ESPN's 2016-2017 College Basketball Early Top 25
Michigan nowhere to be found. Hard not to feel like next year isn't a huge season for Beielin. He's due to make 3.37 million dollars in 2016. Only Coach K, John Calipari, Bill Self, Rick Pitino, and Tom Izzo will make more. Also of note is that 10 of the last 15 national champions started the year in the preseason top 5.
I'm with you 100% as far as expectations for the program go. Michigan should expect to be a Big Ten contender under normal circumstances.
I just think the money aspect is not particularly relevant given that 1) Michigan should offer high-level compensation in general and 2) the way this system works, a coach who survives to his ninth year on the job will almost invariably be "overpaid."
By the same token, while I was frustrated with the direction of the football program under Brady Hoke, it wasn't specifically his salary that was my concern. I would rather see us overpay if anything, since that removes an obstacle/excuse for an underperforming coach.
the contracts tied more to team performance. Offer a good base salary, but put in some massive incentives for winning X number of games, B1G titles, playoff games, etc.
If half my pay was tied to me hitting performance benchmarks I'd spend a lot less time on MGoBlog at work.
If you go too far down that route, you risk losing your coach to another school willing to give him more guaranteed money.
last 6 tournaments, does he need to go 6 for 6 to justify his pay?
just making 5 of 6 is the floor, if not below - that's the OP's point. With his facilities and pay, we should be talking about making the sweet 16 three of the last 6 years.
What do I want to see? Easy:
1) Better recruiting classes. Minnesota and Penn State have higher ranked classes coming in than Michigan this year. Beilein recruits like he's at a mid major. Either he's lazy or one of the worst recruiters in college basketball. It should not be this difficult to sign top 50 players to Michigan. You have a 100 million dollar basketball complex and are one of the highest paid coaches in the country. The June 15th offer restriction is spectacuarly stupid. The refusal to recruit the #1 player in the country from Detroit is asinine. Imagine the outrage if Rashan Gary was from Detroit and Harbaugh didn't recruit him.
2) Actual defense being played. Don't really think this needs an explanation. It's been atrocious most years Beielin has been here.
3) Tougness. This has to be one of the softest and most passive programs in the conference. They get destroyed on the glass, destroyed on the defensive end, destoyed in the paint on both ends of the court, and don't block shots. Beilein would rather give up a layup than commit a foul. It's pretty ridiculous people accept this level of ineptitude in so many phases of the game.
It's Year 10. Why does it feel like we're in Year 3 or 4. Beilein's at the point he should be reloading not rebuilding.
You don't have to imagine if Gary were from Detroit. We have Donovan Peoples-Jones, whom the board will lose its collective shit if we don't get. Yet when we don't even get more than a passing glance from Jackson, people write it off as a dirty recruitment that Michigan refuses to get involved in. It's a bizarre double standard.
I'd rather see results from recruiting classes than highly ranked recruiting classes. If Simpson was Trey Burke 2.0, we'd be fine, regardless of where he was ranked.
I'd rather take what we have than certainly half to two-thirds of the conference's coaches, including Crean, Gard or Turgeon.
WTF is near 5 star?
"Top 100" doesn't mean jack shit in basektball like it does in football. Top 50 and above are players. Anyone in the bottom half of the top 100 like Donnal and Wilson are usually 4 year guys who don't impact much.
Go back to the UK board.
That's not really what I'm asking. Obviously we want good players, and we don't want the 145th-ranked defense or whatever.
My question is, do you want Beilein to keep his job? Or do want him to stay but reshuffle his assistants, like in 2010? You've offered this critique of the job he's doing numerous times, but what concrete steps do you want taken?
He already canned all of his assistants once. Besides I don't think they're the problem. I think it's pretty clear Beilein is the one running this ship. He's the one that imposes the June 15th offer date, he's the one that had to have Ricky Doyle and Mark Donnal, etc.
I actually think Beilein never being an assistant hurts him. I don't think he 100% trusts them and lets them do their job. Bacari is almost certainly gone and I've heard he's had philosophy clashes with Beilein.
