Don’t think we need to question his work ethic without knowing what his work ethic is. There’s some nice video out there of him working out with some older pro and semi-pro players, IIRC.
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I seriously doubt Poole could be where he is in terms of skills without work ethic.
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My favorite Poole stat right now is that he’s scoring more points per 40 minutes than any JB player ever at Michigan.
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Yeah if it was a serious problem JB never would have mentioned it to the media. That’s not what he does.
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Agreed. Even on “Inside Michigan Basketball” Beilein wouldn’t even mention which two players he made shoot 100 FTs, making 90 and 75 respectively. Shep couldn’t help himself and spilled that it was Charles and Z, respectively, but the point is that JB doesn’t go out of his way to cast his players in a negative light if he can help it.
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Yeah, I took the quote to mean working smarter rather than working more. Hey, work on this in this way instead of doing x, y, and z.
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I think the context of the quote was a question of how to keep Poole ready to shoot so much even when he doesn’t play that many minutes, and Beilein’s quote was about simulating game reps as much as possible.
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Borzello touches on why that could happen; the SEC built up a bunch of RPI good-will during the offseason, and have just been buffering each other. Kind of similar to what the Big 12 has been doing for the last 5 years, but with less elite teams/anchors and more of a sturdy middle.
But this article is trash, because it’s a “power ranking” and my team isn’t in the top 25 
Thanks for the article. I was well aware of the SEC’s gamesmanship of the RPI. They put together a scheduling taskforce of some kind after they could only get 2 or 3 teams in the tournament the last couple years. I hope we match up with one somewhere in the tournament!
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Yes, after watching Poole shooting on his own from just inside center court, I took the Coach Beilein quote to mean he needs to work on more productive drills, not that his work ethic is lacking. But then he goes and hits 4/6 triples so what can you say
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Has us as a 9 right now… a couple seeds lower than most other bracketologists
Totally possible.
You’ve built quite a straw man there. I want his work ethic to match his swag. Great work ethic and elite attitude would not match.
That being said: he’s trending the right way. Dawkins never got it on defense, I hope he heals up and plays well next year. Poole doesn’t seem lost in the same way, more he NEEDS a Beilein like coach to rein him in, so his aggression keeps producing highlights, but reduces the mistake rate. All part of growing. If he works as hard, and with discipline, as he brings intensity to the court he will be really really special.
As others noted, your comment seemed to miss some of the likely nuances of Beilein’s remark. I tend to agree with the poster who said that very few athletes get to this level–let alone to participate on a J. Beilein team–without working their butts off.
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Um interesting note on protected seeds from a 2013 article on seeding changes: “Some members of the media took exception to the fact that No. 7 seed North Carolina could be placed in Raleigh for its first two games, setting up a potential home-crowd advantage against No. 2 seed Villanova in the third round. However, the top four seeds in each region are only protected against situations like this for their first game.”
Sooooo top 4 seeds are only protected in the first game against scrubs? Did this change?
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The actual rule is only round of 64 protection. It’s hilarious
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Yeah last year Duke played South Carolina in Greenville. The Dukies were upset but considering they have played probably 80% of their opening two games in North Carolina for the last 15 years I enjoyed it.
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Yeah for awhile there it seemed like Duke skated through nearly a decade without playing a “neutral” site game out of NC.
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Don’t think I would agree that RPI was holding Michigan back, but that’s just me.