FWIW
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Yak has two options on the table and neither is even close to if Beilein wants him in Cleveland. Yak is not in an ideal situation right now for his long term ambition. for short term, yes, he is getting a pay raise. I don’t think that Shaka is able to offer him more because his AD more
than likely has set eyes on his replacement. Yak’s hesitation might indicating his waiting for some other options.
Believe he lands at U Denver.
I like Yaklich and think he’s a good coach but I think his mythology amongst the internet fans may out-strip his importance, especially if people are going to be upset about losing him and keeping Saadi - who is also a very good coach.
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I think the former head coach is just fine as an adviser if you can get one to take that role. I don’t worry as much about on court coaching or recruiting, you just want someone to help make sure that Juwan doesn’t miss administrative details that are unique to being a college head coach.
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IMO we’d feel Charles’ loss on defense more than Yak’s
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It’s never clear to me what NBA teams are willing to pay for assistants. The top end pay is higher, but does Hardaway make more with the Pistons than Michigan’s assistants? A lot of the head coaches are paid top 20 type college salaries.
The Cavs hired JB Bickerstaff as the AHC for Beilein. They want to pair him with an experienced NBA coach. He’s supposed to be one of the highest paid assistants in the league. I wonder how much freedom they’re giving Beilein to pick his other assistants and whether they’d shell out that kind of money for Yak.
Money aside, Yak wants to be a head coach. Going to the Cavs wouldn’t be the shortest path to do that. Maybe Texas is better than Michigan in that respect. Might not be an easy decision.
Agreed. We had 3-4 great defensive players last year. Give Yak his due, but That will make any coach look good.
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Fine, but in 2018 he made Duncan and Mo into good defensive players, and in one year caused our defense to improve dramatically.
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Honestly I think Duncan just became more athletic. He was always fundamentally sound defensively.
It’s the same reason he went from D3 to the NBA, not because some coach gave him really good tips (although the staff deserves much credit), but because he eventually became physically ready along with refining his skillset.
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I think Sanderson had something to do with it, too. Thankfully, he’s staying!
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Honestly, at Michigan he looked the same to me every year as far as athleticism.
I will say that this year, in the D-League, he showed WAY more athleticism than I ever saw at Michigan.
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So did Matthews.
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Any new rumblings??
Seems shockingly quiet…
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Well he did just hire a strength coach
Duncan was definitely more active attacking and defending the baskets in both summer league and G-league, and looks very well conditioned.
Duncan and Mo went from actively bad to pretty good. Duncan got absolutely roasted in the Oregon S16 game and Mo got benched for DJ. As late as December 2017 a primary concern was how to get Duncan and Mo defending at a decent level. There’s a reason Livers started as many games that season as he did. By March 2018 these weren’t issues anymore. The Yak before/after for these guys is really apparent.
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Michigan basically completely changed the scheme around how to use Duncan about midway through the year. He was borderline unplayable at one point and then they figured out how to make it work. Definitely would give some props to the coaching staff on that.
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Hmmm interesting. I didn’t notice this! Care to elaborate on how they did so? Genuinely curious
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Basically they ran off-ball switches whenever there was action ran near Duncan. So Duncan was effectively playing a zone near the paint/corner. So if his man ever moved above the break, he would switch responsibilities with someone else so that he could stick in the paint / guard the corner. It prevented him from getting exposed guarding in space. I believe Dylan wrote an article on it
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