This season sucks. No doubt about that. But I’m old enough to remember when people were calling for Beilein to get fired after the 2015/2016 seasons.
Calling for him to get fired at this point is absurd. He’s proven to be an elite recruiter and claiming he doesn’t know how to coach is such a lazy, bad take. It should be fairly obvious to anyone who knows basketball that Michigan runs some pretty sophisticated offensive sets by ncaa standards. There’s a lot of well-designed nba style stuff in the playbook that Michigan’s more experienced teams did a really good job of running.
Now the last couple of years, they’ve struggled to execute on both ends of the floor, largely due to relying on inexperienced freshmen/sophomores. I think there’s a good argument that if you’re going to recruit tons of 1-and-done types you have to simplify the playbook to make that type of roster work. In other words, what kentucky does. But of course that would only add fuel to the “Juwan can’t coach” fire if he went full calipari and just rolled out the ball and let guys do what they want.
Or maybe the answer is that you need to recruit more transfers and program guys to balance out the youth, but then you risk losing guys to the transfer portal, which Juwan has already got flak for with Collins and others.
It also probably isn’t entirely the coach’s fault when your all-American caliber center plays like a shell of his former self who’s content to cash his NIL checks and go home. Also doesn’t help when your starting PG tears his acl.
Anyways there are a lot of reasons why we’re here but just as many potential ways to address the issues over the off-season. Juwan’s definitely shown enough to earn the right to try and clean up this mess.
But that team was absolutely not going to win a national title.
I wouldn’t rule it out. If you recall, that team was rolling early in the year and started stumbling only when Livers got hurt. Then when he came back they looked right back on track until the world shut down. 5-5 without livers, 14-7 with him. Definitely think they had a puncher’s chance with everybody healthy.
This is such a trash take. You have to really not know basketball at all to think this.
Michigan has very obviously been an extremely well-coached team under Howard’s tenure. The offensive sets they run are among the more complex relative to what ncaa teams typically. They regularly generate quality looks in the half court - the problem the last couple years have been knocking them down.
They also move the ball extremely well, another hallmark of a well-coached team. I rarely see bad shots and/or selfish play, which is a rarity if you watch other teams play. Beilein’s teams were pretty good ball-movers too but even he had a few guys like Hardaway and Irvin who just couldn’t always be reigned in and had me pulling my hair out at some of their heat checks. I’ve basically never had that feeling under Howard’s tenure despite having plenty of guys with shoot-first tendencies. If you compare Chaundee Brown’s shot selection at wake forest to at Michigan you’d think you were watching two different guys.
Defense has been more of a mixed bag but I chalk that up more to relatively inexperienced rosters. The 2021 team had a top 5 defense in the nation despite starting an undersized pg and a freshman at center.
All in all you have to have the brain of a mouse or not know basketball at all to think these teams are poorly coached.
Do you not consider Eli Brooks to have been developed?
Of course you could reasonably argue that beilein holdovers don’t count. But if you don’t count beilein holdovers then the premise of questioning whether a coach can develop guards when he hasn’t had a chance to coach a single recruiting class through senior year yet is an absurd premise.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I definitely understand and and expect there will be ups and downs and if Dug can’t develop as a shooter, that will put a lot of pressure on the rest of his game to overcome that deficiency.
But it’s absolutely laughable that folks were questioning whether he could even be a D1 player after last game. He clearly has a pretty special ability to take guys off the dribble, and despite some big hiccups the last couple of games he seems to see the court extremely well for a college freshman.
I said this even before this game -it says a lot that Juwan is putting the ball in his hands this much this early. He didn’t give Frankie or Zeb anywhere near this much rope unless he absolutely had to because of injuries.
Terrence is a guy who takes what the defense gives him. That means he’ll have games like against EMU where he takes advantage of a lot of open looks and slashing opportunities because defenders are leaving him. That also means he’ll have games where he doesn’t show up in the box score as much but as long as he plays solid defense, moves the ball and spaces the floor, he’s doing his job. That doesn’t make him inconsistent even if his stats are.
