Mark Donnal story on Mlive
There is a nice Mark Donnal story on Mlive.com . The story mentions how difficult it was for him not to play last year as he was holding his own against the starters.
The quote I liked to see was this:
Because of that, Donnal opted to attend both U-M summer sessions this offseason. He remained on campus, emulating last summer’s regiment of Nik Stauskas and Caris LeVert that was often cited for their breakout 2013-14 campaigns. Joined by Irvin, LeVert (who is recovering from injury) and sophomore point Derrick Walton Jr., Donnal logged added hours in the gym and on the court. The group visited with U-M strength and conditioning coach Jon Sanderson “nearly every day,” in Donnal’s estimation. Three days a week focused on weight lifting. Some days consisted primarily of stretching, agility drills or endurance training.
Donnal noted his biggest emphasis has been “developing my body and fine-tuning everything -- working on post moves and making sure my jumper is alright.”
It sounds like he is confident and ready to go.
Good to hear. All the articles mentioning the "summer session" talk about Walton and Irvin, but this is the first time I've heard that Donnal stayed as well. That's really good to hear.
I think Donnal and Doyle are the X-factors for the team this year, mainly Donnal. If he can hold his own in the post, convert on his chances in the pick and roll, and keep the rebounding differential close, that would be the difference between a tourney team in the top half of the big ten and a big ten champion. I'm really excited to see how he plays, but I'm trying to keep my optimism realistic.
I like that everything we hear from the basketball team indicates that Donnal could have played last year and has held up well against the starters in practice. With McGary, Morgan and Horford going into last season there was no reason to burn his redshirt considering that Beilein doesn't play 2 bigs very often.
Donnal seems like the type who could be a 4 year player so why waste a year as a guy who gets 5 mins a game when you can give those minutes to Bielfeldt. Hoping he can do well as a starter this season and we can get decent play out of Doyle as a back up.
It was also nice to not only read a bit about Donnal's self-assuredness and confidence that he was doing well enough in practice to be out there, but also to see that it was backed up some by the statement that "he held his own" in practice. If you think about his role to mimic other players in practice and think about who started primarily, that makes me think this could be a very nice year for Donnal potnentially. The additional time over the summer can only help towards that, I would think.
Pansy
so no, let's not skip the next few months!
" if he was good enough if we should have burned his red shirt mid way through the year. "
Will let you know in 2017-make a note of this and lets get back to it then.
in the entire Big Ten season other than garbage time. It's hard to argue that's worth burning a redshirt for even if you knew he would play better, and there's got to be some doubt whether Donnal would have.
I fully expect Walton, Irvin and LeVert to make the expected jumps, and we'll always be able to shoot effectively, especially from beyond the arc. But we've got zero proven inside game right now, and Donnal has to step up and be a rebounding machine. I think he can be the guy, but he's going to have to grow up in a hurry, otherwise we're going to get absolutely mauled on the boards all year. I'm sure Beilfeldt is good in his own right, but he's not a go-to guy.
Good to hear. He's definitely the X-factor. If he can give us good play at the 5, we could be a Big Ten contender again. On the perimeter, even with the loss of Stauskas and GRIII, we're still pretty stacked.
After Beilein's third season here, his record was 46-53 overall and 21-33 in Big Ten play. A substantial portion of the fanbase thought he wasn't up to the job. We'll see if Hoke can have a similar turnaround.
Agreed. The only difference is that football gets far more scrutiny. When we're coming off a bad season people talk about how we're not going to go to a bowl game or we're going to lose 56-0 to our rivals. When we're coming off a good season we're going 15-0 and beating MSU and Ohio 56-0.
say that this is all within legal limits of extra stretching time and such, otherwise.......
We went 9-9 in the Big 10 that year. Which was fine but I think expectations for the program have heightened since and there will be a lot of complaining if they do that despite losing massive amount of talent in 1 year (not to mention 2). I think we'll do a 11-7 or 10-8 type of conference year myself but Donnal will definitely need to be a key cog and replicate Morgan's RS FR year which in retrospect was a very good one considering some of his struggles that followed. 22-24 min a night, 9 ppg, 6 rpg, and stay out of foul trouble as much as possible.
I am not worried about Donnal on offense, the defense and rebounding is where his play will be key. Our defense even with a superior interior defender in Morgan last year left a lot to be desired so the perimeter defense needs to pick up for the slack the inside will. There are going to be nites Donnal gets his first foul in the first 2-3 minutes and basically has to play soft to stay in the game for much of the rest of the first half for example.
That record is misleading though. We started out 1-6 in league play, had the Aneurysm of Leadership in East Lansing, and then finished 8-3 and ended up a runner away from taking Kyrie Irving and #1-seed Duke to overtime. We had one of the youngest teams in the country and it was the first year for the assistant coaches as well. The program is much more established now.
Two years ago, Caris LeVert shot 31% from the floor (overall, not from 3) and averaged 2.3 ppg. Now everyone thinks he'll be in the NBA after this year.
A lot of guys improve over time - especially with our coaching.
Those might be fair comments about him back then. Bacari said one of Mark's key improvements since coming on campus was the "ability to rebound in traffic" which is a nice way of saying when he showed up he was probably easily thrown around, not as strong as he needed to be to be a Big 10 interior player. These are my worries about Doyle today as I believe if Mitch had returned he would have been RS'd and be given a year to transfer to "man strength" - he is a bigger body than Donnal when he arrived but obviously a year in the S&C program is going to change Doyle's weight into more muscle and give him more strength. Unfortunately no such option this year due to circumstances.
Similar things were said about Hardaway and Levert, and probably Stauskas for that matter. Two years removed from HS can make a huge difference.
I think he will be solid this season and could develop into an all league player before he is done. He looks so much more explosive on his dunk video than he did in high school. I am looking forward to seeing a stretch 5 in Beilein's system and am expecting big things. He doesn't need to be McGary and I expect more from him than Horford would have given us.