ESPN: Nations Top 10 Frontcourts
LINK ($$)
ESPN has a list of the nations top 10 frontcourts.
1. Florida
4. MSU
5. Michigan
Michigan has one of the best rebounders in the country in Mitch McGary. He grabs a rebound every two and a half minutes. he X factor for Michigan is
Glenn Robinson III. Although the plan is to play the 6-foot-7 Robinson at the small forward position, I would not be surprised to see him play some 4. He is an excellent rebounder and has the length and athleticism to match up with most power forwards. The Michigan system is built on attacking matchups, and Robinson at the 4 is a difficult matchup in both ball screens and in isolations on ball reversal.
While I understand that GRIII wants to play his more natural position, SF, I think it's going to be hard to keep Irvin off the floor and it'd be in our best interest to play GRIII at PF.
I agree. I think Walton - Stauskas - Irvin - GRIII - McGary is our best lineup. Where we lack size at the 4, is quickly made up with size at SG and SF (adding in LeVert too).
I agree with you that this is our most talented lineup, but I think that going bigger will give us our best chances at winning in the B1G. I expect that we will end up starting spending about half our time in our big lineup and spend the other half of the time in a lineup closer to what you've listed.
The best lineup at any given time will vary based on the other team's lineup (and the game situation). Adjusting for matchups is more important in basketball than other team sports.
Were you frustrated right around the time that our team MADE THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME?
I guess you truly can't please everyone.
Yeah but they lost, obviously because rebounds and defense did them in. Fire John Beilein!
And your inability to detect sarcasm is amazing.
You can also recognize that this is a discussion about next years team, in which case talking about our weaknesses is more than appropriate.
They were 89th out of around 300 D1 teams in rebounding margin. Comparing that to other final four teams, Louisville was 66th and Syracuse was 71st. Wichita St was in the top 10. But Ohio (which should have made the final four probably) was 87th. We had a lot of small lineups that led to highly efficient fast-break play and mismatches on offense. The defense did struggle through much of the season, but I thought they played inspired defense in the tournament. They also rarely dealt with foul trouble, perhaps as a result of their defensive approach.
is not a good measure of how good of a rebounding team really is. It doesn't take account into how good of a shooting team really is and it shrinks the rebounding opportunities a team may get. Or an offensive style the team runs.
Michigan is solid at defensive rebounding but is not good at offensive rebounding because of John Beilein's philosophy. They shoot more jumpers and they don't crash the glass on their missed shot as often as some teams do like MSU for example. They are one of the best offensive team in the country and they make a high percentage of shots, therefore it limits the offensive rebounding opportunities. Likewise, if a team is bad at shooting the ball and gets a ton of rebounds, the rebounding numbers are inflated in that sense.
The best measure of rebounding is rebounding percentage (both offensive and defensive). Michigan bigs, McGary, Morgan and Horford, are excellent rebounders. McGary is an elite rebounder while Morgan and Horford are very good rebounders. The problem is John Beilein rarely use two bigs on the same floor. It limits the rebounding opportunities Michigan will get because GRIII is small for a PF and has to guard bigger players. If Beilein plays two bigs at the same time (one who can shoot like Donnal), I suspect that Michigan rebounding won't be as big of an issue that many make it out to be.
Not sure why everyone is negging this guy. Pre-tournament, everyone was bitching about the same thing on these boards. He has a point, tournament run aside.
Defense and rebounding were not team strengths last year. That is just a fact, like it or not.
I think he'll play some 4. But everything I've read is that the expectations are that Irvin can play the 2 or the 3. So we may get some pretty big lineups like Morgan, McGary, GRIII, Irvin, Walton. I think Beilein will have a lot of flexibility and can really cause matchup problems depending on what the opponent is trying to do. Lots of counterpunches available.
Uh oh, don't show this to Sparty fans because they will get annoyed seeing M there.
I say this because yesterday, for the first time ever, I tried to discuss M/MSU with the folks on RCMB. In the words of Arnold, "BIG MISTAKE." They are simply unable to have a civil conversation. There is a thread on there about Devin's being on the WATCH list for the Maxwell award...the watch list. You would think that someone insulted their mothers based on some of the comments from those people. It's a freaking watch list and they were so annoyed. Some even suggested that Andrew Maxwell should be on there instead, which is 100% laughable.
Obviously biased but I would rank UM's frontcourt over MSU's. McGary better than Payne, GRIII better than Dawson and Morgan/Irvin/Horford better than Costello/Gauna/Kaminski. What am I missing here. FWIW, I think MSU has the better backcourt.
You'd have to read the article, but it sounds like they weren't really considering GRIII as part of the frontcourt. I didn't want to copy and paste everything they said.
WTF? When did "frontcourt" become only the 4 and 5 players? I thought that term included the 3. That seems to be the standard everywhere I look.
Small forwards are normally looked at as "wings", so they typically fall in the classification of a backcourt player. It is pretty subjective, though.
Thanks but that is contrary to how I was raised with bball. Admittedly I am old so maybe thoughts have changed with more 3-guard offenses although the sources I searched all seemed to agree that backcourt = guards and frontcourt = forwards and center.
Like I said, it is pretty subjective. I was speaking more of my experience with the classifications. When we do our top 100 lists for the state of Indiana, we classify PG's, SG's and SF's as "backcourt players" and we classify PF's and C's as "frontcourt players". There really is no right or wrong way.
Yes, I do see where his other listing was "perimeter players" which was odd because Michigan was not listed. If you take GRIII into consideration and add Walton, Spike, Stauskus, Irvin and Levert, I don't see how Michigan doesn't make the top 10. I can see how Michigan doesn't make the list if you are only including 1s and 2s. Just seems annoying to me but I guess that's the worldwide leader for you. Thanks for your input.
