Our 3 bigs (Morgan, Horford, Bielfeldt) combined for an almost miraculous statline. They had 18 COMBINED rebounds and points next to 14 fouls. Once again: our bigs almost had more fouls than points and rebounds together.
Because he's a surefire top 7 or so pick in this year's draft, maybe top 5. Just about everyone in a position to know has been saying he's almost certainly going pro, for obvious reasons.
If I had to guess why he's visiting: why not? He gets to take a bunch of free trips all across America (he's Australian) and get treated like a goddamn Sultan. I'd do the same thing in his position. Why turn down free fun?
Seriously, don't even get a hint of a hope up here.
Stern is retiring this season. LeBron has 2 championships in his decade in the league. But there's always going to be some dumb, generic assertions to cast, I guess
It's a solid team, but not one that's ever going to do much as constructed. Defense is the best predicter of playoff success, and Detroit's defense is pretty bad.
Monroe has to go. That lets Smith slide over to the 4, where he belongs, brings in another asset, and prevents a horrifying cap mess in the frontcourt. Monroe supposedly wants a max (which is dumb), and Detroit can't pay him anywhere near that with Drummond's extension coming up in the near future.
If they can flip Monroe for a real 2 or 3, that'd be ideal. There would still be a glaring need for a star offensive threat (no, Brandon Jennings isn't taking you places as your best scorer), but not bad.
"2 lines of fuckwits throwing their own shit at each other" pretty much perfectly encapsulates basketball game threads.
Maybe pop four Xanax, take a deep breath, and point out where I insinuated the team is above criticism. They aren't. I was summarizing what goes on when people pop blood vessels banging their keyboards and inundating everyone else with dumb, reactionary "commentary."
But that doesn't sound like something you'd know anything about, you prince of level-headedness, you
Solid comparison here. Michigan in the Big Ten is definitely comperable to Boise State, who used to play about 1 ranked team a year in their undefeated days.
Go ahead and find me a year in the last decade in which an undefeated Michigan would ever have been left out of a top 4. Or ever, really. It's never going to happen. If we win our games, it doesn't matter how good the Big Ten is.
Nah, we really don't. We need to not lose our games. There will pretty much never, ever be a time when an undefeated Michigan won't get selected for the top 4.
It would only ever matter if we lost a game. In some years, we'd still end in the top 4 with one loss and a conference victory.
Here's what it boils down to: it's probably easier to go undefeated in an awful Big Ten (see OSU last year) than to lose just 1 game in a great conference, where you get some benefit for perception.
I think we overrate Dantonio because we're his bottom bitch. He's had several good years, but also several mediocre years. He coaches in a conference that no one (rightfully) has any respect for. Before this year, he had never won anything more than a shitty bowl game. And the peripherals are bad: he's a pretty poor recruiter*, he's got all the personality of a particularly boring pebble, and his style of football isn't exactly enthralling.
He's also not at all young. I can understand why he's not an attractive option for huge openings like Texas or USC.
* Yeah, he's great at finding underrated talent. But at these national programs, bringing in top talent is the expectation, and he's really pretty awful at that. How many of his highest priority targets has Brady Hoke (and everyone else) swiped in the last few years?
He's from the NFL. He's not going to pass up a big time NFL job because Penn State might maybe in the future be good enough to sometimes finish 2nd to OSU.
I only care if Michigan has a good coach. I actively hope every other team in the conference is a flaming tire fire. It would only ever matter if we got good enough that conference perception would hurt us in getting selected for the playoff - but since we're about a million miles from there, here's to hoping everyone else loses their coaches and has their facilities destroyed by freak tornado.
You and me both, peanut. What does UM basketball have to do? We went to the championship last year and it's a saturday game against #1. Either the non-students didn't show because we lost some earlier games (pathetic), or this program is never going to generate the loyalty they deserve. Either way, it's really annoying.
Those only lasted a few seconds before they got covered up ok, but yeah, no band hurt. It's telling how many UA fans there were, though, and all over the stadium. It just sucks that there were hundreds of students who tried and failed to get tickets for this when there were open seats and UA fans aplenty. And students have finals; everyone else has no excuse. It was honestly pretty infuriating.
