Isaiah Todd decommits from Michigan, will pursue pro opportunities

Just curious, is there anywhere to find some on-off stats in terms of individual defensive impact? I think that would be helpful in regards to this debate.

He did do an exceptionally good job communicating. I think that is a good point. He was a great player. He will be missed but I just think players will step up to fill the void.

Don’t think they’d be particularly useful here considering how much Simpson played. Guessing a pretty significant chunk of his “off” possessions would be at Nebraska, especially if you were to look at games against HMs.

Not sure that tells you much of anything.

The defensive loss of Teske is probably much more significant when you account for the fact that the options are Dickinson and Davis.

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I agree with everything about Simpson and the potential reasons for his defensive dropoff, etc. I’m not here to criticize Simpson. But you are adding in the larger impact of Simpson as a Sr. and “understanding the game”, etc. Obviously, no replacement will fill all that.

But the original question was simply about defense and the responses were simply that Simpson wasn’t that great on defense the way people are making it out to be.

yep been my concern is hunter’s D for all the projections of his minutes from people

Teske also received such a small amount help defense this year. Coach Howard seemed to be very stubborn about that. Good post players are going to score a high percentage of times if they’re playing one on one. I thought Teske was really good at getting in position, protecting the rim and challenging shots in the lane that came from dribble penetration.

And in Teske’s defense, he was going against unusually good talent almost every game last year.

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I wasn’t suggesting he should’ve started over Simpson or Brooks. There were times when, due to injury/suspension or just generally, guys like Davis and Nunez were seeing minutes and everyone was wondering why DeJulius wasn’t seeing the floor. Howard also played all three guards together at times. Odd substitution patterns and choices were a common complaint here this past season.

Zavier definitely underperformed defensively last year. I remember a handful of times last year where X just gave up on a blow by or didn’t put forth any effort defensively at times. Not saying he was trying to be bad but he was obviously so crucial to our offense I think Juwan wanted him to “load manage” in a sense. That’s why Eli was tasked with guarding the best perimeter player. I think X is the better defender out of the two but we didn’t need him To get into foul trouble plus it’s just a lot more energy exerted. Payton Pritchard did take him to school though😂. I always admired Pritchard, dude is just a baller.

Over a span of 16 hours, I have gone from being wildly excited to check the site to utterly terrified to check the site.

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It’s so true!

Well, it looks like a lot has happened in the few hours my wife and I were away! Perhaps this has been discussed above as I haven’t read the thread, but I wonder if the recruiting five stars luster has worn off yet! :wink:

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As has been noted a few times already I think this should be a really good learning experience for Juwan. I don’t think it should discourage him from recruiting 5-stars, nor should it discourage us from being excited about recruiting them. There are however, certain recruitments that a lot of high profile teams don’t get involved in, and we got involved in two of them.

All things considered, this was a tough couple days, but Juwan still put together a top 10 recruiting class in the country on short notice. He will do much better with 5 stars given the same amount of time to recruit them as everyone else. Especially given the connections he’s building/already has.

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Gonna be really interesting to see how Juwan approaches backcourt recruiting going forward. Basically a blank slate besides Zeb starting in 2021.

It will be his team (recruits) pretty fast.

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I’m not going to lie and say that the developments of the past 24 hours are not disappointing, but on the other hand I’ve long harbored an uneasy feeling about pursuing roster construction with transient players who (very likely) have more interest in personal pursuits than team goals. I feel at peace, as a fan, knowing that if the buy-in wasn’t there with these guys then it’s probably best that they went elsewhere and the program can build with the guys who are fully committed.

Also, I have no doubt Juwan will amass plenty of NBA-level talent over the coming years to enable him to run his NBA-level schemes that he likely prefers and is more comfortable with. He will find his recruiting sweet spot the longer he operates at this level.

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Same. Memphis last season was an example of a collection of very talented players who did not equal a very good team.

I’m not against pursuing five-stars, but balance is generally best for a good team.

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If you take out Wiseman Memphis class was not even THAT good. And it was poorly constructed. It would have been like our class with Todd but not Christopher. If you build a team around that it wouldn’t be very good. So I don’t think last year’s Memphis team is a good example

They were simply the first team which came to mind, given all the hype.

I would say Arizona, not counting the one year that the cloud of investigation hovered over the Miller program and affected recruiting, has consistently underachieved relative to talent level.
There are plenty of examples, though how much of it is related to players being bad teammates, and how much coaches being great recruiters and poor game managers is debatable.

Brown is 100% Texas bound.

And many people thought Todd was never coming here.

Christopher is the surprise.