A) They’ve had about the same success so that’s false
B) It’s about the value, you want to pay a Mercedes price for a Lexus? I don’t think so. But hey who cares, according to your logic it’s a car so it gets you places.
I really don’t think Mack and Miller were going to Illinois. Miller got the IU job and was probably waiting for a couple spots to open up. Same with Mack (who is an Xavier alum, by the way, and has a good thing going there). (And it’s not like Miller was dominating a power conference or put up crazy efficiency numbers like Marshall. He never finished above 39th in kenpom at Dayton).
So you’re left with Davis and Bennett, two guys who are older than Underwood and have been at their jobs for fifteen+ years, and who aren’t demonstrably better that maybe you could’ve gotten for cheaper.
One final thing to consider – when paying a coach, there are certain incentives to paying top dollar – you want recruits to think you got a hot name, a top coach, etc. Paying Underwood more serves these purposes. If they’d hired Randy Bennett for $1.5 million, it probably wasn’t going to impress recruits or people in Midwest basketball circles.
In the end, this seems to me like it’s more about Underwood screwing OkSt and getting rewarded than that there were other obvious great options.
By the way, just in case anyone is interested (and I know this isn’t the exact right thread, sorry), OkSt hired MIke Boynton, who apparently was Underwood’s assistant there. Zack Dawson is sticking with his commitment, so at least it’s semi-relevant in that some folks were hoping we’d get involved if he decommitted.
A lot of valid points, but my only counter would be Davis and Bennett have proven they can recruit as is. They have teams better than Illinois already that are their guys at a smaller school.
I’ve made the point previously, but Underwood is a huge unknown in recruiting. His Ok St class was going to be bad (bad in terms of rankings, which I know I know “rankings”.) His best player and stud at SFA was handed to him on a golden platter.
Give me a guy at $1.5 million who has proven he can build a program, proven he can recruit, and proven he can win with less, and lastly proven he’s doing the winning with his handpicked players.
Yeah, sometimes it’s better to go with a guy who’s a little older with a track record. Look what Beilein did for UM. Anyway, we’ll see what happens with Underwood.
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Yikes, that hurts. He and Watson seemed like a decent core for a young team. Miles cant catch a break, but players might also be reading the writing on the walls.
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It’s weird. Good players have been transferring out of Nebraska. Not players that a coach would encourage to look elsewhere because of lack of opportunities. Maybe players just don’t like playing for Miles?
I believe Isaac Copeland would be pushing Morrow for playing time and maybe start. Kid has a ton of talent.
I doubt they couldn’t have figured a way to get both big minutes. It’s not like Nebraska has talent coming out their ears
Sheesh - I feel like Nebraska gets hit in the nuts every off-season.
Or maybe the analyst viewed Irvin as an integral piece to UM’s success and isn’t yet sold on Matthews as an equal successor?
It’s early projections. The thing that stands out to me — if those roster projections turn out to be fairly close — is the impressive talent for MSU & Purdue. Those look like pretty complete rotations w/o an insane player development leap (like DJ Wilson made this season). Minnesota returns a lot from a team that found itself as the season wore on. The top of the B1G might not have Top5 poll potential, but it looks likely to have 2 Top10 teams. And the middle of the conference looks to project just as deep as this season.
Maybe. But I’m guessing Dinehart didn’t start from the premise that Michigan was clearly one of the best three teams in the Big Ten this year and significantly better than Iowa. I didn’t actually read the article, though, I’ll admit, figuring I’d wait until there was more info available on comings and goings.
There does seem to be something going on in that program, which comes as a surprise to me. Not the coach that I would associate those kinds of issues with.
Honestly, outside of die hard UM fans I’m not sure many people viewed Michigan as one of the 3 best teams in the B1G this past season. Clearly better than Iowa, yes. But on a season retrospective, UM was a middle of the pack conference team that hit its stride late because it’s senior leaders stepped up late in the season.
Without those two key seniors (on a team that played a short rotation) & without a blue chip stud freshman recruit, can the returning squad replicate that success? That’s the jist of Dienhart’s analysis/projection. And that’s fair, IMO.
I’d also add outside of die hard college basketball fans. I believe the team ended up being the second highest ranked in Kenpom.
Which just goes to show Dienhart isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.
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Efficiency and scoring margins also show we were better than our record. Yeah, we played our best ball during the second half of the season, and played historically bad defense during the first half, but even taking all of that into account, we were the 2nd best team by the margins. We just lost a lot of coin flip games, which is not great, but winning big and losing close does speak to the team’s quality.
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And if we were the second best team, we went 2-0 against the best team (and 2-1 against the third best team).
Well, we’re not disagreeing then. Dinehart probably didn’t use efficiency numbers in his analysis, just W-L record. Whereas, I bet John Gasaway would have said that Michigan clearly was one of the three best teams in the conference. And he would’ve noted the fact that Michigan was second to last in 3 pt FG% defense to boot.
It certainly is fair, though, to wonder how UM will look without Walton and Irvin. We’ll probably all be wondering that until November.
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True, the efficiency ratings were strong but those are imperfect measurements, as well. For example, they don’t tell you when/if a coach subbed out his stars in a blowout win/loss. Beilein (perhaps because he was trying to build game time chemistry among his rotations) kept his core players in “already determined games” longer this season than I remember him doing in past seasons.
Point is any method has a bias that can be exploited — computer models have data points that can be “gamed” and human evaluations have preconceived biases that impact the analysis. AKA, reasonable minds can disagree.
End of the day, perhaps Dienhart really valued Irvin and Walton a lot more than many people on this board? And views their departures as more challenging for UM replace than other schools have with their seniors?