It's probably been mentioned, but the non-students sucked a fat one today. We lined up two hours early in the snow and packed the place an hour before tip-off. Everywhere else, there were plenty of empty seats, and Arizona fans everywhere. For as much shit as the students get on this website, this is only fair. If the students were as shitty as everyone else today, we'd have 4 threads demanding they lose seats.
As it is, I wish 1/2 of the stadium could have been student seating. The demand was there. But alas: merely a bunch of empties who couldn't be bothered to come on a Saturday afternoon against the #1 team in the country.
Their record is already worse than ours over the last 4 years, AND they have a fossilized legend trying to hang on too long. It's Penn State with less rape.
Is just an abject disaster, and has been for his entire tenure, injuries or no. It's Florida so he had a shitton of highly rated defensive talent (seriously, Florida's D has been studded with former 5*'s recently), but he's basically pulled a reverse Rich Rod.
2. I'd be happy if the southeastern portion of the US got donated to Mexico or something. There'd be some initial confusion about the use of the word "football," but America gets some quality addition by subtraction.
Screw Beilein for not designing an array of alley oop plays for GR3, since that's literally the only thing he can execute with any consistency. If only he was like Coach K, who makes sure his players pass to the most talented player in America. Beilein would never do something so tactically advanced.
Put him away before he gets on camera with a "begin the coup" sign and starts a government overthrow. The very fabric of reality is at risk: imagine the consequences of a "divide by zero" sign
I think someone associated with Michigan/B1G has actually gone public with this line of reasoning several times. Dave Brandon? Or maybe it was Jim Delaney.
If someone wants to pay Devin Gardner to endorse their shoes, there is literally no reason he shouldn't be able to cash that check. If I can make money in college using the skills I'm learning to (for example) write an article on a website, it's ridiculous that athletes can't do the same.
I'm very anti colleges paying players directly, though. I've never seen anyone propose a way do it that doesn't have massive downsides. And the truth is, the vast majority of these kids get more from the school (free education, free food, free housing, etc.) than they ever make back via on field contributions. The few exceptional stars, though, should be able to capitalize on 3rd party opportunities.
He's averaging 19 points a game on 51% shooting with 3.5 boards and 3.3 assists. Those are all-american numbers. Compare him to the supposed best prospect since LeBron, Andrew Wiggins: 15 PPG on 51% shooting, 5.5 boards, 1.4 assists. Gary Harris is at 17.6 PPG on 40%.
Just today NBC published a story about how he's *still* not at 100% percent with his ankle, and the Duke game was several days ago. So, yeah, he was hurting, and that was eminently obvious if you actually watched him play. They took him out of the game because he couldn't move well enough to get the ball. You can't just faceguard the opposing team's best perimeter player successfully all game unless he's hurt.
You're really gonna knock a 20 point, 6 assist performance @ Iowa State because he "only" shot 44%?
And did you miss him completely take over the Forida State game with drive after drive? FSU, by the way, typically has one of the best defenses in the country, usually better than Duke by the numbers. It's pretty innane to question if he can create his own offense at this point because of one injured game at Cameron Indoor. He's been doing it the entire rest of the year.
It's not really fair to expect him to become a #1 option on a top team. He's never gotten shots for himself in the halfcourt successfully - that isn't going to warp midseason into a go-to offensive player. He'll do his work on the baseline, in the corner and off transition, with hopefully a little off the dribble mixed in.
I don't understand the whole premise here, though. Why can't Stauskas be the #1? He's been doing it the whole season. I agree they we need GR3 to step up, but there's no reason he needs to surpass Nik, who's playing like an All-American.
... necessitates coercision/force. In a general sense, the answer to your question is no. The specifics are in the details. My girlfriend's friend, just last weekend, was told she had sex with a guy when she was blackout drunk. Obviously, if she could consent at all, it was minimal at best. Is that rape? Honestly, it might well be. But how drunk was he? If they were both beyond making informed decisions, what then? Does his level of intoxication even matter?
