Summer league highlights of Jamal Cain
Sure would like to see him in a Wolverine uniform next year.
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Information regarding Cain seems to be pretty quiet lately, I hope the Matthews commit does not discourage his thoughts about coming to Mich. I think they could compliment each other with Matthews a 2/3 and Cain a 3 and in certain situations a 4. That would be a lot of athleticism at those positions.
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Very impressive. I don’t see why Mathews would totally turn Cain off. There’s plenty of minutes for him still. Hopefully he comes. Could be a very nice class
Is there any reason other than MattD disappearing again that the Cain talk has died down entirely as of late?
I know MattD was one of Cain’s professional cheerleaders and I understand why. I even think he has underrated skills and athleticism and he’s from our backyard. He needs to be a Mich get. Maybe umhoops can shed some light on the status of Cain’s recruitment.
Live period starts tonight so discussion of how guys are playing will really pick up.
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I’d say the July 4th area is usually pretty quiet in the recruiting world. People are generally spending time with their families and can’t/won’t post recruiting updates every 15 minutes.
It’ll be interesting to see who is at Cain’s games when he opens up the first recruiting period.
Well, the ball’s in his court. We’ve offered, and we want him. For an instate kid, it almost feels like a no-brainer given his current offer list. Maybe he’s waiting for other offers, who knows.
LAW I agree the ball should be in his court and my frustration is like you I see it as a no brainer. But kids and or their handlers often have other ideas.
I could understand if schools like Duke, Kentucky, and the like were recruiting him.
Right now, his other two best offers are Xavier and Marquette. I don’t think either program is as good as Michigan (though both are certainly good), both are much further away for his friends and family to watch him play, neither program has shown the ability to develop top 70 recruits into pros like we have, and neither school offers a great education to fall back on like we do if basketball doesn’t work out. And we have plenty of playing time available.
He seems like a really good kid, and if he doesn’t choose us, I wish him well. But I do think it would be a mistake. Nice, good people do sometimes make sub-optimal decisions. Hopefully that won’t happen here. And no, I’m not suggesting choosing any school other than Michigan is a mistake, I’m just saying we are the best offer he has. If other Big Ten powers like MSU, OSU, or Indiana came calling, I could see the argument for choosing any one of them.
Without having any inside information, I think Cain expects to get some more offers from other Big Ten schools (and perhaps elsewhere) and wants to check out all his options (and probably to get the validation too, and nothing wrong with that). Just from reading between the lines, I wonder if he’s worried about playing the 4 at UM.
Kids want to play through July, and I think in most cases are pretty justified in doing that, before making a decision.
Some schools will really press for a pre-July commit like Wisconsin has been doing for Brad Davison, but for the new opportunities are going to arise over the next three weeks for a lot of these kids.
August is when the pressure starts to tighten and new priorities really come into focus, putting pressure on some of the older priorities.
Derrick and Zak are great examples of this, both were really feeling Michigan and didn’t really make it a secret but played through July to see what other offers/interest came their way and decided days after the live period.
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I can understand that scenario and look forward to the end of the July evaluation period.
What happened to Matt D, seems to have disappeared?
I like Cain’s game. I agree he could compliment the rest of the projected roster well. He seems like one of the guys who would flourish at Michigan as a mid level guy who overachieves and wins some games as opposed to the mid level guys who are totally one dimensional that we have gotten lately.
That all makes sense.
I feel like that’s a really overblown issue. Or at least it should be. On offense, it’s the exact same thing as the three, only in the opposite corner. Defensively, a guy like Glenn defended the four just fine. It’s not like any NBA scouts were knocking Glenn for his defense, it was more about his offense and inability to score off the dribble consistently. If anything, the ability to go against bigger, slower guys should help our fours on offense.
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I agree, and I could be totally wrong.
When GRIII came back for his sophomore year, he was pretty outspoken about wanting to play the 3 and not the 4. From a quick Google search, I found numerous quotes from him and JB including:
GRIII: “I was going to play the three then coach decided he wanted me back at the 4 when Mitch got hurt”
JB: “We’ve always envisioned him to be the ‘3’ man”
There were lots of articles back then about the difference between the 3 and the 4 in our offense, most saying the 4 creates much less with the ball and basically scores off of residual offense, drop offs and corner threes.
I think it’s a fair issue for recruits such as Cain who envision themselves as wing playmakers to worry about. I also think having our 3 future starters pegged with Simpson, Poole and Matthews in the backcourt positions may not help us land perimeter oriented guys, but that’s just my opinion.
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Few thoughts on this…
I was in the breakout room in Indianapolis when Glenn really started to open up late in the year about how he had wanted to play the three, etc.
But i would still argue that more of that has to do with the wear and tear on the body defending fours – a legitimate concern for everyone. Offensively, the three and four are the same thing, just inverted. Naturally the more natural ‘playmaker’ usually tends to play the three, which causes more action to be run for them, but if you watch the offense the majority of it can be run to either side. Beilein has also called it left side wing and right side wing at times in the past.
At the end of the day, if you can make plays with the ball in your hands, then you are probably going to get those opportunities. For GR3 that meant residual action early on in his career and a lot of elbow pindowns as a sophomore.
For Cain, I think it would mean a lot of residual action early on, corner threes, attacking off closeouts, etc. whether he plays the three or the four. From the EYBL film I’ve watched, I’m not sure that he’d be ready to do much more than that with the ball early on his career, although he certainly has the potential. But I don’t think that necessarily means he’d play on one side of the floor or the other.
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