I’ll say this - history does not necessarily repeat itself. We may have started slow in the past and finished strong…but past performance is not indicative of what this team will do for a variety of reasons, namely roster turnover…we shall soon see…soon.
LAW - this forum did exist last year after Charlotte, it actually started before the 2013-14 season. If you look back in the old posts it was exactly as you say, especially after Charlotte.
I will say this, this year doesn’t feel like last year. This team doesn’t look like a tournament team right now. I don’t remember feeling that way last season.
For all of you that are getting off on the “I told you so” game, get over yourselves. Nobody anticipated these two losses. Especially after the win over Cuse and the narrow loss to Nova.
I just hope they can beat Coppin and SMU and then find themselves by Conference season. We will see what happens…
I don’t think those people in your “I told you so” faction take joy in it…it is simply the point that some people flat out refused to admit that recruiting was not what it needed to be in order to compete at the level we’ve grown accustomed to over the past 2 years. Personally speaking, it was very irritating for people to say JB will develop players to the extent that recruiting wasn’t as important to UM as it might be OVER AND OVER AND OVER, and that we don’t need to worry. In my opinion, that was a load of crap then, and it’s still a load of crap now. Recruiting>>>>>>>>>>>>>more than anything in college basketball…and it’s not even close. Jim’s and Joe’s, not X’s and O’s…you give JB meat and bread he’ll make a beautiful sandwhich, but take away the bread then we have problems.
It’s amazing how fragile the psyche of our fan base is. I don’t know how you people function on a daily basis.
It’s too bad this message board didn’t exist last year at this time. I would have loved to see the comments after we got hammered by Duke (and Nik went scoreless - probably a ton of “he’s overrated” stuff), or when we lost to Charlotte, or fell down 18 to FSU and got a lucky comeback win, or barely beat Stanford.
We will be fine. I will agree that I did not like our zone offense at all last night. Nor did I like it against Illinois last year, when we were completely confused and ineffective. We need to flash a guy to the middle, and we need to overload more.
As far as recruiting, we actually did our best work after the 2011 season, when we landed Nik, Mitch, Caris and Spike to join Glenn. Why? I think it was because all those guys saw the opportunity for immediate playing time.
Like the last two years, this is a very young team. Unfortunately, we have become so proficient at developing offensive talent that our guys are leaving early in waves. I’m not sure why we would want to emulate Izzo by keeping guys four years - when they stay that long it’s because they have to, not because they want to.
This team will be fine. We started 8-4 last year too. Indeed, in 2011, we started 1-6 in Big Ten play and ended up blowing out TN as an 8 seed before taking #1 seed Duke to the wire. I understand we live in an instant gratification society, but relax.
Note - I am not in any way saying it is OK to lose to NJIT or EMU, or that we played or coached well in those games. All I’m saying is that those two games do not define the rest of the year any more than beating Cuse and taking #10 Nova to the wire do.
I think people can see now why some of us were concerned about recruiting in the 2014 and 2015 classes. Because of all the talent we lost, we simply had to have some instant impact players in those classes and we know that hasn’t happened in 2014 and of course the jury is still out on Robinson.
Recruiting is the lifeblood of every program and it is a what have you done for me lately business. It makes no difference going forward that JB uncovered gems in Caris, Burke, Stauskus, etc. If he can’t do it again, then we won’t compete for championships. It is that simple.
This is starting to look a lot like the 09/10 season. My only hope is that it is a one year decline and not multiple years. The only way to ensure that is to start winning some of the recruiting battles.
I don't know which is more disappointing......This year or the 2009/10 year. I mean NJIT is just a terrible team, and although EMU is a step up, they have no business even contending with us on our home court. These losses have the potential to be a MAJOR negative for our efforts in recruiting elite talent. Who would want to a team that makes gets talked about on ESPN a ton for constantly getting upset? This current team is just completely out of it, and I would say I hope they learn from it, but it has become apparent that they aren't learning from their mistakes as well as they should be. Sorry for being all negative by the way, but I think this is an alright time for it.We weren’t hitting on ELITE recruits after making the Championship game and Elite Eight. So I don’t know how suddenly these losses will makes things anything different.
We basically took a bunch of flyers on guys to fill the roster none of which are even close to being college ready.
Its like Beilein is being punished right now for being so good at developing talent. He hasn’t kept up the recruiting.
Beilein needs a take a page out of Izzo’s book and get guys to stay four years that should have been gone in two years.
Its hard to build a consistent program when our guys leave at their first sign of success.
