Where Are They Now? Evaluation Revisited

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Jamal Murray and his father paid their own way to visit UM when Murray only had a Illinois offer. About a year and a half before U.K. And it wouldn’t have made a difference?

UM come don’t compete with SMU and Oklahoma for Milton but we should have hope in recruitments against U.K. And Duke?

Sviat liked how Nik was used and Dejounte Murray is a Jamal Crawford understudy but no offers?

Sure, some were not coming but didn’t even give it a shot. These are all guys I said offer btw.

Did JB even watch Yante Maten? Imagine if he put the effort he did with Davis into evaluating him.

Misses happen but DJ was the only win in that class and it took 3 years. I missed on Kam and others but don’t think 1/5 hit rate is normal. Call it what it is.

142

Not just Devon Daniels in my case…you can add Bruce Brown, Quentin Goodin, Seth Towns, Tyler Cook and countless other options that are far exceeding the performance of our freshman right now.

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And also, your argument is a little misleading. All of our top targets were properly evaluated, the problem lies when you don’t land them and your Plan B guys aren’t nearly as good. And that’s where I would fault JB, that his back up plan this time around has not been very good.

144

Totally disagree here. All of our top targets weren’t properly evaluated. Zak Irvin, Mark Donnal, Kam Chatman were all toP targets, and all misevaluations. Those 3 are a large part of the mediocrity as we speak, based on misevaluation.

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145

The issue was recruiting “Plan As” exclusively when comparable guys were out there. I remember saying Brunson wasn’t coming and people were upset on here yet JB kept recruiting him…and sure enough it didn’t happen. Dillon Brooks was available late spring but JB was watching D3 film. Shake Milton and Sviat kept listing UM but JB was hosting Dawkins and MAAR. Rick Doyle…I mean his recruitment was the original Austin Davis.

146

I mean how could anyone think the last leg of the Kennard or Coleman recruitments were normal?
Jaylen Brown and Dozier were recruited well but only after begging for interest. Looking through the 2014 and 2015 player rankings brings up bad memories lol.

147

To be fair on Coleman, he’s been a pretty big bust so far. We’ll see how he finishes his career, but 2 years in and he has low efficiency on medium usage and microscopic rebounding/assist/block/steal rates.

148

Yeah I was pretty high on him, looking like I whiffed on that one. As you say, still time, but my gut tells me he’s not going to improve a whole lot.

149

You win some, you lose some. If we hadn’t gone hard after Brunson, the meme here would have been, hey, here’s guy who’s a 5 star guard, he has serious interest in us, why aren’t we recruiting him harder? Now you say it was all a waste of time. Yet you think that Jamal Murray was a miss for us. Can’t win. It’s easy to list guys who we passed on who then became solid D1 players. We also passed on guys who did not, Bess, Ahrens, Coleman and others. Truth is that we don’t know exactly why in each case. In some cases, we’re listed but the kid and/or his people are not. In some cases, it’s fit and/or grades. Any kid we lost to SMU speaks for itself.

150

Not sure how he is on defense (I don’t think he’s anything special), but taking Robinson over him might be an underrated Beilein move that looked awful to a lot of people here, including me, at first.

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And the staff gave him priority for how many months? I was never a Coleman guy and had to be convinced.

Brevin Pritzl and Kenny Williams had offers…Maverick Rowan was heavily scouted. Just bad evaluating those years.

152

How do you figure that when I said that it’s about evaluation primarily, not proximity? If Daniels continues to be the better player, as he seems to be now, I’d concede that we should have taken him v. Ibi, assuming that there were no other factors.

153

I’m not a huge DR fan either, so to me its about equal.

154

Irvin was thrust into a role he wasn’t equipped to handle two years ago, when Caris went down. And obviously when we recruited Zak, no one had any inkling Burke or Stauskas were two and done guys.

Still, by the end of his sophomore year, Irvin was playing very good basketball. The back injury has been a killer for him. I agree, he wasn’t a five star prospect. But even you said he was a top 60 player. With the same explosiveness he had two years ago, I think he could easily average something around 16/6/4, which would make him a candidate for first or second team all Big Ten.

Agree fully on Donnal, and you could add Doyle there too.

Agree on Chatman, but you yourself liked him a lot. That just shows how easy it is to miss.

Also, when it comes to Irvin, it’s not as if we were turning away McDonalds All Americans to sign him. That’s always part of the equation - what is your opportunity cost?

And I think that applies to this year’s class. You have personally found things to not like about Poole, Livers, Mathews, and Brooks. I can’t fault you for that - you’re being objective. But that really isn’t the question. The question is, given our other available options, were those guys players we should have taken?

That’s why I like your focus on Daniels and now Elliott - those are guys we could probably get. But you can’t say, for example, we “missed” on Jordan Poole because we should have recruited (pick the top shooting guard in the class) instead. Now, if you want to say we should have offered VJ Beachem instead of Irvin, sure.

Talent evaluation is just inherently hard. In the past 4-5 years, you could find instate kids on Detroit, Oakland, Western Michigan, or whichever team who could have easily helped UM or MSU more than some of their current kids. I mean, that kid from CMU who just went for 50? I’d imagine he could help us a lot more than Ibi Watson, or maybe even MAAR.

For all we know, Antjuan Simmons might turn out to be better than any of UMs linebacker recruits, and people will say, “He played right across the street.”

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Kennard? I mean, he fell in love with Duke. As did Thornton. Maybe the Final Four and championship hardware on the walls, and the ton of Duke players in the league, were selling points. And the opportunity to be coached by the guy who sits #1 in all-time wins. You seriously think we did something to screw up those recruitments?

We showed a ton of interest in Dillon Brooks. Just like Murray. Just like Looney. Just like Ellenson. You can’t force kids to reciprocate. Same with Sviat. Not to mention programs like Kentucky, Kansas, and UCLA have a long history of shady recruiting practices, which of course you and Matt refuse to acknowledge. You might as well say we didn’t recruit Josh Jackson, either.

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156

I probably like him more than you, but at least we can say he does the main thing we brought him on the team for fairly well. Illinois can’t say that about Coleman.

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Right, all Plan B guys (other than Towns, who certainly had a TON of time to commit) who were better than the Plan B guys we settled for. Agreed, we haven’t done a good job evaluating guys in the 50-150 range in the 2016 class. No question. Tejon Lucas and Kevin Huerter look like nice players, too.

158

Ehh, Coleman is 38.3 from distance this year. That’s pretty good. DR better though, so point taken

159

That’s better than I thought. For some reason I was thinking he was 36%.

160

An above average starter, a few role players, and 3 transfers isn’t “hit or miss”. It’s mostly misses on 6 spots.

Murray was under recruited for a year and a half with UM on him early and got no offer. Brunson rose in ranks my and was trending Illinois/temple/Villanova yet JB kept pursuing for months. Surely, yo my see the difference?