Unverified Voracity FIGHTS IN THE STREETS
Illinois State to the Final Four [Marc-Gregor Campredon]
Talkin' 'bout Yak. Sam Webb interviews Illinois State head coach Dan Muller, who actively tried to get his assistants the jobs at Michigan they in fact got:
“I was talking to him about the next step in his career and what he wanted to do, what his aspirations were as a coach, and how I could help,” Muller recalled. “He said, ‘hey, what do you think about Michigan?’ And I said, ‘I think that would be a great place for you. Have you ever met Coach Beilein? (He said), ‘no.’ I said, ‘okay look, in this business I am going to tell you the odds are you won't get the job because you've never met him. A lot of times coaches hire guys that they know or have met at least.’ I said, ‘if you want, I'll call him and just see.’"
“I called Coach Beilein that day and left him a message. He called me back a couple days later and said thank you very much, but I've got a couple of guys I think I'm going to hire. I actually recommended DeAndre Haynes, also, who was on my staff. I said, ‘coach that's fine. If anything changes give me a call. I think both of these guys would be terrific for you.’
That is incredible on many levels. Beilein listened to a cold call about a couple of guys he didn't know, did the requisite research to bridge that gap, and hired both of the Illinois State guys on offer. And the guy who'd hired them in the first place and saw them build a team that absolutely should have gotten an at-large NCAA bid in the MVC was selfless enough to kick that process off.
Additional YAK. Yahoo's Jeff Eisenberg has another long feature on Michigan's defensive coordinator:
The first priority Yaklich drilled into his team before Saturday’s game was to take away Florida State’s vaunted transition attack. The Wolverines responded by not surrendering a single fast-break point to a Seminoles team that scored 14 two nights earlier against Gonzaga.
The second point of emphasis from Yaklich was keeping Florida State from generating second-chance points. Michigan held the Seminoles below their season average in offensive rebounding percentage despite playing four guards for most of the game.
Yaklich’s final objective was to successfully foil Florida State’s pick-and-roll game and force the Seminoles to win the game shooting contested jumpers. The Wolverines fought over screens, made crisp rotations and recovered to shooters quickly, contributing to the Seminoles scoring almost nothing easy at the rim from start to finish.
“You have to take away the roll man against Florida State,” Yaklich said. “They’re so big and long. You watch them on video, and they’re throwing dunks in from five or six feet away. We just had to stop their momentum to the basket and then it’s the effort we always talk about on defense of getting back to the shooters.
“We have a phrase that we yell every day in practice every time a ball screen is set, and that’s “Do your job.” That means you’ve got to sprint to where you’re supposed to be right away. Those practice habits helped.”
Uh… what? Yahoo collects a bunch of coach quotes about the Final Four teams, and the guy talking about Michigan is a little cheesed off at the end:
Prediction: Loyola can beat their asses. Everyone saying this is a mismatch is wrong. Loyola has a bunch of like pieces, which screws up Michigan’s offense. It’s going to be a defensive-type game, which means that anyone can win. Look at the teams Michigan feasted on: Texas A&M, Purdue, Michigan State and Nebraska in the Big Ten tournament. If you play big like those teams, they are going to annihilate you. If you switch and junk it up and play almost guerrilla-warfare coverage on defense, they’ll struggle to score. If you can switch, which Loyola does 1 through 4, this game will be close.
I have a lot of problems with these assertions. One: Nebraska switches one through five better than anyone else in the Big Ten because Isaiah Roby is an elite defender. Two: Loyola's center is a plodder who's extremely ill-suited to switching. Three: who cares about switching 1-4? How many PG-SF pick and rolls do we think Michigan is running?
Also this was a bit of an odd assertion:
One thing we noticed was that they’re unbelievably handsy and grabby. I was almost taken aback at how physical they are. You don’t expect it. It’s going to be a physical game, you have to be ready to fight in the streets.
Can't say I've noticed a FIGHT IN THE STREETS kind of defense except for that one game against MSU, but I guess that's the word on the street. Mostly they just contest stuff. That doesn't make them WVU.