The loss of Mcgary is devastating this team.
I may have been unclear but I meant the players like Derryck Thornton and Jaylen Brown. People that are actually highly considering us. I have no idea how you can say that these losses won’t have an effect on whether or not these kids come to play here…
My my my…
Wow, the immaturity of some is truly comical…Guess that’s my signal that it’s time to censor myself again.
You could have taken the high road but you didn’t, did you. You still wrote what you said you weren’t going to, because you were “taking the high road”. Classic MattD. A jab without jabbing, nice.
If validation and credibility is what you desire you should Check out your overreaction posts after the Charlotte game last year. How are you credible in any way after last season?
Luckily I’m not on here to be perceived as credible or a good predictor of future outcomes. I just want to see the team do well and talk basketball. Unfortunately all this forum turns into is a place for You to do your trolling.
Finishing 10-8 or 11-7 seems “out of the question”? Really. Just a week ago we were a ranked team coming off a last second loss to #10 Nova (who blew out Illinois last night, by the way) and a win over Syracuse.
Of course, if we don’t play any better than the last two games, we’re probably going 8-10 in conference play. Maybe worse. If we play like we did against Nova and Cuse, 10-8 or 11-7 seems easily attainable.
Two guys have really hurt us the last few games - Irvin and Chatman. Chatman had a very nice game against Cuse, and finally seemed to be coming on, and then had two awful games in a row. Irvin shot the ball brutally against Cuse, was a bit better against NJIT, and then was terrible last night. If those two guys get their act together, we’ll be fine. If they play like they did last night all year, then sure, we’re going to have problems. I’m betting that won’t be the case.
I don’t usually focus on individual players when watching (I’m a huge fan, but a casual fan, nowhere close to a scout or whatever).
But I was watching Irvin closely for a few plays yesterday. He really shows little fire or tenacity. I saw him get easily beaten for 2 offensive rebounds.
Also, I was at the Nova game (first half only, it was such a late start) at Barclays. When Irvin did drive, which I think he did twice, he basically dribbled around the 3 point line from one side to another. Never attacked straight ahead.
To me, Irvin has been a disappointment. He is really 1 dimensional.
The upshot may be that he is clearly not ready for the pros, unless he wants to play in Europe.
For Irvin (and the bigs), I would like them to attack the defensive glass. The EMU bigs basically controlled the glass on both sides. UM is way too passive on the glass. I wonder if they are coached like that or just too soft?
Back to the topic of the thread…the team. I still haven’t lost hope for this season, still a lot of games to be played. Hopefully we get things worked out, NJIT doesn’t bother me so much because it was clear the effort was non-existent, but yesterday gave me reason to be skeptical about this team’s ceiling. The team played hard, EMU was simply the better team. For me personally, the biggest thing I was upset about was the lack of adjustments by the coaching staff…generally speaking JB has done a good job of that, so I’m not going to over-react to it either. Would really love to see us push tempo more, even if it equals more TO’s. Teams now have the blueprint to beat us with that zone.
Problem is right now we basically play a 7 man rotation and 2/5 of the starting lineup is giving us next to nothing. We have to get more consistent contributions from more players or this team or we will really struggle. I can’t believe how awful a shooter Chatman is (27% FG’s & 20% on 3’s).
I think the last couple of games have shown as solid a player as Spike is, if you overexpose him, you are asking for trouble. I don’t think the plan was ever for him to play 28 mins a game but because Chatman has been so bad, Beilein goes small at the first sign of trouble.
Doyle has got to become a better defensive rebounder. He is a good offensive rebounder but he’s getting killed on the defensive glass. Between, Donnal, Biefeldt and Doyle, we have no one at the 5 position that can hold their own on the defensive backboard.
I would like to see Walton be more aggressive in looking to score. They need him to hunt his shot more often. They need his scoring ability. Irvin’s scoring is totally dependent on hitting 3’s at this point and I think we’ve seen, that’s hit or miss depending on the game. Walton can score. He’s great in transition but in the halfcourt, I think they need him to look for that pull-up jumper from the elbow or try to get into the paint more often.
I’ll be honest, Chatman might have been the most overrated player coming out of HS, he has been completely underwhelming thus far. I was of the view that he was borderline elite based on HS film…I was wrong. He is a good rebounder for a freshman but outside of that he has been disappointing to say the least. His shooting is so bad that defenders can just sag off him making his strongest attribute, passing, irrelevant. If Chatman were as good as advertised, this team would be a LOT better because everyone else could stay within their natural roles. The lack of Chatman’s effectiveness is really hindering the team in my opinion, we needed more from him.
