Coach B's recruiting

The Big Ten crapping its metaphorical pants in OOC play isn’t going to do B1G bubble teams any favors.

1 Like

Just because there are many minutes available doesn’t mean you are going to produce. Ward has produced along with Bridges in a big way. They are both damn good frosh.We’ll see about Langford after he’s healthy. There isn’t a fan on this board who hasn’t bemoaned his loss to the enemy.

Barring a catastrophic injury, Ibi and X are not going to get consistent minutes this season. They’re not remotely ready to contribute as of yet. It is my belief that neither will have a significant impact on the success of this years team.

Beilein doesn’t trust them and will trust them even less come B1G time. Nobody is giving up on their careers, but the preseason Simpson HS hype was incredibly misguided.
Anybody that saw him play knew it was going to be really difficult to be an impact player on a team that so heavily depends on half court offensive sets. That’s not his skill set at all. He’s up and down transition and full court pressure. Not happening at M.

How he effectively is able to score in the half court going forward in his career is a very legitimate concern. I’m skeptical that will ever change. The kid is elfishly small and has never been a consistent jump shooter.

Here’s hoping he proves me 100% wrong and becomes the next Trey incarnate. I have sincere doubts given his existing skill set. We’ll see if he can expand on them going forward.

1 Like

Langford gets time to carve out a roll.

Simpson, Watson, and Teske are already busts.

we get it.

Langford has looked awful. Injury Or not, he’s going to take some time. I may be the only one but I like what I’ve seen from Simpson and Teske. Teske has surprised me the most honestly. Simpson might be our best perimeter defender already. I’m so hoping tomorrow that we see a bit of all three of these guys.

I would like to see Teske get more of Wagner’s minutes. We all got excited about Mo’s upside, but it appears to only be on the offensive end. He is a liability on defense and he doesn’t rebound. Why not use more of those minutes to develope Teske.

1 Like

I can’t get on board there. I like teske but if the team is going to be any good over the next two years one major reason is going to be because Wagner steps up. Wagner is still very young and learning. Our offense needs him if it’s going to take the next step and make us a dangerous team. His offensive potential is certainly tops amongst the big men.

I know shooting 3s is our go to offense under Belein but we just aren’t good enough shooters or good enough and getting cleAn looks to just fire them all day. We need to drive more and feed the big men more. He needs to get more touches so we can take full advantage of his skill set. His play the last few games last year and then in New York this year shows you glimpses of what we have.

He could be very good offensively. I know we don’t do it much but I’d love to see us hit him on the ISO post up a few plays a gAme. He showed a few times last year that he has the crafty little footwork and baby hooks/ flip shots. I feel like we are not utilizing him or even mark nearly enough or properly. I’m certain getting them the ball more will boost our offense dramatically

1 Like

Can we be somewhat realistic here. Beilein likes to play an 8-man rotation at most. With a starting 5 returning from last year plus Wagner at center, that only really left two potential slots in the rotation for freshmen. DJ Wilson emerged at the wing to claim one of those options. XSimpson is playing minutes at the other option.

And in a Beilein-world that’s what he wants — freshmen to learn their first year without the pressure of rotation minutes and set up for a big jump in production as sophomores or juniors.

I’ll admit I thought Simpson would be able to contribute more from Day 1, but from most accounts his defense is ready, it’s his offensive recognition that hasn’t clicked yet ---- and Beilein’s offense is known to be pretty complex for guards. Hopefully the reads on offense slow down for him around the Christmas Break, much like MAAR, Dawkins, LeVert.

Many people on this Board kept insisting that Watson would get minutes, but that was either with a misguided sense of a 9/10 man rotation or it was in place of Wilson — and Wilson’s emergence is better news than Watson jumping into the rotation as a freshman, IMO. Quite honestly, looking at projected rosters, I don’t see Watson breaking into the rotation next season either?

To me, Teske’s been a decent find. I was cautiously hedging on how his game would translate to the NCAA level and he’s still “thinking the game” rather than reacting, but I see a path to progression for him heading in to next season when he could be asked to hold down the No2 center slot.

And the 4th member of the class, Davis, was always a strong red shirt option.

If Simpson’s slow start makes this class bust, then I guess so be it, but that’s really the only change between realistic preseason projections and current real life production from the freshman class?

