Latest analysis from Beilein not encouraging
I have been busy and not able to post this earlier, but Beilein's comments after tOSU game are not very encouraging. Here's the quote and link from The Wolverine (bold added by me): http://michigan.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1185166
"They were playing us like a couple teams have played us this year. They lock the rails on all our shooters on both sides," said Beilein. "There's no weak side help; they are making us play a two-man game. It was a good defensive plan, but we still got to the rim a lot. We missed a good number of not easy shots, but shots we should have made."
The end result was yet another heartbreaking loss to a very good opponent.
"We're getting there," said Beilein. "We've got to keep working on the best way [to play]. We experiment every day how to score points in the Big Ten. It ay set us back at times, but we're trying to get a plan for the future."
Reasons this bothers me beyond the obvious:
1) This is an X & O's issue which is one of the things people quickly bring up when describing Beilein.
2) Beilein admits they have encountered this before and they still haven't figured out a game plan for it.
3) In year three of any coach I would hope that halfway through the season the coaches were not still trying to get a plan for the future figured out.
All of the guys seeing time are Beilein guys. How does he not see the plan here?
I know this is from a press conference immediately following the game and he probably wasn't in the best mind set but this does not instill confidence in the players or the fans.
February 4th, 2011 at 4:28 PM ^
for his system to work has yet to recruit a single one who has proven to be a reliable, game-in, game-out, threat from the outside. Granted, the freshmen have to be given a pass because they're freshmen, but if you look at our shooting percentages for the 3+ years of the Beilein era, we're near or at the bottom for overall FG% and for 3-pt shooting %. Couple that with Beilein's failure to land a single true big man, and it's inevitable that we're going to get what we get. Beilein might be a great tactician and game-day coach, but as a recruiter he's second-echelon so far.
February 4th, 2011 at 4:49 PM ^
The consistent increase in recruiting rankings disagrees with your statement; we've gone from Novak and Douglass to a class with two McD AA nominee guards coming in next year.
February 4th, 2011 at 4:53 PM ^
Selective use of data, my friend. Look at the recruiting classes themselves. It's certainly not Beilein's fault that Ben Cronin's hip was a disaster or that Robin Benzing was ruled ineligible. Novak and Douglass are juniors and Novak is shooting almost .400 from three. That's certainly better than acceptable. Douglass is .365, which isn't bad, and both have seen huge improvements this year, as you'd expect they should. That's his first class.
'09: McLimans and Morgan are big, yes? Both are redshirt freshmen, of course, raw as hell the way all big men are. Morgan's only 6'8" but his game is "true big man." Vogrich is a near .400 shooter too. Nothing wrong with that. Morris isn't a good three-point shooter but that's not his role, either.
You said you were willing to give the freshmen a pass, but even so, Smotrycz is shooting .381 - outstanding for a freshman.
There's only three Beilein recruiting classes on the court, and the guys who are here mainly to shoot three pointers - Novak, Douglass, Smotrycz, Vogrich - do it well. Of course, we're going to have a low FG% because we rely on the three, but our effective FG% is well up from the early Beilein years - and you're dinging Beilein's recruiting based on the performance of players he didn't recruit.
I haven't even mentioned that a player who is a perfectly reliable, game-in-game-out threat from outside is the basketball equivalent of a jackalope: lot of people pretend they're common as deer and many even believe it, but it takes some shady underhanded tactics to actually produce one.
February 4th, 2011 at 5:15 PM ^
JB is recruiting plenty of big-time shooters and big guys; most of them haven't said "yes" yet. This team is young, and a couple of guys still may prove to be big-time players as upperclassmen.
Besides, last night was more a case of the refs deciding for about three minutes that every move Michigan made on either side of the floor was a foul. After the one really obvious flop that was called a charge, the OSU player who flopped was clearly laughing to his teammate and trying not to get caught laughing by the refs.
After that, Michigan sorta gave up for about two minutes. That was enough time for OSU to pull in front enough to change the dynamic of the game. When this team gets older, they will play through shit like that. It's all part of watching a young team grow up.
