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.
Sounds similar to Belichik and the Patriots as I remember that they had something like 17 non-drafted players on this year's team.
He signs guys who are team players and typically not prima donnas.
perhaps,but only one of them doesn't cheat
Brady might be the biggest prima dona in the league. Gronk loves the spotlight, so did Randy Moss who contributed to the Patriots having their best offense ever. The patriots have a lot of undrafted guys on their team because they lost draft picks to cheating and are drafting late where the line between drafted and undrafted isn't that big. They get the best players they can that fit their systems, just like every team tries to do, they just do it better/have the greatest qb of all time to paper over a ton of flaws.
He's the greatest QB of all time. He's also the greatest whiner of all time.
Same thing as Sidney Crosby, the best player in the NHL for a long period of time but a grade a complainer.
I have three questions for you, ak47:
- What team are you a fan of in the NFL?
- Why no avatar of your name?
- Do you own an ak47 or other assault weapons?
.
1. Ravens, born and raised in Baltimore
2. I'm lazy
3. No
Regarding Ravens, I almost think that EVERY somewhat competitive team in the AFC hates the Patriots and by extension, Tom Brady.
Beyond that, I also think that almost every fan who is a partisan of a team in the northeast would hate the Patriots and by extension, Tom Brady.
So, in the NFC, Giants, Eagles and Redskins fans would hate the Pats. In the AFC, everyone hates the Pats, but especially Bills, Jets, Ravens, and Steelers.
I am a Bears fan, and the Bears suck (no pity wanted.) As a result, I am a also surrogate Pats fan, largely because of Brady and his Michigan connection. I want to see him seal his legacy as the GOAT. Maybe I'd feel differently if I was a fan of a competitive team in the Northeast.
of finding players like the ones you mention, one of the other keys is they kill it in the draft. Most of their draft picks pan out. Their higher picks just usually don't play super long for them because the Pats aren't willing to sign them to the lucrative long term contracts the players want.
About Brian believing Beilein's ceiling was crippled by recruiting...Brian also opined that Beilein's ceiling was a run maybe to the Sweet 16 every four years or so with a senior Pittsnogle type.
Not to pick on Brian whose opinions and prognostications are published every day but rather that most everyone thought that. We did not realize his skill as a developer of talent or his amazing ability to adapt and change.
Sparty FBall fans “I’ll take Dantonio and his convict 3 stars that win big games over Harbaugh, all his hype and 5 stars.”
Beilein has done an amazing job, but make no mistake, it's in spite of recruiting, not because of it. If he had his choice, he would have had Booker/Bluiett/Winston etc.
Not that the recruiting is entirely, or even mostly, his fault. I think it's pretty obvious that Beilein is working against a huge disadvantage in recruiting.
I suppose there is some similarity in terms of player development. Having said that, I think that Beilein is a much, much more positive, encouraging, upbeat, cheerful, enjoyable, pleasant, upstanding kind of guy. I won't say that Dantonio is morally corrupt: I actually suspect that he is kind of straight shooter, although I wouldn't know, and I'm sure that would be shot down here. However, even so, I don't think Beilein is so unhappy, with such a bunker like mentality, the way that Dantonio is.
I think Beilein has 7-10 years left in him. Just my opinion.
Baumgardner only used the word "but" seven times in the above article. He must've been having a good self-esteem day.
Most of his articles, every other sentence includes the word "but". The man constantly hedges his bets. He's scared to death of taking a stand on any point.
players who are so advanced in their development that they don't require the type of coaching that Beilein offers and provides.
He is a teacher of the game. Five stars aren't always the best pupils because they mostly have it all figured out. You can always question the guys that Beilein gets, but not what happens to them after he's had a chance to shape their growth into a team-oriented winning formula. And he just made a fanstastic concession about his own teaching abilities by acknowledging that coaching defense isn't his forte, and he is more than willing to find assistants who can shore up that weakness in his own game.
The championship teams that I most remember were teams molded by their own ability to succeed at a high level regardless of their talent. Michigan lost to Kentucky when it had a surplus of five-star talent and multiple seven-footers comng off the bench, and it still took a buzzer-beating shot to eliminate the Wolverines. And most of the guys who played on that Michigan team are in the pros, not exactly where they were projected when recruited. In fact,
By now, it ought to be self evident that Beilein makes his kids better, and he knows how to recruit kids with great shooting strokes whose foundation for improvement leaves lots of head room. If you're good enough and coachable, your development will exponentially improve under his tutelage. Just imagine Michigan this year with DJ on it. Lights out, with his continued growth and outstanding talent, this team might have lost once or maybe twice.
The fact is, Beilein has advanced the pro careers of some unlikely targets who were never highly recruited by the major programs and that's because as a coach at lesser schools, his program never had the name recognition in attracting top recruits. So you change the way you do business to succeed, just like in the real world. He didn't go after the big name recruits expecting to land them, just to show that he was making the effort to get them. Instead he found kids with great skill who for one reason or another, were overlooked by others. That's the skill of a great talent evaluator who knows what he needs, and how he can sculpt their ability into team success. Some kids buy in and others don't. Beilein was never about one-and-done, but he's so good in refining his kids skills that their talent advances beyond their time with him. That's not a negative, but as a fan you kind of just wish his teams wouldn't break up before their time.
I couldn't disagree with this more.
Matthews is a 5 star, he needs tons of development.
Look at every 5 star izzo has gotten that has busted or stuck around multiple years getting worse and not better.
Imagine how insanely good Michigan would be with Jaren jackson and Miles Bridges--super sized ridiculous athletes that shoot the 3.
It's insane to say Beilein only pretends to go after 5 stars. He only wants good kids and coachable kids but those are 5 stars too and all the ones we missed out on he wanted and we would be better if we got some of them.
re beileins ceiling being crippled by recruiting - that mightve been true to a limited extent for stretches (though he gets the best from his guys and develops shooters which when combined with style of play, it offsets some of recruiting impact) but beileins attitude toward D always had greater impact on ceiling.
beilein seems to have embraced the need to play tough, physical D and grind out it at times so thats no longer really a factor or argument. its been great to see
We didn’t take Simpson after Winston chose MSU. We proactively chose to take the bird in hand in Simpson after giving Winston first chance, which he declined. Winston was the top priority for a long time, and Beilein could have chosen to continue recruiting him. Many believe he would have eventually chosen Michigan.
for Beilein but that's the price for running a clean program. Recent revelations (and more to come) have shown just how dirty college basketball recruiting is at the top. With perhaps the exception of Duke, I think it's fairly certain that the programs at the top of the recruiting ranks are all very dirty with players simply being bought. There's absolutely no way Calipari is running a clean program with the way he is pulling in the very best players year after year. I was initially disappointed in our failure to reap any recruiting rewards from the national championship game run but not after it became obvious why.
Beilein is one of the best coaches in the game. He has been able to keep this program in the top 25 or better basically year in and year out despite a huge recruiting disadvantage. He's done it with a combination of superior coaching and superior scouting of talent. He has had to scour everywhere for hiddent talent - transfers from top programs and lower Division 3 and even overseas. What he's done is simply amazing.
The success of recruits he's lost out on is a testimony to his superior talent evaluation.
That was kind of a strange one...Real high on Michigan and then all of a sudden de-commits and it's Syracuse. Hmmm I wonder how that happens.