1 Like

I understand thats beleins mo, but I feel like it’s a mistake. I think getting the frosh more minutes against the smaller teams would make more sense. Get them minutes now so their ready to come in and play if they need to. Just the way I’d think makes more sense. Then again he has a good track record of molding recruits so who Am I to judge. At least play x more since he’s the one who would seem to be most likely get called upon. Get him 15 minutes here against the " cupcakes". Let him work out his kinks in games that we have more margin of error.

The freshmen need to see more minutes to adjust to game speed and level of play. You can only learn so much in practice. Beilein should be able to work them in for a few minutes each half. One freshman with four starters shouldn’t result in much of a drop off.

X is averaging almost 10 minutes per game. He’s got two games where he played less than 8 minutes. We have two upperclassmen in the backcourt that are going to play 35sh minutes per game. Where should his minutes come from?

Ibi has played in six games. Two of those games, he played less than five minutes. All the others were 7+. Again, that’s going to be his role. And he hasn’t exactly justified more playing time. Where are his minutes going to come from? Before the season, we didn’t know that DJ would be so effective at the four, allowing Irvin to slide to the three. So DJ is getting 25 minutes a game at the four. Which means Irvin is getting most of his 35 minutes at the three. And Duncan is picking up those extra minutes at the three because we know he can at least give us solid shooting. Ibi has gotta justify taking minutes from Duncan. And with our shooting woes from deep, he’s gotta make threes in order to do that. And he hasn’t made any yet.

I’d like to get them more minutes. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Our offense has been up and down. JB is probably trying to balance freshman development with getting the first team to establish a rhythm and chemistry.

The official attendance records put their attendance for the game at 72.5% full, and that’s just tickets sold. It was far from a full house if you looked at the upper deck.

1 Like

Thanks for the feedback; I thought that the announcers called it a full house.

They did… continuously. It looked like it too from the TV too, as they stacked everyone in the lower bowl and the upper deck was dark. They do a good job of hiding it but I don’t know why the announcers were saying it. To be fair towards your point, it’s an 18,000 person stadium so even at 72% it was still slightly over Crisler’s capacity.

1 Like

Some might argue that game time is overrated in terms of development–because the main purpose of games is to collect information on the things that individual players need to work on in training. I mean, there is a limit to the number of workouts per week the kids can do. If Irvin plays a lot of minutes in a game it will count as an intense workout; whereas Teske might be scheduled to do weight room directly following a game…or he might be intense drilling x at a specific skill that he needs to improve…For these developing athletes the real work is occurring in training sessions. Iverson was on a different training schedule, and rightfully so, when he made his famous rant.

1 Like

I think it depends on what the issue is. If it is learning the system or adjusting to the speed of the game, actual game experience may help more than an individual workout.

True.

I guess I am guilty of playing the devils advocate.

I don’t know what the answer is…

Before this subject came up I was thinking about it from another angle: Walton and Irvin, who have developed at a snails pace, are odd seniors in that JB might not feel like he can afford to take away any game time experience from them. They both, oddly, seem way behind the learning curve when it comes to knowing what they are and are not capable of on the court…I feel like a gambling addict–always thinking those two will figure it out the next possession…in my mind thinking: “Just one more possession”…This has been going on in my head for 3 years with those two.

Part of me wonders if the team might be better if JB just calls it quits and turns them both into complimentary catch and shoot players giving more lead guard responsibilities to MAAR, X, and even----Wait for it: Wilson…

Well that might work if the starters had spent more years in the current defensive system. And it might be true if both Walton and Irvin were more consistent on the offensive end or MAAR had made more progress as a distributor. I get JB isn’t confident in freshmen, but I think he sees things with the starting group as well.

I mean I’m not a d one athlete but when I played sports practice and game were night and day for basketball. It took me time to adjust to in game scenarios and intensity/ crowd/ nervousness. Might be different for kids who were all stars prior to college. I’m just going off my mental as a kid. That’s why I feel like that experience is important. If we don’t sustain any injuries we may not need the young guys much anyways so I’ll let coach b judge it.

I thought the main purpose of games was to improve our record by winning.

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself, I agree that games are for feedback, while practice is when players get better. For example I might want a post player working on drop steps, but in a game if his spin move is better, I want to see the spin move.