For fuck’s sake there isn’t a basketball player alive who doesn’t get beat by a back cut every now and then. If it becomes a consistent issue, then we’ll have a problem but that was just one example.
i do agree that his off-ball defense could use some work but being like “omg how can he give up a back cut” is just a ridiculous take.
He’s a freshman pg. He’s obviously making a lot of typical freshman mistakes but he also clearly has a very advanced command of the game for a freshman. The fact that Howard is letting him run the offense as much as he is speaks volumes. Frankie and Zeb never got anywhere close to this much leash early in the season.
I’m personally bullish on TWill as a creator. He didn’t get much of a chance to show it off but the guy definitely has some signs of being a shot maker.
It’ll be matchup dependant. You don’t want Baker guarding any 2s who are primary options but if the other team’s 2 is a just-a-shooter type you can have him there.
Have we been linked to any other transfer guards? Not as far as I can tell.
I wonder if the plan is to use play 3 wings with a pg a lot nba style with Jett/baker/twill on the floor at the same time
Edit: I think the Youssef pursuit all but confirms this. Expecting to see a lot of lengthy 3-wing lineups. Yeah maybe Baker/Twill/Howard don’t have ideal quickness for the 2 but with all that size and shooting out there there good things will happen.
This is just wrong. You’re very misinformed about Baker’s career at Duke. Yes they’ve had nba talent on the roster but he was a top recruit who was supposed to complement those guys. And they weren’t that deep every year. They burned his redshirt because they ran out of bodies after Zion got hurt.
This guy was given every chance to be a starter at Duke but couldn’t cut it.
A lanky former top recruit white guy who can shoot the ball but can’t do anything else? So basically the Matt Vogrich of Duke. I’m sure the guy will also be a great fit at Skeeps on Tuesdays
Not sure what point you're trying to make here. Even though Houstan didn't fully live up to expectations, that was probably more due to unfair expectations. He still had a pretty damn good season for a freshman, way better than Caleb Love's freshman year.
Besides, despite Love's improvement, he's still getting mocked as a late first-rounder/high second-rounder.
I think what people don't understand about draft stock is that it's not enough to go back to school and improve. NBA scouts expect players to improve as they get older. To improve your draft stock, you need not only improve but improve MORE than NBA scouts expected you to improve. That's a very high bar that many players who return don't reach.
I don’t say that to be a dick, but genuinely curious. Because as someone who follows the nba a lot more closely than college basketball I’m not surprised at all that Houstan is getting overdrafted. There is a huge scarcity of 2-way wings who can shoot in the nba. Guys like Houstan who have prototypical nba measurables and a proven 3-pt shot are extremely hard to find.
Now having watched Houstan play closely, I wouldn’t take him. I have a lot of concerns about his inability to finish inside and shoot anything but very clean, non-contested looks and what that says about his functional athleticism. But am I surprised that nba scouts are willing to overlook those things for a guy who looks like the spitting image of klay Thompson if you squint? Absolutely not.
There’s a whole universe of sophomores who came back and didn’t improve their draft stock. Hunter Dickinson is a prime example where even though he got better across the board, it still wasn’t really needed-moving.
You have to take a pretty massive leap to get nba teams excited about you while also being a year older.
I think it's pretty ridiculous that people are assuming that Bates, who is still only 18, is a finished product and can't improve on his performance last year. He obviously struggled with shot selection and decision-making, but he was a 17-year-old freshman.
Passing is coachable. I have a hard time seeing a Juwan Howard team devolve into iso-ball. If it does happen, it'll be the first time it has. Michigan has been one of the better ball-moving teams in the Big Ten under Juwan's tenure. Some of that is obviously personnel, but a lot of guys have improved their passing quite a bit while coached by Juwan. Franz tripled his assist rate Y1 to Y2. Hunter doubled his. Livers and Brooks improved a lot too. Devante Jones and Mike Smith were both definitively score-first players who reigned it in under Juwan.
Yep and in a world where Houstan and Diabate are both back I could see him sitting out even. If I were him I wouldn't want to use a year of eligibility coming off the bench when he could clearly start for most D1 teams.
I don’t disagree with folks picking Poole but I don’t agree that it’s not close.