It's very gray, but typically, you need concrete evidence of coercision, or proof that she actively didn't want to have sex, to successfully press charges.
Forget his innocence or guilt - a press conference? I turned on SportsCenter this morning, and it reminded me of nothing more than waiting for a recruit's school picking ceremony. They had a goddamn timer on the top left counting down to whether the kid would be charged for rape.
You have to be an absolutely enormous asshole to host a press conference for this. When you reach a decision you either let it be known there's no charges or you bring him into custody: that's the best for all parties involved.
The douche behind the mic will undoubtedly be running for higher office pretty soon.
Walton starts because he can stay in front of his man - Spike can't. Defense is mostly effort and technique, but those aren't Spike's issues, as far as I can tell. He simply doesn't have the size and especially the speed (holy good god he's slow).
I recall him getting beat so bad in the Duke game that when his man stopped his drive and brought the ball into the corner, it took him about a full 2 or 3 seconds to catch up. McGary had to run out and cover. It's ... it's not good.
Why do you want McGary demanding the ball on the block? I've always been confused about the assertion that he needs more touches. He's never shown any aptitude (at all) scoring with his back to the basket - he doesn't have a post game. He can face up decently, but it's not anything you want to base your offense around. I like his passing, but I'll pass on feeding him like he's Shaq.
How quickly Stauskas has been forgotten. All he's done so far this season is produce like a conference player of the year. 18 PPG on 50% shooting, and that's with the Duke game outlier. The idea I've seen expressed several times is that teams "figured us out": when you take away Stauskas, we're screwed. They only played him like they did because he was hobbled. Denying a perimeter player the ball for the length of a game isn't a realistic or feasible strategy. He couldn't shake his guy because he sprained his ankle. Beilein didn't even know if he was ok to go until Monday.
We haven't played a single game with a healthy Stauskas and non-rusty McGary. Until that happens, panic seems premature. If LeVert can be as aggressive as he was against Duke, that's another good sign.
It's also time to chill on Glenn. I think we get it: he hasn't been playing up to the hype. He's being trashed because he's not living up to expectations the internet set for him. He was barely recruited when he committed here, and now he's a solid player who does some awesome things in transition and off cuts. Yeah, it's a shame he hasn't improved much. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a Michigan basketball post, on this forum or any other, that doesn't contain a mini-tsunami of GR3 agnst. At some point can we just get over it instead of dedicating 300 posts per game thread to it? He is who he is.
We start 4 sophomores and a freshman. We're still one of the 10 youngest teams in the country. McGary has had two weeks of practice after a few months of doing nothing.
They'll get better, but expectations should never have been top 10.
All the calls against Duke were good and fair, because Michigan never gets calls in their favor.
I have no doubt that the foul discrepancy would be something everyone would be frothing about if it was reversed. There were some softies on Duke, especially the one Spike drew.
Recent Comments
I'm about to drive Chicago to Port Huron. Is this gonna suck?
You have low standards for "pretty good."
I'll just put this here:
Our 3 bigs (Morgan, Horford, Bielfeldt) combined for an almost miraculous statline. They had 18 COMBINED rebounds and points next to 14 fouls. Once again: our bigs almost had more fouls than points and rebounds together.
Please never leave, Mitch.
Because he's a surefire top 7 or so pick in this year's draft, maybe top 5. Just about everyone in a position to know has been saying he's almost certainly going pro, for obvious reasons.
If I had to guess why he's visiting: why not? He gets to take a bunch of free trips all across America (he's Australian) and get treated like a goddamn Sultan. I'd do the same thing in his position. Why turn down free fun?
Seriously, don't even get a hint of a hope up here.
Stern is retiring this season. LeBron has 2 championships in his decade in the league. But there's always going to be some dumb, generic assertions to cast, I guess
This is Jennings' 5th year, and Smith's 9th.
It's a solid team, but not one that's ever going to do much as constructed. Defense is the best predicter of playoff success, and Detroit's defense is pretty bad.
Monroe has to go. That lets Smith slide over to the 4, where he belongs, brings in another asset, and prevents a horrifying cap mess in the frontcourt. Monroe supposedly wants a max (which is dumb), and Detroit can't pay him anywhere near that with Drummond's extension coming up in the near future.
