This team is not good. This team might be good in the 1980s with 2 bigs and no 3 point shooting. Unfortunately it’s 2021 and this is a roster construction problem that won’t be resolved for some time.
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Now being 10 games in and coming up to some gaps in the schedule and some time to tinker, I wonder what the adjustments will be. Looking at PG…
There are a lot of things that are just jarring about this team, but this is pretty spot on. And this is not just on Juwan, I am wondering where this NBA talk is coming from. Wasn’t he reputed to be a top-shelf defender from the combine? Dude can’t keep anybody in front of him. I find myself less and less confident in a role for him on this team and with this roster, given we have to get Kobe and Zeb a look at this point. Not quite at the point of Frankie being the answer either. I think his sweet spot is a 20 MPG player.
I know the trade-offs that happen, but I wonder at what point we need to bite the bullet and make Eli the primary PG. If you noticed in crunch time he pretty much was and Jones was hanging in the corner.
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We played head-scratching line-ups on more than a few occasions last year and the year before. This year we don’t have the talent and the experience to survive with suboptimal line-ups.
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It’s a guard’s game these days. Juwan doesn’t recruit guys or play guys with that attitude it feels like.
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Don’t disagree, but you look at the last 2 games, it started with Hunter being the primary focus in the paint and building out from there, both with him and the team. First half was much the same and Hunter got into a good rhythm.
Announcers did a nice job pointing out late in the 2nd half how we had moved totally away from Hunter. Credit to Minnesota as they were packing the paint but it also seemed like we weren’t trying terribly hard either.
Of course, as bad as things were, scoring 65 points with the defense we were supposed to have should have been enough. Dylan mentioned a few weeks ago that Michigan needs to lean into being a good to elite defensive team and today was not close to that.
Sorry to be pessimistic but today feels to me like a turning point. The inverse of JB beating Duke with a bunch of discards in his 2nd year.
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Imo their defense was only 
for a small portion of the second half. They only gave up what 30 in the first half , on a ton of tough runners/ mid range pull ups and then they basically locked them down the last 6 minutes.
It’s not good that it fell apart for ten minutes in the second half but they needed to be up 10 at half which they could of , had they been decent on offense.
The larger problem for me is really weak pg play and shooting / play making from the perimeter as a whole.
I’m just shocked Juwan is so committed to Jones with how poorly it’s been going. I think the team needs a spark and a change to the rotations and I’m shocked we haven’t seen more Frankie, Kobe, or Zeb.
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If you’d told me before the game Jones would score 14 points on 50% shooting and we’d have only 8 turnovers, I don’t think I’d have expected a double-digit loss.
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Was Jones great today? No
But was he more effective than Frankie? Yes
Does this team have way bigger issues than Devante Jones? Yes
Looks like this team is going to go as far as the 3-point shooting takes it on a given night. This was a miserable outside shooting performance and it seems the team is capable of this on any night. Which means we can lose to any team in the conference on any night. I don’t think all is lost because we’ll get some good wins on nights when the ball goes down. Hard to imagine this being a team that shoots it consistently though.
The defense was also brutal on Battle and Willis. Give Minnesota credit they played a perfect game and Battle gave hell to our entire front court. No one could stop him not Moussa not Brandon not Hunter not Twill. But that’s a bottom half big ten team that beat us soundly on our home floor. And the big ten isn’t even that good this year.
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I’m not so sure about your first sentence. Midway thru the 2nd half, they said Minnesota made 20 of their last 30 shots. We can argue about the efficiency of those shots and maybe Battle/Willis went NBA jam, but they were getting whatever they wanted.
Also leads to the point that has been made that Battle and Willis/somebody that can just go get a bucket would be really nice on this roster.
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I’m praying Kobe can give us some of that shot creation this year.
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I’m praying Kobe gets a meaningful minute on the court again this season
Should it be a worry this team might have severe backcourt shooting problems, like this year, the next 3 seasons at least while Frankie is at the helm?
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Jones looked pretty good today on offense. We saw the offensive player we were supposed to get. Can only imagine how much more effective he’d be if anyone could make a three.
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Sure it should. That’s not a Frankie issue it’s up to Juwan to figure it out but if he wants to coach like we are playing 2 posts and 2 other guys who can’t shoot from the outside good things aren’t happening this year.Probably not next year either. Nobody will say much about it but the effort in a few games has been quite poor and that’s another issue. If Juwan needs to implore his guys to give more it’s a big problem. Unfortunately we won’t learn much about this team until they play their next conference game in a few weeks.
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