Not a pretty situation with Spike but I don’t think the staff could have foreseen that he would get injured and want to return – plus, as Spike notes, they’ll have two PGs on the roster and even if X isn’t an immediate improvement he’ll need some playing time to be able to take the reins in 17. I wish Spike the absolute very best. That said, I hope that JB puts his foot down this time and does everything in his power to prevent an in-conference transfer. I don’t really blame Bielfeldt for taking his services to IU since he had redshirted in the hope of getting an extra year at M and was denied that, despite the fact that none of the other bigs on the roster were substantially better. But in Spike’s case, I think Michigan basically upheld its side of the bargain.
Go to Marquette, Notre Dame, Pitt, UCLA, wherever, but don’t let that sweating, belt-adjusting man in Bloomington prey on him.
Spike will always be one of my favorite UM players, and I say that as someone who never jumped on the Novak/Stu bandwagon. He wasn’t just a scrappy underdog with a heart of gold, Spike was a rocksteady floor general with brilliant court vision who could flat out play basketball. Still can, I bet.
They’re two very different situations. For all we know, Spike can’t contribute at a high level and he could end up transferring to a low mid major. Plus, there is a roster crunch whereas we could have brought Bielfeldt back after Brown didn’t commit. Even if Spike is healthy, we still have to move him on because of the roster. He would also be blocking X’s contribution and development. And that kid isn’t redshirting, so it’d be a wasted year. It could just be a situation where we are worse than we would be with Spike next year, but we’d be worse in the years after him because X didn’t get the court time he needed to develop.
Couldn’t you say the same thing regarding Bielfeldt - keeping him would have blocked Donnal from ever really starting to click. I understand Donnal is far from great, but he at least showed some of the ability people expected to see at times.
Maybe Max helps change the record by a game or two (I doubt it personally).
It also could have meant not playing or getting Wagner at all… Redshirtting a kid from Europe doesn’t seem like a great option given that they have the fallback option to go home and find somewhere to play.
This is a bit too sensible, I’ll bet, for most people’s taste, but true. But I’ll be the first to grant that it was painful watching Bielfelt drop 3s on Kentucky the other night.
I’d rather Spike then Kam, Aubrey or D.J. A rotation of Spike Derrick MAAR Zak and Mo with Donnal X and duncan off the bench is better to me then what will be our rotation.
Aren’t you making the correlation that Donnal will make a big jump next year? Donnal didn’t get much playing time last year and had some good performances this year. Wagner was averaging 2 mpg in the B1G before the B1G tourney and play-in game. You think Bielfeldt would have prevented Wagner from playing? Well only if Bielfeldt was kicking ass and that would have been a good thing.
The best players should play. In Max’s case, I don’t care that Donnal needed room to grow. He needed to outplay Max in practice and take his slot. With an open scholarship this year, that will never make sense to me. Same with Spike and X. The only way this can be stomached is if Spike is not who he used to be, and JB knows he’d be #3 all year. I hope for Spike, that is not the case, but its the only way this is defensible, and as many have said, we simply don’t know. It does piss me off though.
If spike can heal I’d want to bring him back. Also Thornton is very good but let’s not sleep on this sacred heart kid. I think he could be a good scoring guard for us. He also would give us another guy who can get to the rim and create for himself / get to the line besides maar something this team desperately needs. Plus how could u sell Thornton and x on playing with each othet
Spike leaving as a grad transfer was the most likely outcome for some time. We have a scholarship crunch and are relatively deep at PG, and Spike’s ability to contribute isn’t clear anyway due to his health. And for Spike, why not get a free grad degree? Wish him the best where ever he winds up, every day he’s not playing Michigan.
As for Max, you make the decision with the information you have for the best future of the team and program. At the time, I did wonder about not keeping Max when it didn’t seem to cost anything, even if it was a just in case of several injuries measure. I even wonder if he would’ve seen some time at the 4, maybe giving Zak more rest. But looking back, it seems unlikely Max would’ve made a significant difference in the season, although you never know – and, indeed, there’s no guarantee it would’ve been better – and who knows if we’d feel as good about the bigs going forward. Even though IU annoys me, I was happy for him to have a good season.
When things aren’t going so well, it’s easy to question every little thing.
I don’t disagree with the fact that we would have used him differently/less/less effectively. IU has players who are way better off the bounce than we do, probably make his looks significantly better.
That said, even if it was to spell Zak’s 35m+/game, or to just bring some stability to what seemed to be a mentally fragile team (28-0 run at home?!?), with an open scholarship I think the default is to keep the guy if he makes the rotation stronger (and he would have been in the rotation ahead of several others). Time may show that this was the defining moment when Donnal had the opportunity to break out, and 2016/7 will be his all big10 year in which case this all looks like genius in retrospect, but if a coach generally keeps players who raise the average of the bench/rotation I think its significantly more defensible.
I do agree however, that it isn’t about how well he did at IU that should make anyone concerned, but rather how our team looked, and who he would have outplayed to get time.
Michigan is relatively deep at PG? Walton is a PG in label only, he hasn’t really shown the characteristics you want out of a good PG in the past 2 years. You have MAAR that starts and Xavier Simpson who hasn’t played a single minute of college ball but Michigan is relatively deep?
I don’t disagree. I’m just highly doubtful Max makes any difference - and not because he couldn’t, but simply how he would have been used.
But would he have played minutes at the 4 shooting career 3’s at 26% and not providing ball handling? I doubt it. He’d have been tossed into the mess at the 5 position. What he did well at IU was shoot 3’s. He wouldn’t have done that at UM. So what would he have provided or done better than Donnal? Or Wagner? I’m really not seeing much to be honest.
What would have been nice would have been to use two “bigs” like Max and Mark together but apparently JB missed the part where Irvin was getting pounded on playing interior defense…
Doyle prevented Wagner from playing this year and I wouldn’t say he was kicking ass. Mo was held back by various things and Max being here would have limited what he played even more than it was hampered this year.
The Spike thing is nothing like Max. Spike essentially “hung up his spikes”. The coaches didn’t think he’d play ever again. They recruited based upon this assumption. Now that the class is signed Spike feels like he might be able to play. No slots at this point. If we have more attrition than the coaches think I wouldn’t be surprised if they offered for him to stay but I suspect that this isn’t what JB wanted. Timing sucks. Situation sucks. Best of luck to a great kid.