I don’t know what this means, Reegs. Did Michigan prepare specifically for Akron, pr did it treat this as a scrimmage where adjustments were to be made on the fly? How about Akron–did they prepare for Michigan? What were the minutes breakdowns for both teams? Did either team change up offenses or defenses, or were they vanilla? And, of course, all this leaves aside the fact that this was a scrimmage, not a game, with no consequences, crowd, adrenalin, etc.
With all that, and with the fact that this is a single piece of data, I don’t know how you can reach the conclusion that “the team clearly needs to improve if they want to make the tournament safely.” The college basketball landscape is littered with teams which lost exhibition games to D2 and D3 teams and/or early season games to bad teams and went on to make deep tournament runs. If there’s something out there worth noting for individual players which should give us pause, please share. If not, I’ll wait a few weeks until we play Marquette and SMU/Pitt on neural courts, South Carolina away, etc. before I reach even preliminary conclusions about the team. That’s not burying my head in the sand, that’s just waiting to actually see games with my own eyes, instead of relying on second hand feedback about a scrimmage played under different circumstances than we will ever see throughout the year.
Couple thoughts here… First, it seems like the ‘top secret reports’ from every ‘secret scrimmage’ over the last decade have Michigan losing. shrug Teams that have lost secret scrimmages have had good seasons and bad seasons, not sure there’s always correlation there. (Also I think Akron will be pretty good, took OSU to OT in the NIT last year). Hell, Trey Burke’s freshman year Michigan won an exhibition game like 49-37.
Second, just about all of the ‘takeaways’ seem straight forward from ‘Derrick Walton played a good game’ to ‘Duncan Robinson struggled on defense’. I’m not sure anyone is shocked by those earth shattering takes. The one that caught my eye was about Ibi playing well, but I’ll take a wait and see there.
I also think playing a scrimmage like this is a lot better use of one of the exhibition slots than a traditional exhibition game. I’d rather split two halves against Akron than beat a D2 team by 20.
Finally… I’m ready for real basketball. Season is less than two weeks away… Champions Classic in two weeks… 2K Classic in a little more than two weeks. Let’s see some real hoops.
I will definitely agree that these scrimmages are a waaaaaaay better use of games than exhibitions. Exhibitions are basically useless (I’ve been trying to downplay people’s Miles Bridges hype by showing them GRIII’s exhibition line in 2013, lol) especially since you can only play your players in one of the exhibition games without giving up a redshirt. So it gets you more minutes to sort out the Teske/Davis situation as well since they can both play in the scrimmage/exhibition.
Foreign perspective here, but one idea that Michigan should consider would be to bring in one of the small handful of elite Canadian university teams like Carleton for a public exhibition. That way, they could offer a public exhibition while getting practice against a MUCH better team than D-II Wayne State or whatever. Carleton (and to a lesser extent schools like Ottawa and Ryerson) have been a very tough opponent for D-1 schools – over the past few years, they beat the Kaminsky-Dekker-Hayes team by 13 (!), manhandled Memphis by 35, and have wins over Baylor, IU, Cincy, etc. The athleticism is usually mediocre but the teams are basically dominated by seniors and they have no NCAA-imposed practice restrictions, so they are exceptionally well drilled. Just a fun thought, as the border isn’t that far away.
Looks like a healthy mix of home exhibition games vs US teams visiting on foreign tours - dating back to early August - and exhibition/closed scrimmages in the US this fall. Also, looks like they must be good, as WindsorBlue suggested, as they’ve won almost every exhibition game they’ve played so far, dating back to August.
Best ‘win’ looks like vs Wichita State (100 - 75), in what must have been a Wichita State foreign tour to Canada this summer. Although it looks like they lost to Providence this past weekend.
You’re quite right, it’s so far been mainly summer tours, and the scores reflect the NCAA teams having to adjust to international rules (shorter shot clock etc.) That said, Carleton played Syracuse tight a year ago at the Carrier Dome, losing by 8 after leading most of the game IIRC. They’ve also played @ Cincy, I think.
As JumpStop notes, CU destroyed Wichita State this summer, so they are definitely better than a typical “mid-major.”
Also, the Univ of Toronto, one of the weaker Ontario schools basketball-wise, just beat UNLV in a summer tournament in the Bahamas, so I think the talent gap between dominant Carleton and the rest may be slowly starting to even out as the sport grows in Canada.
I think the responses show why secret exhibitions are a good thing. If you play in public, then the fans expect you to win. So you can’t try anything too extreme. In private, you can do anything you want, including playing freshmen a bunch of minutes to see what they can do.
Exactly right…the scoreboard isn’t important…I’m sure Beilein and the Akron HC talked about certain scenarios they wanted to focus on(zone D, zone full ct press, etc) and spent several minutes in those scrimmages getting reps on film so they can work on it in practice.
Fans would not enjoy watching a ‘secret scrimmage’…they are slower paced, more instruction and not as free flowing as you would see from an Exhibition game. Regardless of whether UM ‘won’ or ‘lost’ isn’t the focus…it’s what can they take away that will help them win in the future(if anything). I’m guessing there were plenty of teachable moments for everyone(coaches included) and hopefully as a result, we will see a sharper product on Friday vs Armstrong St.
MSU lost the second half against Saginaw Valley State, a team much worse than Akron. But clearly Michigan losing a half means we’re headed towards doom and destruction.
