Both from the Northwest, both 6ft7, both seem overwhelmed by high level competition.
Maybe more like the modern day Willie Mitchell.
Not really, I mean Christian was a 2 star out of HS with very low expectations. Chatman on the other hand, was a top 40 on all sites, with high expectations.
Christian was an above average athlete with little in the way of skill, while Chatman was a below average athlete that supposedly had good court vision and handle.
Two different scenarios
Yes. And Derrick Walton is the next me. We are both 6’0", from the Midwest, and both of us had a foot injury at one time.
Both from the Northwest, both 6ft7, both seem overwhelmed by high level competition.
They are pretty similar in a lot of ways except for their rankings coming into the program. Chatman also reminds me of Smote with his hangdog demeanor.
Side note- Coach Bacari did another “TweetBlitz” today in which he named every active player on the team (minus Kam), then named both coaches, then ended it by saying “You just experienced a Coach BA Tweetblitz” and only then added a tweet about Kam after the fact. Probably nothing other than he simply forgot to include him, but I still found it interesting.
He is barely seeing the floor and the roster is in shambles. Sure he is a freshman, but you have to think Beilein expected a lot more.
Since Day 1, his jump shot has been horrendous. If he had at least this element, record wise we’d be in a lot better shape.
He doesn’t look very athletic, seems pretty stiff actually.
Slow rotations on defense.
Misses point blank and wide open easy layups with regularity. The fact that he doesn’t dunk them is extremely troubling.
Doesn’t seem to have that bounce, awareness, gamer mentality.
Despite all the injuries, the most troubling aspect of this team is the very minimal contributions of Chatman and Donnal.
Honestly, I would be very surprised if one didn’t transfer.
I think that the only way that players like Chatman and Donnal will improve at this point is if they see court time, which is hard for them to get due to poor play. Donnal has come out and shown spurts of improvement. I think that Chatman needs to regain some confidence and be the player he was recruited to be. His expectations were high when coming in. He has been very disappointing so far, but he is still very young and inexperienced so I would give him a little more time. (But not too much time)
I think that the only way that players like Chatman and Donnal will improve at this point is if they see court time, which is hard for them to get due to poor play. Donnal has come out and shown spurts of improvement. I think that Chatman needs to regain some confidence and be the player he was recruited to be. His expectations were high when coming in. He has been very disappointing so far, but he is still very young and inexperienced so I would give him a little more time. (But not too much time)
I would love to see Donnal get more minutes. However, he looks to be a kid that needs to get continually pushed. I wish he had more of an edge.
I still think he has one of the better jump shots on the team. I hate that he is usually reluctant to shoot.
But at the same time Beilein has to manage these games to be respectable and win. I mean it would be great to give these guys minutes, but you also have to put guys on the floor that will shoot when open, not hesitate.
But these guys do have to show something for Beilein to trust them. I just wish these guys showed more potential in some areas so we could be a little more hopeful.
Was today Kam’s true coming out party? He has had some good stretched in the past but today’s game he really seemed to step into his shot with a lot of confidence. Or… was this much like high school where he excelled against lower level talent?
There are a bunch of real fickle fans in the Wolverine Nation. Take a long hard look around the college basketball world and you will find other highly rated players who have not gotten off to the type of start most misguided fans with lofty expectations figure they should. You have fans come out and suggest players Should transfer and that's sad. That type of fan is too caught up with stats and numbers, that's not how it works, it's not that simple. I can name a player (Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk) whose stats are worse than Kams as a Fellow freshman. But I bet every Wolverine fan would LOVE to have him transfer to Michigan. Thing is, Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk may just leave for the NBA draft altogether after this season, even with the paltry numbers he has managed to post this season.
I was not familiar with the player you mentioned so looked him up and the first video I found was this one. Just my take but they are not the least bit similar in athleticism or skill sets. That said I agree in part that many of us are looking for instant gratification on high level recruits; meaning if Kam was a 3 star and we saw this last game the reaction would be wow he has a future not where has this been.
