Dozens of players a given school evaluates never make it to the school. That’s the way college basketball works. Every player who doesn’t come is a potentially useful club to beat the coach over the head with, especially for fans with large magnifying glasses and too little else to do with their time.
There is no objective person in the United States who would go over the list of players Beilein has brought here–studded with rich discoveries as it is–and say that Beilein is a bad recruiter. Struck out on a few? Yup and who hasn’t (see the top of my statement). Lost some to injuries and been depleted? Absolutely. He and his staff, like every staff, have even bobbled some. But this numbnuts ‘Beilein sucks at recruiting’ meme needs to be taken out back and shot. As the Cain recruitment once again makes clear, Beilein has a keen eye for talent. There’s a certain irony, for me, in that MattD is the one who “discovered” Beilein’s discovery here. Let’s leave it at that.
What’s your thought on the Michigan roster? How have they recruited/developed/retained players and how has it shown in the standings? This doesn’t mean comparing Michigan to the likes of Rutgers/Nebraska etc…
We have the experience advantage, but Sparty has a massive talent advantage. This season could answer a lot of the debate about JB’s future success or lack thereof. He has an experienced team of guys that he obviously liked better than many pundits or other high profile programs.
While, I agree with MPBear that this team should be a contender based on their experience level, I just don’t see the necessary talent there to win a conference title, despite it being a down year in the B1G and that is all on the staff’s recruiting.
You could add several other posters to that remark and it would still be true.
There is less and less information and insight on this forum. It has developed into a bitching about Beilein forum and a “My opinion is better than yours” ongoing argument.
I think the talk about Beilein is fair game especially over the last 2 years. We can include the contract extension that he asked for whether or not the contract was merited or not is fair game as well.
Since this is the movement thread it’s imperative Beilein hits a homer in his 2 assistants and gets results asap. That might be difficult to attain as last time we went through an assistant shuffle the results that year was 21-14 and 9-9 in conference. After the past couple years 21-14 and 9-9 wouldn’t cut it.
Experienced team of guys he liked better than pundits and other coaches? Like who? Irvin, Walton and Donnal were all highly rated guys… Chatman was highly rated and had offers from all the big schools out west and UConn… DJ Wilson was top 100 with offers from teams like Gonzaga and Cal… You can say that about MAAR, but MAAR is a poor example since he’s one of the best guys on the team… Just because some guys haven’t panned out like we hoped, doesn’t mean these were guys that only Beilein liked and targeted
It opens the question of which is better, a 3-4 star who has been in the system for 3-4y (my strong preference if they can continue to improve) or a freshmen who may be athletically dominant but doesn’t know how to play within a team where he’s not expected to be the #1 guy.
I’d generally take the experienced angle and there are plenty of illustrations of the pieces fitting together better and better over time if you watch Wisconsin, Nova, UVA, others. Have we gotten that out of the 3s and 4s we have? Not yet, but as many others point out injuries, and various bumps in the road have made it hard to get an accurate read.
Long story short, guys like Miles Bridges (or Swanigan last year) give me very little concern b/c they don’t necessarily play a particularly smart brand of basketball. Guys like Langford do. We do have a team full of talented guys who in most cases are smart and working their butt off trying to reach their potential, even into their senior years. We have a coach who many feel is great at getting guys to their potential. Some projected growth is reasonable if we give JB that credit and a pool of Maar type diamonds in the rough, and top 100 guys with this much experience should be able to hang with everyone in the league based on the combination of tenure x talent we have.
My view anyway. If time permits, I will look at the B1G rosters post draft commitments to see star rating x years tenure who has the most of this combo metric on their teams. In the B1G it has been a good predictor in years past.
From a fans perspective, I would rather watch a team full of 3 and 4 year players than a Kentucky style one-and-done cast of characters. Even if you win big every year (which they don’t), being only able to watch a guy for one year loses appeal. I wouldn’t even feel like they were Michigan guys if they were only here for a year.
Sure, anything is fair game. But there is a group of posters on this forum that seem to devolve any thread into the same conversation.
It’s frustrating and makes the place hard to follow/read at times. For example, this thread is supposed to be about Big Ten Roster Movement this summer.
Part of that blame is on me for not moderating this place well enough, but we need to figure something out to make this place work.
Well clearly guys like Duncan, Maar, Wagner, Watson and Davis were not highly rated and/or recruited. But your post hits on the other problem with this roster, which is that the highly rated guys they landed have almost universally not lived up to their rankings. Hopefully, this is the year a number of them finally put it all together because that is what is going to take for this team to have much success beyond just making the tourney.
I understand the concerns. My point is that if the concerns are as damning as we are lead to believe then the roster shouldn’t really be in position to challenge for a Big Ten title. If Beilein has a roster that is expected to compete for the Big Ten title, then I think criticism is over blown. Something something cake and eating it too.
If everyone is saying that he’ s a really smart basketball player, then my view is that they would be.
I think you can be amazingly talented, and not be immediately impactful as a freshmen due to the need to adapt a personal style to a team style. See Cliff Alexander, Caleb Swanigan, Wiggins to some extent, etc. I think all 4 are impressive talents, but not necessarily teams I would put money on if they are the best player on the team as freshmen.
the best 2 year run we had under JB was with a core set of players who had 1 and done capabilities. You didn’t feel like Trey Burke was a Michigan Man? Or McGary? Or GR3? Stauskus left after 2 years even.
JB needs one and done talents to win at a championship level. Where did this notion come that he’s been consistently successful without great talent?
Don’t try to confuse the whiners on the board with facts. It rarely works.
Meanwhile, even though recruits like Burke, Morgan, Stauskas, Robinson, McGary, Irvin, Walton, Levert, and Spike all played key roles in either 2013 (title game), 2014 (Big Ten title, Elite Eight, #2 seed), or both, the only thing we should care about is the past two years. I mean, if a coach can’t replicate his recruiting and on-court success every single year, then it should be on to the next guy, because there are literally like 100 coaches out there who could easily win a national championship at Michigan. Why should we have to settle for a guy who only has great years some of the time? As a fanbase, we’re this entitled program living on what happened nearly 25 years ago, all spearheaded by a player who took $650k in improper benefits.
Right, that’s the point - the highly rated guys (for a variety of reasons) haven’t been as good as our highly rated guys in the past.
You’re never going to have a team where 13 roster spots are filled with 5 star recruits. Even Kentucky has a few, unheralded four year program guys like MAAR. When our top recruits play like we anticipate, the results (2013 and 2014) have literally been as good as just about any team in the country.
A two year group which includes Simpson, Teske, Poole, and hopefully Cain/Young or similar players, should be plenty good enough to compete for the Big Ten title, which usually means a top 10-20 ranking or so. And since MattD loves Cain, and he’s never wrong, we shouldn’t blame the coaches if Cain turns out to be no better than Irvin, right?