People are forgetting how good Levert is when healthy. He’s not the pure shooter Poole is but he’s a dangerous playmaker in his own right and more versatile defensively. He averaged 20 and 9 in the playoffs 2 years ago so it’s not like he’s incapable of doing it at the highest level.
Hardaway is also in the “injured so people are forgetting him right now” camp. He’s never gone off like Poole is doing now but he also is a better defender.
Pure speculation on my part but if both Houstan and Diabate return, I wouldn't be surprised if TWill transfers. There have been rumblings of him doing so and honestly if he's not a starter next year, I wouldn't blame him for leaving. He clearly showed last year IMO that he was ready for a big role this year and if he's fighting Jett and Gregg Glenn for backup minutes, I think it would be totally fair for him to look for more minutes elsewhere as an upperclassman.
So one way or another I think another scholarship opens up for another sorely needed guard.
Pure speculation here (but aren’t we all just speculating?) but I wonder if this has something to do with Dickinson’s return actually.
It’s a lot harder to stand out as a PG when your offense flows through a traditional big man in the post. Especially when you’re not a great shooter/off-ball threat.
For all the talk about NIL and getting recruited over, maybe this is as simple as Collins correctly ascertaining that his skill set fits best on a team built around the pick-and-roll and Michigan isn’t going to be that type of team as long as Dickinson is here.
I think you're dramatically underestimating how much this team should improve naturally. We had an extremely young roster last year. There will be a lot of improvement. Running it back should easily give us a Top 5 team.
Some similarities but Llewellyn seems much more clearly a 2-guard vs. a PG. He did a lot of creating off the bounce at Princeton but unclear if that'll translate to the Big Ten where there are better athletes so he may end up being more limited to catch-and-shoots, attacking closeouts.
The NBA combine is invite-only, with invites decided by a committee of NBA team reps. They usually invite about 60-70 players. There doesn't seem to be a hard limit as the number varies year by year but I'm sure they don't want to waste anyone's time by inviting players that clearly aren't good enough to make the league.
Also it costs money to travel to the combine. I would guess the NBA covers that but in any case somebody's paying for that flight ticket and I don't know why you would for someone who obviously isn't good enough to make it.
Now you can get drafted without attending the combine, and some elite prospects who are no-doubt lottery picks will skip. But it's pretty rare for players on the fringe to get drafted without attending the combine, with the exception of international players.
He missed a decent chunk of time with an injury. Texas tech also had a pretty deep rotation so he wasn’t playing 35 mpg. When he was playing he was definitely putting up shots.
Juwan is super well connected and highly regarded across the NBA. It's not like this is his only shot. He'll have plenty of future opportunities to coach in the NBA, likely in even better setups.
I don't think there's much near-term concern here. I'd be very surprised if Juwan Howard left Michigan while his sons are on the roster. That's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to coach his kids that he'll never have again.
The NBA will always be there, and the Lakers job isn't a very good one IMO (high expectations, shitty, aging roster beyond Lebron + AD). Juwan's profile is high enough at this point that I think it's pretty safe to say he'll be able to get an NBA job at some point in the future when he wants to.
So I doubt he leaves now, but I do think these rumors will keep popping up and eventually, he will leave so Michigan would do well to have a succession plan in place. I just don't think there's that much risk he leaves in the next couple years.
It would be a high-profile job for sure. But I think it's a pretty crappy setup. Frank Vogel isn't a bad coach. Maybe a different coach could get a bit more out of the team, but the Lakers' problem this year wasn't coaching, it was talent.
They have little around Lebron except AD who's often hurt. Westbrook is just a disaster at this point in his career, and it'll be extremely difficult to trade him for anyone much better. There isn't much else in terms of young talent, cap room or assets to upgrade the roster. AD getting healthy would help a lot, but even with him this team is a long way away from being a championship-caliber roster and those are the expectations.
Whoever takes the Lakers job is just getting set up for failure IMO.
"Any "spacing" issues they had were those that came from playing two bigs that made for limited driving lanes"
A lot of teams play two bigs together. Once upon a time it was the default. Less common today for sure, but you're acting like Michigan was unique in playing 2 bigs. Was certainly rare during the Beilein era, but those Beilein teams played smaller than most teams do.
