Tyus Battle to Syracuse
Five-star former basketball pledge Tyus Battle (Hello!) (Goodbye) has ended his recruitment; despite the sanctions, he's going to play for Boeheim.
Tyus Battle commits to Syracuse | Story: http://t.co/iLrwYUJcEX pic.twitter.com/eyb0eG9Kx5
— Evan Daniels (@EvanDaniels) July 13, 2015 So that sucks. Michigan was hard after both Battle and similarly ranked (just outside top 10) Alabama SF Josh Langford, and Battle pulled the trigger in May when it appeared Langford was about to take that option away from him. Beilein apparently thought that decision was earnest enough that he cut off pursuit of Langford, who committed to Michigan State three days after Battle reopened his recruitment.
When you play the game of thrones… There's of course going to be a lot of Michigan fans upset at Battle, and Battle's family, and Syracuse, and the world in general.
How Michigan went from a near-guarantee of one game-changing talent to none with a richer rival isn't complicated: Beilein is operating with honesty in an environment where most everybody else is just trying to get theirs. Because of the nature of basketball—small rosters and the sure effect of pure talent—winning a guy like Battle or Langford is highly likely to substantially change your team's prospects. Once you're into the extreme edge of 17-year-old basketball ability distribution, there aren't enough humans out there to start getting picky over which ones have nice families, a firm handshake, and a head for marine engineering.
This is known. We have a "basketball recruiting is dirty like dirt in a dirt sandwich" tag for this reason. When you make a play for a guy who could make any team better, you're entering a cutthroat world where any weakness—including trust—will get exploited.
So we got Lannister'd, and it was cruel, and possibly avoidable. But before you go advocating poison (or worse, tweet at a recruit) remember that highly sought teenagers have to navigate the same sea of bullshit.
Obviously Battle was pretty serious in his interest in Michigan, since there seems to be little reason otherwise to keep the option open. Obviously Langford wasn't guaranteed to come here if Battle didn't commit, since an end to pursuit on Michigan's end was enough to push him to Izzo. Obviously if the same had happened to Izzo and Michigan was the beneficiary we'd be laughing right now.
How much do you wish this was different? The more people you meet, the more you'll realize they tend to expect everyone else to operate the way they do. Dishonest people expect dishonesty; the operating factor in "nice guys finish last" is nice guys tend to be surprised when the competition isn't so nice. Beilein has lost enough battles to Kentucky to know how the world operates outside his program, but the essence of Beilein is he's ready to trust because he's trustworthy. Sometimes this gets him burned, other times Mr. Basketball of Indiana finds it astonishingly refreshing. Take the good with the Battle.
What now? Michigan is still pursuing 2016 PG Cassius Winston, which hasn't changed, and has a scholarship offer to PG Quentin Goodin. They'll probably offer another wing now. That Beilein recognized Battle and Langford early enough to be a major player for their services speaks to a scouting ability that hasn't lost its edge. That same ability has served him well with late pickups Spike, MAAR, Dawkins, LeVert, and…
So what 3* does Beilein get drafted higher than Tyus Battle?
— guestavo (@guestavoo) July 13, 2015 I trust he'll be a good one.
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made me feel alllll better.
I will be actively routing against Tyus Battle his entire college career. I won't tweet or message him, and I don't hope he gets injured, but man did he screw us by taking Langford's spot. Basketball recruiting is the worst. I am aware that this is total sour grapes on my part but something like this can affect your program for years.
Moving on to the next great 3 star pg 1st round draft pick story.
A player can sign a LOI at any time. No LOI, no commitment; i.e., until we receive your LOI, we will recruit others.
From a players' standpoint, I agree with Brian's idea of never signing one, but getting the school's Financial Aid Dept. to commit to you. The player needs to be aware that the school's team will continue to recruit others.
That said, all this renegging is getting out of hand. There should be consuquences; e.g., a student at Ross who renegs after accepting a company's offer (but doesn't sign the contract) gets kicked out of on-campus recruiting--can't go to corporate networking hours, presentations, interview on-campus, etc.
Best of luck in your ahtletic and academic careers. Thank you for considering the Universtity of Michigan.
Best of luck in your athletic and academic careers. Thank you for considering the Universtity of Michigan.
No -- I think it is ok to be angry at the kid for this one. When he purposely commits early so that he can jump over Langford only to later backout and leave us with neither -- that is pretty weak.
... what I hate is that Brian has to be so cryptic about what really went down. My guess is he knows a lot more than he is willing to share. I get why he has to be careful, but, man, I'd love to buy brian a beer and get to really know what happened.
