Thought this was an interesting Big Ten graphic
Interesting to see MD so high. Because of their recent slide it’s easy to forget how well they’re doing considering how much they lost.
One thing about this kind of graphic/thinking though – it rewards coaches for being really bad the year before.
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Gottlieb and DeCourcy are having an interesting discussion about Michigan on twitter in regards to performance/expectation.
Can’t believe I’m missing that 
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We’ve performed about as well as I expected before the season started, but then again I’m a pessimist.
This one is easy. They have underachieved on any realistic measure. 5 returning starters, significant contributions from 2 guys who were mostly on the bench last year, and 2 senior leaders. Record is basically the same as last year. Continued woes on the road. Other then Wisconsin and Purdue, teams above them had less returning. My expectation going in was a push to the sweet 16, as an expectation that could be accomplished. In the end, the tournament is all that matters to me, and if they somehow make the sweet 16, which right now is a longshot, then they will have met/exceeded expectations. Getting this team to play at the highest level has been a struggle for Beilein.
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I would amend that to say “at the highest level consistently”.
This team still has a high ceiling and a low floor and drives everyone crazy because of it.
Without getting too far into the weeds, I sometimes take issue with folks who try to quantify aggregate opinions and use that aggregate like data. Clearly the newcomers for Minnesota were undervalued coming in to the season. Lynch is a game changer. Should we all be heaping praise on Pitino (if so, I’ll sit that out, thank you) or criticize those making incorrect projections.
“Hey, your team outperformed our awful expectations of you. Great job, coach!”
Does this team still have a high ceiling we are almost at the point where if Michigan loses 2 more games their season is over. Unless they have a tourney run in them I’m not sure the high ceiling mantra really exists.
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I’d say yes. Just because we might not reach the high ceiling at the end of the year, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. This team is a classic low floor, high ceiling high variance team. We showed that we have a low floor in bad losses to U of I, OSU at home, and Iowa (at the time). We showed that we have a high ceiling with the blowout wins at MSG, against MSU and IU, and mostly comfortable win against Purdue.
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Pitino should be given some credit because pretty much every player he has brought in the past 2 years has been a solid contributor. From Murphy/McBrayer/Lynch/Coffey/Curry/Springs that’s to go along with a very good PG in Mason. Lynch is doing the same things he did at Illinois State to a tee. If you don’t want to heap praise on him that’s fine he should be given credit for having his team playing at a high level this year though. Those players I mentioned are either in their 1st or 2nd year at Minnesota so he has turned it over pretty quickly.
Meant for this to be much more about the rest of the Big Ten, but I guess I see why you guys took it this way.
Just as much as Pitino deserves blame for being terrible last year, bringing a bunch of off the court nonsense and losing so many games last year, he deserves some credit for the Gophers being good this year.
IU and MSU way underachieved their KenPom marks which I found interesting. I still can’t figure out what the hell happened to Indiana this year.
As far as Michigan, I hit on some of the points above in today’s post: