How would we be in better place right now? Unless you’re saying that Beilein would have prevented Livers from getting injured we’d be in the same place with a worse incoming recruiting class.
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All of this continues to drive home how lucky we are to have Juwan. When Beilein left, especially given the timing of it and some of the potential replacements, I honestly thought we were screwed. I hope for the best for Beilein. I’d love to see him continue to coach, and hope that he’ll find success wherever he lands. But, bottom line for me as a Michigan hoops fan is still one giant exhale that our program landed on its feet after what could easily have been a program altering (in a negative way) departure. Maybe we’d be in a better place with Beilein, maybe we’ll end up in a better place with Juwan, but the fact that the latter is even a possibility is near miraculous.
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I think we were generally assuming that Beilein would retire in the next few years, so if he hadn’t left, that would be hanging over us. It’s done now, and we have a coach who could be here 20 years if he wants. At this point it’s a relief to be past the transition.
Also, calling us a .500 Big Ten team right now isn’t very fair IMO (even if it’s literally true at the moment) considering that one of our best players has missed most of the conference season.
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I agree that this is best for the future, only because Beilein was getting close to retirement anyways and now we don’t have to worry about the future. With that said, JB had a chance to put together a nice 2020 recruiting class too and we know how he is at development. A class of Zeb, JAR and Kessler + Jalen Wilson from last year wasn’t an unrealistic outlook. That said, the future is bright and I’m very happy with where it appears that we are headed.
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That’s where I’m at. The toothpaste is already out of the tube.
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Yeah I’m not saying we would have been a bad team with Beilein or anything like that. But the fact is that he left so all the what if’s are completely speculation. The only thing we do know is that the future looks bright now.
Well we’d have Jalen Wilson (not Juwan’s fault of course). Perhaps that helps with Livers injury. Also Beilein himself was set up for a pretty killer recruiting class for his standards and based on what he goes for. So I feel like we’re not set up for the future any better considering Beilein is such an elite coach.
Having said that I am excited about what Juwan has shown. Saying we may not be better with him than opposed to Beilein is not an indictment on Juwan, moreso about how much I respect Beilein.
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I guess that just depends on how far off you determine future to be? And again it’s almost entirely speculation. I still maintain that I think the future under either coach would be better with Juwan at this point in time. Especially longevity wise
I think we would have more wins with B as our coach this year.
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EMU it is! Rob Murphy hasn’t exactly had a stellar season in Ypsi.
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Jalen Wilson broke his ankle though and is out for the year.
I’m sure we’d be fine with Beilein at any rate, although it’s possible that at some point down the road, age/retirement rumors would have affected recruiting. He left before that happened.
Yeah I can definitely see us winning one or two of those toss up games. But so long as Livers goes down I don’t think we win the league this year.
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That was my thought, too, though the example that I reached for was Dick Bennett.
I don’t care about paper recruiting. Beilein got us to two nattys in the last six years with his model of recruiting.
If Juwan comes anywhere near the baseline of Beilein success wise…that would be a surprise to me.
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Right, but most likely he doesn’t break his ankle if he’s at Michigan. But I mean maybe he tears his ACL lol. Impossible to know but most likely he is relatively healthy this season.
Measuring success entirely on the basis of NCAA tournament success just doesn’t make sense at all to me. There is so much luck in the tourney, hell without two super improbable shots going in we never make a FF under Beilein.
Now they did go in and those championship game appearances will always be a part of the Beilein legacy. But I think Juwan will have just as much chance as Beilein did to win a title in his career. And again, there are a lot of other things to look at to measure how a head coach does at a school.
I was always a huge fan of Beilein and I consider Michigan lucky to have had him around for as long as they did. But I also think Juwan has a lot of tools that Beilein didn’t have that can help move the program forward even further. I think you’re really underselling Juwan.
I work in a place where I’ve had the opportunity to see with my own eyes what road-trips in the NBA are like. These guys don’t have much time, really, for anything - 11 PM flight departures to show up to their next hotel at 2 AM, 9 AM breakfast, 10 AM walkthrough, maybe back to the hotel for a nap, then out again at 4 PM for shoot-around/game, then back to the airport when it’s done.
These guys don’t have the bandwidth for schematic tweaks between games (something I’ve read several players complain about with Beilein), and if they’re asked for they probably aren’t that well implemented because the guys have had at best a few hours to think about them. Add in that he has a roster full of guys that are literally just trying to learn to play NBA basketball coached by a guy learning how to coach NBA basketball. Love has been a needless asshole this year, but I think fairness would require one to conclude that this is, and probably always was, a terrible match.
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What are you referring to when you say our ceiling is higher then?
Man if things had gone worse with Juwan or we had another inferior coach I can not imagine how salty I’d be about all this. It’d drive me insane.
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National presence, conference success, recruiting, there’s a lot of things