Ace - 

I may be suffering from recency bias, but I have always felt that you took a limited amount of data from Walton's freshman year and extrapolated it to expectations that were perhaps too optimistic.  I don't have access to KenPom stats, but my memory of his freshman year was that he was a reliable role player who actually didn't do a lot of PG things within the offense.  I know he shot well from outside and had a reasonable A/T ratio.  

But I also remember that he rarely was involved with the ball-screen staple of the offense as that fell to Stauskas.  I remember him mostly parked in the corner looking for threes or doing a good job on the fast break.  He did have that great MSU game.  

The issue is that when his role and importance expanded he never developed those other skills.  And when called on to attack the rim as a primary playmaker he just doesn't seem to have that skill in his arsenal (not that any Michigan PG ever can get a call going to the hoop from the refs).  On top of that, he's had to play with bigs who haven't been very good at running the ball screen or starting a fast break.  In fact, as a primary rebounding threat he's often unable to start much of a fast break because he's around the hoop.  Finally, even if he runs the break with the team the last two years he has FAR WORSE finishers around him than he did with Stauskas, Robinson, Morgan, and McGary.  

I love Walton as a player, but not as a star.  He doesn't create for his teammates like Morris and he doesn't generate his own offense like Burke or Stauskas.  He also was forced to play an insane amount of minutes this year and often guard the opposing team's best player.  

But is my expectation calibration flawed compared to yours?  

I touched on Walton above and now I'd like to talk about Irvin.  First of all, people forget that he started from so much further behind than some of the names that he was compared to above.  As a freshman he saw the court less often and was very one-dimensional.  From that point of view he has grown a ton and brings a lot to this team no matter what the KenPom stats say.

The reason everyone is so frustrated with his turnover rate and finishing ability (both of which I agree with) is because the team NEEDS him to be one of the stars.  The fact is that he does not finish well around the rim as he isn't particularly athletic - he's just average.  He had a lot of shots blocked or missed near the hoop considering the level of difficulty and the team's need for him to finish those.  He rarely dunks.  He's probably never finished an alley oop (think about that relative to Stauskas, GR3, and THJ).  Likewise, his handle is always scary....despite how much it has improved.  

I don't think Ace is saying that Irvin's stats are particularly out of line for how far he's come, for being a solid contributor on a good team, or playing forward.  The issue is that this team needs him to be more than that - and when he isn't, it is more obvious.  Ideally he is playing as the #2 or #3 best player on a team where he plays SF and can take a ton of jump shots.  Instead he's playing a weird mix of SG and PF for a team that needs him to create offense.  

There's a clear double standard getting applied here and there's a lot of reasons why that might be. Ace argued abovei it's because Robinson's in his first year in D1 - "The expectations for them in 15-16 were different for good reason." 

I'm not sure that's a very defensible position. Zak is younger and shorter than Duncan. He was one class below him in high school until Duncan prepped a year after HS. They started college at the same time and now, just like Zak, Duncan will enter his 4th year of college this fall.

Duncan's path is different, but he shouldn't be treated like a freshman. Duncan has been the center of a college offense before.  And yeah, of course making the jump from D3 to D1 is hard.  So is jumping from being a minor role player off the bench to being the focus of every defense you face. 2 years ago Duncan was at D3 playing at an all american level -- at the same time that Irvin was playing 15mpg.

The D3 excuse is also dated. Duncan had been practicing with Michigan for a over a year, going up against Caris, Zak, Aubrey, and Chatman "everyday" in practice, so he wasn't seeing high caliber athletes for the first time when the stats started counting.

He's also undergone zero major back surgeries.

You could make an argument that given age, height, experience leading a team, health, and shooting ability that it should have been Duncan Robinson who should have been expected to be the #1 option on this team.  Not the guy who struggled so badly trying to fill that role in '14-15.

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Zak is being held to a standard of a #1 option. Is this fair or reasonable? Now that the "first year in D1" excuse is gone -- Will Duncan Robinson be held to the same standard next season?  Something tells me not.

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He certainly wasn't this year. In an earlier comment Ace raised Zak's turnover rate in conference play as a major negative. This was the main point raised in the argument that Zak had not improved overall and deserves to be included in The Bad. Robinson though, who came in with a mountain of hype about his shooting and track record to backup the practice buzz doesn't register here. Yet Robinson's shooting 35% from in conference play went unmentioned.  Keep in mind that is less than Zak's 38% this year. It's also far worse than what players in similar roles did as freshman (making the much harder transition from high school to D1): Stauskas, Irvin, even Dawkins.

Robinson did do very well for the full season hitting 3s at a good rate (similar to Stauskas, Irvin, and Dawkins in the same role [all hit between 43-45% in their first year]) it can not be denied.  But Zak also did pretty well in turnover percentage on the season (similar to Stauskas, Levert, and Hardway in similar roles). Yet the in-conference dip for Irvin means that "flaws were exposed" in Irvin's game as defenses adjusted but not Robinson.

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Zak's shooting fell off this year and was flat out atrocious in the early season.  He did struggle at times with tough defenses.  The development for him hasn't been as fast as Stauskas or Burke, but that goes for Duncan Robinson too - a guy who is using up just as many scholarships as Zak Irvin.