Jon Teske, Xavier Simpson, Ibi Watson at the Ohio-Kentucky all star game

From a talent perspective, I’d be happy to have Thornton. It will be tricky, though, to manage playing time and egos with Simpson also here and neither guy seemingly having a skill set to play off the ball. I’ll bet Thornton is looking for a situation where he can walk in and start at the point. I’m not sure that’s here with Simpson in the fold.

You are responding to me like I’m down on Ibi. I like the kid’s game and I hear nothing but good things about his work ethic.

He’s physically not ready for the big ten and doesn’t have the athleticism to make up for that. Once he develops his body he will be a solid contributor. IMO he’s 2 years away. Now that doesn’t mean he won’t get early plain time. I just dont expect the kid to produce much early.

He’s the definition of a program recruit which is fine. He’s a nice piece going forward.

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Except that’s not what happened - he waited himself out of the offer.

I am saying that MAAR and Robinson were not recruited with the idea they would be stars, they were recruited as depth (MAAR) and a guy with a defined role (Robinson - shooter).

Elite players want to be able to start immediately. In MAAR’s class, we missed on all our top two guard targets (Booker, Blackmon) - probably in no small part because Zak, Nik, and Caris were already on the roster when those two were being recruited. When Nik left, and Caris appeared certain to leave after his junior year, we needed wing depth.

We still went after our top 2015 guys - Kennard, Coleman, Dozier - after adding MAAR and Dawkins. No one saw those two as elite starters - they were wing depth.

No coach (except maybe Cal - knowing his whole roster will turn over every year) recruits a roster full of elite guys. Every team has some role players.

That’s fair. Caris is a guy who didn’t have the body to contribute right away either, but ultimately did (especially against Cuse), even though his overall freshman stats were awful. His upside is no doubt greater than Ibi’s, but Ibi seems a little more physically ready to play than Caris was.

Caris was surrounded by a ridiculous amount of talent. Ibi will not be.

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I was Dawkins biggest fan after freshman year. I thought he’d be a go to scoring option this year and beyond. His play shocked me. I thought he’d end up as a bench player in the leGue. I thought he’d be a better version of hardaway because of s better jumper/ better hops.i still believe he’ll rebound and be a problem at ucf and dominate that low level competition. Yes but we have to wait now and see. I like Watson. Not as much as you do, but I’ll givewualittb him props because from what I’ve seen Ohio basketball is high caliber particularly Columbus and Ibi dominated and was all state. With the quality of players Ohio put out this year that bodes well for teske and Ibi,

So in the 2014-16 classes, who were recruited to be the stars of the team? This is the problem a few of us have been harping on for years. We have been getting WAY too many role players lately.

Is your question “who were recruited to be the stars”? Or “who committed that we thought might be stars”? Or “who committed that will never be stars”?

I think we recruited plenty of guys to be the stars, but didn’t land them. And I think the '14 class had some overvalued players (we really can’t count the '15 class even though Mo-Buckets might pan out nicely). I don’t think its fair to include the '16 class yet, although there is certainly a possibility that guys like X and Teske could be college hoops studs at their respective positions.

Well, you get the best guys you can get, right?

In 2014, our top targets were Booker, Blackmon, Blueitt, Chatman (got him), Bates-Diop, and Doyle (got him). Doyle, as it turned out, just wasn’t special, but we targeted him early and he committed to us over Notre Dame. Wilson was a Plan B, MAAR and Dawkins were spring recruits after Nik and Glenn left.

In 2015, our top targets were Kennard, Coleman, Dozier, and Brunson. We offered Eric Davis later, and made a play for Jaylen Brown in the spring. When Coleman took his time, we accepted a commitment from Duncan Robinson and quit recruiting Coleman. There were other guys we “targeted,” in the sense that we spoke with them and would have happily accepted their commitments - Henry Ellenson, Diamond Stone for a short period, Caleb Swanigan - but they never showed us any strong interest. I’d say we went after Wagner pretty hard, and I think in another year or two, he’s going to be a very good player for us.

2016? Top targets were Thornton, Leaf, Battle, Langford, Teske (got him), Winston, Towns (who we ultimately dropped). In this class, I think we expect Simpson to be our star PG of the future, and Teske to be our starting center and rim protector. Obviously, had we held on to Battle, this would be a very nice class.

2017? Poole, for sure, is a guy we recruited to be a high end shooting/combo guard.

Here’s the thing - the reason our recruiting from 2014-2016 has hurt us, IMO, is this - the 2013 guys who were expected to be great by now (Walton, Irvin, Donnal), aren’t. And neither is Chatman. Let’s say those guys had developed like their predecessors - they would likely be turning pro right now, and that’s how a lack of great recruiting would have really hurt us. If we had to come into 2016 with Simpson and Watson as our starting backcourt, for example, you might be looking at a really long rebuilding year.

To me, 2016 will be a good year with a defined ceiling. I think we win 24-26 games, land around a 5-7 seed, and win a couple tourney games. It’s unlikely we have the talent to do much else.

