I agree. I think second or third is likely, They lost a ton but z, teske, and livers is such a nice core. They play winning basketball and improve every year.
Having Wilson would have been a nice touch and given us scoring and creation we might lack but I think Franz will be just what what we need.
I still think eli will be more of what we saw late last year over next two years and give us a competent guard who can give us some offense.
Colin is going to be a beast and I’m expecting a nice year out of him. I think johns is going to break out and I’m expecting dejulius to give us nice guard minutes of the bench.
With that trio and those five guys I just don’t see a huge drop off coming. I’m expecting another big year.
Purdue fans might trade Painter for our two trips to the title game under JB.
Kidding. I do like Painter. Very good coach and class act - always has nice things to say about JB and UM, and vice versa. Could teach Izzo something about class.
Agree that that’s a super-solid core, probably more talent than critics, with less insight than we have, are assuming. But with the installation of a new or tweaked O and D and a new staff it’s just not unreasonable to assume there are growing pains. I’m going to try to worry less about every win and loss this year and just enjoy watching what happens.
I just don’t see how the offense doesn’t take a step back. It’s losing an offensive genius, keeping its very good but also limited centerpiece (Simpson), losing its two best peripheral players to the NBA, while the previous team was starved for depth.
To go with that I don’t see a big drop off on D, but I expect some because imo Charles was the best wing defender in the country.
So that drops Michigan to around a fringe top 25 team for now
Reasonable. The optimist’s argument for the offense is that it wasn’t that great to begin with, so matching its output is not a herculean task. Howard clearly sees what any reasonable coach would, especially one from the NBA – that here’s an elite P/R combination, and you’d be foolish at least this year to not use that as your starting point. And the thing you want to do next is put three shooters around that pairing, and the odds are strong that this year’s crop of wings is going to shoot from 3 better than last year’s – Matthews is gone, the best 3 shooter from last year is expected to be a heavy-minutes starter, and the best incoming freshman has proven he can knock them down from the new line, and against a high level of competition. So that’s a pretty solid case for why the offense can be better. You could feel even better thinking to yourself that Michigan’s weakness last year was the inability to punish switches, and that this coaching staff seems to want to address that with more post play.
None of that’s a given, but if Michigan has made the right choice of coach, it’s easy to see how the offense could be just fine if not better.
Yeah, if you had to make a path for this team to be better offensively, it would be that whoever takes Charles’ role is much more efficient. The issue I see with improving 3 point shooting around the X-Teske PnR is that that may not be a given. Poole was 37% and Iggy was 39%, both on pretty high volume.
Franz seems like a pretty safe bet to be in the 37-39% range. But the other spot is at best unproven. Brooks, Johns, Dejulius.
As for your last comment, if the offense is better this year then honestly it would assuage really any doubts I have about Juwan. We know he (probably) can recruit solid talent, we know he can (probably) coach defense. If he takes this team and has it as better offensively then either Juwan is a fantastic coach or X or someone else made a transformative leap. I’m just a massive Beilein stan so I think people may be overlooking the possible drop there.
One thing that may help the offense is if we can successfully run more. Another would be if Franz can replace Iggy’s numbers - a tall order but perhaps achievable.
Agreed. A few months ago I had a real long post about what an improved Michigan offense would look like this year. IIRC, the main ones I mentioned were Charles touches going to someone more efficient, an increase in OREB% leading to easy baskets, improved transition play, and someone making a much larger than could be expected leap.
Personally I don’t see Franz matching Iggy. The main reason being age and development. Iggy turned 19 midseason, while Franz just turned 18 last month. As well as Iggy being very impressively built for a freshman. I don’t see Franz being able to jump into college basketball like that, even acknowledging how well he played at a top flight European level. I really like Franz though and am really looking forward to watching him play.
Buncha good back and forth here, with Hack laying out what I see as the best case for improvement or offensive efficiency from the starting five. I see a possibility for a lot more efficient bench play from almost all sides, as well. The bench and how Juwan integrates it is also a fascinating question.
but “the best 3 shooter from last year” has yet to demonstrate that he can create his own. Big difference—particularly if, as likely, he gets more defensive attention.
I think Franz has a role to play in the offense that doesn’t necessarily require him to be Iggy, but it does suggest you need more from the other positions.
I don’t necessarily see offensive improvement as replacing Matthews with somebody more efficient. Poor 3 shooting wasn’t just him. Poole’s extended slumps also played a huge role in that. I just see it as a generally more coherent offense if you have three wings who make their 3s around that P/R.
While I do expect P/R to still be the base of the offense, it’s not reasonable to expect Juwan to just look for the best shooters to fit around it, as Beilein would have done. We’ve heard they’ll play faster, and we’ve heard as well that they want to crash the glass on offense. So things are going to be different. One thing’s for sure – if Johns can actually shoot with range, and guard 4s on D, then LFG.
Good points about transition offense. And maybe we need to wonder about transition defense too.
I don’t see the logic in expecting him to do more than attack closeouts. He’s not shown anything that would lead to a reasonable expectation he’ll be creating off the dribble or anything like that. But he is well suited to the role on offense he will most likely be playing, and that’s great.
Ha, this is true. This is the only team I root for where I feel things are going to go well. Coach b era shook the negativity out of me. Every other team I root for I’m expecting the Scott Norwood every game/season.
Hopefully that won’t change in this new era.
Although my Bills maybe finally turning the corner…
