Fair enough Dylan, improved shooting would go a long way.
I’m still a huge Z fan and hope he continues to shut down opposing pgs and lead this team to success.
I would be curious to see if there was a point differential metric that measured the difference between Simpson’s ppg and the opposing point guard he is guarding. This could be compared with the difference between our past offesive-minded pgs and the opponents they guarded. Would be an interesting study!
It means a lot to this team. I’ve written about how important his leadership is, how important his defense is, etc. We are talking about a top 25 list here that is obviously much more focused on individual players.
Individual defensive stats are always very tough, especially when you get as specific as the player someone was guarding (this can really only be accomplished at the NBA level with camera tracking data). The simplest way to think about this is that Michigan played something like five of the 7 or 8 worse offensive games for any Beilein team in the NCAA tournament and only lost one of them.
That illustrates a) how good the defense was late in the year and b) how much the offense still struggled.
It can be harder for a perimeter player’s defense to make up for offensive deficiencies than a center, who can be a true rim protector. And this is especially true for a PG, where so much offense comes from these days, and considering teams are often able to get a defensive gnat switched off his man.
For example, Rob Gray didn’t have his best game in round 2, but he went for 23 pts, 10 rbs, 3 asts, 4-8 3pt, while X went for 1-7, 0-4 3pt, though he did have 4 asts, 8 rbs, and 2 steals. Overall, Z shot 2-13 from 3 in the NCAA tourney.
As a team, defense may be half of the equation, but for a defensive-minded PG to have as much impact as an outstanding offensive counterpart is not easy.
I wouldn’t argue with that. But Dylan didn’t say average starter, he said replacement level. Now it’s tenuous to talk about replacement level in college athletics, because there is no pool of “freely available talent” as there is in the pros. The closest thing would be JuCo players that could be signed without a recruiting battle. A guy like that would be considerably worse than Jaaron Simmons, and Simmons was a step down from Z on offense last year.
As for your ranking - you really thought C.J. Jackson was a better offensive PG than Simpson? Remember, Holtmann used to sub in Dakich to make the offense flow better…
Corey Sanders? Well, I guess it’s hard to be a distributor on a terrible offensive team, but his offensive numbers were not good.
Anyway, Carr, Mason, McIntosh, and Sanders are gone; as you suggested Z would definitely be in the middle of the remaining pack on offense.
Replacement level was probably a bad term. I meant something far more generic than what you are referring to there.
Wow, Z not in the top 25? I for one disagree.
Top Players Play Big in Big Games.
2017-8 UM - Purdue 3 games combined
C. Edwards: 99 Minutes, 44 pts, 14 reb, 6 assists, 7 TO’s, 2 Steals
Z: 103, Minutes, 41 pts 15 reb, 15 assists, 4 TO’s, 4 Steals.
2017-8, UM - MSU 2 games combined.
Z: 62 Minutes, 9-17 FG, 2-4 3 Pt, 11-18 FT, Reb. 11, Assist 7, TO 2, Steals 2, 31 Pts.
Winston: 66 Minutes, 6-17 FG, 1-6 3 Pt, 15-18 FT, Reb 7, Assist 7, TO 5, Steals 1, 22 Pts.
Based on January - April play, I would have Z above Winston and probably in the top 10-15 in the B1G. He also compares favorably HTH with Carsen Edwards, although I would rate Edwards, slightly higher. My input.
Unfortunately, X didn’t play all year, or even all of January to April, like he did in those 5 games. Basing too much on a couple head to head matchups can be dangerous. Compare how he did against Rob Gray, as I discussed above, or against Clayton Custer vs Loyola, when X was outscored 15-0.
Rankings can be a hard job, and I wonder if Dylan would have a different order if he ranking the “top” or “best” players and actually drafting guys for a team. X, a guy who reportedly always wins even in practice, seems like he’d be higher in the latter.
It would be interesting if Alex and I did more of a ‘draft’ than doing our own rankings and then combining them.
2017-8 UM - Maryland 2 games combined
A. Cowan: 77 Minutes, 41 pts, 10 reb, 12 assists, 7 TO’s, 0 Steals
Z: 52 Minutes, 15 pts 4 reb, 6 assists, 2 TO’s, 2 Steals.
Good one DeAngelo!! I guess you can twist this one a lot of different ways. The only two I looked at were Purdue and MSU. (Top 3 B1G teams last year).
However, I still think Z is a top 15 returning player in the B1G.
We’ll see soon!!
I definitely see how Z is a fan-favorite to many…but I think if he was not on Michigan, not many people would be arguing he deserves to be included in this list. I have always viewed him as Tum Tum Nairn on steroids. Phenomenal leader, loveable teammate, plays big in big games, outstanding defender, but an absolute liability offensively. I do think he has the potential to be a much more complete player before he is done here, but for now I’d have him outside my top 25 without much thought at all. As @UMHoopsFan said though, if this was a draft a full team scenario I think I would value him much higher.
Might be interesting for you to choose some of the regulars and do a snake draft of some kind like fantasy.
Seconded. This would be so cool.
Im just very skeptical about Simpson this year. He is not a 1-1 lock down defender by any means.
He plays passing lanes well and is responsible for a lot of deflections and steals. He has had numerous games where his guy roasted him rather routinely, even though Simpson apologists would be reluctant to admit it.
Offensively Dylan has nailed it. There’s no need to rehash his shooting futility and horrendous FT percentage. He’s a one side of the floor player who is a huge liability in the half court offense.
If JB can’t fix his shot after two years, I wouldn’t be expecting miracles to surface this season.
His forays to the rim this year are going to be limited without Moe-MAAR-Duncan spacing the floor.
Let’s not forget how horrendous this offense was at multiple times last year WITH those guys.
Simpson’s value is in transition where he shines. Hope it’s a bigger part of our actions this year.
IMO Nairn did not play big in big games and was not an outstanding defender. Nairn played hard all the time but he was not a good defender, at least not in Simpson’s class. Only commonalities between Simpson and Nairn are height, lack of outside shot, and effort, and even then Simpson had 2-3 inches on Nairn.
Simpson bigger, stronger, quicker, much more creative, much better defender.
Disagree pretty strongly here; he is lock-down.
Id like to hear thoughts on an aaron craft comparison (though 2 years of simpson cant yet be compared to 4 years of craft, so we may have to wait 2 more years)
Craft was a gym rat and gritty a real student of the game, while Simpson has great natural quickness and raw talent
oh boy… don’t go there.