From what I've heard and read, Langford had been a UM fan forever, while Battle's commitment was out of the blue and rather unexpected, since there was no sign that he was ready to commit to UM beforehand. A cynic might have been more inclined to tilt to Langford and be suspicious of Battle based on that, but that's in hindsight.
Beilein got screwed for being trusting, but it's not as though Langford didn't have the chance to commit, either.
I don't know what you do differently here. It would have been crazy to turn Battle down because you thought might still land Langford.
If Langford was a UM fan forever, then he can easily commit to us right now.
maybe Langford diiscovered he liked MSU as much or more than UM. I find that hard to believe, but there are students and athletes that love MSU.
Or/and, maybe Langford believes he should honor his commitments. There are such persons.
So it appears that maybe you gave ASOIAF another chance? That makes me happy.
Did you read all of them?
Yes but the last I put down for six months, and then again for over a year when I got fed up with how abominably boring it was. And then Sam waited at the Old City which was an old city and kind of like Oxford. And he waited longer. And then there came a boy with a name you'll confuse with the 1,000 other characters, and the boy took Sam upstairs, and an old man said something cryptic. And then there was an old scholar talking about how the Iron Islands were going back to the old gods and would have an election, and then we talk about Kraken politics a lot, and then there's a king's moot and people give longwinded speeches, and a guy we've never met wins, and then another guy we've never met has a meeting with a side character about all this, and then there's a battle between the whodafucks and the whaddafucks, and meanwhile there are battles in places a main character came through 3 books ago and ewwwww gross they put their decomposing king's corpse on a horse I have no idea who these people are or what they have to do with the story, is this Lemoncloak what happened to Lemoncloak, oh wait that's one of the guys who killed Breanne because that's what Lady Deathwhisper (or, you know, whatever they're calling reanimated Catherine who's amazingly even more of a bitch now that she can't speak). I'm way off. I think this is one of the people who were traveling on that swamp riverboat with Tyrion and OH HEY THIS GUY'S A KING NOW TOO YAY MORE KINGS I'm not sure if this is even the plot now or if I've switched to stuff my nephew tells me about World of Warcraft.
Then every character you know dies, and the side characters with house banners that are painfully described all take over the story, but now you are totally lost except all of these people are even less likely to give a damn that there's a zombie army about to attack from Scotland . The end.
The books suck, especially with the last book GRRM has given up on plot almost entirely to masturbate to his world. Benioff and Weiss are geniuses for turning that mess of series written by a creep of a man into something highly entertaining.
Thanks for explaining, and at least you gave it a shot. I assume you don't intend to read Winds of Winter then?
I'm a little bit meh on the show. They have done a nice job condensing things down, but I think it has turned into pure shock and boobs for the sake of them. The first several seasons were pretty strong, this season was the worst imo. The whole Dorne storyline was just painful to watch.
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Does our current roster management situation warrant any discussion here? What I mean was that no one has discussed the fact that we didn't have enough scholarships to allow both players to committ or for us to at least continue pursuing Langford once Battle "committed". Prior to this taking place there was discussion on the board about taking another project at center in the same class (probably) as Teske. Would having another scholarship have mattered in how Beilein played this?
My opinion remains that these two guys were not signing with the same school no matter what so the benefit of being able to continue to recruit Langford was minimal at best. And I still would rather have a roster full of solid prospects who want to be at Michigan than tenuous stars who may bolt at any minute.
I do think Langford was close to selecting Michigan and I almost wonder if one small factor in picking MSU was to stick it to us and Battle. For the record, I don't think Izzo recruits dirty and I don't think he played any role in how this all played out.
What frustrates me about this whole situation is the choice of Syracuse. When we lose a kid to Duke or UK in basketball or Alabama/Ole Miss in football we roll our eyes and move on. But in this situation the kid picked a school on sanctions with a coach who's leaving and at a school with middling recent success over a program with everything opposite of that going for it. Is that proximity to his Dad really that important? Usually when parents meddle it is because of having a pocket full of cash or with some delusion of the NBA on their mind. I'm not sure either applies in this case. (Would there be powerful boosters at Syracuse in the current environment willing to shell out for Battle?)
With that being said, something that always makes me nervous with recruits is when they constantly bounce around. This kid has changed high schools, AAU teams, college choices, apparel brands, etc. more times than you can count. I realize that he's a 17 year old kid, but that type of situation screams of someone who is still trying to figure out what they want and needs to be catered to or will leave. I wish him the best......and while I wish we had him or better yet Langford on the roster of the future, Michigan will be fine.
Whats most devastating about this is how close this hoops program was to eclipsing Izzo's. You get Langford instead of Battle and now momentum is on your side and MSU are the ones on the outside looking in. This definitely sets us back a couple of years unless we pull off Winston and Bridges.
Any chance Langford reconsiders here?
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