MBB: Lunardi's extremely early Bracketology
I have been wondering why more people aren't higher on this squad, they made the tourney with pretty much the same team, and we should be better next year. It's about time we get some love.
Because anyone who actually watched this team knew they weren't tournament quality (although they deserved to make it based off the horrible process that the selection committee uses), and that many of its best players have already pretty much maxed out their potential as rising 4th year players (Irvin, Walton, Robinson, Donnal).
Basically the only hope to actually fulfill this 5 seed is if Wagner becomes a stud, which is a pretty huge assumption.
Oh yeah, and we lost all of our "depth" to transfers and it looks we are gonna go into the year with 11 scholarship players (with 4 of them only able to play center).
Come on, I don't love the current Michigan basketball team, but there's more reason for hope than you're saying.
- We return five starters from a tournament team, albeit a borderline tournament team.
- We're bringing in a really intriguing assistant coach, Billy Donlon, who is being tasked with fixing the team's biggest problem from the past few years (and he seems well suited to doing that).
- We have at least one incoming freshman, Xavier Simpson, who looks like he could contribute early.
- We have guys who should get better because, despite your "maxed out" claim, that's what usually happens with college basketball players. (And it's not like it's rare for Beilein-coached players to improve.)
To be honest, I'd be pleasantly surprised with a 5 seed, but it's definitely not outside the realm of possibility.
Returning all the starters just means our baseline/worst case is approximately what we had last year. According to KenPom that's the 58th best team in the nation (which shouldn't be making the tournament).
As far as Donlon, his defensive ability is intriguing, but it is pretty ridiculous to expect him to make a massive impact in one year. For one thing, our PF is 6'6" 215 lbs and our returning starting center is soft, unathletic, weak and short for a center. None of our players are plus athletes and none of them are even above average one-on-one defenders (the only guy who I would character as even average is Walton). It also isn't easy to implement a completely new and different defensive scheme in one year. It's incredibly unlikely that the players will be good at it after first learning the system for only a months.
We have ONLY one freshman who looks like he can contribute early. Watson, Davis and Teske are all low ranked and projects. Xavier also isn't projected as a guy who is going to come in and be great right away. The best we can really hope from him is an average 3rd guard as a freshmen.
Walton, Irvin and Donnal have all minimally improved in their 3 plus years on campus, so I am not holding out hope that they make huge jumps as seniors. And Robinson is as "just a shooter" as you can get. Sure they'll probably improve a little bit, but I don't see them any of them ending up as consensus All Big Ten players. Walton is our only player to make an All Big Team (one of the two All Big Ten 3rd teams) and it was probably undeserved.
I anticipate an 8-10 seed quality of team. As I said, a 5 seed would require massive jumps from a few players.
Have you considered that maybe you're just a homer? I've been to nearly every single home game the past 3-4 years and have been a to a few road games over the span as well including driving 4 hours to Dayton, watching us beat Tulane and then immediately driving home. I have no concerns about my own fandom. Being skeptical and critical is not being a bad fan. I was optimistic before the past two years assuming that "Beilein would figure it out". But now, after these two failure years, I'm just looking at the roster and what we have objectively, and it's not super promising.
How was the Tulane game?
Very fun. Seeing Irvin's 3 live was probably the best moment of the season for me. Was nice and combative between Michigan fans and OSU/Dayton fans. Dayton's arena is really really weird looking. So that was cool to see as well.
minus the fact that it was Tulsa not Tulane...
Haha woops. My bad. Basically the same thing though.
Sad though that it was such an tight game against a lackluster team but guess fans shouldn't be complaining about NCAA wins (even if it was the first four).
...we went from unplayable to barely playable with glimpses of good against shitty teams. He was consistently outmanned and pushed around defensively. He will likely improve going into next year, but I don't think you (or others) should expect much.
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Well, upside tends to be associated with athleticism and learning how to properly use that athleticism, so the fact that no one on our team is athletic adds to the fact that most of our players are pretty close to their peak.
For an example, look at Derrick Walton. What skills has he added while he's been at Michigan? I'd say basically nothing. His skill set boils down to: good spot-up shooter, great rebounder for a guard, good in transition. That's basically exactly what he was as a freshman with some slight improvement in his strengths.
