Cleveland Cavaliers hire John Beilein

Michigan Basketball
975

Come on, man. You’re the one judging solely on Natty’s. The dude said he thinks Juwan has a higher ceiling and you immediately start trashing him and saying that the only way to go higher would be to win a championship because Beilein was a runner up. That’s you saying that. You’re literally dissing your own viewpoint in this comment.

How about becoming a consistent Big Ten championship winner? Beilein got 2 in 12 years. A massive step up from the zero that they had this millennium prior to him, but far from the ceiling for this program. Unless you think it is the ceiling? With the way he’s recruiting (particularly compared with the rest of the conference) and what we’ve seen from his X’s and O’s I highly doubt that this is an impossible goal.

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976

We competed for big tens once B got the train rolling. We also got to 2 nattys.

Hence my skepticism for Juwan having a higher ceiling, however you want to define it.

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977

Most impactful on program

  1. Cazzie Russell
  2. Fab Five
  3. John Beilein
  4. Ed Martin
  5. Glen Rice
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978

I know people like focusing on the regular season Big Ten titles (note: Michigan hadn’t won any since 1986 before JB, and that includes the NC team and Fab Five era), especially the people who for some reason want to diminish Beilein’s accomplishments in order to prop up Juwan, but he won two BTT titles too. You get to raise a banner for each thing so I’d call it 4 Big Ten Championships for Beilein. He also lost in the BTT title game a couple times so he had them competing most years for both by the time his program was up and running. And one of the years he didn’t win the Big Ten regular season or tournament, he made the National Championship. He also accumulated the most NCAA tourney wins in the country between 2013 and 2019. I love Juwan, love the talent he is bringing in, but Beilein set a very high bar. If Juwan passes that in his first head coaching gig, it’d be an incredible accomplishment. That’s no slight on Juwan.

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979

4 championships out of 24 in 12 years really doesn’t seem that high to me. If Juwan sticks around that long I feel like it’s a safe bet to say he gets more than that. But of course to be fair Beilein did take over a barebones program and Juwan gets a head start.

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980

If it were that easy, Michigan would have had more than 1 Big Ten title (a vacated BTT title at that) from 25 year period between 1987-2011. During Beilein’s tenure, only MSU, Purdue and OSU won more BT regular season titles and OSU’s were before Beilein even had his program rolling. If we include the BTT, it’s only two programs with more championships - MSU and OSU. With where the program was at when he left, I’m sure Beilein would have won more hardware before he hung it up. Coming from where Michigan started, that is damn impressive.

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981

Getting really far afield here, but not many are much better:

Matta won 9 in 12 years
Ryan won 7 in 14
Painter has 5 in 14
Izzo 13 in 24

(this is combined tournament/regular season titles)

982

Yup. And Beilein’s first couple seasons were a wash with what he inherited. Those other guys took over healthy programs. Given more time, Beilein catches up to some of them.

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983

One quibble would be that OSU had been similarly mediocre for three years prior to Matta. But Matta’s method of team building (immediately a top 5 recruiter compared to…Stu Douglass and Zack Novak) probably lent itself to faster success. Purdue had gotten quite bad in Keady’s dotage.

984

I just feel like people in general view the conversation of comparing the coaches in the sense that they’re starting from the same point. In reality the program is in the perfect place for Juwan to succeed. JB built this brand up and now we have a coach who is going to recruit at a much higher level.

I know I already referenced it earlier but the reason I’m so high on Juwan as a coach is that high level recruiting. The only real comparison in terms or recruiting in the Big 10 is Thad in his prime at OSU. Those teams absolutely dominated the conference for a pretty long stretch of time.

I’m not saying that I think Michigan is going to dominate the Big Ten like OSU did then. But if Juwan is able to consistently recruit like he has this year (basically starting from a whole cycle behind other coaches) I really think sustained conference success is pretty obtainable.