Reality is that you literally have to anticipate the absolute worst every year in terms if attrition. If you don’t recruit any projects then most likely you won’t have any problems. All instant impact every year
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There are a bunch of real fickle fans in the Wolverine Nation. Take a long hard look around the college basketball world and you will find other highly rated players who have not gotten off to the type of start most misguided fans with lofty expectations figure they should. You have fans come out and suggest players Should transfer and that’s sad. That type of fan is too caught up with stats and numbers, that’s not how it works, it’s not that simple. I can name a player (Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk) whose stats are worse than Kams as a Fellow freshman. But I bet every Wolverine fan would LOVE to have him transfer to Michigan. Thing is, Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk may just leave for the NBA draft altogether after this season, even with the paltry numbers he has managed to post this season.
Meh…there is some middle ground. While what Webb is saying has some merit, college basketball has changed. 20 years ago it simply wasn’t an expectation for a true freshman to be an impact contributor, but in contemporary times that is a very realistic expectation for may reasons. Was Kam expected to perform at an all B10 level this year…no, but was he expected to be better than he has shown…you better believe it.
Bottom line, patience in today’s sports world is VERY limited. Expectations are for players to contribute immediately if highly regarded out of HS. It’s not as difficult for true freshman to be impact players because college basketball simply isn’t that good in relation to 20 years ago because all the upper tier college players leave after 1 good season. Not many people (myself included) want to wait 3 years for a player to become an impact player when freshman all over the country are lighting it up…its just the way things are in contemporary times.
Well, Kam sat out his entire junior year of high school, didn’t play high level AAU ball if I recall correctly, and the competition in Portland wasn’t great.
Plenty of guys at Michigan have struggled and then became very good players. Darius Morris and DeShawn Sims being two prime examples. Yes, for this year’s team to be really good, we needed more from Kam. That doesn’t mean he’s not capable of turning it around. Yesterday, he played very well. He just needs to build on that.
In addition to Kam, off the top of my head some other 4/5 star kids who have really struggled this year: Theo Pinson (UNC), Devin Robinson (Florida), the Kansas kid, and Bates-Diop (OSU). Cliff Alexander hadn’t been exactly dominant,either, before his suspension (of course, whenever I suggest programs like Kansas have some shady recruiting/recruits going on, MattD buries his head in the sand).
Meh.............there is some middle ground. While what Webb is saying has some merit, college basketball has changed. 20 years ago it simply wasn't an expectation for a true freshman to be an impact contributor, but in contemporary times that is a very realistic expectation for may reasons. Was Kam expected to perform at an all B10 level this year........no, but was he expected to be better than he has shown...........you better believe it.Bottom line, patience in today’s sports world is VERY limited. Expectations are for players to contribute immediately if highly regarded out of HS. It’s not as difficult for true freshman to be impact players because college basketball simply isn’t that good in relation to 20 years ago because all the upper tier college players leave after 1 good season. Not many people (myself included) want to wait 3 years for a player to become an impact player when freshman all over the country are lighting it up…its just the way things are in contemporary times.
Who says we’ll have to wait three years? We might only have to wait one. If we knew Kam was only good for his senior year, yeah, I’d rather go with some other recruit and hope he can contribute almost immediately. But what if we get 2 good years of Kam? I think it’d be worth the wait.
IMO, injuries and attrition are clouding our judgment of him. Kam’s development wouldn’t be as big of an issue right now if we had GR3 and Stauskas here. But because of the unexpected attrition and injuries, we really needed a ready made power conference player. And Kam’s just not that. If we had what we expected to have, Kam’s development would be fine and we’d be ok with bringing him along slowly. I’ve seen enough from Kam to believe that he still has a good future ahead of him as a B1G basketball player.
I would say GRIII, McGary, and Morgan was expected attrition while Horford and Stauskas was unexpected attrition. When you combine the expected attrition, unexpected attrition, injuries (Walton, LeVert, Wilson) and 2 unusable scholarships (Duncan, Hatch), you run into a sticky roster situation.