I dunno man. If a 50-75ish ranked player wants to come here, I’d nearly always say yes unless the fit is flat out bad.
I just don’t expect much next year. Ceiling is clearly limited. I realize others may disagree with that assessment, but to me the weaknesses of this years team are still gonna be there, except they’re going to be worse. I think we’ll make the tourney and maybe grab a game, two if we’re lucky, but not more than that.
I’d rather pull a high ceiling guy like Hyland and give him some time to lift and play on in practice with some of the other young guys we’ve got.
this is how i feel, we are at best a sweet 16 team next year with remaining recruits, or so it seems
dylan would know better than me if our 2020 prospects are better than a top 75-100 kid in 2019 thats a bit more of a long term project. but feels like you dont just pass on kids like this unless you landing franz and pierce. certainly not sure an open scholly makes sense
I don’t want to derail the thread, but I am legitimately shocked Jordan Poole would be 100% decided on staying in the draft at this point before seeing if he even receives a combine invite, or getting feedback from NBA teams. Projections are all over the place and it’s not entirely certain he will actually get drafted at all.
I get that he wants out for a variety of reasons, and I respect that. But a traditional transfer would make more sense to me than declaring for the draft with such a large uncertainty of being selected. At this point I really hope it works out for him, because I firmly believe that he should be a mid-first round talent, it just hadn’t materialized yet based on his sophomore season.
Of note on Hyland, the last weekend of April is a live eval weekend on the circuit. Hyland playing on the UAA circuit is a bit rare for a graduating senior (but makes sense given his situation). I’d expect he’d draw a pretty big crowd including Michigan at that point.
FWIW I wouldn’t be surprised if his listed 6’3" height is outdated. Watching some game footage from December and a newer video from Endless Motor and he looks extremely tall for a guard.
Ok so let’s say Hyland is indeed going to be a real target going forward.
Would you guys rather go for him, or go for a grad transfer for this year and then go hard for one of these 2020 guards Michigan has been known to be pursuing:
Cade Cunningham
Nimari Burnett
Jayden Stone
Ethan Morton
Cam’Ron Fletcher
Caleb Love
I’d tend to prefer the latter option personally. Not saying odds are great for these guys but chances of landing them go up if Michigan knows they are saving an additional guard spot besides Jackson if Michigan add a grad transfer for this year. That simple fact of knowing that spot will Forsure be open next year would allow the staff to really hone in on one or two of these guys and it ups the odds of landing them.
An interesting question I’ll answer with another question. What are the chances of landing a grad transfer (or two)? There’s Justin Pierce, who I’d take over him and I suspect the staff would too. After him, who’s on the board? A hidden problem in recruiting transfers to Michigan is that it’s notoriously hard to get them past admissions, even if they can get in most places.
I guess another key question is whether we’d rather have Hyland as a soph or someone like Morton as a frosh. Of course, if passing up Hyland meant landing Cunningham, you do that. I don’t think we land players like him often enough to make choices based on the possibility.
This is definitely an issue as far as recruiting graduate transfers. Look at most transfers that Michigan has brought in and they are all pretty much academic achievers. Charles Matthews received several All-Academic honors while he was here, Duncan Robinson was at Williams, Jaaron Simmons was all-Academic Big Ten. Even guys that Michigan has brought in seem to be good students (Pierce graduated in 3 years from William & Mary and is being pursued by pretty much only good schools.)
It does turn out to be a pretty big hurdle though. Just like JUCO recruiting is off the board, there are some schools that come up as a potential transfer names that probably won’t end up working.