FiveThirtyEight Article on 'small ball' Michigan Championship team shout out
This FiveThirtyEight article compares the National Championship Game team from several years ago favorably to the Warriors and points to it as a emblmatic of a larger shift in the game of basketball.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-warriors-convinced-big-schools-…
Discuss.
We had a two year run (Title Game/Elite Eight) that teams would love to have. Outside of that, we don't have a single win beyond the first round of the tournament. We're the underdog by time we play our second game. We should be better than that by now.
We've split the last 14 games with MSU, but look at the beatdowns they have given us. Our Final Four team got blown out at East Lansing and won in the closing seconds in Ann Arbor. The Elite Eight team barely beat an undermanned Sparty in East Lansing, came from behind to win in Ann Arbor and got blown out in the B1G title game. I don't know what the scoring differential is in those games, but I'm sure they are on the plus side.
Due to Beilein being at his other Div. I jobs for five years max, there is no track record of him having extended success leading a program deep into the tournament consistently. He can coach, but can he successfully bring in recruits to one destination for an extended period of time? We'll be the first program to find out.
Outside of the elite traditional basketball powers (Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, UNC, Arizona, UCLA, Indiana, UConn, etc.), who is recruiting well in the One-and-Done era? Every year these schools often have to reload and replenish their roster after losing their 5-star freshmen to the draft. This has an effect on all the other schools who are left to pick from the rest as the elite schools cycle through players faster now than ever, especially with the high transfer rates as well. Look at the top 50 recruiting lists from the past 5-10 years. The usual suspects take a majority of these players.
Unfortunately, we are not there as a program, and it would take a Harbaugh-like hire to get us there. And look how dirty some of the top elite coaches really are and how many have left their programs in the cloud of NCAA investigations and sanctions (Calhoun, Pitino, Calipari, Boeheim, Roy Williams). Given where Michigan was coming from in the 1990s, I don't think we could take that chance right now. Crazy to imagine what would have happened if Michigan had ended up with Pitino instead of Amaker in 2001 as Pitino backed out of taking the job as the last second.
I think you have to be a little realistic in your expectations as well. We are currently the second best basketball program in our own state. It helps that Michigan has a top-20 basketball history, great facilities, and one of the best public educations in the country. But a lot of top recruits don't really care about that as they are usually only going to be in school for a year or two. Even Tom Izzo has had trouble recruiting in this era, and he is one of the top 5 coaches in the game right now.
And another factor that should help us now: being a Nike school. I think people really underrate how much of a disadvantage it is being an adidas school in recruiting.
I find the disconnect between your username and the notion that we are the second best basketball program in our own state to be humorous. Not in an antagonistic way...in a 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife kind of way.
So the guy got a top ten class, yes?
He put 6 guys into the NBA?
I guess he *can* recruit?
Also, the advice to "do more of that" is nice. He should also just "do more winning". Hell, why not "do more winning national championships"? Done! We should have thought of this years ago!
Mine is actually sarcastic.
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Just go out and sign 2 to 3 five star players a year. It's easy. How come he didn't think of that.
The most painful part of that article: seeing top Beilein targets Trevon Blueitt and Jaylen Brown on that list. Michigan really could have used one of those guys (or even Vince Edwards).
Kind of ironic that Draymond Green is the NBA prototype for a smallball 4 when MSU had been one of the last major programs to embrace that style of play. Izzo had stuck to a traditional PF for most of his career, and it wasn't until this year that he really embraced floor spacing and the 3-point shot.
Took a while but eFG% is worth while for a reason.
March 21st, 2016 at 10:01 PM ^
The problem with Beilien is that he is staying above the table at a high-achieving academic school. He is not willing to get down and dirty with the AAU coaches, who have such a strangle hold on the sport it is rediculous. I coach at a high school, and there are kids who can barely dribble that are talking about balling with AAU, and being sold all the promises under the sun.
Other then Duke, I am struggling to think of a highly successful basketball team that has equally as high of academic standards. All the Mid-Major hot shots have the RR problem: taking high talent guys who did not care about high school academics, so they had such bad academic scores that they could not get into major universities. When they move to a school with ANY standards, those kids can't come, and the coach falls a part.
We have a coach who is staying clean, above board, at a school with tough standards to get into... and that leaves us chasing German across the European basketball world... and hoping that the next 3* recruit is a Nik that can rain 3's. I like knowing that when we win, is it done with good ol'fashion hard work and determination... not by a series of back door deals and AAU arrangements. But that is just me.
March 21st, 2016 at 10:29 PM ^
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March 21st, 2016 at 10:32 PM ^
March 22nd, 2016 at 12:39 AM ^
March 22nd, 2016 at 11:02 AM ^
seems to be trending up at Virginia though. Yes, he's missed the tourney 3 years but those were his first three years. His record at UVA:
15-16 (5-11 in conference)
16-15 (7-9)
22-10 (9-7, NCAA 2nd round)
23-12 (11-7)
30-7 (16-2, Sweet 16)
30-4 (16-2, NCAA 2nd round)
28-7 (13-5, Sweet 16 if not further)
UVA has 2 regular season ACC titles and 1 ACC conference tourney title.
So we can sign 25 good football players but can't find 5 good basketball players because of academic standards? Not buying it. Duke, UCLA, Virginia, UNC, Texas, etc. all recruit well. Hell, Cal signed 2 5 stars last year.
March 21st, 2016 at 10:30 PM ^
March 21st, 2016 at 10:48 PM ^
Later on, when we were down double digits well into the second half, the announcers—speaking of Michigan as if its season were over—said we needed to get bigger. While U-M of course came back, that game was hardly proof of the superiority of small ball. Kansas got the better of it until things got zany late.
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Moreover, the headline - "The Warriors Convinced Big Schools that Small Ball Works" is contradicted by the article's text, which clearly suggests that small ball originated in college and has only recently come to the pros.