That game could not have gone much better. Rahkman not only showed aggressiveness but efficiency. Wagner showed more passing than ever. Simmons continued his solid streak. X made a three. Matthews got rolling a little late. Robinson is playing solid D and continued to shoot well. Poole kept up his excellent play and showed some nice passing. Hard not to rethink the potential ceiling of the team.
Maryland looked pretty bad though. Hopefully we made them look bad, but there are reasons they’re the 11th defense in the conference.
I often wonder if guards that would be perfect fits like Kevin Huerter, that turn down the chance to be coached by Beilein ,wonder what the hell they were thinking when guards that did sign up to be pros are kicking their butt up and down the court.
Huerter loss was a tough one. He would’ve been a great fit at the two. I guess I always assumed Turgeon was an average coach but above average recruiter. I guess we will find out if he was recruiting fairly, we know Stone was on the take.
I have become convinced that most players don’t look that closely at things like what coaches can make me better or who can get the most out of me. They seem to think more about relationships or what the team has won in the past or is it a blue blood program.
Agree with all of the praise people are putting on this group. Almost everyone has taken it up a notch and is executing better. Just want to give a shout out to the sometimes overlooked Jon Teske. He has been going after it pretty hard. His defense is looking stronger and stronger every game.
Pretty excited about the possibilities of this group making a run.
I’m not over looking him. John looks great off the bench. I’d love to have another year of Wagner but I’m very intrigued by teske and kind of want him to get his shot next year. This is already a good defensive team but think about if teske was manning the middle next year 30 minutes a night. Literally a write up about us would say team strengths: defense. Z, Poole , Mathews , whatever 4 and teske would be one tough team to score on. I almost think you start ignas at the 4 to add more offense. Although I hsfe a feeling livers will develop into a nice weapon next year as well.
This team has a chance to win big now but I’m very excited for the next three years. It’s going to be a special time to be a Michigan fan. Good guy, Clean recruiter beilein will win the day. I wonder what future classes look like if everyone starts playing fair. You gotta think coach b starts landing a 5 star almost every class. At least every other class. I wish shittu had chosen us. I thought we had a real nice shot with him and what coach b could have done with that talent at the 4 would hace been a site to behold.
I wonder how dirty coach k is if at all. If he gets named on this more that would be pretty crazy. I kind of thought he was beilein on steroids. Clean guy who’s reputation and skills preceded him so he didn’t need to cheat. Now this Carter allegation and the top 3 kids in the class signed makes you wonder. I’ll be pissed if Barrett backed off because we wouldn’t pay to play. I’m 100 convinced that battle left for money or some shady benefit.
I have an intersting story about coach boheimand his title team. Involves Jeremy McNeal, billy edelin, Keith Duaney, a joint and borboun street.
Oh yea and the police, bail and a rich Long Island father
Kind of misleading. One clunker drops out of the 5-game moving average and all of a sudden you have this hockey stick suggesting something big has changed when it hasn’t.
I appreciated Orian giving some props to Jaaran in his write up. It may be too late for a “true breakout” performance as Orian said, but it could happen. Jaaran showed a much greater comfort level with the offense yesterday, and had a really solid game overall as Orian said. I’ve noticed, in addition to just looking more comfortable on the offensive side of the ball, he works hard on defense, too. I’d love to see a 10-12 minute performance from him where he scored a point a minute of floor time, had three or four assists, and played good defense. He doesn’t HAVE to do that to contribute, of course, but it would be great if he did. As we enter the B1G Tournament and the possibility of playing four games in four days (one can hope!) his contributions could be huge, especially with hard as Z works on D, certainly for the team, and for him, too! Thanks, Orian, nice writeup!
This 100%. Of course I’m happy to roll with the guys we get but Huerter would have fit like a glove here. You wonder if what could have been crosses his mind. I know they had a decent year last year but looking at what our guys did last year and this year has to make the mind wander.
Basically just replace Ibi with Huerter… Possibly could have kept many people wanting to fire Beilein last year as well as that would have been a pretty darn good recruiting class.
Huerter, Langford, and Cormac Ryan are 3 guys who I think would have flourished in this system to a much higher degree than they will at their respective schools - obviously complete speculation with Ryan. I don’t consider them “misses” on our end, and I do love most of the guys we have hauled in the past few years (including 2018), but I think the 3 aforementioned might have passed up major opportunities to be drafted, and/or drafted higher.
I’m not a huge fan of comparing player to player within our system (even though our own coach often does this!), but I think Huerter and Langford would have had a chance to have BRILLIANT Junior seasons. There are so many other variables and the roster composition would probably be different, but I don’t think either of them would have been able to take away enough minutes from MAAR to be superstars before next season.
Granted, I could be off on that with positional flexibility. Interesting to think about regardless, but I am still happy with the guys on this squad and can’t wait to see JPoole blossom moving forward instead.
