Preseason Rankings and Expectations 2021-22

Michigan Basketball
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Baylor played three guards and won a title, were Davion Mitchell or Jared Butler or Maceo Teague a forward because of arbitrary numbers?

I wrote the Kobe Bufkin section of the article. I mentioned strength, because yes, it could be a concern if he has to play primarily the 3. It didn’t prevent me from advocating him as a top 10 player at his natural position.

Your opinion is that Eli Brooks is without a doubt a top 10 guard in the conference. Do you believe he was a top 10 guard last season in the conference? Do you foresee him taking a statistical leap? Who on the list discussed would you rank Brooks above, is it just Bufkin and Akins?

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And there’s the difference between you an me. As a former coach I look for team players. I look for players who will do what it takes to make the team better, to make the team of a championship caliber. The truth is I don’t care about individual accolades. I care about making the team better and winning…as a team. Eli Brooks is definitely a top ten guard in the league. I would want him at six but probably would have put him at seven.

As for Kobe, I really doubt that you are a bigger Kobe Bufkin fan than I am, though we can’t quantify that, so it would be a fruitless argument. But I will say this, if Kobe beats out Eli as the starting two guard by the end of the year (which, I suppose “could” happen), #1 Eli will probably be Kobe’s biggest fan and supporter, and #2, I’ll be his (Kobe’s) second biggest fan and supporter. Well, that’s behind his parents and his girlfriend, of course! Oh, and if that happens, I will be an even bigger Eli fan (if that’s possible!), because he will handle it with class and a team first attitude, and THAT’S part of what makes him a great player, too. It pains me that, these days, people can’t see the importance of that aspect of basketball.

Finally (and I hope this is my final comment), so different guys write different parts of an article like this? Why would that be? Is it like committee work? OK, I know…I’m starting to get a bit surly! This has been a much too long off season. I just want to see my favorite coach get to work with my favorite basketball team and my favorite young players and then WATCH SOME BASKETBALL!

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As you know I am a big Kobe fan too. We shall see if Kobe’s 2 mos this summer to work with Camp Sanderson helps for this season. I’m confident it does.:wink:

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I’m also a high school coach, and I like team players. Eli is a great one. The purpose of the article wasn’t to build a winning team. If it was, Eli would definitely have been in my top 10 picks for guards. It was a very subjective ranking of the 10 best individual players, done collectively by three people who then averaged our list together and wrote subsections individually. I believe a similar structure happens every year with insidethehall and this very site. I took Jones (who finished #3) and Bufkin (tied for #10), as I am the only Michigan fan involved. I also took Bohannon (can’t stop my Iowa stan-dom just yet) and Curbelo.

This will also be my last comment here. I enjoy and respect your opinions on all of this @silverblue, hopefully the feeling is mutual even though I have Eli 12th instead of 10th on my list of best guards in the Big Ten :slight_smile:

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I agree.

Tier #1 = Kofi & Hunter

Tier #2 = TJD, Trevion, Liddell

I’d probably pick Liddell over Trevion for all the things he does…but it will be interesting to see how much he plays PF versus C this year. I think he unlocked their weird roster at C - not sure at PF.

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I AM a TJD guy (sorta, I mean, that’s hard to be), but I would quickly switch his spot and Hunter. H was dominant and drove an offense. TJD is a fine player but as #1 option he is over his head.

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Very thoughtful and well written response, and I appreciate it, Buckets! I also appreciate that you are a coach, and I understand that, as a coach, you “get” much of what I wrote about the importance of team and the need to have players who are not a detriment to the team, no matter how much skill they may have individually, but rather who support and promote the notion of team.

As I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere I’ve been a bit surly lately, no excuse really, but I have been, and reading my comments back, I’m not particularly proud of the tone it seems I used. One of my comments that was probably a bit “snarky” was, “And there is the difference between you and me.” As it turns out, we are not too different in that regard at all, though I’m sure you’re about 40 years younger than I am! :grin: We are BOTH coaches, or at least I was for a long, long time, 67 sports seasons and you currently are. I’m sure we have similar philosophies in a lot of ways. In any case, it wasn’t appropriate for me to make an assumption and then to make a “snarly” comment as a result of that assumption, whether it was true or false, and it WAS false. My apologies for that.

You had the courage to put something out there, to write a piece for publication. Not everyone has the courage to do that, and it is commendable. We know that when we do that, when we put ourselves out there, not everyone will agree with everything we write or say. That will always be, we will never get everyone to agree with everything we write or say. I think Lincoln said that in some form and with his uncanny use of simple eloquence.

I disagreed with some of your rankings, especially on Eli. That’s OK, and I don’t think you have a problem with that, but if I was overly critical, perhaps of the process or the explanations for the rankings, then that is not what I typically stand for, and in fact I have been known to rail against it. So, I feel badly about that, really as much because I have violated my own standards and impugned my own integrity in not matching my actions with what I say I believe. By the way, Hack is gonna have a field day with this because he thinks I’m WAY too positive! :grin:

So, I’d like to chalk it all up to being quite surly lately, which IS probably just an excuse, because I just MISS being able to cheer for MICHIGAN, for a MICHIGAN team. I’m even trying to get myself excited for the football game on Saturday, though they’ve broken my heart more than a few times over past decade and a half or more! I found myself watching and CHEERING for that great little league championship baseball team last week because they were MICHIGAN! :joy: Well that, and they were really good, AND we had a connection with one of the players on the team, so it was fun!

