Horford to Florida
He'll get the chance to play in a 2-post offense with post up opportunities. Wishing him the best.
Considering the fact that his brother went there and their sustained success under Donovan, especially in developing big guys, this move makes a lot of sense.
Florida has landed Michigan transfer Jon Horford, sources told ESPN. Eligible next season. Will help Gators frontcourt depth.
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) April 26, 2014April 26th, 2014 at 12:46 PM ^
Those Who Leave........Well .......
Goodbye Horford!!
Don't let the door hit you in the ........
April 26th, 2014 at 12:59 PM ^
I will now "transfer" my support to players who want to play at Michigan
opinion, but one I share.
I have little against him - although I strongly resent the shots he took on his way out the door - but I wish him no ill will. And I totally respect his decision - it's his last year to play college ball - why shouldn't he see if he can find what he's looking for? I get that.
But I also feel free to make my own decision which says that he was a malcontent the second half of last season, is unlikely to break through what I think is a hard ceiling on his potential (but again, he damn well might as well try), and that I just don't care that much about him one way or the other.
I hope he has success in life. I'm sure he's a good guy - who among us hasn't had a time they felt slighted on one athletic team or another - but I'm not going to go out of my way to root for him down in Florida.
Best of luck to Jon. It would be nice to have another M player in the NBA. Only downside is that Gainsville is the armpit of Florida, but he only has to live there a year. Good luck!
"It's a system that, if given the minutes, any big could have success. I could have had success," Horford said. "I feel like in the games that I was given good minutes -- 16, 17 minutes and up -- I always had success in the system. It's just that those kind of opportunities were so limited."
"I don't think my skill development was limited," Horford said. "What was limited was my opportunity to have experiences crucial to players to gain the confidence and the feel that they need to have success on the highest level.
"The one thing I'm truly lacking, and I can admit it, is experience. From a skills development standpoint, the coaches have done an excellent job preparing me."
So everyone is telling me that Jon, knowing Mitch was leaving and he would get the bulk of minutes at Center, is leaving because he thinks the system isn't right for him? He literally said himself that if given the minutes, any big could have success in this system. Let's get real folks, Jon either didn't like Beilein, didn't like the way he was treated, or probably both. He is taking thinly veiled shots at Beilein and the program because he thinks he is better than he is. Either that or he didn't think he was going to get a lot of time playing this year, even though he said he already knew McGary was leaving. I'm sorry, but just because someone sticks it out on the team for 4 years doesn't mean I need to cheer for him. He left the program and could have kept his mouth shut, but he didn't. He decided to take shots at the program and the coach.
We're not negging you for not going along with most.
why don't you shoot for just no ill will and not caring either way?
Saw Horford this afternoon, around 12 PM, walking north on Maynard Street. He looked happy.
Now he gets to get to get dunked on by Dakari Johnson and Willie Cauley Stein at least twice next year.
Yeah I didn't like the way he left or the way he played late last season.
Yeah that's it, you need to be in Gainesville with Billy Donovan coaching you...then you'll be your brother. Lol.
Good luck to him but he just doesn't have the skill to excel at this level whether at Florida or Michigan.
Good luck to him. If he left us, at least he chose a solid program with a good coach as well.
For those claiming that Michigan offers plenty of low-post touches, here's a story from UM Hoops with a scatterplot of B1G teams' percentage of plays where the ball goes to a low post, and the efficiency on those plays.
Michigan nearly doubled the number of low-post touches from 2012/3 to 2013/4, and they were still last in the league. The low-post efficiency was much higher this year than last, too, and ranks third in the league, although it's well below the offense's efficiency overall.
Note that these numbers were as of late January. Final numbers are presumably available behind the Synergy Sports paywall; I don't subscribe.
|
Season |
Plays in the low post |
Low post efficiency |
|
2012-13 |
2.3% |
0.69 |
|
2013-14 |
4.0% |
1.02 |
That's despite the loss of McGary (or possibly even because of it? my sense was that he was much more effective up high than down low, but others here had a different take). It'd be interesting to see how the 2013 tournament numbers differed from the regular season.
Of course some of the increased efficiency is because these were midseason numbers and efficiency is lower in conference play because the defenses are better. 50%'s a pretty big improvement though--I doubt it would go away if these were schedule-adjusted.
League average is a little over 8%, with an average efficiency somewhere around .9 or a little under (depends on whether you weight the average by how often it was run, it's higher if you do because there's more Kaminsky and Payne that way); Wisconsin and Purdue are in the low-post 13-14% of the time. Kaminsky was the most efficient individual low-post player at 1.20.
On its face, that seems both to support the proposition that Morgan and/or Horford were better low post players than they were given credit for, and that the coaching staff was right not to emphasize it because even though it was a good play, the rest of the offense was better.