If they can flip Monroe for a real 2 or 3, that'd be ideal. There would still be a glaring need for a star offensive threat (no, Brandon Jennings isn't taking you places as your best scorer), but not bad.
"2 lines of fuckwits throwing their own shit at each other" pretty much perfectly encapsulates basketball game threads.
Maybe pop four Xanax, take a deep breath, and point out where I insinuated the team is above criticism. They aren't. I was summarizing what goes on when people pop blood vessels banging their keyboards and inundating everyone else with dumb, reactionary "commentary."
But that doesn't sound like something you'd know anything about, you prince of level-headedness, you
Oh, my bad. That's a perfect example of a dumb cliche that I totally forgot
Look at all these super honored-feeling Native Americans.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/11/27/native-american-leaders-speak-out-against-redskins-name/
No wait just kidding, they fucking hate the name, and severely outnumber the pro side.
But hey, who am I to doubt your expertise on the relative offensiveness of a word to an ethnic group you undoubtedly have no contact with
I'll save everyone the trouble of reading the game thread, should we not win by 70
- GR3 isn't a D1 player
- Beilein got lucky with Burke
- Zomagawd we don't run any offense it's just drives h4yufytbfybjhbbf
- Something about not having a winning mentality
- "fuck"
- worst Michigan sports year everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
- team will be lucky to make the NIT
- why doesn't Beilein teach defense or rebounding
You're all welcome
My respect for his football analysis has dropped after what he did to Rihanna
that's kind of a massive investment of time and money for a bit of nostalgia
What? He hasn't won 2 conference titles. In our haste to crown him God we're actively making up accomplishments for him now I guess.
And apparently "division titles" are a thing that matter now? Awesome.
Solid comparison here. Michigan in the Big Ten is definitely comperable to Boise State, who used to play about 1 ranked team a year in their undefeated days.
Go ahead and find me a year in the last decade in which an undefeated Michigan would ever have been left out of a top 4. Or ever, really. It's never going to happen. If we win our games, it doesn't matter how good the Big Ten is.
Nah, we really don't. We need to not lose our games. There will pretty much never, ever be a time when an undefeated Michigan won't get selected for the top 4.
It would only ever matter if we lost a game. In some years, we'd still end in the top 4 with one loss and a conference victory.
Here's what it boils down to: it's probably easier to go undefeated in an awful Big Ten (see OSU last year) than to lose just 1 game in a great conference, where you get some benefit for perception.
I think we overrate Dantonio because we're his bottom bitch. He's had several good years, but also several mediocre years. He coaches in a conference that no one (rightfully) has any respect for. Before this year, he had never won anything more than a shitty bowl game. And the peripherals are bad: he's a pretty poor recruiter*, he's got all the personality of a particularly boring pebble, and his style of football isn't exactly enthralling.
He's also not at all young. I can understand why he's not an attractive option for huge openings like Texas or USC.
* Yeah, he's great at finding underrated talent. But at these national programs, bringing in top talent is the expectation, and he's really pretty awful at that. How many of his highest priority targets has Brady Hoke (and everyone else) swiped in the last few years?
He's from the NFL. He's not going to pass up a big time NFL job because Penn State might maybe in the future be good enough to sometimes finish 2nd to OSU.
I only care if Michigan has a good coach. I actively hope every other team in the conference is a flaming tire fire. It would only ever matter if we got good enough that conference perception would hurt us in getting selected for the playoff - but since we're about a million miles from there, here's to hoping everyone else loses their coaches and has their facilities destroyed by freak tornado.
You and me both, peanut. What does UM basketball have to do? We went to the championship last year and it's a saturday game against #1. Either the non-students didn't show because we lost some earlier games (pathetic), or this program is never going to generate the loyalty they deserve. Either way, it's really annoying.
Those only lasted a few seconds before they got covered up ok, but yeah, no band hurt. It's telling how many UA fans there were, though, and all over the stadium. It just sucks that there were hundreds of students who tried and failed to get tickets for this when there were open seats and UA fans aplenty. And students have finals; everyone else has no excuse. It was honestly pretty infuriating.
no.
