More Beilein hype on Austin Davis

In today’s presser

Where’d the comments about Davis go?

They are in the video, couldn’t figure out to embed the video from the Tweet.

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14:50 in the video. “He will be a major player for us next year.”

Odd that our 5 spot seems so much more deep and competitive than our 2 spot.
Donnal - Wagner - Teske - Davis - Bamba?

Good for Austin. Hope he keeps it up and proves all the doubters (me included) wrong!

What if somehow we actually do get Bamba, does Teske redshirt? Highly doubtful he would see much time behind Mo W and Mo B plus sounds JB likes Davis. No way Davis can play the 4.

I think you see Wilson playing some three. I’ve always been higher on Davis than most. My only question is his fit in the offense. I believe he will be a good shooter but does he have three point range? I think he will have a soft touch around the rim and be s good rebounder, I also think he has plus foot work and is tough / knows how to use his body. I feel like he won’t get enough post touches to reach his potential here. Then again who knows? We may start to move that direction a bit with moe and dj being our top weapons.

Little bit of getting ahead of ourselves with Bamba here :slight_smile:

Without Bamba, you have Wagner, Davis and Teske as your three bigs. That seems fairly reasonable, and judging by Beilein’s quotes it seems like perhaps Davis could be ahead of Teske.

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As Dylan posted, a little bit of cart before the horse… but in the scenario posted above, yes, I think the coaches would target Teske as a redshirt candidate.

(Although I would caution the hype train on Davis a little. I remember Beilein speaking glowingly of the redshirt year work from Donnal; that didn’t translate as smoothly to game production)

Beilein has definitely over-hyped redshirts in the past, sometimes you wonder why he keeps doing it…

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I wouldn’t be surprised to see some lineups with Wilson at the 3 even assuming we don’t get Bamba. JB has talked about letting Wilson play left-to-right, which would be easier if he was playing the 3 on offense. It might not be optimal with the roster make-up – i.e., is JB going to want to play Davis or Teske more than some of the guards – but we’ll see. You could even see Wilson at the 3 and Matthews or Livers at the 4 on offense.

Did JB hype Donnal that much? I recall it being more from JMo and other players. Maybe, though. I do think that what JB said about needing to see it when the lights come on is key. It’s one thing to be great in practice, another in a game. It’s like the players who make every 3 in practice. Some do it in games right away, some take time to adjust, some never get there.

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Cart is definitely before the horse and in all honesty I don’t think with get Bamba but was curious what others thought would happen since we would once again have four 5s on our team again. Going to be an interesting late period to see what direction the staff goes.

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I think Davis is going to be very effective in his role at M. He looks like a basketball player now. The young, slow kid from 2-3 years ago is gone. Davis is an imposing young man now. Big shoulders on that young man. He can set some nice screens, good hands, hopefully finishes well, and cleans up on the glass. I have more reservations about Teske but think both will be productive.

With the ever increasing odds of Wagner having one more year of college in him, Coach Beilein is looking wise in having two 5’s preparing to fill the vacancy.

As JB said “you give it to him and you know it’s going in. There’s no drama - like the Kardashians”
If he’s finishing in practice vs. Teske and Wagner, I suppose that’s a good thing.

JB previously mentioned it’s important to have guys that can go 1-on-1 and/or post guys that you can feed it to and get buckets. I wonder if that was on his mind when he answered the question about Davis…

Matthews and Davis hype

Here is what I like about Davis before we have even seen him play in a game. He was a big guy as junior in high school and worked his tail off to lose bad weight and improve is movement. So he comes in stronger than Teske or any big we have. From his high school film I see workable skill for a big guy who is not totally stuck to the floor. To me the only issue is can he handle quickness at the college level. We hope so. Because I believe he will be able to man handle some folks.

I know we’ve heard the redshirt fluff before…but there does seem to be a look in JB’s eye that is a little different when talking about Davis (and Matthews).

Still hard to grasp what lineup would truly work with Davis out there (unless I’m underestimating his jumpshot), but JB more than ever seems to be openly talking about the evolving style of play he’s going to have to steer toward.

Offense would probably look a lot like a Jordan Morgan at the 5 offense. Morgan almost never shot the ball outside the paint.

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I’ve always felt that Donnal is a disappointment to Beilein, at least on some level. He has some skills but never the consistent passion/energy that the staff wanted and thought he could bring.

He has? I can’t think of any examples off hand. I don’t recall hearing anything great about either J-Mo (who turned out to be pretty good his RS freshman year) or Donnal (who didn’t). I know when practice started in the fall of 2012, one of the coaches told a friend of mine Levert was one of the team’s five best players, and they didn’t think they should redshirt him.

I remember a lot of talk about Donnal during the tourney run.

But LLP, Duncan, now Matthews, Davis…

Jordan was injured during his RS year I believe, all I remember is Beilein saying he didn’t know how to run fast enough down the court hahah, so that’s fair.

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