come back joe tiller
unverified voracity
berkley edwards
matt falcon
basketball scheduling
annual complaint about basketball scheduling
jack hughes
jack lafontaine
moritz wagner
nba draft
one and done

Unverified Voracity Runs With The Big Dogs Shirt Comment Count

Brian

HOEG. Richard Hoeg does small business law. Need to incorporate? Need some contracts? Need to talk about Star Control? Richard will do all three, and only charge you for the first two.

hoeglaw_thumb[1]

Anyway, Star Control. Star Control was a mindblowing video game because stuff happened in it and if you took too long you could lose the game as your allies fell to the great galactic menace. Losing is fun.

Having a bad contract and either getting sued or having to settle on unfavorable terms is not fun, and Richard Hoeg can help craft contracts for you that will avoid this eventuality. Police horses!

Tiller-era in more ways than one. This twitter bomb(!) from one of Purdue's recruiting yokels is frankly baffling:

Why pick a fight with a program that held you to 15 yards in the second half last year? Why get mad about Michigan getting recruits? You're at Purdue! With limited exceptions for legacies and locals the number of bonafide recruiting battles you're winning against Michigan—against, hell, most of the Big Ten, is zero. Also Purdue's leading receiver averaged 3.6 catches a game.

I feel like this guy bought a Big Dogs shirt for the first time and was overwhelmed by it while near his phone, and he'll return to a mild-mannered citizen tomorrow when he puts his Ron Jon back on. It happens. It's good, really. It's fun when Purdue has a bunch of ornery passing maniacs who talk shit and bend rules.

[After THE JUMP: a bunch of stuff! And porpoises!]

Furies past. People were super mad when Michigan didn't offer Berkeley Edwards; Edwards didn't pan out at either Minnesota or Central Michigan and now joins Michigan as a walk-on. Probably, anyway. I'm not sure how he still has eligibility after he redshirted in 2013, played two more years for Minnesota, transferred, sat out, and played in 2017. Medical hardship, I guess?

Anyway, not every legacy is a scholarship player.

Different people were super mad when Michigan decided Matt Falcon was no longer a football player they could take after two high school ACL tears and offered him a medical scholarship instead; fast forward a couple years and Falcon is taking a medical scholarship at WMU after another knee injury and ten carries.

Another good guarantee game. Another basketball home game has been announced:

Western has been an approximately .500 MAC team for the last four years and was 177th in RPI a year ago. Their only games against high majors were bizarrely both against South Carolina, a team Michigan could play twice this year; they lost a road game 78-60 and a neutral court game 79-66.

This is a game that Michigan should win. At the time of the first matchup SoCar was #41 on Kenpom and WMU was #147; Kenpom gave the Gamecocks a 91% shot. Michigan will presumably be a top 20 team next year and should do even better than that.

But while it's almost certainly a W it is not a SWAC RPI anchor. That's a second game in the 150-200 range, along with Air Force. Taken together this is a sign that Michigan is thinking about their nonconference schedule and how to stop shooting themselves in the foot before the ball is even tipped off.

One prospect rises, one falls. Moe Wagner might be moving up draft boards here. NBA.com now has him going to the Jazz at #21:

He’s a tailor-made modern day big, who’s been a dynamic three-point shooter the last two years (39 percent as a sophomore and a junior) while also being able to put the ball on the deck and get to the rim. Wagner stuck his nose inside as well for Michigan last season, leading the team in rebounding at 7.1 per game. Wagner would be a very different kind of big than Derrick Favors, but he’d be a solid insurance policy for Utah with Favors one of the few quality bigs available in free agency this summer.

A majority of mock drafts now have him as a first rounder after he developed into a rebounding force this season.

Meanwhile, get a load of that sweet development down the road in East Lansing:

Return to Izzo == drop, because Miles Bridges as a sophomore was the same as Miles Bridges as a freshman. On the one hand it's great that Jaren Jackson got the hell out of college, but that does rob us of a spectacular counterfactual: could Izzo have football-padded and toughness-drilled him into the second round if he stayed four years? Alas. We'll never know.

One and done has a tentative expiration date. The NBA is warning teams that there might be a real good draft in the near future:

The NBA on Friday sent teams a memo indicating that "eligibility rules" for the draft may shift as early as 2021 (but no earlier) as the league reviews issues "related to player development and the corruption investigation in college basketball," according to a copy of the memo obtained by ESPN.

The memo does not mention the one-and-done rule by name, but it is meant to remind teams that the league and the players union could agree to scrap one-and-done before the expiration of the current collective bargaining deal in 2024 -- and perhaps well before then, sources say. The memo says that, as of now, the league does not expect changes in draft eligibility rules to take place at any time "prior to the 2021 or 2022 draft."