It's probably been mentioned, but the non-students sucked a fat one today. We lined up two hours early in the snow and packed the place an hour before tip-off. Everywhere else, there were plenty of empty seats, and Arizona fans everywhere. For as much shit as the students get on this website, this is only fair. If the students were as shitty as everyone else today, we'd have 4 threads demanding they lose seats.
As it is, I wish 1/2 of the stadium could have been student seating. The demand was there. But alas: merely a bunch of empties who couldn't be bothered to come on a Saturday afternoon against the #1 team in the country.
Their record is already worse than ours over the last 4 years, AND they have a fossilized legend trying to hang on too long. It's Penn State with less rape.
They are definitely worse off than we are.
Is just an abject disaster, and has been for his entire tenure, injuries or no. It's Florida so he had a shitton of highly rated defensive talent (seriously, Florida's D has been studded with former 5*'s recently), but he's basically pulled a reverse Rich Rod.
1. Sriracha is shitty
2. I'd be happy if the southeastern portion of the US got donated to Mexico or something. There'd be some initial confusion about the use of the word "football," but America gets some quality addition by subtraction.
Screw Beilein for not designing an array of alley oop plays for GR3, since that's literally the only thing he can execute with any consistency. If only he was like Coach K, who makes sure his players pass to the most talented player in America. Beilein would never do something so tactically advanced.
We have a first year writing requirement for graduation, so I can't imagine whoever posted that went here
Put him away before he gets on camera with a "begin the coup" sign and starts a government overthrow. The very fabric of reality is at risk: imagine the consequences of a "divide by zero" sign
Vishnu has more important things to take care of than fixing bowl results
If Taylor Lewan did that in Columbus (and we won), I'd have probably enjoyed the hell out of it.
But I imagine I'm in the moral outrage minority on this one.
I think someone associated with Michigan/B1G has actually gone public with this line of reasoning several times. Dave Brandon? Or maybe it was Jim Delaney.
If someone wants to pay Devin Gardner to endorse their shoes, there is literally no reason he shouldn't be able to cash that check. If I can make money in college using the skills I'm learning to (for example) write an article on a website, it's ridiculous that athletes can't do the same.
I'm very anti colleges paying players directly, though. I've never seen anyone propose a way do it that doesn't have massive downsides. And the truth is, the vast majority of these kids get more from the school (free education, free food, free housing, etc.) than they ever make back via on field contributions. The few exceptional stars, though, should be able to capitalize on 3rd party opportunities.
That's crap.
He's averaging 19 points a game on 51% shooting with 3.5 boards and 3.3 assists. Those are all-american numbers. Compare him to the supposed best prospect since LeBron, Andrew Wiggins: 15 PPG on 51% shooting, 5.5 boards, 1.4 assists. Gary Harris is at 17.6 PPG on 40%.
Just today NBC published a story about how he's *still* not at 100% percent with his ankle, and the Duke game was several days ago. So, yeah, he was hurting, and that was eminently obvious if you actually watched him play. They took him out of the game because he couldn't move well enough to get the ball. You can't just faceguard the opposing team's best perimeter player successfully all game unless he's hurt.
You're really gonna knock a 20 point, 6 assist performance @ Iowa State because he "only" shot 44%?
And did you miss him completely take over the Forida State game with drive after drive? FSU, by the way, typically has one of the best defenses in the country, usually better than Duke by the numbers. It's pretty innane to question if he can create his own offense at this point because of one injured game at Cameron Indoor. He's been doing it the entire rest of the year.
Link to still injured:
http://collegebasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/12/08/nik-stauskas-still-not-100-percent-after-second-game-back-from-ankle-injury/
It's not really fair to expect him to become a #1 option on a top team. He's never gotten shots for himself in the halfcourt successfully - that isn't going to warp midseason into a go-to offensive player. He'll do his work on the baseline, in the corner and off transition, with hopefully a little off the dribble mixed in.