Enough philosophizing! I do respect your opinions, and I respect the HECK out of you for coaching. Keep doing what you do, which I am sure includes teaching kids the right way to play, the fundamentals of the game and the value of teamwork. Have a great rest of your evening and a terrific Labor Day weekend! Peace, my friend!

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I will admit that 2 years of watching TJD score 20 points in 25 point losses may be coloring my opinion of him, and blaming him for Archie’s deficiencies, but…I have never had the “uh oh, this guy is a PROBLEM” vibe from him that I got from EJ Liddell when we played OSU last year.

Their top 5 is probably right, but not the order. I’d say:

Cockburn
Hunter
Liddell
Williams
TJD

Am I also nuts in thinking Ayala at 42 and Scott over 60 seem low? Ayala scored 15 a game on above average true shooting, and Scott scored 12 on significantly better (as well as providing a pretty good defensive presence for them). Like, if Davonte Jones, ranked 20 spots higher than Ayala, puts up those scoring numbers with like 1-2 more assists, he will wildly exceed expectations, no?

I know head-to-head isn’t everything (or most things) but I have a hard time overlooking Kofi’s demolition of Hunter (until Hunter corrects it this year, of course).

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I think Kofi has a slight lead on Hunter as we enter the season…but I personally think Hunter has more upside to his game than Kofi. Hunter might develop a left hand, he might develop a 15-footer, he might shoot threes, he might pass from the top of the key to Diabate or Houstan. What is Kofi adding to his game this year? He’s going to be great and smash people like the hulk…maybe his FT% improves some…but what else? I don’t want to sell him short because he’s a very good player, but I could see Hunter passing him on this list.

Liddell has the best overall skill set of the other three guys too…so he could be a star. He’s also not really a center so it will depend on how they use him. Williams and TJD are very good - not sure what they add to their game though. I could see TJD with a new coach unlocking some new tricks maybe.

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I just tend to think that Kofi’s size, strength, and hands in the college environment basically mean that the only thing holding him back offensively is how well he shoots FT’s and how much they get him the ball.

So yeah - he doesn’t have a broad skill set or that much more growth in terms of skill - but I just think he can just mash more.

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Personally I do not. But I don’t think that rules out him becoming a better player than he was last year. His in-season development last year was impressive to me. He went from a bad idea floater at the end of the shot clock when we were stuck for options to actually a pretty good one who was getting all the way to the rim more with scoop shots and whatnot, and that was a big step for him. He can still find a little more upside I think.

His stats are never going to jump out, but you need excellent two-way players like him who are low usage and high efficiency. I myself have not looked at every other guard in the conference to check, and there may be 10 guards in the league I would rather have, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is not.

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@buckets12 isnt saying he would take all of those players over Eli. It’s more of a best players to be the 1st or 2nd option on a team ranking. Personally I would still rather have Eli over Jordan Bohannon but it’s at least an argument when framed like that

My rankings with only a couple minutes of thought put into them would be:

  1. Ivey
  2. Curbelo (I’m bullish on him)
  3. X. Johnson
  4. Ayala
  5. Feel like I’m forgetting someone obvious?

then uhhh…

Hard pass on Fatts. I like Jalen Pickett. I like the McGowen bros are fun, but also probably going to be super inefficient. Davante Jones is in there somewhere, I’m just not sure where.

I guess this has taught me I do not envy @buckets12 for having to rank this group of players :rofl: I see very little separating 3-13. All way too situation dependent for me to even get into ranking.

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What about…

:rofl:

Also, how good are we thinking Xavier Johnson is to have him at No. 3?

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Idk but at least he’s a proven solid high usage PG at the P6 level. That puts him above a lot of dudes by default. I’m not trying to call him a stud or anything

My 5 least favorite guards list in the conference would be easy :rofl:

  1. Brad
  2. Chase Audacious
  3. Geo
  4. Boo
  5. Fatts will earn a spot here probably

Honorable mention to Daryl Morsell RIP

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He wasn’t all that efficient, had a high turnover rate and played for a team with a losing record. I feel like we overrate players who are “new” just because we aren’t as familiar with them. I’m sure he’ll contribute for IU but I don’t really have much expectation that he’ll be great by any means.

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I fully agree but im looking at the other guards and I don’t think there will be a single great player. And only a couple good ones that carry a remotely large role on a good team in the conference. He should not be grouped with Ivey and Curbelo but I can see by the way I ranked it that it can be seen that I view him a tier above others

So in that sense if you want to say Eli Brooks is a top 8 guard on the conference I will not argue because the other ones are not good enough for me to point at their shot creation or other skills for me to say they are better players.

Also giving any look at the guards here and it ain’t hard to figure why the conference struggled in the tournament last year

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Other names we considered in the exercise were Brooks, Geo Baker, Jalen Pickett, Davison and Fatts. 3-12 there isn’t much separation at all, ugly year for guards overall. Jones/Brooks/Bufkin/Collins/Zeb is probably the deepest group by far

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I’m also a bit concerned about his bailing on Pitt with two weeks left to go in the regular season “by mutual agreement.” When the best player on a team, one with multiple years of eligibility left, leaves late in the year, and the coach seems to signal that it is for the best, that says something.

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The funny thing about Eli is that I suspect every one of the fourteen coaches in the conference would take him in a heartbeat on their team and probably start him and give him 30 minutes. He’s THAT valuable with how he plays and all that he does. But I suspect that those same 14 coaches won’t vote for him in the all-B10 awards because he doesn’t do any one thing exceptional.

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That makes 100% sense on Eli’s value. Invaluable for the team but he isn’t one of the best player in the conference, and that’s okay

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