11 PM pods 
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Surprised that BQ doesn’t think they make the tournament next year. The Simpson and Teske duo should be enough with any sort of relatively expected progression from Livers and the rising sophomores.
In all honesty if next year’s team doesn’t make the tournament I feel like this fan base would be very unstable.
I fear it’s already unstable. 
But I agree that barring other early surprises making the tournament is a not unreasonable expectation.
Barring any other upcoming moves/transfers or injuries during the season (I think we will lack depth), tourney should be a very achievable goal. Bringing back 3 plus players (Simpson, Teske, Livers) plus 3 top 100ish recruits going into their sophomore year (DDJ, Castleton, Johns) seems like a team that should make the tourney. You’re right that if they don’t, there will be a lot of people within the fan base ready to jump off a ledge or post apoplectic messages on this board. Personally, I’m more worried about the following year, but hoping that the Juwan hype will start with shoring up some high level recruits for 2020.
I have a hunch that Juwan will recruit some pretty talented kids. The questions will pile up at a slightly higher level of expectation about how he integrates them, etc. And I believe that’s work he will relish and can be expected to carry out with insight and some real success. If we’re upset it will be a pretty first world problem of not meeting higher expectations, underachieving, not seeing the kind of crafty genius we saw with Beilein.
I do see some possibilities of crashing and burning around the extraneous stuff–personalities, the Fab Five becoming a three-ring circus–but I’m betting that Juwan is a pretty darned good organizer, humble enough to ask the necessary questions. Can he tell people to bugger off when needed? That will be interesting to note.
Underrated take. “Ready to Go” was a pretty big hit back in the day.
Oh wait, that was Republica…
I already miss the days when our coach could take down other teams who just tried to out-athlete us. Now our hopes cling to amassing top talent and hoping the roster and scheme works itself out.
Good stuff @umhoops! Btw, the “buyout” number you quoted (i think Pikiell) from USA Today refers to what the team would owe the coach if they fired him. not what it takes to hire them away. Just FYI as i saw some crazy numbers there but then realized it was the amount owed to coach not school.
If any of the core guys get injured though then things get shaky.
It’s actually pretty crazy how healthy Michigan has been aside from that brutal three year 2014-2016 stretch. Sure some guys went down early in their careers and got redshirts (Horford, Wilson), but the cores have been very stable in that area. I’m guessing that’s a Sanderson thing?
A few narratives that I think have evolved through the decades due to no one having a good reason to correct or add nuance:
“The Fab Five were dirty” (and by extension Juwan’s hiring can be seen as dirty, and JB is clean) - Look at who actually took money, and who actually took the obstruction of justice charge. By literally every account and report, Juwan is as clean and professional as JB full stop. He is lumped into something because the Fab Five have come to represent corruption in a 1990s sense, but I don’t think its fair to make that his badge to wear. This is a comment about Chris (maybe 5% Jalen and 95% Chris)
“The Fab Five are out in front of the media making this about them” - For Jalen, yes, 1000%. For Chris, not really at all. For Jimmy, you may see him at events or on radio/tv b/c he was part of that team, but neither him, nor Ray, nor especially Juwan bring this up without being asked. This is a comment about Jalen, not the Fab Five. (Keep gettin them checks Jalen)
As someone who grew up with the 89/92/93 teams, and who kept the fire burning in at every game in early 2000s with the team get absolutely smashed by Illinois, MSU, UCLA, Duke, etc, I think one point that should be fleshed out is that the University heavily (over) indexed on their shame rather and what a dark day this was in order to maintain their integrity/brand. While that isn’t really something that can be debated as right or wrong, a lot of the retrospective on that team and the overall black cloud was driven by the University’s very public presentation, and willingness to let the process stay in the news cycle for 4-5 years before it was put into the past. A lot of the press in the last 24h, including the podcast correctly pointed out that the offenses that we are talking about look trivial in retrospect, especially if Ed Martin was just an average booster, or if Chris had owned up to his role.
While the reality is that the university putting Juwan highlights in the intro video IS an extreme juxtaposition given their prior stances, all that really compares is one lazy narrative (university’s take on the past) against another (that Juwan was corrupt by association) because based on the actual facts of what happened and who did what Juwan Howard the person doesn’t deserve to be included in any of these broader classifications which are driven by the behavior of individuals, and the University’s post-mortem response.
I don’t think that there should be any insinuation that Juwan is somehow dirty. But hiring Juwan is going to bring the whole Fab Five into focus and the fact is those games were wiped away so people are going to talk about it. Also the stuff about “making it about themselves” that seems to be very much a Jalen and CWebb thing obviously, but Jalen and CWebb are basically the mouthpiece of the Fab Five, I guess until Thursday.
100% agree with this, especially how things look now. Michigan also just made terrible decision after terrible decision around its basketball program and let it fall apart into shambles. Because of how that followed the Fab Five, that aftermath (which really isn’t connected necessarily) is also kind of tied to the Fab Five’s legacy, fair of not.
Don’t jinx it!
I mean that’s 25% of the Beilein era that was either torpedoed or had the ceiling lowered from being a national title favorite due to injury, seems more than fair to me
I think most programs would take not having any major injuries 75% of years.
Seems high to me
Also, as Dylan and BQ note, with Will Wade and Sean Miller still holding down jobs, the Fab Five Is Dirty Thing, I mean…
People also forget that the largest part of the improprieties occurred with the second Fab Five, not the first (Taylor, Bullock, the flipped car with Cleaves on the recruiting trip)