these high 3 or 4 stars. Now everyone doesn't want 5 stars. Love can't get in and now it is all Juwans fault yea that makes alot of sense. I am sure JH is pissed as we are as he was under the impression all was well in Love coming in.
Which 5 stars are you talking about?
Caleb Houstan
I’d rather have 3 star guys like Tim hard away jr or trey Burke or nik stauskas than a Caleb Houstan or Diabate any day of the week. Those guys were so overrated it’s embarrassing.
um...the basketball team is in trouble
Lol, understatement of the year
Well, shit.
1. Our admissions department sucks. Why are Warde or Santa not addressing this?
2. Juwan needs to maybe be in contact with the admissions department before accepting a commitment.
3. Football can survive in the portal era because you can recruit and develop well, then fill holes with grad transfers and freshmen transfers. Much harder with the smaller rosters in bball. Being a football school also helps with NIL more
4. I think Juwan would have been a great coach pre portal/NIL era. Roster management is the major weakness and it’s really hurting him right now. I am pretty bullish on in game coaching and development. But recruiting and portaling have been tough for him to figure out with the changing landscape
We don't want to depend on the portal as a football program... See MSU.
Losing players like Hunter due to NIL double hurts because we can't recruit due to admissions...
No, you don’t want to but they also don’t need to because we can recruit a top 10 25 man class ever year and those guys have to at stay in college at least 3 years. So they might as well stay at Michigan because our development is good. Basketball is a different animal. You have to depend on the portal unless you get a group of kids to stay 3 years. But Michigan has recruited guys that have left after a year or two. And then can’t bring in guys at the level of what those players would have been.
Change "great" to "good" in point 4 and I am inclined to agree with you.
Beilein was a great coach and a very difficult act to follow.
Definitely a tough act to follow. But I also think he would have struggled in this era. Recruiting strategy (not offering til a visit, not even doing verbal offers til NCAA says it’s ok etc) would have been hard in the portal era. And his system was not always easy to pick up in one year.
Beilein at most would have lasted 3 more years. He was jaded by the early departures so the second the portal thing took off he would have left. Just like Jay Wright.
Juwan needs to maybe be in contact with the admissions department before accepting a commitment.
Yep, at this point it's self inflicted. How many times has this happened under Juwan? 3 or 4 times? At some point you need to adapt your recruiting to your circumstances but he apparently has not
I don’t think results would be too different as the pool of players we could get in is smaller compared to most other schools but we would at least not feel like the rug keeps getting pulled out from under us.
If he would have held off on the Love commitment, we could go after other targets. Maybe not as talented but better than nothing. Hopefully RayJ Dennis feels good about being the top dog at Michigan
Love, Shannon, Kante, whoknows who else. It's becoming a trend. Putting a large percentage of your eggs on players you, as a head coach, should know might not make it through admissions.
Right or wrong, Juwan should know the hurdles in front of him. He just seems to run blindly through a hurdle race hoping to knock them all down and still win.
Yep, it sucks we have this hurdle, but he needs to learn to adapt and it's worrying he still hasn't
I concur. And he and his assistants are well versed in the NBA game. That gets recruits that want to make the league and don't seem to want to develop.
That doesn't bode well for Michigan. Other than exposure, which may attract a few One n Dones.
So we can become Kentucky. A minor league NBA farm system. Or we can be Virginia/Nova. A successful college program that still sends guys to the League. But develops them to better prepare them.
Kante is a different situation in my opinion than these guys - every year a handful of high-profile HS kids don't qualify academically and that's a problem. Howard admitted as much throughout the process, and Beilein took risks on guys as well who you weren't always sure about. That's part of recruiting and Howard was clearly aware of the risk Kante wouldn't be able to sign.
Love and Shannon are far less common - name me other prominent guys who didn't get to transfers to big-name programs due to credit issues - and all seem to trace back to some miscommunication between coaches and admissions. I have to assume that Howard spoke to someone in admissions before going after Love (maybe Love said he'd have graduated by now, something other guys who transfer promise) and was either assured it would be fine or Love said he'd have the appropriate credits to be a grad transfer.
I'm certain going forward that Howard is unlikely to go after anyone who isn't either a true sophomore or a grad transfer, as both of those situations seem to be guys who have fewer issues transferring over.
That's fair. I needed a third...
" I needed a third..."
Nojel Eastern
With respect to portaling it seems like neither the football nor the basketball team are getting a ton of breaks but football is able to at least keep guys on campus longer due to the different pro options between basketball and football (plus the recent run of success). Football guys do leave but since your only option for the first 2 years is another school vs. the NFL you see less movement. Howard really is a bit of a victim of his own developmental success - Bufkin absolutely wouldn't have left for the NBA had he not gone from "good prospect" to "potential NBA first rounder" in one year.
I don't think Howard was ever going to be a great coach - that's really hard for anyone to pull off. But he has been bitten badly these past couple of years and it sucks.
Yep. Some is self inflicted but hard to criticize recruiting top 40 players and them leaving after a year (two in Kobe’s case). Factor in that CBBrosters are older on average overall and it’s a double whammy. We are facing alot of turnover and can seemingly only replace it with young players or role player upperclassmen.
If you think the athletic director can do anything with the admissions department at the University of Michigan, you may as well blame him for everything wrong in the world.
That is so far out of his purview (as it should be if Michigan is going to have ANY semblance of academic integrity).
Now Santa? Well, of course he could do something...but he's the savior and y'all would rather blame Warde for all things bad at Michigan.
