Nate Mason was over Walton when Walton went bananas the last couple months
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youāre rightānow Iāll have to look up the X snub.
I would. And I would expect anybody who watched Maryland much, as I have because my older daughter went there, to agree. Morsel is a terrific defender, who fared quite well defensively against very good players at the 1, 2 and 3 positions. While I think Charles Matthews was better, they are similar defensively.
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I go back and forth on what I think for the āall conferenceā teams with position versus non-position. Maybe they should create an āall-proā team or something that recognizes the five best players (in this case four centers) and then an all-star team that recognizes the best player by position.
It is so on-brand for the B10 to have 4 centers on the first team and 1 center on the 2nd & 3rd teams combined.
The two things that stand out to me are Trevion getting so much love when I donāt know where heād even rank in the ācenters Iād build my team aroundā conversation in this conference and Franz overall getting less notoriety on all of these teams. (Maybe it is a ploy by Juwan to convince him he needs to come back next year and light the conference on fireā¦lol)
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But Tillman was Defensive Player of the Year in 2020.
Was Dickinson unanamous for BIG FOTY and/or All Freshman Team? His name wasnt bolded/all caps and to consider the possibility that someone didnt vote for him as the FOTY let alone on the All Freshman Team is mind-blowing.
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Yeah but Iām talking about the year before when he and Matthews were the best defensive players in the conference and both missed the all defensive team.
Aaron Henry is the oddest All-Defense selection.
Why? Heās a pretty spectacular defensive player.
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Yeah - this is what I was struggling with above. I feel like Franz should be on the Defensive team, but who do you remove from it? I suggested Henry, but heās a really good defender in his own right. Franz just has those non-stat sheet defensive plays that I think are severely underrated/unknown by those casting the votesā¦
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If anyone follows the NBA, where specific positions are part of All-Star and All-NBA votingās rubric, itās funny to see 6 centers on the 3 all-conference teams, and 3 on first team.
That said, I find it hard to believe that Hunter was the 4th best center in the conference (and Iām not even sure heās the Wolverine Iād put on first team). Part of the challenge is that we probably had 2 guys with a decent number of first team votes (Franz and Hunter, Iād guess), and Iād wager they stole from one another, while a voter saying āWell Purdue is 4th, they need a playerā really only had one choice.
Franz should be on the All-Defensive team. He was incredible this season and was disruptive. He was Michiganās best defender on a team that finished 4th in KenPom defensive ranking and I donāt think itās all that close tbh.
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They never seemed like a particularly good defensive team. Watching other games, Wheeler, Morsell and Myles caught my eye on defense. Never noticed anything special about Henryās defense. (Apparently he locked down Ayo, but I only caught the end of that game.)
Henry is great but MSUās defense was worse than Iowaās in Big Ten play. Maybe thatās not the overriding factor but I think it matters.
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This seems to be the way it standsāand Iād be curious what instructions voters receive. But at that stage āteamā is stretching it.
EDIT: I would be interested in othersā analysis of whether Franz doesnāt get a few things crazy right on D but fail, maybe pretty often, on things like closeouts. Maybe itās because he often has the tougher assignments, but it seems to me he gets burned with some frequency on them.
Even when he closes too hard, he manages to get back most of the time or blocks shots from behind. You must be thinking of Brown, who just over-commits.
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I know weāre all biased, but Wagner was not just good or great on defense this year, he was PHENOMENAL. The mix of on ball and help side defense that he provides is incredibly rare to find. He was snubbed full stop.
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I kinda think Kofi Coburn was screwed on Defensive awards. He is an excellent defender, I think, in the classic big guy rim protector and rebounder mode. The Rutgers guy (Johnson) was also really good, but I really donāt think he was better than Coburn.
I think I think Coburn is the best defensive C in big ten since Greg Oden.
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Different player type obviously, but IMO, although Cockburn is a very good defensive 5, Xavier Tillman was considerably better defensively overall. Not the straight up post defender because of size; that said, there is a lot more to defense at the 5 than just that.
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