There are tradeoffs from both sides, and when you play 2 bigs, that does put more pressure on your perimeter players to shoot. You are correct that if we started Twill over Moussa, shooting would've been better, but you could say the same thing about if we had a knockdown shooting PG to play over Jones.
"the expectation is that he'll change the complexion of the team next year...That only happens with no-brainer pros that are generally top 5 propsects overall."
You might mean something else by "changing the complexion of the team", but I don't know if the bar is that high. I mean I'd point to someone like Iggy Brazdeikis as someone who definitely "changed the complexion" of that year's team, and he was far from a "top 5 prospect".
Not saying that should be the expectation for Jett, but seems like that could be an upside case?
Recent Comments
This season sucks. No doubt about that. But I’m old enough to remember when people were calling for Beilein to get fired after the 2015/2016 seasons.
Calling for him to get fired at this point is absurd. He’s proven to be an elite recruiter and claiming he doesn’t know how to coach is such a lazy, bad take. It should be fairly obvious to anyone who knows basketball that Michigan runs some pretty sophisticated offensive sets by ncaa standards. There’s a lot of well-designed nba style stuff in the playbook that Michigan’s more experienced teams did a really good job of running.
Now the last couple of years, they’ve struggled to execute on both ends of the floor, largely due to relying on inexperienced freshmen/sophomores. I think there’s a good argument that if you’re going to recruit tons of 1-and-done types you have to simplify the playbook to make that type of roster work. In other words, what kentucky does. But of course that would only add fuel to the “Juwan can’t coach” fire if he went full calipari and just rolled out the ball and let guys do what they want.
Or maybe the answer is that you need to recruit more transfers and program guys to balance out the youth, but then you risk losing guys to the transfer portal, which Juwan has already got flak for with Collins and others.
It also probably isn’t entirely the coach’s fault when your all-American caliber center plays like a shell of his former self who’s content to cash his NIL checks and go home. Also doesn’t help when your starting PG tears his acl.
Anyways there are a lot of reasons why we’re here but just as many potential ways to address the issues over the off-season. Juwan’s definitely shown enough to earn the right to try and clean up this mess.
I wouldn’t rule it out. If you recall, that team was rolling early in the year and started stumbling only when Livers got hurt. Then when he came back they looked right back on track until the world shut down. 5-5 without livers, 14-7 with him. Definitely think they had a puncher’s chance with everybody healthy.
This is such a trash take. You have to really not know basketball at all to think this.
Michigan has very obviously been an extremely well-coached team under Howard’s tenure. The offensive sets they run are among the more complex relative to what ncaa teams typically. They regularly generate quality looks in the half court - the problem the last couple years have been knocking them down.
They also move the ball extremely well, another hallmark of a well-coached team. I rarely see bad shots and/or selfish play, which is a rarity if you watch other teams play. Beilein’s teams were pretty good ball-movers too but even he had a few guys like Hardaway and Irvin who just couldn’t always be reigned in and had me pulling my hair out at some of their heat checks. I’ve basically never had that feeling under Howard’s tenure despite having plenty of guys with shoot-first tendencies. If you compare Chaundee Brown’s shot selection at wake forest to at Michigan you’d think you were watching two different guys.
Defense has been more of a mixed bag but I chalk that up more to relatively inexperienced rosters. The 2021 team had a top 5 defense in the nation despite starting an undersized pg and a freshman at center.
All in all you have to have the brain of a mouse or not know basketball at all to think these teams are poorly coached.
I also think he got way too jumper happy towards the end. Some went in others didn’t, but I don’t think those are the best shots we can get.
This reads like like someone who didn’t watch the game and only looked at the box score.
Collins was a force on the defensive end and was largely responsible for a lot of turnovers that turned into efficient transition offense.
The foul trouble took him off the court but by then the game was mostly out of reach anyways
Do you not consider Eli Brooks to have been developed?
Of course you could reasonably argue that beilein holdovers don’t count. But if you don’t count beilein holdovers then the premise of questioning whether a coach can develop guards when he hasn’t had a chance to coach a single recruiting class through senior year yet is an absurd premise.
