keita bates-diop

Uncertainty ball. [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

The deadline for putting one's name into the NBA Draft has come and gone, so we now enter the period of uncertainty as players who didn't hire agents go through the pre-draft process before deciding whether to return to school. The Big Ten already has several notable early entrants who will hire agents and stay in the draft, including Moe Wagner and the duo of Jaren Jackson Jr. and Miles Bridges at Michigan State. (Also, uh, Nebraska's Jack McVeigh?)

Even more are testing the waters without an agent, including Charles Matthews, and those decisions will go a long way towards determining the Big Ten outlook for 2018-19. College Basketball Talk's Rob Dauster put together a list of the most influential early entry decisions from a college hoops perspective; of the 12 teams listed, five are from the B1G, and two of those teams (Maryland and Nebraska) have two players with NBA choices to make.

Here's a look at who's gone, who's testing, and how the draft could impact the conference standings next season.

Gone For Sure

...bye. [Campredon]

These players have declared and will hire an agent, locking them into the draft.

ILLINOIS

F Leron Black — A big loss for an Illinois team that relied heavily on Black's scoring and rebounding. The Illini have some decent young talent and a solid incoming class but this is a setback for Brad Underwood after a rough first year. As for Black, he's probably going undrafted.

MARYLAND

F Justin Jackson — Jackson had the misfortune of getting injured after coming back for his sophomore season, and he'd already been off to a stock-hurting start. Still, he's a talented player who made a solid impact as a freshman, and the Terps could be losing a lot depending on a couple other draft decisions.

MICHIGAN

C Moe Wagner — I don't need to tell you about the impact of this one for Michigan—we've covered it extensively and there will be plenty more to come. Wagner is currently a late first- or second-round prospect who's considered a safe pick without a ton of upside (his defense remains a sticking point).

MICHIGAN STATE

F Miles Bridges and F Jaren Jackson Jr. — Bridges was overdue to enter and probably slipped a few spots in a loaded draft year because he returned to jack up 25-footers over a 2-3 zone. Jackson, after taking a strangely long time to make a decision that seemed quite obvious after that Syracuse game, made the obvious choice—he could go as high as #3 overall. Both are obviously major losses for an MSU team that may end up starting Kenny Goins at the four. They could lose the third member of their starting frontcourt, too.

NEBRASKA

F Jack McVeigh — Is not an NBA prospect, to be frank. He barely played for the Huskers this year after being useful rotation piece in his first two seasons. Nebraska's fates are much more closely tied to the decisions of two players who haven't hired agents.

OHIO STATE

F Keita Bates-Diop — An expected departure as KBD put together a Player of the Year-caliber junior season that earned him first-round projections. The Bucks also lose Jae'Sean Tate and Kam Williams from the starting lineup. They're set to drop back after a shockingly good first year under Chris Holtmann.

PENN STATE

PG Tony Carr — Remember that brief moment when Penn State was a dark horse conference title contender for 2018-19? It's over now. Pat Chambers still has a team that could make some noise but they're going to have a very tough time replacing Carr's high-usage, high-efficiency offense. Carr should go in the second round.

RUTGERS

PG Corey Sanders — A huge loss for Rutgers, as Sanders dragged that offense out of the KenPom 300s in efficiency the last couple years by taking all the bad shots he could handle and making a respectable number of them given the circumstances. While bad-shot-making is an NBA trait, Sanders isn't expected to be drafted.

[Hit THE JUMP for the water-testers.]

Unrelated. I tried, but there's no way to even pretend this is relevant.

OT.

Amazing. BHGP's Horace E. Cow finishes his fake pro combat series with Ohio State, and it's a doozy:

Click. It is amazing.

Basketball offers. As expected, they went out to Keita Bates-Diop and Devin Booker on Friday. Neither dropped immediately but both made encouraging noises. Booker gave various sites a variation on this quote:

Where does Michigan rank among the schools who have offered you or otherwise contacted you?

Michigan is definitely a top runner. I don’t know about an exact rank, but they’re definitely going to be there throughout the whole recruiting process. They’re up there.

I got all excited about the version of the quote($) he gave to Rivals that called Michigan "a strong frontrunner" and I took that to mean they were the front-runner, but the overall picture is more circumspect than that. Booker seemed taken aback when UMHoops asked if he was committing this summer. Booker's verging on five-star status—31st to Rivals, 23rd to ESPN, 29th to Scout—everywhere and would be a big pickup.

As for Bates-Diop, the vibe seems to be Michigan or Purdue and somewhat soon.

