jaevin cumberland

Head coach: check. Seven more things still need to get resolved. Those are Howard's three assistant coaches and S&C guy plus the three open scholarships Michigan currently has.

COACHING CAROUSEL

Even if Michigan wasn't getting hit in the face with giant amounts of money from the conference's new media deals they'd have some extra assistant money. Howard's contract is relatively modest:

Juwan Howard has been officially announced as Michigan's next basketball coach. According to a U-M press release, he agreed to a five-year deal, starting at $2 million annually, with a base salary of $400,000.

— Orion Sang (@orion_sang) May 22, 2019

Beilein was making almost double that. If Howard wants an expensive assistant money should be no barrier.

Per Brendan Quinn, Howard is reaching out to various experienced college coaches and thinking about hiring a former HC as one of his assistants. Beilein taking guys to the NBA is receding as a threat per "multiple sources." Yaklich is being given "time to sort things out at Michigan," which again implies that if Howard pursues Yaklich he can get him.

I strenuously disagree with internet folk who are suggesting that Yaklich is expendable because Howard was more or less the Heat version of him. Next year's team is going to be defense first and continuity there is important; also Howard just got a ton of stuff dumped on his lap and if he can confidently delegate a big chunk of that to a guy with back-to-back top three defenses that lets him focus on all the other aspects of running a college program.

FWIW, Brian Snow put together a list of former head coaches currently looking for gigs:

Tim Miles (formerly at Nebraska)
Phil Martelli (formerly at St. Joe's)
Bryce Drew (formerly at Vanderbilt)
Bob Hoffman (formerly at Mercer)
Brian Fish (formerly at Montana State)
Kareem Richardson (formerly at UMKC)
Tony Shaver (formerly at William & Mary)

Miles knows the conference; Drew is an intriguing option because he recruited like gangbusters at Vandy. I'd still bet that Howard's assistants have an existing connection to him. Webb brought up Jay Smith, who had a decade-long tenure at CMU on either side of the millenium. Smith is dealing with cancer, however, and may not be able to act in an assistant capacity.

[After THE JUMP: three open scholarships. Can Howard fill them?]

Swing and a miss. William and Mary grad transfer Justin Pierce is going to UNC.

So what's next? On WTKA this morning, Sam brought up Oakland grad transfer Jaevin Cumberland. Cumberland is a straight-up sniper SG and is thus a cleaner fit than Pierce, but until this year he'd been stuck playing deep bench minutes at a Horizon League school. His bust out this year was an alpaca out of nowhere experience, as he suddenly played 37 minutes a game and hit 40% of his 263 threes. Here are some highlights that will make you think it's 2005 again:

Mmm. Grainy.

Cumberland did get about a third of his shots inside the line last year and made most of those shots by attacking closeouts, but a 56% conversion rate at the rim against mostly low-major opponents is a strong indicator Cumberland would be Just A Shooter. This is fine for a lot of schools: he visited Oregon and Purdue and has NC State after him. FWIW, Purdue just landed High Point transfer Jahaad Proctor and is probably going to bank their last scholarship for 2020.

Cumberland's cousin is Cincinnati star Jarron Cumberland and the other Cumberland was rumored to have some Michigan fans in the family when he was briefly recruited by M a few years back. Hopefully that carries over.

Michigan's other shooting guard prospect, Bones Hyland, may need a prep year to get his grades in order after the ordeal that the last year of his life has been. That was briefly alluded to in this 24/7 article…

For now, Hyland is leaving all options open. Because he missed so much time and was off the radar, there was some thought of going to prep school, but for now that appears to not be the case.

“The plan right now is definitely to go in the class of 2019, but whatever happens, happens,” said Hyland.

…and Sam said something along those lines on WTKA today.

As far as the potential Iggy replacement goes, it looks like it's Franz or bust.

[After THE JUMP: basketball recruiting on trial! also just plain ol' basketball recruiting. And Tru Wilson]