Best friends forever. Tim Hardaway Jr drew up a play for Trey Burke during Burke's 40-point double-double:
Hornacek let Hardaway Jr. draw this play up ... AND IT WORKED PERFECTLY. pic.twitter.com/m3VHfg2q0P
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) March 27, 2018
Of course it was a long two off the dribble.
Speaking of. Burke as Allen Iverson is happening:
The Knicks gave up 137 points to lose… but hey, Trey Burke! Pay no attention to his reliance on midrange jumpers.
Doubling down. Myron Medcalf managed to write a 3,000 word story about the rise of the three pointer in college basketball without a single one of them being "Beilein." Michigan is in the Final Four! Beilein's had one team in the last 15 years that wasn't in the 90th percentile in 3P%! Pittsnogle! Pittsnogle.
Instead, Medcalf's 3,000 word story includes quotes from Jaren Jackson, Miles Bridges, and Tom Izzo. I'm not even mad. I'm impressed.
Minnesota makes a hire. The Gophers' new hockey coach is St Cloud State's Bob Motzko. Motzko was SCSU's head coach for 13 years, during which the Huskies made 8 tourney appearances, including five of the last six years. Motzko never paid off his regular season success in the tourney as he reached just one Frozen Four and didn't get to the title game, but worst tourney in sports, etc. He's now got access to the biggest talent base in college hockey—seems like a pretty good hire.
Etc.: Miles Bridges declares for draft, hires agent, avoids going 1-5 against Michigan. Saban admits some offers aren't committable, which is fine. ESPN on Wagner. Baumgardner on the building blocks. Top talent now almost entirely avoids college soccer. Regional photo feature. The Great Tennessee Coaching Search Dump. Nick Boka profiled. Franz Wagner highlights.
If you make sure that the players you recruit never improve....
They can't leave early, or at least rarely can.
With a side of parking freshmen on the bench no matter what and negging players until they believe they suck and develop stockholm syndrome.
The midrange jumper is a terrible shot if you're forced into it, or settle for it, which is often the case. That's why it's becoming an anathema, and to be clear I'm not disputing this finding by NBA stat geeks. Usually a two-point jumper is a win for the defense. But a statistical trend isn't necessarily universal among all players. Burke has 3-point range (well of course he does) but he's leeetle by NBA standards, and he's not the quickest, so he was always going to need another weapon. Time will tell if his jumper is an anomaly that won't last or a go-to, but nothing wrong with a 2-point jump shot IF you can make it consistent. In Burke's case, it may be a need.
In creating your own shot, there are jumpers and driving. You have to be an excellent dribbler in traffic and have an explosive first step in order to get to the basket on a regular basis. Barely scratching 6 feet, won't cut it without Iverson/Westbrook level quickness. Even Chris Paul is limited in his role and has never been known as a scorer. Next best thing to develop is a pull up jumper, because it allows you to create space off the dribble, which you will always be able to do. Add in a runner and a step back or fadeway and you have enough in your arsenal to score against most people. Jordan's last few years were all pull up jumpers. But you have to make a high percentage of them, and at some point you have to threaten by taking it to the hoop, and then also driving and dishing. You are basically creating your triple threat: driving to a spot for the mid-range jumper, driving to the hoop, or driving to kick.
It's not going to fall like that all the time, but he was hot. And I think he needs that when he drives to keep the defender honest--his pullups were open looks, as his defender typically was retreating quickly to protect the basket.
Consider guys who can't shoot that kind of shot consistently: Ricky Rubio was a good example when he was here in Minnesota. They can still move the ball, but the absence of a jumper allows defenders to cheat.
Burke was also dealing assists in good quantities in that game. Hopefully he continues to produce well.
Man, I feel old. It was super-orthodox in the 90s. As canzior mentioned, Jordan extended his career with the pull-up, but it was also just a common way to create space if your drives alone weren't good enough (though not everyone was good at it).
If this pattern holds, it makes Burke more of a throwback player, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say as his midrange game goes, so will his career.
Year after year, Myron Medcalf is the worst ESPN writer / prognosticator come March. It's true he sets himself up by penning his notoriously awful "Predictions sure to go wrong" features, but even when it's not pure clowning, it's real crap content. Can't understand how he's kept a job after two years of constant layoffs at the worldwide leader.