Brockdate. The Toledo Blade updates us on Brock Mealer's situation and recent charitable activities:

"I talk about perseverance," Mealer said. "I talk about the things that come from hard work, about accepting challenges rather than avoiding them. For me, that's about faith. Having a tragic thing happen, but remaining faithful."

Mealer and his family -- including part of the family he's come to know in the Michigan football program -- hosted and took part in the David Mealer Memorial Classic on Monday. In its third year the golf tournament has raised more than $20,000 for various charities and medical causes, and its designated beneficiaries this year are the emergency room department of the Fulton County Health Center in Wauseon and Athletic Angels, a charitable foundation run by former Michigan strength and conditioning coach Mike Barwis; the charity's emphasis this year is to provide personal training for individuals with paralysis.

26 of the 120 golfers were Michigan football players, a veritable festival of shots shanked backwards off the tee. You will tear up on senior day this year when Brock is standing next to Elliott. This is a warning.

LEAVE THE FALCONS ALONE. Those Peregrine falcon chicks that picked up the first names of various Michigan football coaches had an accident:

Three of the four newly hatched peregrine falcon chicks that live atop University of Michigan Hospital are in rehab after dropping from their nest onto a landing above the second floor of the hospital.

The chicks appear to be unharmed but are in rehab so specialists can help them develop flying muscles, said Michigan Department of Natural Resources Specialist Christine Becher.

If I see them at my next physical therapy appointment I'll advise them to follow the example of Yost and adopt the last names of the various coaches. No one has actually given name X to chick Y yet, but it's logical to assume that the one who didn't fall off the building is the one who took the last name of the coach, not the first name. None of this would have happened if these chicks were named uniformly.

Fascinating, captain. Holly asks "what is the Big Ten equivalent of PAAAOWL, anyway?" And… well, what is it? The best I can come up with is saying something mean about Jim Delany.

PDG forever. The United States of Hockey points to an indication of how long Phil Di Giuseppe might stick around:

“It’s unbelievable,” Di Giuseppe told New England Hockey Journal from his hotel room in Toronto, where he is attending the NHL Scouting Combine this week. “When you start looking at NCAA programs, one school stands out: the University of Michigan Wolverines. Growing up, I never really looked at going there, but as time went by, and I began to look at maybe taking a different route, there was no other choice for me.”

A junior year maybe? He is very young.

Was there a question about this? The GLI has been extended to 2014 under the usual format (Michigan Tech/Michigan/Michigan State/Wildcard), something I've never seen reported before. Accompanying quote:

"The Great Lakes Invitational tournament has become a long-standing tradition with our program and other schools in the state," Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon said in a statement. "We are pleased that this annual holiday tournament will continue for the foreseeable future."

Not to be paranoid, but does this make anyone else think the tournament might either be going away or facing changes in the somewhat near future? Of late the GLI has acted as a bridge between Michigan Tech, the one in-state school not in the CCHA, and the rest of the state. When the various Michigan schools are spread across three conferences, it seems like Wildcard should always be Ferris or Western or Northern or Lake State and at that point we might want to start talking about a larger tournament.

I've mentioned this before. It's fun to Play For Stuff and now there's a need for the Michigan schools to get greater exposure to each other. The GLI could morph into the end of that tourney.

Proposed format reminder:

• Grab either BGSU or Notre Dame for an eighth team.
• Form two groups of four with MSU and M split, Ferris and WMU split, and fill out the groups with the WCHA and honorary Michigan team. Example group: M, WMU, NMU, BGSU. Example group two: MSU, Ferris, LSSU, MTU.
• Each team plays two games against each group opponent—the WCHA teams in the same division can have an early-season conference series double as their Michigan Cup series. Top two in each group advance to the GLI.
• GLI is as is, with group winners avoiding each other in the first round.

The GLI trophy, whatever it is, now means something pretty cool. You could rescue the Mason Cup from oblivion if you want. (I'd prefer to not continue glorifying a man who spent his career trying to murder entertaining hockey no matter how nice and successful he was, but you may not be so opposed.) Michigan also has six of their 14 nonconference games set every season. The only reason not to do it is a slight amount of money Michigan and Michigan State won't be getting by loading up their nonconference schedules with the Bentleys of the world. Yay money!