I don't understand the whole premise here, though. Why can't Stauskas be the #1? He's been doing it the whole season. I agree they we need GR3 to step up, but there's no reason he needs to surpass Nik, who's playing like an All-American.
... necessitates coercision/force. In a general sense, the answer to your question is no. The specifics are in the details. My girlfriend's friend, just last weekend, was told she had sex with a guy when she was blackout drunk. Obviously, if she could consent at all, it was minimal at best. Is that rape? Honestly, it might well be. But how drunk was he? If they were both beyond making informed decisions, what then? Does his level of intoxication even matter?
It's very gray, but typically, you need concrete evidence of coercision, or proof that she actively didn't want to have sex, to successfully press charges.
Of college parties. Not to say he's innocent in truth, but relatively anonymous consensual sex is pretty much a weekend staple
Forget his innocence or guilt - a press conference? I turned on SportsCenter this morning, and it reminded me of nothing more than waiting for a recruit's school picking ceremony. They had a goddamn timer on the top left counting down to whether the kid would be charged for rape.
You have to be an absolutely enormous asshole to host a press conference for this. When you reach a decision you either let it be known there's no charges or you bring him into custody: that's the best for all parties involved.
The douche behind the mic will undoubtedly be running for higher office pretty soon.
Walton starts because he can stay in front of his man - Spike can't. Defense is mostly effort and technique, but those aren't Spike's issues, as far as I can tell. He simply doesn't have the size and especially the speed (holy good god he's slow).
I recall him getting beat so bad in the Duke game that when his man stopped his drive and brought the ball into the corner, it took him about a full 2 or 3 seconds to catch up. McGary had to run out and cover. It's ... it's not good.
Why do you want McGary demanding the ball on the block? I've always been confused about the assertion that he needs more touches. He's never shown any aptitude (at all) scoring with his back to the basket - he doesn't have a post game. He can face up decently, but it's not anything you want to base your offense around. I like his passing, but I'll pass on feeding him like he's Shaq.
How quickly Stauskas has been forgotten. All he's done so far this season is produce like a conference player of the year. 18 PPG on 50% shooting, and that's with the Duke game outlier. The idea I've seen expressed several times is that teams "figured us out": when you take away Stauskas, we're screwed. They only played him like they did because he was hobbled. Denying a perimeter player the ball for the length of a game isn't a realistic or feasible strategy. He couldn't shake his guy because he sprained his ankle. Beilein didn't even know if he was ok to go until Monday.
We haven't played a single game with a healthy Stauskas and non-rusty McGary. Until that happens, panic seems premature. If LeVert can be as aggressive as he was against Duke, that's another good sign.
It's also time to chill on Glenn. I think we get it: he hasn't been playing up to the hype. He's being trashed because he's not living up to expectations the internet set for him. He was barely recruited when he committed here, and now he's a solid player who does some awesome things in transition and off cuts. Yeah, it's a shame he hasn't improved much. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a Michigan basketball post, on this forum or any other, that doesn't contain a mini-tsunami of GR3 agnst. At some point can we just get over it instead of dedicating 300 posts per game thread to it? He is who he is.
Pretty much sucks. We'll be forced to go a lot of 2 bigs in that game, but Tarczewski is about the player I'm 5th most worried about.
We start 4 sophomores and a freshman. We're still one of the 10 youngest teams in the country. McGary has had two weeks of practice after a few months of doing nothing.
They'll get better, but expectations should never have been top 10.
when the stupidity would start
You could count Glenn's halfcourt baskets this year on your fingers. As an amputee.
Dagger, right when we get it to 6. I think Spike has our only 3 in this game.
And holy ballsack, Horford borrowed Morgan's hands of brick.
50% is pretty good.
Who who you put on him? None of our wings can handle his size and strength, and our bigs can't keep up with him on the perimeter.
There's a reason he was hyped up as the best prospect since LeBron.
Is one of the worst defenders you'll see. I feel bad for the kid, but he has rec league footspeed.
All the calls against Duke were good and fair, because Michigan never gets calls in their favor.
I have no doubt that the foul discrepancy would be something everyone would be frothing about if it was reversed. There were some softies on Duke, especially the one Spike drew.