Beilein and hotseat...is it fair?

But there is no question his recent recruiting misses have hurt the program.

Couple that with some really bad injury luck and you have some less than stellar years.

That being said, he's not on the hot-seat.  He's essentially in the running for being one of the most successful basketball coaches in Michigan history.  If he had pulled of the title game win a few years back, he'd have a strong case for it. 

I think it is fine for people to want and expect more from the program, but the idea that Beilein is going anywhere is not something that is going to happen. 

The "we can't recruit well because we aren't dirty" argument is weak. There is still a lot of explaining to be done. Take for example the Austin Davis offer. Just... why? He's a 3*, not athletic, and not particularly good at anything. I guess he has nice footwork, but nothing else about his game is impressive. Not to mention we already have Donnal, Doyle, Wagner, DJ, and Teske coming next year. And JB doesn't like to play 2 bigs at once. Why did we offer early?

IMO Beilein really needs to cut it out with these "skilled" big men. I think he has some dream of five guys on the floor who can all step outside and shoot well, when clearly four of those guys plus an athletic rim protector would put us in a much better position. I'm not talking about an elite level big either. Just someone with above average athleticism who can be physical on defense in addition to catching and finishing around the basket. I think we would all agree it would be useful to trade Donnal's outside shooting ability for more traditional big man skills.

Pretty funny looking back at how lots of people here were beating their chests and proclaiming that Beilein had taken over the state of Michigan a couple years ago. Now we have lost the last four games vs. MSU (all by double digits) and Izzo is bringing in monster recruits. Let's just hope Beilein's replacement is better than Izzo's.

To see these opinions broken down by age demographics. 

I honestly can't fathom anyone over 40 even considering the idea that Beilin should be on the hot seat. Having experienced several decades now of completely shit basketball before he arrived and all. Two recent B10 champs and two years removed from a breath away from back to back Final Fours and we're seriously talking about this?

That said, are people completely incapable of providing context? The team has been dealing with injuries to its best players the last two years. Levert, far and away the teams best player is out. And yet Beilin is supposed to sprinkle magic fairy dust on a team that starts two people who had decent floor time last year and auto nuke everyone that sets foot on the court? Sure...ok. Duke has the same record and some laughably bad losses and I don't see anyone calling for Coach K's head. Who do you expect to get that will instantly make this team better? What is considered "better" at this point? Does the new coach get a mulligan or two if his best players go down?

Reality: The team is good enough to beat bad and mediocre teams, they aren't good enough to beat good ones right now and I wouldn't expect that to change until Levert is back. You have issues with recruiting? You'd prefer we go the Kentucky route to win a few more basketball games? No thanks. 

I'm sure Beilein will recruit some hidden gems and have another good team in a few years. If the team regains its compsure they should finish with 9 wins in the B1G and make it into the tournament. It seem like they were playing well  a few weeks ago. The only way Beilein leaves is when he retires.

Is Thad Matta on the hot seat?  Matt Painter?  Illinois looks terrible this year.  The reality of college basketball is that you're going to have some bad games and bad stretches especially during the regular season.  It sucks if you care, but I'd doubt you could get someone that would be better then Beilein.  You could get a better recruiter, but it'd be a worse coach more than likely.  

Not sure the answer - but this really sucks having a soft team,  that can't play D, & can't shoot worth a shit either. 

Actually sad and disappointing that there's actually a group of people out there who actually feel a coach of John Beilein's caliber is someone who needs to be replaced.

I follow nearly every one of the 351 D-1 CBB teams (probably 250) in the country as a professional sports bettor that does this full-time every single day for over 6 months a year and I seriously can't think of another CBB coach in the country that I'd rather have over John Beilein.

I've had this same discussion with the only people I know who also closely follow the 22 CBB conference's out of 33 that have point spreads on their games on a regular basis. These guy's follow CBB at the highest levels also as it's how we get paid and nearly every time the topic of top CBB coaches come's up John Beilein is a guy all agree is on that short list. 

Also to anyone brining up the first 3-4 years JB was at Michigan and trying to use that to make a a point in their argument ("he's only went to the tournament 3 of 8 times" or whatever crap they say), wow that's so weak.

Keep in mind this is the guy who in a short period of time rebuilt what was a total crap CBB program into one that WON THE BIG TEN TITLE OR WENT TO THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME 3 OF THE LAST 4 SEASONS!!! 

Take a second and think about that. Now add in the fact sincec then he lost a consensus top 20 NBA 1st round pick last year to a season ending injury and then to make matters worse arguably the next best player on his team a game or two after that. This year he's once again had to deal with nearly the same issues of having to play without his top guy (a superstar level CBB player) again out for large chunks of the season. 

