You know how I know we aren’t elite on offense this year. I watched the Xavier UConn SMU games. Now you can take you stats that are grossly inflated by playing the sisters of the poor to state your case but in the end the eye test doesn’t fail.
Probably hitting a ton of 3s against a team that has won 2 games and has a name that sounds like a middle school instead of a University just might help out that overall stat column.
At one time this year Leonard Fournette and LSU were bull dozing there way with an insane rushing attack. Then they actually played someone and got curb stomped. Stats told a different story up until that point. After that Bama game LSU was the fraud they were all year masked by playing inferior comp.
Yup. We have played absolutely terrible competition the last 4 games. It’s much easier to look elite against the worst teams in Division 1. Let’s see what happens Jan- March. My guess is the offense will be good but certainly not elite and the defense will be bad. Hopefully, that formula is still enough to having a winning league record.
I think this is a good thread. Imo it’s a probably a bit of everything, obviously having a rim protector would help but since Beilein has gotten here how many of those has he actually had? Eventually when you have been in one place for an extended period you can see what his vision is. His vision really doesn’t correlate to having a rim protector.
As brought up earlier the lateral quickness with some of these guys is severely lacking. I guess my question would be. Beilein was known for his zone defenses has WVA yet we have seen very little of it here. If we have seen it quite often the opposing offense would figure it out pretty quickly. Does he not recruit the type of player that can adapt to playing zone defense? Even Boeheim at Syracuse continually sticks with his zone defense at times he may have a group that is slow to pick it up but after becoming more familiar of it his teams catch on and that zone can be a big issue for the opposition.
As for Michigan being an elite offense the numbers would tell you this but from their 5 toughest games UConn/Xavier/Texas/NC State/SMU I imagine you would find an offense that isn’t elite. Those 5 teams are probably a better indicator of the opposition they will face. Michigan won’t be facing many more teams like Charlotte, Youngstown St, Bryant etc…
Totally get what everyone is saying about the competition—the good and bad—on the noncon schedule. And of course the B1G slate will present a lot of tough challenges. But let’s not lose sight of how down the conference is this year. Never have there been as many close to guarantee games as there are this year vs RU, MINN, PSU, NEB. Add in a much softer middle w OSU, ILL, NW. There are so many wins to be had against that bunch alone–at least seven, if not ten, right there!
Generally hate the word ‘elite’ in any discussion, but trying to say that Michigan doesn’t have a really good offense right now is a bit silly. We have a number that is adjusted for SOS, includes Michigan’s ugly losses, and it says the U-M offense ranks about 18th in the country.
We have a number that does the same with the defense and it says its ranked 98th in country.
Are there really people who would argue with those numbers? They seem about right to me.
Then we are agreed, the offense is very good and getting better. The defense is average at best, but could improve over the rest of the season.
Having said that, I think some of our issues this year at both ends of the court have resulted from playing a lot of guys while searching for the right starters and rotation guys. Now that we seem to have that settled, I think this group will continue to gel and improve.
I would hope so. Many of these teams lost to a short handed UM squad last year that had no business winning as many games as they did last year.
All I’m saying is that UM hasn’t had the bad losses many in the conference have had nor has UM played subpar teams closely the way many of these teams have. there are a lot more W’s to be had this year in conference than in the past with the very bad bottom and very soft middle.
when i said elite. I was also talking about the recent past. It points to the coaching mindset which in turn is most likely the player’s mindset. That offense is just more important. So I’m assuming that in practice most time and energy goes into getting the offensive sets perfect. And then during games, most physical and mental effort goes in on the offensive side. Which means the ceiling for the offense is elite territory where the ceiling for the defense is probably not much better than average.
There is definitely room for debate on you would like to be elite/maybe average, slightly better than average/slightly worse than average, average/average, or some other combination.
I think it’s pretty rare when there is an elite/elite, and that takes special players.
Last year? After all of the injuries? Not really worth re-hashing, but that team wasn’t making the tournament with a 6 man rotation and a couple of walk-ons.
Could they have made the NIT? Sure they lost four games in overtime in the last month and a half. Would that have changed anything about the problem? No probably not.
Are you being facetious or just negative? This is a serious question because I’m really trying to figure out from where you’re coming as it relates to Coach B and the current state of Michigan Basketball. Help me out here, facetious or negative? Or perhaps neither and, as Dylan suggested below, you felt we should have been invited to the NIT, with which I would concur. I’m not trying to be a jerk, just trying to get a handle on your perspective.
OK, this was a reply to your “no business” comment. But I do now understand what you meant and I do agree in theory. However, we don’t live in a theoretical world. Injuries to your top two players do happen in the real world. So while I agree Michigan “should” make a post season tournament every year, in the real world that sometimes becomes VERY difficult, and if you expect to make a tournament EVERY year you’re setting yourself up for inevitable disappointment.