But by 2017 and 2018, we have LOTS of playing time to offer. Simpson and Poole are penciled in as the starting backcourt by 2018, and if Wagner is still around he’s probably your starting center (with Teske/Davis behind him), but the 3/4 positions will be wide open. And it will probably be time to start recruiting a high end PG again, as Simpson will be a junior by 2018. So, sure, if we’re not landing any Plan A targets by then (say Cain and Young), there’s reason to worry about recruiting.

But I’d also say this - we do much better when our Plan A targets are not guys who are ranked in the top 25 and are also considering schools like Duke and Kentucky. Poole falls into that category, I think Cain and Young do as well.

Here’s a big difference between Tim and Dawkins. Dawkins has a low release point on his shot - he almost throws the ball at the basket a little. So he needs room to get his shot off. In the games where he was great last year (Rutgers, Northwestern), he had room. Once teams figured out you could crowd him, and he couldn’t put the ball on the floor to counter that, his three point shooter became less effective. That, and he seemed to spend the offseason working on dunks, not dribbling and defense. You can see this with Dawkins’ shot because even though he can elevate like crazy, he gets his jumper blocked a fair amount (like Irvin does, too).

Tim is longer, more fluid, and has a higher release point on his shot. That doesn’t happen to him. And he could score enough off the dribble to keep the defense honest.

And Dawkins’ defense was so bad we just couldn’t justify playing him a lot this year.

“But I’d also say this - we do much better when our Plan A targets are not guys who are ranked in the top 25 and are also considering schools like Duke and Kentucky. Poole falls into that category, I think Cain and Young do as well.”

This has become accepted wisdom here, at least by a number of posters. But do we have a big enough pool of evidence to make that judgement? I’m not convinced. Struck out on some guys, for sure. But whether that means we can’t land a few in future. . . dunno. Maybe we can’t take them from NC, KY, or Duke, but we’ve taken them from KS. I mean, don’t you judge by the signs a given kids is giving (for one)? I’d say that what hurt was having the backup plan fail too, and that was really one or two cases.

Place McGary and Caris back in the equation, add Derek and Spike–back surgery for Irvin–and I’m not sure any of what Beilein has or has not done looks egregious. I also think there’s some real chance that Teske could be a star.

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Almost all our stars under JB were guys who we didn’t get by having to compete against Duke and Kentucky (among others), and who weren’t five star recruits when we got them - Morris, Hardaway, Burke, Nik, Glenn, Caris. The only times we’ve really gone head-to-head with elite schools for recruits were McGary (UK, Duke, Florida) and Chatman (AZ, UConn, Louisville).

In the past few years, we’ve passed on some potentially good players (McQuaid, Kyle Guy among them) to pursue guys like Battle, Langford, and Winston. As long as the five star kids are showing real interest, sure, you have to recruit them. But at the same time, we put a lot of our eggs in those baskets, and didn’t get any of them. I think Kyle Guy is a player we probably could have gotten had we offered at the same time we offered Battle and Langford. Hueter, too, seems like a guy who we could have gotten if we had put on the full court press. Instead, we wound up with Watson, a guy who the staff would probably rank behind Guy and Hueter.

I think moving forward, we’ll take commits readily from our comfort zone (50-150), while continuing to recruit five stars who we see as recruitable. If you apply that to 2017, it means we take a Cain or Young right away, as opposed to waiting on them to see what guys like Wilkes and Scruggs will do.

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Ok? Are you saying they were wrong? If so, that is utter BS. MAAR still isn’t a distributer, Duncan is still just a shooter who’s bad at defense, and Wagner has shown flashes in all of 5 games last year. Obviously they all have potential, but nobody who said they’d take years to develope is wrong.

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You should take your own advice re: spellcheck.

I think there’s a solid difference between completely incoherent ramblings with repeatedly misspelled words throughout entire paragraphs and one “r” replacing a “d” That I saw and edited shortly after posting :joy:

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Wow, people do like to attack you for thinking positive about players . Just because I believe that the current players on our rosters can be productive - I get attacked? Wow. Yeah, I had some typos but you understood what I was typing. It’s funny how some people are never happy or optimistic. It’s also funny how some people that some people will be eating crow but pretending to think highly of the players from jump. I’m not trying to get banned - so I will no longer speak on this topic. It appears that my opinion is no longer welcomed here. You all be blessed. I have better things to do.

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Me and you have no conversation buddy. You’re trying to insult me. The face is that I will believe in every single player on this team until they graduate. Like it or not. If that’s my sin - I will happily take my punishment for it.

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They contributed more to this program than you have - enough said.

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Am I suppose to be offended? If so I’m not because at the end of the day, I’m happy with my life and your attempt at internet bullying won’t change my views. I support ever player and recruit on this rost and I actually donate money and attend games. No, I didn’t graduate from UM ( I graduated from Rutgers) but I consider myself numero uno fan. You can try and mock me because of obvious typos but you won’t stop me from succeeding in life . YOu have a good day buddy.

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