I agree about Beilein in particular, but Jim Calhoun is coaching at a D3 job and Rollie Massimino coached at an NAIA school not too long ago.
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I think youāre spot on Dylanā¦the Patrick situation could be key here.
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I wouldnāt call it āceilingā but I think there will be a difference in media coverage and āthe discourseā between a Juwan Howard coached-team that recruits with Kansas and Duke and a Beilein-coached team āover-achievingā with more moderate recruiting.
Obviously its hard to ask for better results, except maybe, as Izzo has managed, near annual contention for the Big Ten title.
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Iām guessing thatās more because those guys had no better suitors.
I could see Beilein doing something similar to Calhoun at some point much later in his career ā certainly before he works an admin job in a university somewhere ā but it is a bit easier to do that with 3 national titles in your pocket.
If Beilein is healthy enough to coach at a high level, I think he would want to be at a place that he could build into a team that could make it to the Final Four.
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His ego?
The guy wanted to try his hand at coaching in the NBA. Why does that suggest his āegoā was the problem?
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Now that I agree with
And itās also true an improbable shot by Kentucky kept us from a Final Four. Works both ways.
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From five more minutes of the Elite Eight, at least. 
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I like Juwan a lot and if he has the ability to coach up his recruits, weāre going to be in great shape for years to come. (I think he does have that ability; weāll find out soon enough). But conference success is an odd argument since we sit at 7-7 in conference play right now and JB has two Big Ten titles and two Big Ten tourney titles on his resume ?and four total BT title game game appearances). You think JH will do even better than that? I hope so but itās a high bar.
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Exactly, thatās why I think using tournament success is a bad measure of total success. In 12 years at Michigan Beilein had two conference championships. If Juwan is able to consistently out-recruit the big ten I think he can definitely do better than that.
My response was to a comment that insinuated JB would be interested in a Division II job. A man that was motivated enough to leave Michigan coming off a 30-win season solely because he needed to fulfill his personal desire to coach at the highest level (even though the situation he chose to step into was the worst one imaginable at that level) would never allow himself to stoop down to such a smaller level now.
Maybe I shouldnāt call it ego. Pride, competitive drive and personal priorities would also suffice.
I think this year is actually a pretty good representation. If we have Livers healthy all year I think we are right in contention. Thatās nothing to do with Juwan. (That being the injury I mean)
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2 titles, 2 more Big Ten tourney titles. And he also took over at a time when the program was really down. Iāll say this, the team that wins the Big Ten is often NOT the team with the highest rated recruits on paper (see Wisconsin in any year they won it). Heāll need to be a strong coach, too. (I think he can). And heāll need to find the right balance between 3-4 year guys and one and done guys.
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As far as Beilein/Juwan/etc. debate which Iām sure will be completely rational.
Juwan has a higher ceiling as a recruiter, thatās pretty obvious already. I think it is also fair to say that he has a lot of potential because he has only coached 25 college games. Heās going to make exponential improvement because heās still growing into the job. Heās also probably going to take some lumps along the way whether it is in the NCAA Tournament or via roster construction or anything else.
I think it is also fair to point out that you need to see Juwan Howard coach without a senior All-Big Ten point guard to get a complete picture of his coaching ability.
Thereās just a lot more uncertainty there tooā¦ We donāt know where this thing will end up in 3-4 years.
As far as thinking about the situation, the fact that at some point there was going to be a transition at some point canāt be ignored. Beilein wasnāt going to stay at Michigan forever, he had already stayed at Michigan twice as long as any other stop along the way.
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Fair point, and I agree. I like what Iāve seen so far. Of course most of these guys cut their teeth under JB, so JH will need to maintain and grow the existing culture.
IMO, as far as ceiling goes, I think the program under Juwan has the upside to be more consistent and possibly compete at near blueblood level. JB always struggled with roster management and handling attrition and it led to some uneven ebs and flows where the teams would be bad for half of the season or an entire season was just lost. I think that was always a threat to reoccur with the way JB preferred to recruit. As successful as we were in the post-season, we really only had 2 seasons (maybe 2 and a half?) where we were a wire to wire top team.
Juwan has upside to consistently have teams like that, IMO. JB could definitely have won a National title here, but I think Juwan has the chance to bring more consistent success along with that. Like I think ceiling as far as the program health instead of NCAA tournament ceiling.
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I agree with all of this. JB is 67, he wasnāt going to stay forever. Iām actually fine with how it all turned out because I really like Juwan. Iād be really bummed if we had hired someone else (say Shaka Smart) and were a .500 team with mediocre recruits with JB available again.
If you look at OSU during Thadās peak recruiting years they won 5 conference titles in 7 years. Now who knows if Juwan can consistently recruit at that high of a level but if youāre looking at a comparison in the Big 10 thatās really the only comparable program.
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Winning regular season conference titles consistently is the best way to gauge how healthy a program is in the Big Ten.
It isnāt everything and it isnāt the most important to fans, but it is the hardest thing to do and proves which programs are the best from top to bottom IMO.
Thatās not to say that there was something bad or wrong about Michiganās recent success or to discount it. Just thinking more big picture.
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