Freep article: Beilein and recruiting
There is an excellent article by Nick Baumgardner at the Detroit Freep Press about John Beilein and recruiting.
LINK: John Beilein topples recruiting critics: builds true team at Michigan.
Nick talks about how many fans (me included, FTR) thought that Michigan's championship run in 2013 would lead to increased recruiting success. And how this almost completely failed to materialize.
Here's the list Nick compiled, of guys Beilein recruited who went elsewhere:
- Devin Booker, 5 star, Kentucky
- James Blackmon, 5 star, Indiana
- Keita Bates-Diop, OSU
- Treven Bluiett, Xavier
- Vince Edwards, Purdue
- Derryck Thornton, 5 star, Duke
- Luke Kennard, 5 star, Duke
- Tyus Battle, 5 star, Syracuse
- Jalen Brunson, 5 star, Villanova
- Jamal Murray, 5 star, Kentucky
- Jaylen Brown, 5 star, Cal.
Instead, Beilein got 2 star Muhammed Abdur-Rahkman, Wagner out of Germany, (who no one else recruited,) Robinson, a Div III transfer (unheard of!!), and Zavier Simpson, after Cassius Winston chose MSU. Matthews was on the bench at Kentucky, a transfer, Teske and Davis were needed backups to Wagner at the 5, Poole had a modest offer sheet. Livers was really the first highly ranked guy we got head to head in recruiting against MSU.
The point, according to Baumgardner, is that Beilein has done an excellent job in recruiting a TEAM, not a collection of individual stars. There are other schools who will have guys go in the lottery, other teams with more athletic talent, other teams with more guys who will play professional ball. But Beilein has done an excellent job recruiting the right guys for Michigan, guys who have bought into his system and have gelled well together.
I love the incoming recruiting class. But on paper, we're woefully far behind. Duke has 4 guys who are 5 star talents. Oregon, Kentucky, Kansas, Villenova, LSU, North Carolina, and Providence ALL have multiple guys ahead of Michigan. I don't care any more. Many years ago, iirc, Brian felt that Beilein's ceiling was crippled by recruiting. The way that Beilein coaches, and the team plays, I no longer feel that his recruiting is a liability.
TL,DR. Summary: Beilein does a great job of recruiting, and Michigran will be fine.
If my memory is correct, we would have taken KBD all the way through (unless we eventually accepted too many other commitments.) He is definitely a talent. Not disappointed with the team at all, but you have to take talent when you have the opportunity.
Now, there is one thing I'd be interested in knowing . . . I wonder if any of the guys on the list who went elsewhere wish they had gone to Michigan instead? Guys who know now that they would have been better off playing under Beilein in Beilein's system? Of course, it'd be pretty hard to get anyone to be honest about that, but it did cross my mind, there might be a few kids who wish they had gone to Michigan instead of their actual choice.
I don't know. Every one of those players on the list have done very well for themselves.
I believe he committed to UCLA then decommitted to Michigan. JB said no thanks because he doesn't want to get back into the game. Bluiett ended up at Xavier.
Enough said.
All this list does is highlight the stupidity of the one-and-done system.
Almost half of these players should have been able to jump straight into the NBA or D-League after high school instead of waiting a year in college.
is that too many of them have an inflated opinion of their game at 18/19 years old.
Jaren Jackson for example, great player but he was useless against us, he needs more work and in reality could use another year in college. He would have gone straight to the NBA but he was pretty invisible in many games, especially against U-M.
It helps to go to college, become a man in an academic environment, learn a few things instead of being a teenager up against grown men, what's the freaking hurry?
That's why you have NBA scouts. Scouts will tell players coming out of high school the reality that they will not be starting or even playing at their current talent level and could use more seasoning in college.
The hurry is if you want to do something and are qualified and capable of doing something....why arbitrarily wait to do that thing? Especially when this could be your livelihood.
Or you come from a family that is struggling to keep the heat bill paid.
Iggy could be a star too.
