Wow. A lot of hard truths in this recap. We’re a young team. We ran into something we weren’t ready for. I hope this is a big time motivation for next season!
Heck of a season covering this team. Thanks to all of you guys for following along and joining the site. Been an awesome year and I hope you enjoyed our coverage.
In tier A games, Simpson’s O Rating is identical to what it was last year. He’s a far better passer and FT shooter but also gets to the line a lot less and he was better at converting 2 point shots last year. He also struggled against MSU this year (unlike last year) and was horrific against TT.
He’s maxed out physically and both he and Teske are old for their grade at 22. I’ll take the cynical view that both he and Teske don’t improve that much next year. Matthews is the same player as last year and is one example. I suspect improvement from junior to senior year, for most players, is fairly minimal. Instead, I’d think the biggest jumps would be freshman to sophomore year and then another decent bump from sophomore to junior year.
Michigan will be a top 10 team next year but I think their chance to be a truly elite team depends largely on Iggy and Poole’s development into playmakers. I’d like to see Livers get in much better shape too. The 2018 recruiting class, in addition to Iggy, needs a big offseason of improvement as well.
I shudder to think of Livers and Brazdeikis trying to guard the perimeter next season.
Charles return to school to lift his offensive game to a potential NBA level was a bust, but replacing his perimeter D is not going to happen.
Seidel: John Beilein has to adapt after losing to MSU, demolished by Texas Tech
Really glad I decided to subscribe halfway through the year. Thank you for all the hard work and great material.
The site’s pre-game coverage of Texas Tech was incredible. At least you left us well-prepared to understand what was happening to Michigan last night and by whom.
Someone read this article for me and tell me if it’s a stretch or not.
Dylan summed it up pretty well for me. It’s hard to call a 30-7 season a disappointment, but I think it is. I mean, 30 wins, right? But I think this will be The Season State Beat Us Three Times. Not to mention leavin* two B14 titles on the table and cratering out against Texas Tech. Bummer.
Yeah, this season was an abject failure. It’s ironic in the sense that the team that showed up last night is more or less exactly what I expected prior to the season: a strong defensive team who can’t shoot it and lacks play-makers on offense. But running through the start of the schedule like they did raised expectations. Heading home with zero banners to show for it and annihilation by MSU isn’t good enough.
This offense getting better next season is going to fall at the feet of Livers and Poole. Iggy is probably gone.
Abject failure? Uh, okay. Might as well have said this season was UNACCEPTABLE(!!!).
Certainly bittersweet and a feeling it could have been more but if you can call a 30 win season and a Sweet 16 is an “abject failure” (it isn’t)… imagine what that says about how healthy your program is. It is almost unimaginable given where Beilein built this thing from.
Very disappointed by last night but it was a good season. I thought they pretty much max’ed out their talent. 3 of 5 starters are not good shooters and only Livers can score off the bench. We had flaws from day one.
I wouldn’t call it an abject failure. It’s very disappointing to go out in that manner, but considering the offensive compromises this team had going into the season getting 30 wins speaks more to successes than failures. What concerns me is where do we find a way out of this in the short term. I reckon we hope those two incoming freshmen mature quickly, and perhaps a shooter from the transfer portal if a spot opens up.
Yeah, I would expect Michigan to make a concerted effort to find a grad transfer gunner.
Michigan was on the edge of a great season. If we had beat MSU in the BTT and one of the regular season matchups, we would have hung two banners and people would be disappointed with tonight, but overall fine with the season. Heck, if we had beat them one of the three times, people would not be so despondent. Obviously we lost all three. But that doesn’t make the season a failure. We were a top 10 team this year. Last night doesn’t change that.
So many thoughts on this one. I’ll try to keep it short.
- I read Seidel’s article about how Michigan must change. He’s absolutely right. But I’m not sure the answer is that they need to get better at beating switches and at 1-on-1s. The truth is, Michigan’s heavy dependence on ball screens has become stagnant and predictable. They need to focus more on generating offense with off-ball action. I know they do some of this (Poole had two back-door cuts for buckets) but not enough. Did Poole get one open look from 3 last night? To me, that’s a bigger problem than switching defenses.
As Dylan said in the preview, TT does a lot off-ball stuff. So does MSU (traditionally) as well as Purdue. The game is always changing, but the changes aren’t always new. Think of the NFL a few years back with SF and Seattle suddenly dominating a pass happy league with hard-nose football.
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Can you be a truly elite defense and also not foul your opponent? TT fouls alot. MSU is one of the leaders in fouls every year. Playing a physical defense draws whistles, but it deters your opponents. Also, the officials aren’t going to call fouls every time (again, see the Legion of Boom defensive backs). On the other hand, Michigan abhors fouling, which allows the opponents to drive with impunity. We saw this from Mooney and Culver at times last night.
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Thanks UMHoops for all the great coverage.
Yea but the point made is true imo. After the first 12 games they played , I really thought they’d win it all. They looked so damn good. Going into that unc gane, I didn’t hope we’d win, I KNEW we’d win.
It’s great they got to that level but the expectations were raised after that hot start. It always burns to lose but the way it happened stinks. They just had a bad game. Tech’s d was good but there were other things that had me nervous early. Lots of odd bobbling of the ball on rebounds ect. They just looked really tight.