Rimjob? Uh…

"If he's (T.Jackson) better than Jace he'll probably be the starter at the 4."   Jace is the 3rd or 4th best option at the 4 so being better than Jace doesn't make you a starter.

Given the trend lately of top picks staying at Michigan 2+ years, I am hopeful we'll return pretty much everyone but Mackie, Hughes (obv), Fantilli, and Portillo so a good transfer goalie and this could/should be a top 8 team again I think

I know there have been some rumors maybe Fantilli wants to play another season, but I'll believe it when I see it

Would be nice to get some of these guys back for hockey next year.  It might be too much to ask for the Hobey winner to come back but who knows with cheap NHL teams anymore.

If Love isn't going to be the #1 scoring option, who is? It would take an unreasonably massive improvement from Dug or Tarris to reach that level.

Unfortunately, men’s basketball is going to be a major reboot pretty much every year going forward. Players who develop quickly (and even some who don’t) will be gone to the NBA after 2 years. Players who take longer or who just aren’t up to this level will mostly enter the portal. Not many guys will fall in between.

Can we add Davis to Tray Jackson's name and get a Hoosier doppelganger?

Brian tends to fall victim to the "past results are a guarantee of future performance" fallacy, whether it's evaluating opponents in football (Illinois, he famously claimed right before they played us, "is butt") or incoming basketball players from the portal. The fact is, each of those players will have one more year of experience under their belts, each will be playing in a new system and with the slate-cleaning that comes from a fresh start, and each will have the opportunity for additional coaching under Juwan and the Michigan assistant coaches. 

Will that transform them? Who knows? It would be like assuming Bufkin is only good for 3 points a game, because that's all he managed in 2021-22. Players improve, no? And Juwan is clearly confident (or at least hopeful) that he can get more out of the incoming guys than they've achieved in the past.

Focusing on their stats in the past, not on their athleticism or potential, is only half the story. And it seems to me they have at least the potential to do more. And I'm not so absolutely sure that Juwan is so clueless about basketball that his confidence is worthless. Here's to hoping for a surprising 2023-24!

Made it through the first half.  I have to tip my cap to Seth so far on this pod.  I've been critical of his non-Football contributions to the pod in recent weeks as I found them to be highly confident but modestly informed takes on basketball and hockey.  In this one he's spot on while Brian is more of the "die hard fan" viewpoint.  

Hockey Loss:

• Portillo was not a championship goalie and those goals were bad - so he needs to take some criticism.  But I'm with Seth in that he also made several high level saves at the same time and I don't agree with Brian's erasure of those.  
• My argument was that Michigan was never winning a Frozen Four game 2-1.  Their defense, PK, and GK were never going to be good enough against an elite opponent for that.  So let's correctly bash Portillo's performance, but acknowledge that he faced far too many good chances and we created far too few.  I don't know how to find expected goals for college but in my head it was something like 5-3 and we lost 5-2.  
• How it is 2023 and we're only allowed 2 paid assistants for hockey is insane.  

Basketball:

• I have concerns about Love since he's mostly been an inefficient chucker.  But I've come around a bit because Michigan needed someone to be high usage and there weren't a lot of choices.  If he were efficient he'd be in the NBA.  We are right to be skeptical of his play and specifically shot selection - but he also helped UNC make the title game and we need someone to take tough shots for us.  
• When rebuilding a roster through the portal you're almost always picking between high-major former stars that have sort of washed out, high performing low-major guys that may or may not make the leap, or a very small number of highest-bidder NIL chasers.  There are reasons to believe Juwan and his staff can "fix" guys like Love and Burnett.....but it might not work.  
• If we're optimistic, the best versions of the players projected to start all address problems we've had lately - defense, athleticism, switchability, taking tough shots, depth, positional size, etc.  We don't have any shooting really, however and all of our players have some fatal flaws (or else the would follow the Michigan tradition of going to the NBA to be a deep bench player).
• It appears Michigan is still on the market for more talent....though I'm curious where the roster spots are coming from.  We can dream about Hunter returning, but that might mean Reed transfers.  We'll see.  
• Hard not to be crushed by how ugly this season was.  But our two portal "fixes" both flamed out in ways that were out of our control - Llewelyn's injury and TSJ's academics.