I don’t see anyone overreacting positively.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I definitely understand and and expect there will be ups and downs and if Dug can’t develop as a shooter, that will put a lot of pressure on the rest of his game to overcome that deficiency.
But it’s absolutely laughable that folks were questioning whether he could even be a D1 player after last game. He clearly has a pretty special ability to take guys off the dribble, and despite some big hiccups the last couple of games he seems to see the court extremely well for a college freshman.
I said this even before this game -it says a lot that Juwan is putting the ball in his hands this much this early. He didn’t give Frankie or Zeb anywhere near this much rope unless he absolutely had to because of injuries.
But I was told Dug McDaniel was hopeless and would never be a successful D1 player!
Terrence is a guy who takes what the defense gives him. That means he’ll have games like against EMU where he takes advantage of a lot of open looks and slashing opportunities because defenders are leaving him. That also means he’ll have games where he doesn’t show up in the box score as much but as long as he plays solid defense, moves the ball and spaces the floor, he’s doing his job. That doesn’t make him inconsistent even if his stats are.
del
For fuck’s sake there isn’t a basketball player alive who doesn’t get beat by a back cut every now and then. If it becomes a consistent issue, then we’ll have a problem but that was just one example.
i do agree that his off-ball defense could use some work but being like “omg how can he give up a back cut” is just a ridiculous take.
Not if you get all the way to the rim uncontested it’s not.
He lost the handle on the way up but if he hadn’t that’s a wide open layup.
Bad execution? Yes.
Bad decision-making? Nope.
He’s a freshman pg. He’s obviously making a lot of typical freshman mistakes but he also clearly has a very advanced command of the game for a freshman. The fact that Howard is letting him run the offense as much as he is speaks volumes. Frankie and Zeb never got anywhere close to this much leash early in the season.
Yep I definitely remember that tip in too not sure what happened
Damn we lost Jones twice?
I’m personally bullish on TWill as a creator. He didn’t get much of a chance to show it off but the guy definitely has some signs of being a shot maker.
They got two of the…
???
They got two of the best transfers in the portal in Llewellyn and Baker and came close with a third (Shannon).
If you were expecting more you shouldn’t have.
If they land this kid from Europe it’ll have been an incredible haul.
I wasn’t shitting on Houstan. I agree with you that he was a key piece on the team and catches more flak than he deserves.
But I do think Baker will likely be better. What he lacks in raw talent compared to Houstan he makes up for with far more experience.
Downgrade compared to sophomore version of Houstan? Probably.
Downgrade compared to last year’s Houstan? I highly doubt it.
It’ll be matchup dependant. You don’t want Baker guarding any 2s who are primary options but if the other team’s 2 is a just-a-shooter type you can have him there.
Have we been linked to any other transfer guards? Not as far as I can tell.
I wonder if the plan is to use play 3 wings with a pg a lot nba style with Jett/baker/twill on the floor at the same time
Edit: I think the Youssef pursuit all but confirms this. Expecting to see a lot of lengthy 3-wing lineups. Yeah maybe Baker/Twill/Howard don’t have ideal quickness for the 2 but with all that size and shooting out there there good things will happen.
This is just wrong. You’re very misinformed about Baker’s career at Duke. Yes they’ve had nba talent on the roster but he was a top recruit who was supposed to complement those guys. And they weren’t that deep every year. They burned his redshirt because they ran out of bodies after Zion got hurt.
This guy was given every chance to be a starter at Duke but couldn’t cut it.
A lanky former top recruit white guy who can shoot the ball but can’t do anything else? So basically the Matt Vogrich of Duke. I’m sure the guy will also be a great fit at Skeeps on Tuesdays
The fact that he shot 38% from 3 and couldn’t get more than 10 mpg tells you how bad he is at everything else.
Yes we need shooters but adding a shooter who can’t stay on the floor isn’t really adding another shooter.
Maybe pickings are slim and Baker is the best gettable option but I don’t think he’s likely to help much.
Not sure what point you're trying to make here. Even though Houstan didn't fully live up to expectations, that was probably more due to unfair expectations. He still had a pretty damn good season for a freshman, way better than Caleb Love's freshman year.