On the recruiting point . . .
First of all, when we landed guys like Darius Morris, Jordan Morgan, Tim Hardaway, Trey Burke, Glenn Robinson, and probably even Nik Stauskas, I’m pretty confident MattD and the other “recruiting sucks” people were not jumping up and down and proclaiming we were about to make the national championship game. Nor were all those guys superstars as freshmen, either. I don’t know if this board existed when we signed Spike, but if it did, my guess is MattD ridiculed that signing.
So, for anyone who wants to argue we don’t develop players, I give you Morris, Morgan, Hardaway, and Levert for starters.
Second, let’s examine when we landed some of our star players. Our most successful recruiting period was the end of 2010 through early 2012, when we landed ALL of the following guys: Robinson III, Stauskas, Burke, Levert, Spike, McGary, Walton, Irvin and Donnal (Hatch, too, before the tragic plane crash).
Were we a great team then? Nope. We had just finished the 2010-2011 season, where we started 1-6 in conference play but rebounded strongly to make the tourney, hammer Tennessee, and give #1 Duke a game right down to the wire.
What did we have to sell? Well, we were an up-and-coming program for one. But far more significantly, we had playing time to sell. Nik, Glenn, and Mitch all walked into a situation where they knew they could start immediately.
Now, last year at this time, what did we NOT have to sell with wing players? Yep. Playing time. Guys like Blackmon, Blueitt and Booker looked at the roster and saw guys like Stauskas, Levert and Irvin ahead of them. I promise you in October/November 2013, no one thought Nik was leaving after the season. On the other hand, everyone assumed Glenn was gone. That’s probably a big reason why we got Chatman - he knew he could step into the starting four role right away. In contrast, Booker (like everyone else) no doubt assumed the Harrisons would be one-and-done guys, and a guy like Blackmon knew he could start immediately for Indiana.
So, if history repeats itself, this season will look more like 2011 (it’s already shaping up that way), and the 2016 class will see immediate playing time available and we’ll get some stud players.
Of course, the other explanation (the one MattD likes) is that Beilein just isn’t personable, isn’t a good recruiter, and thus we won’t get guys. That explanation, of course, doesn’t tell us how we were previously able to land all the talented players I just mentioned.
And, of course, we landed all those guys BEFORE we played in the title game, or made the Elite Eight, and BEFORE any of Trey, Nik, Glenn, Tim and Mitch were drafted by the NBA. But I’m sure that Beilein is such a d*ck that even with all that success, recruits can’t see past it and just don’t like him.
Either that or they’re looking for playing time right away.
By the way, MattD also thinks Tommy Amaker was a great recruiter at Michigan. So there’s that.
Man, I refrain from comment, try to get it back on topic…no matter what this JB/recruiting thing is just so polarizing for some. Can we try to stay on topic please
People are actually comparing these losses to the Charlotte one last year? They were 178 in the final kenpom ranking, which is by no means good, but it’s a lot better than the 300s that NJIT was in, AND it wasn’t on our home court, AND Robinson went down with an injury. The magnitude of these losses (specifically NJIT, I was already sort of worried about Eastern prior to that game) is unbelievably great. This has waaaay different feel to it than Charlotte did too. It’s not a stat and I can’t really explain it, but I think most of you agree(sans mattD, because I’m pretty sure it’s literally impossible for him to agree with anybody) that this team just doesn’t come close to last year’s AT THIS POINT IN THE SEASON. To me it’s the uninspired play where it looks like many people don’t care enough or simply aren’t trying hard enough. Perhaps we will see the team that beat Syracuse and almost knocked of Nova earlier, but at this point, I don’t think our confidence is going to be able to rebound. And on topic with the current conversation, I think LAW’s view on our recruiting is simply spot on. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
NM
Come on, it’s “going to take a Herculean effort just to make the tournament now?” No, it isn’t. We’ll lose to Arizona, I have no delusions about that. We should finish 8-4 non-conference (like last year, when we landed a #2 seed in the tourney), and then we head into Big Ten play. 10-8 or better and we’re probably in. And the Big Ten is hardly imposing this year - lots of good teams, but only one (Wisconsin) that could fall into the great category.
Yeah, this is definitely not a relax and see moment. Michigan is #111 in RPI with a loss to Arizona upcoming. It’s gonna take a herculean effort just to make the tournament now.