Not the very near future. This change could not commit to Michigan for football or basketball. (Hockey? Yes, yes it could commit for hockey.) But the sort of near future!

Bah. Well this petered out into a whole lot of nothing:

The once-tantalizing prospect of adding Hughes and Oliver Wahlstrom comes to nil. Michigan instead gets neither and loses Bode Wilde to "don't care, wherever else." Holding on to Quinn Hughes is all that separates Michigan from the worst case scenario.

Exit Jack LaFontaine. Enter Jack LaFontaine? This is sort of Michigan hockey summer but since LaFontaine lost his job to Hayden Lavigne, who returns, a departure was probably inevitable. Lo, it has come to pass:

Penicton is in the BCHL, which is a league that will maintain your NCAA eligiblity, and apparently LaFontaine is going to return to school next year?

That will be a crowded goalie room when LaFontaine returns. Lavigne will presumably be a senior. LaFontaine will return as a junior. Strauss Mann, who finished third in the USHL with a .932 save percentage on the Clark Cup-winning Fargo Force, will be a sophomore. Mann had a .936 in 43 games split across a prep team and a junior team in the East the year before so he's got a fair amount of sample size that suggests he'll be good.

Etc.: I am reasonably enthused about Gregg Berhalter's USMNT candidacy. 2020 hockey commit Austen Swankler profiled. Iso variants getting more popular than power in the "smashmouth spread," which sounds like a thing Michigan might do with Shea Patterson this year.

Comments

stephenrjking

June 21st, 2018 at 1:34 PM ^

Losing out on all the hot recruits this fall (minus Wilde, which is a bit of a gut punch in the surprise category) was always a possibility and perhaps the most likely one. I think it is more likely that Quinn leaves than stays, given his already-established willingness to follow the guidance of whatever team drafts him on whether or not to sign this summer. But we'll see what happens.

Still stinks. Welcome back to the good old days, I guess: A heart-breaking FF loss followed by a series of guys that would be stars magically transforming into empty lockers.

That's what happens when you're a big boy. The difference: Mel is recruiting in a way that both tries to draw in these guys but also fills the roster with older types that will stay for four years. We'll see how that works, but I'm optimistic.

Joined: 03/15/2012

MGoPoints: 20143524

stephenrjking

June 21st, 2018 at 4:03 PM ^

I don't think there's any scenario in which Quinn spends more than a handful of games with his NHL team next season, but that doesn't mean that there aren't franchises who would prefer him to spend that year in the AHL. It depends upon the franchise. Some will sign him for a year in the minors, and some might just let him develop for a year at Michigan before paying him a salary and taking up minor league roster space.

Joined: 03/15/2012

MGoPoints: 20143524

bronxblue

June 21st, 2018 at 2:46 PM ^

For some reason my youtube feed had highlights from that game, and one thing that jumped out was that O'Korn really got some lucky breaks (he escaped pressure a couple of times, had some balls pulled down in traffic) to complement his solid play.  So maybe he just used them all up in that one game, because Purdue's defense wasn't terrible by any means.

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 170851

OwenGoBlue

June 21st, 2018 at 5:51 PM ^

Michigan dominated the side Brohm is supposed to be a genius at so as long as we have Don Brown I'm taking that game for granted. Purdue got a couple of chunk plays but those got fixed pretty quickly and they had to run a gimmick offense to little effect for an entire half because none of their regular stuff worked. 

It's very fun how much rando Purdue fans hate Michigan. 

Joined: 04/03/2016

MGoPoints: 31535

MGoBlue-querque

June 21st, 2018 at 2:00 PM ^

I bet Izzo would've bumped JJJ's playing time all the way up to 23 minutes/game had JJJ made the terrible decision to return to EL for 1 more year.  That was some top notch coaching malpractice only giving him just over 20 minutes a game last year.  Keep up the good work Tom.

Joined: 12/05/2012

MGoPoints: 12148

bronxblue

June 21st, 2018 at 2:52 PM ^

Bridges possibly slipping out the lottery is a bit unsurprising.  Izzo did him no favors, but in his second year he failed to really establish himself as someone with an elite skill.  He's not uber-athletic, he's not a great shooter, his mid-range jumper is hit-and-miss, and he's not going to fill the stat sheet up on the defensive end to offset those deficiencies.  Had he left last year, he'd have been drafted higher but probably would have struggled just as much.  Obviously Izzo didn't develop any of his weaknesses, but unlike Jackson I could see Bridges having issues in the NBA just because of his limitations.