Besides, despite Love's improvement, he's still getting mocked as a late first-rounder/high second-rounder.
I think what people don't understand about draft stock is that it's not enough to go back to school and improve. NBA scouts expect players to improve as they get older. To improve your draft stock, you need not only improve but improve MORE than NBA scouts expected you to improve. That's a very high bar that many players who return don't reach.
“Seems like you're kind of contradicting yourself.”
You need to read my posts more clearly.
My pov is that I don’t like Houstan as a prospect but I can easily see why nba scouts would have a favorable pov.
Kind of like I can see why you might view my post as contradictory if you didn’t read it accurately.
That’s a reflection of wings being much harder to find and of shooters being much harder to find than athletic bigs.
Diabate has way more ceiling but a lot more to prove to be even a rotation player.
How much do you follow the NBA?
I don’t say that to be a dick, but genuinely curious. Because as someone who follows the nba a lot more closely than college basketball I’m not surprised at all that Houstan is getting overdrafted. There is a huge scarcity of 2-way wings who can shoot in the nba. Guys like Houstan who have prototypical nba measurables and a proven 3-pt shot are extremely hard to find.
Now having watched Houstan play closely, I wouldn’t take him. I have a lot of concerns about his inability to finish inside and shoot anything but very clean, non-contested looks and what that says about his functional athleticism. But am I surprised that nba scouts are willing to overlook those things for a guy who looks like the spitting image of klay Thompson if you squint? Absolutely not.
There’s a whole universe of sophomores who came back and didn’t improve their draft stock. Hunter Dickinson is a prime example where even though he got better across the board, it still wasn’t really needed-moving.
You have to take a pretty massive leap to get nba teams excited about you while also being a year older.
Nobody’s talking about emoni as a PG
I think it's pretty ridiculous that people are assuming that Bates, who is still only 18, is a finished product and can't improve on his performance last year. He obviously struggled with shot selection and decision-making, but he was a 17-year-old freshman.
Passing is coachable. I have a hard time seeing a Juwan Howard team devolve into iso-ball. If it does happen, it'll be the first time it has. Michigan has been one of the better ball-moving teams in the Big Ten under Juwan's tenure. Some of that is obviously personnel, but a lot of guys have improved their passing quite a bit while coached by Juwan. Franz tripled his assist rate Y1 to Y2. Hunter doubled his. Livers and Brooks improved a lot too. Devante Jones and Mike Smith were both definitively score-first players who reigned it in under Juwan.
Yep and in a world where Houstan and Diabate are both back I could see him sitting out even. If I were him I wouldn't want to use a year of eligibility coming off the bench when he could clearly start for most D1 teams.
I don’t disagree with folks picking Poole but I don’t agree that it’s not close.
People are forgetting how good Levert is when healthy. He’s not the pure shooter Poole is but he’s a dangerous playmaker in his own right and more versatile defensively. He averaged 20 and 9 in the playoffs 2 years ago so it’s not like he’s incapable of doing it at the highest level.
Hardaway is also in the “injured so people are forgetting him right now” camp. He’s never gone off like Poole is doing now but he also is a better defender.
Pure speculation on my part but if both Houstan and Diabate return, I wouldn't be surprised if TWill transfers. There have been rumblings of him doing so and honestly if he's not a starter next year, I wouldn't blame him for leaving. He clearly showed last year IMO that he was ready for a big role this year and if he's fighting Jett and Gregg Glenn for backup minutes, I think it would be totally fair for him to look for more minutes elsewhere as an upperclassman.
So one way or another I think another scholarship opens up for another sorely needed guard.
Pure speculation here (but aren’t we all just speculating?) but I wonder if this has something to do with Dickinson’s return actually.
It’s a lot harder to stand out as a PG when your offense flows through a traditional big man in the post. Especially when you’re not a great shooter/off-ball threat.
For all the talk about NIL and getting recruited over, maybe this is as simple as Collins correctly ascertaining that his skill set fits best on a team built around the pick-and-roll and Michigan isn’t going to be that type of team as long as Dickinson is here.
I think you're dramatically underestimating how much this team should improve naturally. We had an extremely young roster last year. There will be a lot of improvement. Running it back should easily give us a Top 5 team.