February 4th, 2011 at 5:24 PM ^
Usage. When you increase usage, efficiency goes down. The more threes we take, the lower the percentage will be. So taking that into account, Michigan shooting 34% on the amount of 3s we take is much better than a team shooting 38% only taking wide open 3s.
February 4th, 2011 at 4:32 PM ^
You know what I hate? Losing to the #1 team in America, on the road, while playing a bunch of freshmen and sophomores at key positions. And when my coach admits that, shockingly, he is still trying to figure out new ways to score the ball against defenses that are themselves trying to develop new ways to stop the other team from scoring, I truly lose all faith that he knows what he is doing.
/s
Come on - this is coach speak 101. It is a constant arms race in any sport between coaches trying to figure out how to out-execute, out-think, and out-scheme each other both offensively and defensively. I read Beilein's comments as him admitting that it is hard to score points in basketball and that he is always tinkering with his system to maximize his talents. I would be far more worried if my coach said, in effect, I got this all figured out and we should score every time downt he court. Have patience, for Pete's sake, or else we'll just become as insuferable as most fans already think we are.
February 4th, 2011 at 4:59 PM ^
Why can't people present legitimate opinions and criticisms of the coach? You can disagree with the OP, that's fine, but don't do things like insult his intelligence or basketball knowledge. And don't neg him just because you disagree with him or think he is wrong. There is no reason to do that. It just encourages "group think." If the poster is being outlandish or rude about the coach or whatever he is criticizing, then fine, but I hate when you can't critique anything about Michigan without it causing a sh** storm.
February 4th, 2011 at 5:19 PM ^
year 4 clearly do not have an understanding of how recruiting cycles work. This is college basketball, you have really 12 roster spots. Because of this, certain years you will be young (337th in experience across the nation), certain years you will be experienced (2 years down the road).
Let's look back at previous recruiting classes:
2007 (would be seniors now): Manny in pros, KG on football team, LLP talked crap about program to recruits
2008 (juniors): Beilein gets a late start on recruiting, gets Novak and Douglass. Both have been okay... but what can you expect when you have to recruit in half the time of other schools?
2009: (sophomores or RS frosh): Morgan, Morris, Vogrich, McLimans: One project, one role player, one solid starter for all 4 years, one star.
2010: (freshmen): Hardaway, Horford, Smote, Christian: Two players who have shown flashes that they can be real good, one dude who everyone recognizes the upside, and a defensive role player.
Because of recruiting balance, this is the team we have. Maybe Beilein screwed up and should have gotten a big man in the '08 class. Oh wait, he pretty much did with Cronin and Benzing but ran bad and they didn't work out. Basically this team should have a good balance of upper and underclassmen, but we are seeing the effects of the coaching change now. If you're pulling in 5* talent, you can win with young guys. We're just not going to do that, so you win with upperclassmen. The next two years, you will begin to see the molding of a more experienced team.
One last point, the 2007-08 team was a 103.3/96.3 on kenpom. That team was one of the younger teams in the country, ranking 320th in experience and lost Udoh and Ron Coleman. The next year they were 111.3/95.2. We are 109.7/96.1... if we go through a similar improvement it is 118/95, pretty similar to some teams ranked 18-30.
February 4th, 2011 at 5:55 PM ^
I'll say this about the guy, I like the way he recruits. I'm not a fan of getting a bunch of one and done players and hoping freshmen lead you to championships every year. I love watching players develop from one year to another, I like thinking that we will be better because our players have gotten older, wiser, stronger, faster, more skilled, ect, instead of hoping the incoming freshmen pan out because if they don't we'll just suck (UNC).
February 4th, 2011 at 6:42 PM ^
If you see kids taking shots with more than 25 seconds on the clock, they are not executing JB's offense. When I got home from my son's game last night (still undefeated btw) M was tied with tOSU @ 30.
tOSU made a small run and the kids panicked. It became Mannyball again with Morris jacking up quick/bad shots instead of running the offense.
After the game I got to thinking about JB's future at Michigan. I'm starting to think at his age, if the team underperforms next year he will retire gracefully and take a job in the athletic dept.
February 4th, 2011 at 7:38 PM ^
Is he available?
February 5th, 2011 at 12:00 PM ^
There are no NBA type recruits...all these Top teams have NBA type players...Even Freshman!