What I want is for Beilein to implement changes to his program. If he doesn't, then yes I want him gone. I can't keep watching this same movie over and over again (bad defense, bad recruiting, huck and chuck 3 offense, etc).
the team does not markedly improve in the next two seasons I would guess that he will retire. I don't think he is a guy that they want to fire and I don't see him as a guy who will drastically overstay his welcome. If we tank next year it would not surprise me if he starts "wanting to spend more time with his family."
While I think we pretty clearly need to reexamine how we coach the defensive end of the floor, I don't see a need to rethink our offensive philosophy given that we've twice had the #1-ranked offense in the country (per KenPom) under Beilein, and that other programs running very similar offenses (Wisconsin, ND, even MSU this year) have also had very high rankings.
Four out and one in is the way basketball is going. I'm completely fine with that. I'm just not sure that we need to be sacrificing so much at the defensive end to achieve high-level offense. Wisconsin seems able to marry solid defense with excellent offense, and this despite recruiting at a theoretically low level.
We simply don't play any under Beilein. It's incredibly frustrating to watch. All of the great teams in college and pro basketball history played lights-out defense.
High scoring offense is fun (Hi Rich!), but defense wins championships.
"Defense wins championships" is a cliche that seems to hold up well in football (Alabama/Broncos, for example), but basketball is a very different sport.
The biggest difference is that a great scorer simply cannot be stopped in basketball. Steph Curry moves back yet another step, Jordan leapt higher, Lebron bulldozes harder.
Modern basketball makes this point even more clear. Rules against hand-checking and improved three-point efficiency tilt the scales toward teams that can fill it up.
Strong defense absolutely can help, and it's maybe aesthetically more pleasing, but these days it seems that scoring wins championships.
I did some checking. Over the last 20 years (not chosen arbitrarily - that's how far back the stats went), here's what I found:
NCAA Champion:
Avg. Offensive Efficiency Ranking - 14th
Avg. Defensive Efficiency Ranking - 20th
NCAA Runner-up:
Avg. Offensive Efficiency Ranking - 26th
Avg. Defensive Efficiency Ranking - 34th
While the difference is not dramatic, it does indicate that being a strong offensive team is typically more important than defense.
Of the 20 champions, 12 were top 10 in offensive efficiency, while only 6 were top 10 in defense.
Runner ups had 8 top 10's in offense and 3 in defense.
So, if it's fair to say that being in the top 10 is "lights out", only 6 of the last 20 NCAA champions make the grade.
5 of the 40 teams were #1 in offensive efficiency. Not a single team led the nation in defensive efficiency.
To your point, however, Michigan's 2013 team showed the widest dispartity between offensive and defensive efficiency of the 40 teams ranked (3rd offense, 97th defense). That said, this year NC's defense was only 82nd.
NC was 27th in defensive efficiency actually. You can't have a defense near 100 and expect to win, plain and simple.
According to TeamRankings, they were 82nd. Maybe my source can't be trusted. If that's the case, my apolgies.
https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/stat/defensive-efficiency
May I ask, what is your source? Teamsports is the best one I could find that offers free content.
BTW, according to them, Michigan was 168th in defense this year (not surprising), and 24th in offense.
KenPom
Not worth fighting over it.
KP uses adjusted efficiency, Teamsports uses straight efficiency. Both are apparently correct.
As point of comparison, Michigan was #168 in straight d efficiency, #109 in adjusted. Using KP, your comment makes perfect sense - would be hard to be very good with an adjusted efficiency near #!00. With straight efficiency, it definitely happens.
Lies, damn lies and statistics.
So, the final contenders are in the 20's to 30's (on avg, using your source), and Mich was 168 this year. definitely not anywhere close.
don't need to be in the top 10, or even to 25, but its clear sub-100 (and maybe even sub-50) isn't going to get it done.
Yes. Recent championship teams average in the 20's-30's in d-efficiency. It makes sense that teams in the Championship game are going to be pretty good, and ignoring one side of the court's not a great way to get it done.
