There is a lot of space between bubble and 2 conference titles and our three year stretch of two conference titles and a Final Four(which is where I would say people are saying JB exceeded expectations). I don’t think anybody here thinks that the bubble is the standard or expectation of where we should be. You would have to find those posts for me because I have not seen that here IMO.
That’s essentially my point, we’ve met or exceeded expectations 3 of 9 seasons. That’s isn’t very pleasant to look at
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People say that because we’ve won two B1G titles in the last 5 years. Plus an NCAA final and elite 8. They don’t say that because we were a bubble team this season. People also factor in injuries over the last two seasons. No one would have been happy with a bubble team this season with a healthier roster. No one would say that we met expectations. If you posed the question, you would not find a single fan here who would agree that bubble team is his/her expectation for this program year in and year out.
If your expectations for JB’s first handful of seasons were to win conference titles, given the state of the roster he inherited, then I would say you have the bad set of expectations (bad as in realistic, not as in negative).
So with that being said, the fact that we’ve failed to meet expectations in 6 of 9 seasons, what should be done?
Bacon - I certainly did not have any expectations in year 1, but the first handful? I mean, coaches generally get fired without significant improvement within 3-4 years. I just think that in general, the program should be in a better place than where it is all things considered in terms of resources, facilities, academics, recent tournament run, etc.
If you think a roster of Manny Harris, Peedi, Stu, Novak and a bunch of Amaker holdovers and Merrit and CJ Lee should challenge for a conference title…
Nobody is arguing that these last two seasons are what we want or what we should want. Stop saying that because it’s a strawman.
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Maybe this will help clear up my perspective for you.
I’ll use a 5 year window, even though it’s an arbitrary number. So in five seasons, I expect:
- Make the tournament every season
- Finish in the top third of the conference every season (barring extreme youth or significant injuries)
- Win the conference 1-2 times
- Challenge for the the conference title 2-3 times
- Recruit and develop quality student athletes - this matters to me. I want our coach to prepare our kids for life outside of basketball. 90% of kids won’t have a pro career that is good enough to set them ahead for the rest of their lives. Most will have to have regular jobs at some point.
Now, I wouldn’t expect a coach to reach these standards in his first few years unless they walk into a good situation. I don’t think JB walked into that great of a situation. The fanbase was apathetic as a whole, we had a dearth of quality players on the roster and just lost a great deal of experience. So your statement that he hasn’t met expectations for 6 of 9 seasons is ridiculous to me.
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Do we know when Michigan has to be under the scholarship limit, so we have final clarity on next year’s roster?
For football, I know it’s sometime in the summer. Assuming it’s the same for all sports as it would most likely coincide with an academic calendar rather than sport specific calendar. But not sure on that at all.
It’s not just the past 2 years, this appears to be the type of team we field for the foreseeable future.
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The future hasn’t happened yet. So I don’t know why you would include that in your assessment. If he gets a good 2017 class, then the direction can be changed. Let’s see what happens. I’m not going to call for his head until it is clear he can’t do the job anymore. And that is not clear to me yet. We’ve got a good start on the 2017 class. Let’s see who gets paired with Poole.
Absolutely agree, he should not be under the hot seat unless next year is underwhelming.
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You are tool
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Well by your own standards Belein has failed because we missed the tournament in his first five years and his last four.
If you re-read my post, you’d see that I said I don’t expect it from a coach his first couple years depending on the situation he inherits. JB did not inherit a good team IMO, so I didn’t really expect us to get to the tournament until after a couple seasons.
In our last 5 seasons he’s met a lot, but not all, of those benchmarks. I think we can all agree that this year was not what we needed. Gets a break with the injuries the last couple years, but we still shouldn’t have been a bubble team this season. Without Caris, we should still have been a 7-9 seed IMO. With him, I thought we were capable of getting a 4-6 seed this year (weren’t on pace for that with Caris though either). If we are a bubble team the next couple seasons, I think we should look at the program and re-evaluate his position as HC.
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Am I the only one who thinks that Ibi Watson can be a solid bench guy and become a decent starter by his senior year. I like what I see from him.
3-9 is very misleading. Takes a few years to build a program. From DMo’s last season through this season is more relevant. Last two seasons were blown up by injuries. So I don’t think anything drastic needs to be done.
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Next years big question is obviously the 4 & 5 positions but I have to say I like the idea of MAAR, Walton & Simpson in the backcourt. They will give them 3 tough guards who can defend on the perimeter. Wagner will be the key.
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We see Walton’s and MAAR’s defensive abilities differently it appears as bot seem to often struggle to stop the ball.