Interesting stuff about college soccer. It's a sport stuck in a bind in a lot of ways. I was shocked to read that teams are routinely playing three games a week; that is an awful lot, and I can understand why a lot of people have concerns about it. Nobody in the upper levels plays with that kind of frequency, and even in the top levels of Europe where twice-a-week schedules are common there has been a lot of handwringing about "fixture shock."
The danger, of course, is that they could radically alter the sport to better suit pro prospects and still lose all the prospects anyway. And they're a bit handcuffed that the primary league they feed into, MLS, is a spring-summer-fall league. And it gets awfully cold in the winter in the northern states.
Glad I'm not the one with a stake in things. But I feel like the current fall system is awkward, for whatever that's worth.
Add in that in response to the frequency of games, college soccer has instituted a rule (relatively unlimited substitutions) that negatively affects player development. It leads teams to play pressing styles that are unsustainable for players over a 90 minute game. Those strategies, in turn, lead most coaches to deemphasize possession for the type of long ball, Route 1 soccer that doesn't serve players at higher levels.
Changing the sport to fall - spring would benefit all players, not just the future pros, because they'd be less prone to injury with a reduction of games to mostly one per week. The most shocking stat in that article is that studies have shown athletes playing 2-3 per week are six times more likely to be injured.
Per game?
That's pretty much what soccer does, and why it's so boring.
Complaining about teams pressing a lot and using aggressive offsensive strategies is why in the long run, unlimited subs would be great for all levels of soccer.
It's boring as hell when 8 guys on a side stand around conserving energy while only the 3 nearest the ball move.
Rest of the world seems to be doing fine with that formula. I do hear your concerns.
Field Hockey used to have a set number of substitutions per team per game. But back in 90s they moved to rolling substitution. The game has definitely changed and brought in more people to play.
How could we ever repay him for gifting us Haynes AND Yaklich? From the bottom of my heart, thank you Dan.
For allowing Coach Yak to
Do His Job. Go Blue.
"If you switch and junk it up and play almost guerrilla-warfare coverage on defense, they’ll struggle to score."
I think I understand - get handsy and grabby with them. Which is, essentially, playing guerilla-warfare defense by junking up the flow of the offense.
"One thing we noticed was that they’re unbelievably handsy and grabby. I was almost taken aback at how physical they are. You don’t expect it. It’s going to be a physical game, you have to be ready to fight in the streets."
Oh, crap - they can play the same way we do!! And they can beat us at our own game!!! DAMMIT!!!!
"We play dirty and lost anyway, so they must be doing it too."
No one likes being the bad guy, I get it, but I have particular disdain for delusional hypocrites. Own your own damn moral cowardice, or if you're a coach, at least LOOK at the team you're supposedly evaluating. Michigan is one of the most foul-averse teams in the country. FFS their post defense is often just stepping into the path of the drive, trapping with help defense, and then just standing there. Don't get bitter because Z has fast hands; his steals are almost always clean.
I agree with the "guerrilla-warfare coverage on defense" bit, but I'm not sure that is Loyola from what I've seen and also agree with Brian that we do well against a team with a traditional center.
The teams that do give us trouble are the very physical, athletic, long, amorphous teams that look like they have 5 of the same player.
Myron Medcalf's ex girlfriend from high school must have been accepted into and excelled at UofM. Dude is just a hater.
I actually have been saying the handsy/grabby thing about UofM's defense for awhile. I don't think it should be taken perjoratively, I think it's the way you defend the modern college game. Honestly, if you focus on Z all game long, in addition to the relentless textbook foul-free defense he gives is a decent number of arm grabs to keep his guy with him. Frankly, to be an elite defense, that's the kind of stuff you have to do (in situations where you know you want get called for it).
"Fight in the streets" is definitely getting a little carried away with the description. Unless this guy's just referring to Mo Wagner's off-the-top rope loose ball move, which, OK.
Uniformative trolling and invective seemingly from the proverbial 45-year olds still leaving in their mom's basement.
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