Caris Levert is ranked 2nd in the entire country right now in offensive rating for players with 24% possessions or more. He's even ahead of Oklahoma's Buddy Hield currently this year. Take Hield off Oklahoma and tell me how good they'd be. In fact show me another top ranked program who could lose their best player and team leader and not have it have a major effect.

If you define what exactly a COLLEGE BASKETBALL PROGRAM would want out of a coach (a teacher), he's one of if not the best there is in the country. 

Just ask the people who know this subject the most and see what they think about how well of a job he does:

http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/index.ssf/2015/08/john_beilein_voted_be…;

Also just to show how he get's more out of his teams than most CBB coaches, he's had the BEST against the spread record of any current coach in the NCAA tournament. Last time I looked he also had one of the highest ATS records in his career as the HC at Michigan. He's been someone that you could have actually just bet blindly in every game and you would have shown a healthy profit in doing so. 

Thankfully I believe that the people making the decisions behind the scenes at the University of Michigan know the dirty world that is college basketball and they also know just how special of a guy they have in John Beilein. When you take into account his on the court results and combine them with the way he represents the university and the way he's been running the program, I'd say that John Beilein's job is as safe as any other CBB head coach in the country. 



 


 

I like Beilein and staff, but I hope we can start landing more talent. Basketball recruiting is so shady, though. I guess I'm not opposed to bending a few rules, but I definitely don't want the program involved in a scandal.    

In the previous four years, we had three very good ones and one too marred by inury to count.  This has been a terrible week, but even if the whole year goes downhill, it would be the frst real dissapointing season since 09-10.

But for some perspective, this year would rank as one of the best non-vacated years of the pre-Beilein era since Glenn Rice.  We had two official tournament appearances between 1990 and 2009; even if you count the vacated ones we had six: missing the tournament 70% of the time for two decades.  By the time I got to campus as a freshman in '07, the team had to sit on the Diag and beg people to come to games.  Ellerbe and Amaker had sanctions to deal with, so let's go back further.  Fisher's teams were mediocre at best after the Fab Five; Frieder made one sweet sixteen in a decade.

People need to be realistic about what this program is: good but not among the national elite.  We're not Duke (who also sucks this year by the way), and if people think those are the expectations, we're going to be firing every coach we have from now until the end of time.

I think it is very fair and objective to say that Coach B's seat might be getting warm.  He will obviously get this year, but I believe that if next season is similar to this season (getting crushed by pretty much any good team we play) his coaching seat will start to get rather hot.

Coach B has done a fantastic job of resurecting our program and bringing us back to respectability, but there are still glaring holes that have not been corrected whether its due to philosopy, stubborness or outside factors.

Defense is terrible and has been terrible for quite some time.  There is no excuse for this.  Defensive should be a stable for EVERY team and we just look like we don't care, aren't taught correctly or it just isn't even part of the program.  Whatever the reason is, this a severe problem.

Offense has become too predictable and frankly too gimicky to work year after year in a Power 5 Conference, especially one as good as the Big Ten.  The reason our offense worked in the 2 Year Run, as I call it, is that we had elite level players, a Big Man that didn't just sit on the perimeter for screens AND guards that could penetrate and open up the floor.  That is one of the biggest keys to our success those two years.  Burke, Hardaway and even Stauskas could get into the paint regularly, which caused the defenses to collapse and really open those outside shots.   Unfortunately, our current guards just don't have that ability for whatever reason.  So, instead, our whole team 1-5 stays out on the perimeter so its no suprise that all of our shots are contested.

Recruting, to me, has perhaps been the biggest issues.  We have really missed out and have just not capitalized on that 2 Year Run.   I know that we aren't going to get Blue Chips year after year, but when we miss on them, our alternatives are just not enough.  Perfect examply was the Xavier game, their 6'8 F/C was just killing us all day and he was from the state of Michigan.   They even mentioned time and again during the game, why didn't Michigan or Michigan state for that matter, go after him.  He wasn't a very highly rated recruit, but you can see that he had the size and athleticism.  That is what Coach B should be looking for if/when he strikes out on Blue Chip recruits.  Just like in football, sometimes  you just need to get athletes in and teach them the game.   Give me that 6'8' tweener that is just a beast of an athlete and I can teach him the basics.   Yes, we have to get skill, but you need a combination of skill players and just athletes.   That, to me, has been a big flaw with recruiting.  We don't necessarly need to get "DIrty" as other people have suggested, but we should look at some of those raw, but monster athletes, that we could turn into a BBall player.   You put one of those on this team right now at the 4/5 and basically have him stay in the box, screen, rebound, block shots, this team doesn't get blown out and may have even won some of those lost games.

Sorry for the long post.  Again, not saying we should fire Coach B tomorrow, but if next year turns out like this year, I believe his seat is offcially "Hot".