Only Duke last year and UConn in 2011 won the title and weren't in the top 50.
However, NC was 82nd this year, Duke and Wisconsin were both in the 60's last year, Kentucky was 73rd in 2014, and Michigan was 97th in 2013. All of them were top 5 in offensive efficiency. It makes sense - if you're an average (at best) defensive team, you must be pretty damn good at scoring. Also, 4 of those teams lost.
No sane person would argue that Michigan was a championship-caliber team this year.
My point is simply that teams in the championship game are typically more efficient on offense than defense. Lots of truly elite offensive teams have been in (and won) the big game, not as many elite defensive teams.
Just to clarify the two statistics - I used "straight" efficiency, not adjusted for opponents. When you use the adjusted KP stat, teams from big conferences are typically ranked much higher in both offensive and defensive efficiency. Trends are similar, but the differences aren't as dramatic.
I gave you a + 1 for a well-reasoned and respectful response. One thing I will say is that I disagree with the premise of using non-adjusted metrics. Of course that favors big conferences - the level of competition is much harder in the ACC, B1G, or B12 than in Big Sky or C-USA.
For instance, when using adjusted, Kentucky was 10 on O, 41 on D in 2013, and Duke was 3 on O and 12 on D last year.
I don't disagree that an awesome O can make up for a sub-par D, and that basketball differs from football in that regard.
to cherry pick one or two teams in just about any given year, that has a higher rated class than your school. Are you suggesting that Minnesota and PSU are usually out recruiting us? Michigan ranks in the top 25 in recruiting and the two schools that you mention don't even crack the top 50.
He is in year one of 5 remaining years and will be 68 at that time after 2020-1 season. He will likely not coach beyond that time. With our current roster and recruiting, we have at least 2-3 years of mediocre teams in front of us. Jumpman has given us no jump in recruiting. If Beilein were mid-50s, I would say give him a chance, but he is gone anyway in 5 years. Bottom line is we need to be on par with MSU for the prices we are paying.
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Watching last nights game was watching two teams with actual man-sized players that can all shoot, dunk, block, defend, pass and run the floor.
We don't have a single player that could make one of those teams.
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Even in 2013 Kansas scored something like 60 points in the paint. And that was when we had McGary. I shutter to think what UNC would have done to Donnal and Doyle. Scary thought indeed.
After watching that game and in hidsight
With him last year, Michigan played a competitive game against Villanova.
A lot of things have changes since then. Villanova would absolutely crush this basketball team today, even with a healthy LeVert. They're the exact type of physical team that has historically given Beilein fits.
Pretty sure we were top 5 preseason in 2012
had us at #5. My guess is that he is looking at 2011-12.
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Therefore, polls are useless and this one was made by idiots.
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It's such a stark contrast from Harbaugh, who takes high level athletes and figures out what to do with them later. Whereas Beilein requires a highly specific skill set. Does he not want to spend the time teaching a guy like Jackson the art of shooting? Or does he not think he can? I don't get it.
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You mean the same Jaylen Brown whose coaches called Michigan and asked why they weren't recrutiing him?
Beilein literally whiffed on every top target he had over the last 3 classes. Literally every single one. Thorton, Battle, Winston, Kennard, Brunson, Leaf, Langford, Birdges, etc and on down the line.
That's where the recruiting aspect comes in to play. Can't just recruit the kids who are banging down the door to come to Michigan. Does anyone really think Beilein put in the requisite effort in his recruitment of Josh Jackson? He had some inherent advantages; kid from Detroit, girlfriend will be attending school here, mom is a Michigan fan. And yet the most effort he seemingly put in was calling Jackson 2 weeks ago to see if he would still possibly consider us. It's a joke.
Both MSU and Maryland seem ranked too high, and Syracuse seems like a team that just got hot at the end of the year but still has structural problems that aren't fixed.
That said, UM being out of the top 25 makes sense, and I'm still confident next year they'll surprise a lot of people.