Some similarities but Llewellyn seems much more clearly a 2-guard vs. a PG. He did a lot of creating off the bounce at Princeton but unclear if that'll translate to the Big Ten where there are better athletes so he may end up being more limited to catch-and-shoots, attacking closeouts.
I think he's going to fill the Eli Brooks role.
The NBA combine is invite-only, with invites decided by a committee of NBA team reps. They usually invite about 60-70 players. There doesn't seem to be a hard limit as the number varies year by year but I'm sure they don't want to waste anyone's time by inviting players that clearly aren't good enough to make the league.
Also it costs money to travel to the combine. I would guess the NBA covers that but in any case somebody's paying for that flight ticket and I don't know why you would for someone who obviously isn't good enough to make it.
Now you can get drafted without attending the combine, and some elite prospects who are no-doubt lottery picks will skip. But it's pretty rare for players on the fringe to get drafted without attending the combine, with the exception of international players.
I just want one of Houstan/Diabate back. A lineup of Collins/Shannon/Williams/Houstan OR Diabate/Dickinson can definitely contend for a title.
And then you have Bufkin and a Top 10 class of freshmen off the bench.
If we lose both guys, someone unproven gets pressed into starting duty whether that's Bufkin or a an incoming freshman.
Diabate absolutely does not have nice form. Way too many moving parts makes it hard to maintain consistency.
He missed a decent chunk of time with an injury. Texas tech also had a pretty deep rotation so he wasn’t playing 35 mpg. When he was playing he was definitely putting up shots.
Juwan is super well connected and highly regarded across the NBA. It's not like this is his only shot. He'll have plenty of future opportunities to coach in the NBA, likely in even better setups.
I don't think there's much near-term concern here. I'd be very surprised if Juwan Howard left Michigan while his sons are on the roster. That's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to coach his kids that he'll never have again.
The NBA will always be there, and the Lakers job isn't a very good one IMO (high expectations, shitty, aging roster beyond Lebron + AD). Juwan's profile is high enough at this point that I think it's pretty safe to say he'll be able to get an NBA job at some point in the future when he wants to.
So I doubt he leaves now, but I do think these rumors will keep popping up and eventually, he will leave so Michigan would do well to have a succession plan in place. I just don't think there's that much risk he leaves in the next couple years.
It would be a high-profile job for sure. But I think it's a pretty crappy setup. Frank Vogel isn't a bad coach. Maybe a different coach could get a bit more out of the team, but the Lakers' problem this year wasn't coaching, it was talent.
They have little around Lebron except AD who's often hurt. Westbrook is just a disaster at this point in his career, and it'll be extremely difficult to trade him for anyone much better. There isn't much else in terms of young talent, cap room or assets to upgrade the roster. AD getting healthy would help a lot, but even with him this team is a long way away from being a championship-caliber roster and those are the expectations.
Whoever takes the Lakers job is just getting set up for failure IMO.
“He was always easy to root for though”
Speak for yourself. Wish johns all the best but the man made me want to pull my hair up quite often.
"Any "spacing" issues they had were those that came from playing two bigs that made for limited driving lanes"
A lot of teams play two bigs together. Once upon a time it was the default. Less common today for sure, but you're acting like Michigan was unique in playing 2 bigs. Was certainly rare during the Beilein era, but those Beilein teams played smaller than most teams do.
There are tradeoffs from both sides, and when you play 2 bigs, that does put more pressure on your perimeter players to shoot. You are correct that if we started Twill over Moussa, shooting would've been better, but you could say the same thing about if we had a knockdown shooting PG to play over Jones.
"the expectation is that he'll change the complexion of the team next year...That only happens with no-brainer pros that are generally top 5 propsects overall."
You might mean something else by "changing the complexion of the team", but I don't know if the bar is that high. I mean I'd point to someone like Iggy Brazdeikis as someone who definitely "changed the complexion" of that year's team, and he was far from a "top 5 prospect".
Not saying that should be the expectation for Jett, but seems like that could be an upside case?
Like what? I guess we could’ve started TWill instead but that’s literally one other option.
Damn I just saw this but already posted the same exact thing