Warde could be really pushing Santa to do something about it. The athletics department is able to disregard rules for incoming freshmen. Why is it a stretch to do so for athletes that have a history of passing college classes? It’s silly
If Love was admitted would anyone in any way shape or form be worse off for it? I really dont understand the guy was a good student and some are puffing their arrogant Michigan man chests out over this. I just dont get it. Let the kids that make us millions play.
Without knowing the details of Love's admissions issues, it would be imprudent to cast blame, but I suspect your #2 point is the better takeaway than point #1. Michigan has rigid admissions rules, particularly for transfer students, and coaches need to be aware/compliant when building their rosters.
Reasonable minds may vary, but I am strongly opposed to rewriting admission requirements on the account of athletics. Michigan is first and foremost an elite academic institution, and while I am a diehard Michigan sports fan, the latter cannot usurp the former. There is a subtle but significant difference between admitting athletes with subpar grades (this is just holistic admissions) and exempting athletes from rules.
*Editing to say that it is ridiculous that UNC credits wouldn't transfer, so my second paragraph is more general thoughts*
I think letting in students with subpar grades is a bigger stretch of standards than letting in someone that has already gone through multiple years of college. We already make exceptions for athletics for HS students and the degree still holds a lot of weight. A handful of upperclassmen exceptions for athletics would not taint the school.
I don't consider admitting athletes with lower grades to be an "exception" at all. Grades/test scores are just one component of a holistic review. In my view, admitting an athlete with low grades is similar to admitting a highly accomplished chess player or musician or nonproft founder with low grades. I don't have any issues with it because the whole point of holistic admissions is that extremely talented/accomplished applicants can be admitted even with a lagging GPA or ACT score.
But I am opposed to "exceptions" for athletes with regards to bright-line rules, hence my reluctance to exempt transfer recruits from the University's transfer credit policies. Athletes are still students, and academic rules must still apply to them, even if standards that are more malleable (like admissions test scores/GPAs) apply differently.
So my reaction to the Caleb Love news isn't that the University should have just quietly excepted him from the rules, but rather that the University should review the underlying rules that blocked him. Credits from UNC not transferring is ridiculous, regardless of whether the transfer applicant is an athlete or a regular student.
If they wouldn't get in if they weren't an athlete, the rules are being changed for them. I don't see how adjusting rules for transfers is different at all. Caleb Love is an accomplished basketball player. How is that different than your holistic view for freshman admissions? It's just semantics.
My girlfriend had multiple football players in her grad program and guess what - they had to do less work. She had multiple group projects with players and they did far less work. And she wasn't bitter about it. She knew some of them were only there because they had to meet a credit requirement. Some took it seriously and others didn't.
I would prefer them to just look at the rules and change them as well. But if that's not going to happen, just give them a break if they've passed their classes. Having quality athletic programs contributes to campus culture.
I disagree, I think you're conflating rules and standards. Rules are clear requirements that apply to all students. Standards are malleable guidelines that may apply differently to different types of students. Call it semantics if you want, but there is a difference.
Michigan isn't changing the rules when they admit athletes because (with some exceptions) there simply aren't rules for admissions -- it's a holistic review process that allows for discretion to overlook low GPA/test scores if warranted by other portions of the application (including athletic ability, but also other forms of extracurricular excellence, overcoming extreme hardship, etc.). Certainly, there are academic standards that most successful applicants will meet, but failure to have certain academic stats does not automatically disqualify any applicant. In contrast, if Michigan had a hypothetical rule that it would only admit freshmen with at least at a 3.5 GPA but exempted athletes from that rule, then that would be changing the rules for athletes. And I would oppose that.
Michigan does have rules about if/when they will accept transfer credits from other colleges, and they apply to all transfer applicants, regardless of whether or not you're an athlete. Caleb Love's credits won't transferring, and they wouldn't transfer for any student. Reasonable minds can disagree here, but I am strongly opposed to exempting athletes from rules that apply to all other students. Perhaps the notion of the "student-athlete" is a fiction, but it's a fiction that cuts both ways. Michigan student-athletes have to comply with transfer rules, graduation rules, etc., and in return, they get Michigan degrees. If the athletes are going to reap the benefits of being a student, they need to comply with the rules of being a student.
What rules did Caleb Love break? None. He just didn’t have the foresight of thinking which credits would and wouldn’t transfer.
We don’t make athletes follow the same rules when they’re on campus and we make exceptions for the incoming freshmen. Athletes are exempt from many things that regular students are not - attendance requirements, deadlines, workload etc. So why be sticklers before they get here. All they have to do is say “we can transfer the credits but you will get a general studies degree instead of X”.
These aren’t marginal admissions in many respects. Back in the day, Rivals used to put ACT and SAT scores on profiles along with GPAs. Guys with like 2.5s and 15 ACTs were getting in. That’s not holistic admissions or making a decision between two somewhat comparable candidates and going with the athlete over the kid who did nothing else. That is just straight up having different standards for admissions for elite athletes. I’m personally fine with it but call it what it is.
Has it been reported that it’s an admissions issue? I wouldn’t be surprised, I just wasn’t sure that was confirmed.
Yep. Basically what happened with TSJ last year - not a grad transfer and credits not transferring and Love didn’t want to lose progress toward a degree (which is understandable).
I know it's an hour later, but the front page article on ESPN says it's an academic/credits transferring issue.
Confirmed. Athletes trying to clear admissions @ Michigan is officially looney tunes.
You look like Maizinator, force-feeding memes for upvotes when they don't remotely fit.
And yet, sometimes they fit perfectly...