Castleton is another talented stretch 5.
and Nunez can shoot it.
It's like Beilein's perfect class.
Don't forget about David DeJulius and Brandon Johns. DeJulius has Beilein's next star written all over him and Brandon Johns is an athletic guy who can shoot. Michigan should be sitting pretty for a while.
Actually the cratering of Chatman, Dawkins, et al is all the more bizarre in retrospect. But, clearly, Beilein's ability to develop players is not in question.
Chatman was the worst defender I ever saw in D1 basketball. It's like he never played defense before college and that was from when JB didn't put a premium on defense.
At times Livers has been lost inside but that is because of switching/not switching and I can understand that. It also got better as the season went along. Many times Chatman was completely on the wrong side of the floor from who he was supposed to be guarding.
The level of competition Chatman played against here in the Portland, OR area was woeful. He was literally a man against boys . . . short, unathletic boys who weren't good at basketball. If iron sharpens iron, then Chatman was sharpening his iron against lint.
that some schools cheat when it comes to recruiting. Shocked, absolutely shocked.
Looking at that list of names I wonder how many Beilein could have brought to M if he did what other coaches seem to be doing ($$).
I bet Beilein sleeps well most nights. Probably a lot better than Izzo does lately...
I think there is an entirely serious argument to be made on this basis that Beilein is the greatest coach of his generation. *Everyone* else is cheating, to a greater or lesser extent. He's like a hypothetical guy who comes in like 18th every year at the Tour de France, but who is actually the greatest cyclist alive, because he's the only one doing it without doping, etc. And Beilein doesn't even come in 18th, he's coming in towards the very top, more than once.
Really the only counter-argument in his lack of a National Championship, but a) those are super-random in college b-ball, b) in reality he did win one in 2013, and c) he's not done yet. Everything else points to him being right at the top. If he were playing on level terms with everyone else in terms of recruiting, etc., he'd be in the Final Four every damn year.
Depends how you define in his generation. Gary Williams didn't cheat (mostly out of laziness and hatred for the AAU system) and won a championship and had MD top 10 for 5 years and 2 final fours. I don't think people think Jay Wright is cheating and his recruiting has been similar to Michigan's and he has a title. Beilein is still up there but some other seemingly clean guys have championships and sustained runs.
belongs on this list too. No national titles (if you don't count the four he won in D3) but an amazing run of consistent winning and I think we can be pretty sure he wasn't on Christian Dawkins's rolodex.
Best offensive coach yes, but not defensive coach. I love this team so much because of the defense we play.. yes, all the coaches deserve credit for this, but it seems Yaklich has upped the ante and coaching on that end. (And I should add, its also because of the mental make up of the players. You can teach them defense until you are blue in the face, but if they dont put in the effort and play as a team, it means nothing)
Any other fan board, the title "[Team's Head Coach] and Recruiting" would cause everyone's heart to stop because they'd assume that the link would be an expose of their massive cheating. I do enjoy the total calm that comes with rooting for Beilein teams. Oh, and the 4 Big Ten Championships. I enjoy those a lot too!
Syracuse is a basketball first school, recruits definetly are somewhat influenced by that. And lets not be stupid, I love this team but pretty much all of those guys would be fantastic in our system, that is why Beilein recruited them.
Also Syracuse cheats and so did Uconn under Calhoun, neither school deserves shit (bitter former MD fan who watched all the top talent in MD and DC go to those schools knowing they were getting paid)
You are right about Bamba. With Bamba, I remember thinking about him, here's another guy that we end up coming in second place for. Which is pretty much what happened. I don't know why Baumgardner didn't include him in the article. FAIL! (not really.)
just don't read the comments...
I'm of the opinion that Dantonio (as a head coach) works best with the under-the-radar types than the high profile guys. I might be extrapolating too much from a small sample size, but I'd wager that he wouldn't have a whole lot more success with an upgraded roster.
Chris Petersen seems like 1b to Dantonio's 1a
Bill Snyder.