Is he healthy? Shocking numbers if healthy.
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Maybe shoulda gone to a college with a real weight program. His height and standing reach are good enough for an NBA 5 so thereās still something to work w there.
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Sure would be a shame if he had to end up back in college at a school with a real weight program.
Over the last 22 games of the 2018-19 season, Poole averaged 11.9 ppg on 51 TS% while playing poor defense and contributing little else beyond scoring. Prior to that he was averaging 14.1 ppg on 69 TS%.
I donāt think talking about Pooleās season being disappointing is revisionist at allā¦ He was the worst starter on that team by far and his fall-off was a major reason the team didnāt accomplish their goalsā¦ Wasnāt insanely bad, but he was definitely disappointing.
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Worst starter on that team by far?
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You taking Poole that year over Xavier, Iggy, Teske and Charles?
Could argue him over a couple of them I think. Which is why I think saying by far is a massive reach. That teams starting 5 were all pretty similar to me impact wise
Definitely over Teske
Maybe over Charles who was brutal offensively
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He definitely went through a rough patch down the stretch. He definitely was a big part of some of those late losses.
He was also incredible for the first couple of months of the year.
Sort of like how Duncan put up ridiculous shooting numbers during three years at Michigan but did have a couple of really rough patches.
As a fan of a team, you remember the rough patches. Evaluating a prospect, they donāt really matter.
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Yeah the revisionist history on Poole in college to me has gotten a bit wild. He was always good - he just was GREAT for the first month of that season and was just good after that. That team was arguably the best regular season team of Beileinās tenure with plenty of blowout wins galore and he was a major major major part of that success.
Eli Brooksā career averages in three years as a starter weāre 11 PPG on 54 TS% and heās essentially a revered piece. Pooleās worst two month stretch as a starter was almost identical to that (on a much better team) and he was disappointing. Relative to him being an NBA superstar now? Sure. But he was good in college. Always was.
Also if that team just doesnāt go 0-3 down the stretch against MSU this is a totally different convo.
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Charlesā offensive numbers on the year were only a little bit worse than Pooleās adjusting for usage and he was probably the best wing defender in college basketball. Teske was also insanely critical to that teamās defense as well. If you removed any of the three of Charles, Teske and Xavier and replace them with average B10 starters, that defense drops at least 15-20 spots. Whereas Poole was probably an average B10 starter at best on the year.
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B1G average was ~+17 so ~3.5 per position. To end up at (a) Poole +3.5 per 100 at 83% of minutes and (b) that team was +28, you have to have everybody else at way better than their stats relative to Poole suggests is possible from what I can tell. Suggests everybody else was like a +8? Somebody else do the arithmetic, Iām sleepy.
Poole was 7th in the Big Ten in true shooting and the third highest guard. His usage was higher than his fair share.
He had defensive problems but it would need to be pretty miserable to pull that down to ābelow averageā.
Itās easy to say stuff - if he was a below average starter, who were the 14 guard better?
I have Cassius, Edwards (both pretty miserable defensively in their own right!), Romeo, Cowan, X.
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Cassius Winston
Carson Edwards
Anthony Cowan
Glynn Watson
Romeo Langford
Amir Coffey
Trent Frazier
DāMitrik Trice
Ayo Dosunmu
CJ Jackson
Joe Wieskamp
Ryan Cline
Matt McQuaid
Jordan Bohannon
Aaron Wiggins
Nojel Eastern
Zavier Simpson
You could probably quibble with some of theseā¦ but I think Iāve made my point in general even if thereās a few someone might disagree with.
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Not really sure what this means but Poole was better than most of those players in 2019. I donāt think you would say āWow, swap Jordan Poole for CJ Jackson, Glynn Watson, Trent Frazier, Aaron Wiggins, Nojel Eastern, Ryan Clineā¦ whoeverā¦ and U-M is a better team.ā
Poole was a huge part of a really good UM team. He didnāt shoot it great down the stretch which changed how people viewed him IMO.
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Three or four possessions with a different outcome against MSU (or Houston) and heās remembered totally differently. Doesnāt take a lot to swing the balance.
That team ended up 6th in Kenpom and only lost 7 games. Unfortunately 3 of those loses to MSU and then the darn no middle defense.
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Pooleās slump down the stretch and his indifferent defense were factors in how some of us saw his career come to a close. But I think it is a little more than that. We knew that Poole had the potential to be the most talented player on that team and weāre seeing it now in the NBA (except on defense). We felt that if he worked with Beilein another season he would have been a star and a lottery pick - like all of those guys before him (Burke, Stauskas, Hardaway, etc.). He never quite got there and he certainly fell off down the stretch - thus leaving us without the opportunity to see what he could become. And his play at Michigan, while good and showing flashes of great, never really matched that of a first rounder.
Houstan and Diabate are similar in that we know they can be great players as they develop, but they only showed brief flashes of it and neither played like an NBA rotation player or first rounder this year. We want to see them develop, kick b*tt in a Michigan uniform, and turn into lottery picks rather than toil in the G-League for two years hoping to make it work.
It doesnāt mean we think they stink, it doesnāt mean we donāt see their potential, and it doesnāt mean we donāt understand why they would jump at the chance to go pro.
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I went down the KenPom List of top ORating guys and basically just looked for ORating/Usage combos that were roughly similar/better than Poole. And also for guys within the same ballpark who were lower since Poole was the 3rd worst defender out of this group (can never be as bad as the Iowa guys). I agree that Michigan isnāt radically better with CJ Jackson swapped out for Pooleā¦ But theyāre probably about the same and you could go back and forth over who was better. Just making the point that Poole was basically an avg B10 starter since there are lot of guys who you could swap him out with and Michigan probably isnāt much different.
Poole quite literally hit a shot that domino effected us into a national title appearance and got drafted in the first round (4 picks lower than THJ did). If he returned, and he was actually as āaverageā as some people say he was, thereās zero guarantee he would have looked any better the following season, especially playing next to a senior ball dominant point guard who could never be a threat off ball. Poole missed shots because he took tough ones. Some people liked that and some people hated that. Heās the last guard Michigan has had that can make a shot for himself off the dribble. Itās been four years. No amount of advanced stuff comparing him to CJ Jackson can convince me he wasnāt good at Michigan that sophomore year. He was an integral part of a great team - also a big part of why they couldnāt beat MSU in those three games, but that doesnāt mean he was a replacement level player. The threat of him doing creative stuff off the dribble made Michigan infinitely more dynamic that season.
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