Maybe Stephens is trying to ride out Izzo’s retirement?
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And why shouldn’t he. Isn’t that what Izzo did waiting on Jud Heathcote to retire. Or how about Greg Gard from Wisconsin. Who is assuming that Stephens isn’t a good coach. And for the record Clevenland St. should have been turned down.
Cleveland State is similar to the awful Milwaukee job Lavall took. Although Lavall immediately leveraged that into getting to Butler (obviously with some very lucky timing on his part).
Regardless, if he wants to get to be a major conference HC gig, he needs to find a mid-major job at some point. Maybe he’s holding out for CUSA or lower level AAC type job?
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I think there’s a difference between a job that Vall or Dennis Gates would take as younger assistants. Stephens is kind of past that.
Right. But it led to Lavall jumping to the Big East before he was 40. As I said, he’s clearly waiting out a Tulsa level job, for example. Usually assistants would have left 10 years earlier for a Horizon level job. I genuinely don’t know what type of jobs are hiring a 50 year old career assistant, but I hope he can find one as he probably deserves a chance over a flash in the pan mid major coach.
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Upon talking to my brother, I guess it is consensus that Cleveland State, Milwaukee and Green Bay are a race to the bottom as far as Horizon League jobs go. That does make sense to turn down then, ha.
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I believe CSU has awful administration and financial issues. Pretty sure Milwaukee did as well. There’s really nothing about the CSU job that is appealing other than that it is a head coaching job.
The Cleveland joie de vivre?
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A top 25 with 7 B1G teams that aren’t Michigan
Whatever. I’ve lost all respect for any preseason rankings throughout the years. If Michigan was a mid major with two potential NBA players and this type of class they’d be top 20. These guys overthink things. I know what I watched last year and what we have. It’s click bait.
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I don’t think it’s clickbait other than the fact that any preseason rankings are clickbait in a way. I’m not usually one to complain about being underranked but it’s just bizarre to me that Indiana and Rutgers over Michigan seems to be the consensus.
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No worries. We got 'em right where we want 'em.
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It does feel a bit insulting and frustrating…but I like exceeding low expectations a lot more than falling short of high expectations. Given how much we’re rebuilding it is a good thing because we can work out the kinks and make a strong late-season run without the pressure of starting top-15.
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I think when/if Chaundee is declared eligible that the teams preseason rankings will have some upward movement.
Agreed, feel like we’ve been consistently underrated. Like being unranked last year despite Simpson, Teske, and Livers being a top 15, at worst, big 3 to build a team around. Or being in the 20s after the title run with Simpson, Teske, Matthews returning plus Livers and Poole showed potential as freshman now coming into starting spots and a highly ranked recruiting class. There was not 10 teams in the country that looked to have a better starting 5. That roster was an absolute lock to have a top 5 defense in the country, how bad of would a Beilein offense have to be for a top 5 defense to be a fringe top 25 team? I remember saying something to that effect and somebody telling me we didn’t know if the defense would still be elite because we lost Duncan, Moe, and MAAR lol. As if Wagner and Robinson were plus defenders.
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I wouldn’t get took worked up about a pre-season Top-25, one way or the other. It’s not like football, where if you’re not ranked at the beginning, you pretty much have to run the table to have a chance at making a playoff. It’s fun to be ranked but more fun when games have been played.
In my obviously biased opinion we should be ranked higher too. From an outside perspective though…we lost our starting PG (highest usage) and C and replaced them with an up-transfer and a Freshman.
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Jeff Borzello has 5 B1G teams in his top 25, including 3 in the top 10.
6. Iowa
7. Wisconsin
8. Illinois
13. MSU
24. OSU
Two B1G teams in his teams that just missed the cut (26-30):
Rutgers
Indiana
Yeah, well, we’ll be on it too come season’s end.
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