I said this is what he’s going to sell. What you and I think doesn’t matter it’s what the narrative Izzo will bring on the recruiting trail. Same reason people thought he was failing early on but he was going after top 20-30 guys and missing out but he kept banging down doors and selling the program and it paid of this year. They’re losing a lot of talent but it’s not like he’s bringing in the 35th ranked recruiting class.
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Good point. I think I misinterpreted what you were saying there…
I like to think the UMhoops community is only a few more anti-Izzo Internet comments away from MSU basketball’s downfall. Keep those comments coming!
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Mitch wasn’t a one and done.
Damn, another statement undone by the facts.
Is there an updated tally sheet somewhere that has all the Big Ten roster movement. I can’t keep track.
Indiana- loses yogi, bielfedt, Zeisloft (Troy Williams testing NBA)
MSU- loses Valentine, Forbes, Costello, Clark, Bess, Deyonta
Maryland- loses Suilimon, layman, stone, carter (maybe Melo Trimble)
Wisconsin- (maybe Nigel Hayes)
Purdue- loses hammons, Davis, hill (maybe swanigan, Edwards)
Iowa- loses Woodbury, Uthoff, Gesell, Clemmons (maybe Jok)
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Any one else wonder if part of the pitch to Bridges and Langford was “you don’t want to Go Blue, they’ll play you at the 4 all of the time and not showcase you like I can. Look at all of the bigs we have that will be backing you up.”
What about Bryant at IU?
Bryant is staying.
Did anyone else hear Sam Webb talking about the original recruitment of Derrick Thornton? He recounted how when we recruited Thornton originally, the kid and his dad thought that Michigan was no longer that interested him, because their attention dropped off.
The staff still had Thornton as a priority but they got outworked by other staffs because it was during the season. I’m sorry but it shouldn’t matter at all that this happened during the season. ALL staffs have to recruit during the season. All staffs have to manage their time between recruiting and development of the current team.
Look, I don’t expect every coach to be Harbaugh, but if you want to know why JB doesn’t have better recruiting success it is stories like this and the Josh Jackson non-offer that tell you a lot.
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That is probably true, and if true, it is ironic because it sure looks like, as things stand now, they will need Bridges to do a lot of heavy lifting at power forward–he will probably be awesome whichever position he plays, but I doubt it is his wish to play out of position…I can only imagine how he feels about being a front court player alongside an adequate/ slightly below average Shilling and playing with a solidly below average point guard in Nairn and an untested-at-the-college level point guard in Winston–who is not very athletic. Izzo has some great pieces but some huge question marks at key positions.
So is it your sense that Webb has become pretty critical of Beilein? I have been wondering about this.
Lazy recruiter but no one wants to hear it.
…or how we made Jaylen Brown’s final 3. Not because we recruited him but because he recruited us. Doh!
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Aside from the fact that both Thornton and Josh Jackson were both very good players in high school (and even there, Jackson was on a whole different level than Thornton), there is essentially no meaningful comparison to be drawn between the Thornton and Jackson recruitments. It is perfectly reasonable to criticize Beilein for the Thornton recruitment, and he’s a kid we might well have gotten. How this equates to the Jackson recruitment is beyond me. Whether you believe that Jackson’s mom had only laudable motives for pushing him to Kansas (keeping him away from “bad influences,” steering him to a school which had produced one and done wings), or whether you believe her motives were, shall we say, less laudable, we weren’t getting Josh Jackson if we had recruited him with the fervor of seven Jim Harbaughs.
I heard that, and it’s pretty disingenuous. The Thorntons were supposed to set up another visit in the fall of 2014 to get the full academic presentation but never followed through. They did visit Kentucky. Duke offered hm in October. By January, they were talking reclassifying to '15, which is what Coach K (and Pitino) wanted him to do, and which he did do eventually. He was not going to come to Michigan as a '15 recruit with Walton having two years left. K told him that he could come right in and start at PG. We were not telling him that. Calling this a lapse by the coaches fits with a certain narrative, but that’s what really happened.
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Did Thornton get an offer?
I don’t think Thornton was coming here, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the attention of the staff dropped off at some point. Have to prioritize, and time was better spent on Winston, Goodin, etc. And we ended up with an excellent PG prospect in the '16 class, so whatever.
More genuine criticism could be for a guy like Vince Edwards, who really might have come here and who the staff wanted, and who we could’ve really used the last couple years (and going forward), but they probably overestimated their shot at some other guys around then.
But this is all a little off-topic.
I heard that MSU is going after Spike to backup Tum-Tum !?