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985

Two years prior. Three years before Matta, OSU won the Big Ten regular season and BTT. They had MUCH more recent success than Michigan and they also own the state of Ohio so it’s easier to recruit, whereas Beilein entered the state where Izzo had been dominant and was the king for a long time running.

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986

I hope you’re right, but talent doesn’t automatically equal conference championships. The late 80s, Fab Five and Fab Five 2.0 in the 90s were evidence of that. There was a ton of high end talent for that decade and it led to no BT titles. I love Juwan and think the future is very bright, but I just want people to realize how hard it is to win a conference.

987

You’re right that talent doesn’t just equal championships, i’m with you there. But if you look at the power conferences in general, the teams who are consistently getting the most talent are generally close to their top of the league annually.

988

I was curious, and looked at the top 15 ranked freshmen this year - even if they’re posting good stats, very few play on particularly good teams (Maxey and Carey are really the two).

989

Beilein was great but the only teams that I felt were elite were 12-13 (only ended up with a 4 seed),13-14, and 18-19. Sure we had some other tournament success like the 17-18 team but like many people have mentioned I think the ceiling of our program under Howard is far higher and feel like we will be in stronger position to win conference championships more often and receive consistently higher seeds in the tournament.

990

Well, let’s see him do it first. I think he will, too, but it’s not a forgone conclusion.

And Izzo recruits at a pretty high level too.

991

So you’re expecting an elite team year in and year out? I just want to define the expectation, if what JB did here isn’t our ceiling.

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992

I think if Howard brings in more talent than Beilein did we will be more likely to have elite teams. That is not to say that should happen every year, not even Kentucky does that. Beilein was a great coach and developer of talent but having 5 or high end 4 star talent matters if you want to be elite more often. When we went to the championship in 17-18 that season was great but there is no question Villanova was too good and too talented for us. I feel like we can be that team where we don’t need to out coach every team along the way but where we can have a significant edge in talent that can save us.

993

To put simply, Howard will recruit better players than Beilein did which raises the ceiling. Seems pretty simple to me.

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994

I do tend to agree that Juwan can bring in more talented players. That seems fairly clear so far, though Michigan was said to lead for Abdur-Rahim and Kessler when JB took the Cavs job.

With that said, there is a lot that goes into building a winning team and culture. First off, can he coach? From what I’ve seen so far, I tend to believe he can, but it’s also worth noting guys like Teske, Simpson, Livers and Brooks were coached for 2-3 years by Beilein first. They have a lot of winning habits. Can Juwan impart that once the players are all his players?

Second, I think he’ll need a balance of multi-year players and one and done guys. Like anyone else, I’m excited to get five star kids like Todd and Christopher. But I think the multi-year guys - like Dickinson, Zeb Jackson, Terrance Williams, and Jace Howard - are what make or break your program. Not many five star kids are capable of putting a team on their back and being “the man” from day one (prime example, Cole Anthony: nice player but shooting 35.2% from the floor this year and averaging 3.2 TOs per game).

Team chemistry is important, too. Guys like Brooks, Livers (if he returns) and Johns will be the leaders on this team next year. DeJulius, too. Can the one and done kids (assuming they come) play like good teammates? Again, I think so, but it’s something every coach has to worry about a little.

And ultimately, player development is huge too. The following guys, though not “five stars” on paper, played like five star talents in college: Trey Burke, Nik Stauskas, Derrick Walton (last 20 games of his senior year), and Mo Wagner. And guys like DJ Wilson and Caris Levert vastly outperformed their rankings. Juwan having a higher recruiting ceiling will only matter if he can really develop players. Memphis has a roster full of elite recruits and they’re 17-8 right now, 6th place in their (weak) conference.

With all that said . . . from what I have seen so far, I think Juwan is going to be great. I’m just saying I don’t think anyone should just assume what Beilein did was easy, or that even if we land better recruits it just automatically follows that our ceiling will get higher.

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