That said, why anyone would want to go to a place where an angry dwarf yells at you and costs you millions of dollars is beyond me.

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 170851

BlueWon

June 21st, 2018 at 3:43 PM ^

Shhh!

I want Izzo to stay for a long, long time. He has no answer to Beilein-ball and it appears, for maybe the first time since coach arrived in A2, that UM is getting the superior talent.

I think we win 75% of the games as long as this coaching imbalance is in place.

Joined: 04/10/2015

MGoPoints: 3940

bronxblue

June 21st, 2018 at 4:20 PM ^

It definitely feels like UM has the coaching advantage, but it would be nice to see what a Beilein team with, say, Jackson and Bridges looks like.  With the uptick in recruiting perhaps we will, but outside of the first title game year they haven't really had overwhelming talent advantages against the bulk of their opponents nationally.  

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 170851

Double-D

June 21st, 2018 at 11:18 PM ^

Izzo won because of superior talent and a game that allowed excessive physical contact.   Excessive physical play was his real coaching advantage.  The rules have changed and he can’t adapt.  He knows if he stays it will be a slow painful demise.  He will be looking for an exit strategy or a way to cut corners.  

Joined: 12/21/2013

MGoPoints: 86775

Michigan4Life

June 21st, 2018 at 6:41 PM ^

Contrary to the popular opinion, Miles Bridges did get better and added more skills to his repertoire. The big problem is Izzo had Bridges, JJJ play up a position which muck up the spacing especially with Ward taking up the low block. I'm confused that you said that he's not uber athletic, he absolutely is uber-athletic. The problem is he has an average wingspan for his height which doesn't help.

He's just better off playing PF in the next level anyway.

Joined: 07/29/2010

MGoPoints: 24941

Kevin14

June 25th, 2018 at 6:54 PM ^

It's funny to crack jokes, since he came back to lose to M twice and get bounced in the second round of the tourney, but I do think he improved and will be a good pro.  He's crazy athletic and a good shooter.  At the least, he can be a 3 and D guy who have become so valuable in the NBA.  He doesn't seem like an alpha dog and even 2nd option on a great team, but he could be an excellent 3/4 option on a team.  

Also, he didn't drop in the draft relative to where he would have went last year.  He went around the same place.  I saw one mock from last year that had him at 12 and another at 21.  I saw another article that said between 8-14.  

Joined: 03/07/2017

MGoPoints: 2402

maize-blue

June 21st, 2018 at 2:53 PM ^

According to interwebz, Eron Hodges worked on OSU's recruiting staff. I thought this had a Zach Smith sort of vibe to it.

Joined: 01/10/2013

MGoPoints: 44662

Cranky Dave

June 21st, 2018 at 3:27 PM ^

I remember the debates on the board about Falcon and whether Michigan was truly concerned about Falcon's health or was doing roster management a la Alabama.  My recollection is that Magnus was leading the truly concerned about health camp.  But I can't find the thread now and my memory isn't what it used to be. 

Joined: 09/08/2012

MGoPoints: 26240

bronxblue

June 21st, 2018 at 3:32 PM ^

Did it wind up even mattering that year in regards to scholarship count?  It was rather clear he had serious injury issues that ultimately derailed his career, but the roster management argument seemed to hinge on a scholarship shortage that never wound up mattering if memory serves me right.  

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 170851

Alton

June 21st, 2018 at 5:52 PM ^

Regarding the goalie situation, what they are doing makes a lot of sense.  Michigan was probably going to have to bring in 2 goalies in 2020 if Lafontaine had stayed.  Now Lafontaine will be a redshirt Senior in 2020/21.

The bottom line was that Lafontaine wasn't going to see significant ice time in 2018/19 or in 2019/20.  This is a way of redshirting him for the 2020/21 season but also getting him some ice time while being redshirted.  And if he chooses not to come back to Michigan, they can take a walkon (to replace Catt) in 2019 and then add a scholarship goalie (to replace Levigne) in 2020.

 

Joined: 07/05/2008

MGoPoints: 13273

J_Dub

June 21st, 2018 at 6:51 PM ^

Can someone please explain what that purdue guy meant with the numbers at the bottom of his tweet?  I can barely understand anything he is saying.  I realize it's all garbage but just want to understand his (lame) argument.

Joined: 03/26/2009

MGoPoints: 1011

Streetchemist

June 22nd, 2018 at 1:52 AM ^

Lol this is the second time Brian has posted about Bridges dropping in the draft. Go look at the mocks right up until he made his decision to return. All right around 12th. He was drafted 12th tonight. 

Joined: 05/14/2011

MGoPoints: 12224