MattD - you claim “you simply can’t win a title with the defense that UM has displayed during JB’s tenure.”
Give me a break. We were a few bad calls away from beating Louisville, and we lost in the Elite Eight to Kentucky on a buzzer beater. Those results hardly support your argument. When you make deep runs in the tourney, teams are pretty evenly matched and it often comes down to just pure luck.
As far as the defensive metrics under JB, do me a favor - show us the numbers from 2009 and 2012, two JB tourney teams that had decent experience. If your only data points are 2013 and 2014, both of those teams were extremely young, and if you know 1/10 as much about basketball as you think you do, you should readily concede that a team full of freshmen and sophomores is highly unlikely to be an elite defensive team no matter who is coaching.
Let’s see how this team does when guys like Doyle, Donnal and Wilson become upperclassmen, and let’s see what happens when we add Teske. I’ll bet JB will suddenly look like he can coach defense, when the reality is that we will have added length and experience we didn’t previously have.
To be fair does KENPOM factor in the overall the age of the team on the floor? Also, when you make statements that JB is not a good defensive coach please include all his teams, not just his time at Michigan. He’s coached for over 30 years!
I would bet JB could coach defense with anyone. Or I would put it this way - if JB wanted to win with defense as the primary strength of the team, I bet he could do it.
I am not as sure about this JBlair. Just being good at X’s and O’s doesn’t mean you can be good at both sides of the ball. You have to have the right mindset for either one. I do not think Beilein can likely ever be as good at defense as he has shown himself to be at offense. I do welcome the opportunity to be proven wrong.
haha maybe. I don’t think we’ll ever know. I just think he’s too smart and too attentive to details. But it would never happen because he’d have to change his roster makeup.
LA - once again, when you start saying “we were a few bad calls” or a “buzzer beater away” and “pure luck” you’ve gone away from objectivity and into excuse territory. Let’s deal with reality, not an idealistic world. When you start talking in terms of “woulda, coulda, shoulda”, you’ve lost all credibility in my view because you’re analyzing from the standpoint of what you think should have occurred rather than what actually happened. You want to talk about pure luck or buzzer beaters - It was " pure luck" that UM was even in the champ game in the first place considering Burke’s “buzzer beater” from 30 feet away. In other words, UM wasn’t even good enough to be there in the first place under your view but for pure luck on a buzzer beater.
Defensive metrics - once again you want to limit the discussion to a range/idea you think supports your contention rather than dealing with the entire fact set. #69, #58, #37, #61 in your ideal world. So we fielded 3 teams with below average defense and one team with average defense. So even in your ideal “experienced team” world our defensive ceiling under JB is most likely a below average defensive team.
Just food for thought for you LA (as previously cited as well) - UK rolled out the #41 D while starting 5 freshman this year, so let’s stop with the “experience is what’s holding us” up argument
Guys seriously, are some of you really going to claim we have’t been a subpar defensive team under JB? No offense, but I don’t really care about your respective logic as to why, we just have to acknowledge the fact that we aren’t, and most likely never will be a good defensive team under JB. Facts are facts, regardless of what some would like them to be.
I would bet JB could coach defense with anyone. Or I would put it this way - if JB wanted to win with defense as the primary strength of the team, I bet he could do it.
I am not as sure about this JBlair. Just being good at X’s and O’s doesn’t mean you can be good at both sides of the ball. You have to have the right mindset for either one. I do not think Beilein can likely ever be as good at defense as he has shown himself to be at offense. I do welcome the opportunity to be proven wrong.
I would bet JB could coach defense with anyone. Or I would put it this way - if JB wanted to win with defense as the primary strength of the team, I bet he could do it. He's a brilliant x/o guy and pays attention to so much detail.
There’s more than 1 way to win the game…he just chose to take a different route.
JB - if that were the case why not “choose” to win with balance. Why do O and D have to be mutually exclusive. It is not a zero sum game, you don’t have to sacrifice offense in order to be good on D.
To be fair does KENPOM factor in the overall the age of the team on the floor? Also, when you make statements that JB is not a good defensive coach please include all his teams, not just his time at Michigan. He's coached for over 30 years!
JBs defense at WV ranged from 70-112. You can try to limit/open the range all you want, the empirical data simply confirms that JB isn’t a good defensive coach. The man simply doesn’t field good defensive teams, the typical JB defense is below average/ bad according to the historical rankings.
I think it goes back to the type of players he recruits. He’s looking for skilled players that aren’t necessarily the most gifted athletes or physical. If you recruit a bunch of hyper athletic guys that can’t shoot for shit, you end up with a Baylor type team. Balance is the key, but balance is also needed when recruiting. A lot of our guys fit the same mold, so it appears that JB prioritizes offensive ability above defensive ability, but I don’t think that makes him a bad defensive coach (at least scheme wise), he just doesn’t emphasize defense as much as offense. No the two aren’t mutually exclusive but the two way players that you want are either 4/5 star recruits that we can’t seem to reel in, or players that will take time to develop and by junior and senior year will be above average on both sides of the ball. As you can see, we’ve been having trouble with attrition lately (whether it be to the NBA, transfer, etc.). Maybe if we can keep some of our recruits till they are upperclassmen we will see an increase in defensive tenacity.
Incredible. BY FAR the best defensive team Beilein has had. Maybe not quite as good offensively as past teams, but they are really starting to come on as of late. It’s been a joy to watch them this year
This definitely belongs in the now-locked “Depth and future rotations” thread but the backups beat the starters in a scrimmage today. Score one for those who said this would be Beileins deepest team before the season started
Glad we are keeping our edge. Really appreciated the article earlier this week about how summer scrimmages got chippy too. Love the competitiveness of this team