Zak Irvin developed a bit his sophomore year but has stagnated since. All he has really added to his game was some better vision on the pick and roll, but he is so bad as a finisher/slasher that he can barely even use that skill.
Donnal went from unplayable to an average big when playing against bad teams. Idk how he is your success story.
Robinson can only shoot spot up jumpers. Yeah he drove maybe 6-7 times during the season, but he is not even a good shooter off the dribble. He didn't demonstrate to me anything that could reasonably be tuned into being a dramatically improved player.
Wilson has not even been playable.
Muhammad has some promise, but everytime he attacks it is very laborious. He rarely straight up beats a guy off the dribble and gets to the rim smoothly. If you want one of the vets to improve significantly, he is the most likely of them. But he's not a great athlete and is already very very old for a college player.
So yeah, that's all of our returning players except for Mo Wagner.
Mo Weezy Doe
Weren't tournament quality is fairly dumb thing to say considering they won a play-in game and led in the second half of the next game against a team that made the Sweet 16. They literally already proved that statement wrong.
As far as being maxed out, Irvin was clearly not 100% from his back surgery all season, Walton is a year behind in development also due to injury, and Robinson redshirted a year and only has one year at the D-1 level. So none of those guys fits the mold of being maxed out as a result of being rising seniors.
On top of that, you need to take into account that some other teams that were ahead of Michigan last year will lose enough to graduation/NBA that Michigan *can* move up even if they strictly treaded water.
You can be pessimistic...that is certainly your right...but obviously others see it differently. You probably shouldn't speak for them.
Gee, if only there were two major extenuating circumstances that changed our outlook on last season. Hmmm...........
Maybe. But we got pantsed by Xavier and SMU even with Caris and pretty much every other loss was a massive blowout as well, so I don't feel like we would have lived up to preseason expectations even with Caris.
May be right...hard to say. We had a B1G champ and Elite Eight team that lost to Charlotte in the non-con. I think Beilein's teams take some time to round into form.
A 5 seed is "great"?
People make "excuses" for positive things?
5 seed in South region.
South accompanies down arrow on most maps.
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Program is headed downward.
Why don't we actually fulfill this prediction first.
I disagree with what your expectations should be, but I agree with the overall point. Michigan isn't a guaranteed elite program, but I feel like they should pretty much always be a top 25 program, which we have failed to achieve in the majority of Beilein's years here and are trending away from that currently.
I don't think anyone would complain about being a 5 seed next year. I certainly wouldn't. You, on the otherhand, used some ludicrous preseason projection in May to say that the program hasn't been on a downward trajectory since 2014. I hope you realize how ridiculous that is. If we do achieve a 5 seed next year, that will have exceeded a lot of people's expectations.
I would be ecstatic with a 5 seed next year. If we get a 5 seed and a recruiting class with a few top 100 players, I'll be excited about the program again.
-1 for trying to use some BS pre-pre-pre season prediction to talk down on people complaining about actual and current results
-1000 for big blue
looks rough.
So we went from being a 6th seed in the West (April 7th prediction) to a 5th seed in the South, nice improvement, couple more months and we will be a 1 seed!!!
/smh, this man has nothing better to do!
He's as bored as I am at work
+1, this one is awesome!
that really make me wish bad things on people like Joe Lundari and Mel Kiper. Hey guys I really need you to give a shit about me that 1 time a year. So here's a completely B.S. draft of what I do in the meantime so you don't forget about me. Jump in front of a truck Lunardi
That's pretty mean-spirited and without reason. Who cares? It's something to think and talk about for two minutes during those sports' long, slow offseasons, and you can always ignore them.
Was just voicing my distaste for guys like Lunardi and Kiper
just, like, his job dude. ESPN has him on staff, the only thing he does is write Bracketologies, it should not be a surprise that he is writing a Bracketology. Hate ESPN if you must, but I don't get the Lunardi hate in this particular regard.
If I can't illogically hate a few people I've never met for some not very well thought out reasons, then what's the point of any of this?
you do have a point there. I retract my objection.