Also seems odd where Josh Smith would be classified as a backcourt player for the Pistons. Weird IMO.
I'll give you that. But I'm not entirely sure that Keith Appling as a senior will be a better point guard than Derrick Walton is as a freshman.
Bold statement. If, and I mean if, he lives all the way up to the hype, then yes, Walton will be better than Appling. However, if he ends up "just" being a good freshman who serves his purpose (which would still be a hell of a good thing for us), then no way is he better than Appling. We've been spoiled by freshman overperforming lately, and it just doesn't happen every single time.
Regardless, as much as I hate to say it, Gary Harris is a stud. If he can build upon the success he had last year, he by himself makes MSU's frontcourt elite, regardless of his supporting cast. Thus, as of right now, I unfortunately agree that their frontcourt tops ours, but that could easily be a different story come conference play.
While I agree with you that Gary Harris is a phenominal player, he is a shooting guard, so he would not be part of the MSU frontcourt. If this were looking at the top backcourts then I think MSU should be above UM, at least prior to the season.
The person I replied to was replying to someone else who had went on a slight tangent about backcourts instead. So yes, I did indeed mean to say backcourt in my comment.
To top it off, if GRIII does stay at the 4, we will have a former 3 year starter (who is also a member of last year's B1G all defensive team) coming off the bench. Not a bad look for a front court at all.
"...he X factor for Michigan is"
Awesome! Yoda now doing evaluations for ESPN!
Yes i know because of our backcourt but still.
We beat Syaracuse, Florida and split vs MSU (3-1)
How is Florida #1? We dominated their frontcourt last year. Patric Young is mediocre and the rest (Casey Prather and Will Yuguette) are just atheltic but with no real skill. Maybe I'll concede on Yuguette being OK, but how they are #1 is beyond me...
Florida?? The team we smoked by 20?
...were recurring issues throughout the B1G season, as well against non-conference teams with top-level frontcourts (Kansas and Louisville), that neutralized our talent advantage. We need to play 2 legit bigs consistently to be able to compete with the best teams without having to rely on setting the offensive efficiency standard.
Lack of a post presence on offense also hurt us against the good defensive teams that played a lot of halfcourt ball in the B1G. Without being able to drop it into the post to collapse the D, it was tougher to get anything out of screen-and-roll and moving the ball around the perimeter, and we ended up relying on Burke to do to much. Personally, I'd rather hear that McGary's working on playing with his back to the basket more than extending his range.
So it's good too see Beilein's adapting to playing with the big boys.
That being said, Morgan might start, but he won't get starter minutes. Horton, Bielfeldt, and McGary will all see time at the 5-spot, and we'll throw a smaller lineup out there for a decent portion of every game too.
It's funny that you complain about needing to be able to play 2 bigs yet say that the #1 thing that needs to happen in order for us to do that (McGary extending his range) isn't all that important. I think our main problem last year was honestly poor defense on the perimiter combined with a lack of elite shot blocking presence. If we had either of those two factors I think our rebounding looks much better as a good portion of the offensive rebounds we gave up were on times where we had to rotate because someone (often Nik) had gotten blown by on defense.
I think McGary's mid-range game looked fine. We need a consistent post-up option on offense more than another guy shooting 3s (especially when perimeter shots take McGary out of position to challenge for an offensive rebound). I don't think Beilein's plan is to just plug McGary into GRIII's role from last year. This is a different team, and basketball is more flexible than a playbook in football year-to-year. There's no way McGary will linger out on the perimeter as much as GRIII.
I agree our perimeter defense wasn't anything to write home about and certainly often led to players being out of rebounding position, but I still think the bigger problem, and why we took 6 conference losses, was getting pushed around downlow. We definitely didn't have a shot blocker, but I thought Morgan and McGary both were better than average at protecting the basket and altering shots.
I will definitely agree with you about the flexibility of basketball vs football. I think this team is going to be more similiar to the earlier UM Beilein teams in the sense we ran a lot of our offense through Manny on the wing(Insert GRIII and Irvin in that role now though) and Peedi down low(Insert McGary). I agree that we don't need McGary jacking 4 3s a game, but a more consistent mid range game is what we need to maintain spacing. I really think the only games we lose because we were "pushed around" were the @MSU game and Wisconsin during the BTT tourney (As an aside F*ck Bo Ryan). However I will be looking forward to seeing what the team looks like when not at a constant size and/or experience disadvantage.
is silly when they're #1 in KenPom in terms of offensive efficiency. Would it be nice to have a big man who can post up? Yes, but in today's game that's not just going to happen. More and more big guys who can do pick and roll, pass and run. Post players are a dying breed. Plus John Beilein emphasize spacing so if he wants two bigs, one of them must be able to shoot. Having McGary and Morgan on the same floor is killing the offense because of spacing issue and Morgan's inability to provide offense on his own. John Beilein rather sacrifice defense for offense because he believes that putting pressure on defense is much more important than getting a few stops.
Here I was thinking setting picks and rolling to the basket was something big guys had always been doing, but apparently it's this new thing in "today's game" that more and more bigs are getting hip to -- go figure! And I don't even know what a "pass and run" is! Hopefully we'll run more pass-and-runs this season so I can get the idea. And you should pass the word onto Lebron James that post players are a dying breed since he seems to be trying to work out of the post more and more every year.
Also, here I was thinking the way to put pressure on the defense is by getting stops so you can get out in transition. I had no idea it really comes down to half-court spacing.