U of M Basketball Recruiting Discussion

[hack]

Syracuse didn't stop recruiting Battle when he was committed here.

[*JD*]

There's already been a signing period, though.

[*JD*]

There are 3 wings (either SG or SF) in the 247 Composite top-20 that are not signed. Two are hard commits. One is Kris Wilkes, who Michigan recruited. I guess those are your targets. Good luck!

[hack]

Thanks, JD. I feel great about it! Pat yourself on the back for helping me get to that happy place.

[*JD*]

Don't get too pumped. Even if Michigan lands your 1-and-done wing, that doesn't guarantee anything. Look at spartie's season. They added two potential guys like that (at the time they signed) and are currently having a worse year than we are.

[hack]

They added a million of them. Izzo's wonderful, but he doesn't have a track record of integrating a large recruiting class of elite guys all finding their legs at the same time. Seems like Coach K can do that and maybe only Coach K. Cal is hit-and-miss. Nobody else has brought them in in volume like that, right? Not KU or UNC.

I'm just saying add ONE. Not throw a whole bunch in the mix. Just add one truly elite scoring wing to play with your two athletic and productive junior bigs, and you've got the makings of something really nice for a year's run. Wagner and Wilson, if we have both of them next year, are going to be an insane frontcourt.

[*JD*]

I agree. It just doesn't seem like that guy is out there anymore. This season, things may have worked out better for Michigan recruiting if there wasn't an early signing period. Then the development of Mo & DJ could've been a better advertisement for wings.

[hack]

Yeah, seems like it.

[*JD*]

For next year, I hope Matthews is going to be a strong addition. He's supposed to be a very good defender and looks like a rock right now. I expect Poole to be pretty solid and Livers to be in the mix somewhere. I haven't completely written Teske off as a contributor but I'm close. If we land Bamba, Teske will only be a garbage time player like he is now.

One other dark-horse possibility for your super wing want, is Wilson. He's shown a little bit of ball-handling this year and did it a lot more in his H.S. years. If we landed Bamba, I could see some stretches with a super big line-up.

Even if we don't land Bamba, I expect a healthy squad to be a near lock for a Sweet 16 run. The only question I have is at PG. Simpson doesn't make many mistakes and is a good defender but he's not an offensive threat at all so far. Then you have Eli Brooks as the back-up. Despite what he's doing this season, it's a big jump up for him. Maybe MAAR plays some point too?

[*JD*]

I didn't mention Duncan Robinson. I think we've seen the best of him. He's gotten a little better on driving the ball but, by and large, he's a 3-point specialist and that is it. Poor defender, below-average athlete and not very strong. He has high-major range and mid-major everything else.

[hack]

With those two bigs, if all we're hoping for is the Sweet 16 then just fuggit. And, frankly, that's all we might get. Beilein has yet to prove his system works without a lottery-bound perimeter player. Maybe 1.5 of them. We'd have to transition into a defense-first team. Which could happen. I think Walton and Irvin are working hard out there on defense, but they are old dogs learning new tricks, and they are the team leaders. Next year, assuming coaching continuity, the team will have a new personality.

[*JD*]

With those two bigs, if all we're hoping for is the Sweet 16 then just fuggit. And, frankly, that's all we might get. Beilein has yet to prove his system works without a lottery-bound perimeter player.

What coach's system has proven that? Hardly any teams make it to the final four without a first round talent. I can think of 3 in the last 15 years. Wichita State, who had a high-second round pick as their best player, VCU (one guy in the NBA) and George Mason.

Anyone who knows basketball knows Beilein can coach. Jim Calhoun was singing his praises all through the game last night. The big question is can he ever land another top-10 player (giving the nod on Mitch since he was #2 at the time of commitment) or ever get a top 5 class. The window is starting to close on that opportunity. He's turning 64 next week so the odds are he'll be in the game about another 5 seasons.

[hack]

I said lottery. And, 1.5. And I didn't say Final Four.

I guess my point is that Beilein looks to me like a boom/bust proposition on a season-to-season basis, because of the system and because of the kinds of players he recruits. When he's got the right ingredients and the system is working, it's like angels singing in heaven. When he doesn't have exactly what he wants on the perimeter, it's just fucking terrible, because he has a bunch of low-athleticism technicians that show no ability to grind out an ugly one when the offense isn't clicking. And, sometimes they just quit. He knows it and he's been trying to make moves against it. One thing I'll always appreciate about him is that he's not rigid, or blind to the flaws. A lot of those offense-first/no-defense coaches just seem to have a massive blind spot, and he doesn't. He's a life-long learner in his job. Maybe because he spent so long at the low-and-mid levels and made it to a big-time program a few years later than others, or never was an assistant at a high level. Dunno. Either way, the recruiting woes and tactics have been documented -- he doesn't call them enough. They all say it. He either gets them early, or if he's in a protracted battle, he always loses because the other coaches pay more attention to the kid. And, no offers until you get on campus. So, we'll see what happens there.

I'll set expectations for next year once we see the roster. There's also the grad-transfer market, and that could bring the wing scorer or perhaps PG in a grad transfer.

Overall though, ``Beilein is a great coach'' is something that gets said a lot because it's been said a lot in the past. I don't think he's a great coach. I think he's a good coach, but I can name plenty of others who can field an excellent offense, and one a little less fragile, and without giving up so much on defense. And he's clearly been a poor recruiter far too much of the time.

[*JD*]

It's been said that he's a great coach a lot through the years because that's what other coaches think about him. He also took a dead Michigan program to their first National Title game in 20 years and another Elite 8, plus he won the B1G title twice (which they hadn't won since 1986), and that's all in the last 5 years.

If you want to say that he's not on the level of Elite Coach, like a Coach K or Roy Williams, maybe so. However, I'm not sure that's so much X's and O's as it is Jimmys and Joes. Those guys win in recruiting, no doubt.

Calipari blows everyone away in recruiting but still only has 1 title to show for it despite having multiple lottery picks each year, plus he choked a title game worse than any coach I know of when he had Derrick Rose at Memphis.

Izzo is pretty consistent but only has 1 national title from 17 years ago and that was partly due to Kenyon Martin getting injured right before the dance.

Who makes your list of great coaches, aside from Larry Brown?:-D

[hack]

Coaches say nice things about other coaches because that's what they do. It's a collegial community. But if you watch Michigan basketball games enough you get a sense of the language that's used. Dakich has a rotating list of six of seven ways to get the point across. There's probably no outsider that knows the program better.

I don't know that we should expect an elite coach here. And maybe Beilein is a great coach who for whatever reason isn't getting it done here despite having every resource needed. But I don't know that we have to have an elite coach, and I'm not demanding one. I would happily take a step back and have a coach who isn't so slavishly praised by his peers irrespective of his results. A good-to-great coach whose team plays hard, doesn't quit, and has a Plan B when jumpers aren't falling -- that'd be suitable. Wisconsin gets on just fine, and they always have a better offense than what Beilein puts out there in addition to playing defense. A young up-and-comer would be good. Last year it looked like Archie Miller might be that kind of coach. I haven't followed along, and honestly haven't taken a real serious look at the post-Beilein coaching situation because I don't think it's in the near future.