Etc.: Ohio Supreme Court rules that OSU was basically fine in denying various FOIA things but has to release a small subset of the things they hadn't previously. Rats. In other Ohio State news:

To be fair, I think every school in the Dakotas has something like that on Minnesota. Maybe the new world of college football playoffs will tell us what's in the computer formulas. Mark Donnal's team won the camp championship at the NBPA thing. Athlon predicts Michigan will win the Big Ten this year. MVictors on the departed Bob Chappius. Zach Travis on M finally beating OSU.

Laser third downs and such. Wolverine Historian pays tribute to John Navarre, and even manages to get a still of the Buffalo Stampede selected as the introductory picture:

That's some youtube wizardry there.

Congrats on Olympic trials… and not dying. Michigan men's gymnast Sam Mikulak finished third in the men's gymnastics senior nationals and will appear at the Olympic trials as a result. He escaped a scary situation to do so:

Determined to make a good impression this weekend in St. Louis after missing last year's U.S. gymnastics championships with two broken ankles, Mikulak didn't flinch when he realized the parallel bars were loose.

After he had already started his routine.

"I thought the bar was going to fall and I was going to die," Mikulak conceded.

This comes a year after Mikulak managed to break those ankles on the floor exercise. Mikulak taped his ankles up and finished the meet because he only thought he'd badly bruised himself. The Olympic trials are in three weeks. USA Today has more on Mikulak's story.

Camp, basketball version. Michigan's Elite Camp was over the weekend, and while the effects were significantly less dramatic than last year's when the entire 2013 recruiting class was gathered, one Keita Bates-Diop was in attendance. Joe Stapleton on his appearance:

Keita Bates-Diop (2014, Wing, Illinois Wolves)

Keita was probably the only player in attendance who is a “lock” for a Michigan offer on June 15th. He didn’t appear to be in his element during the 5-on-5 scrimmages but his skillset was more than evident in the drill portion of camp. Everything he was asked to do he did easily. His concentration and coordination was on display and it separated him from his peers. During the 5-on-5 scrimmages Keita didn’t exactly stand out but did what his team needed from him in this guard-filled camp: he rebounded the ball well, finished in the post, and played smart defense. Bates-Diop’s performance jives with what we’ve seen this spring: he has all of the tools but needs to become one or two notches more aggressive within a game setting. Still, he was solid and definitely the best player in attendance.

As the blockquote says, Beilein only offers after that's officially allowed in four days. At that point you'll see Bates-Diop and a few others like Devin Booker get them. It doesn't seem like anyone will drop right away, but I don't think anyone other than maybe the coaches was expecting to get four commitments last June.

There was one surprise 2013 name to watch, a kid named Vitto Brown out of Bowling Green, Ohio who you may remember being the one tall guy in that video where Mark Donnal goes bonkers. He was impressive but remains a 6'7" post player. I'd guess Michigan keeps him on the radar in case they get more attrition than they expect. Right now they're full.

There's also a bunch of stuff on 2015 recruits at UMHoops if you're interested.

Camp, fantasy version. Both the Women's Football Academy and the Men's Football Experience also happened recently. Fluff video ho:

Also there is one for the men. The big news resulting is Devin Gardner switching to #12 and Drew Dileo possibly switching to #9. Angelique Chengelis participated. Money was raised. I have no comment about this.

Brady Hoke is irascibly old-fashioned about something. He's like that about everything, yes. Here's a specific instance:

"You can take all these stars and the way all these guys are rated and all that, and that's great for the fan base and the public," Hoke told reporters last week. "But we've had some pretty good players here that probably would have been two-star guys.

"Tom Brady probably would have been a two-star guy. He turned out OK, I think."

Other recent Hoke rumble grumbles concern the playoff format—concerned about too many games and too much travel for parents—and year two with the same team.

Could have gone better. Michigan lost to Army 27-6 in 1954. Newsreel footage of that:

That bomb is totally offensive pass interference.

This game would be Michgian's last loss against Army. Michigan won the next two years and then a couple times in the sixties; the two teams haven't played since 1962.

Lines. Some real actual lines from Vegas:

• +12 vs Alabama
• +1 at Notre Dame
• -6 vs Michigan State
• -2 at Nebraska
• -2 at Oho State

That Alabama line has gotten a little less depressing after periods where it was supposedly +14.5, though I'm not sure you could have gotten a bet on that in an actual casino at any point.

Most of these lines are in the "I don't have any idea" range. When team X is favored by less than a field goal that's basically a coinflip. Could be a nervous fall.

Old school UFR. MVictors enjoys old-timey diagrammed wire photos of the Mad Magicians, and I'm with him:

What's wrong with Fielding? Peregrine falcons have been named inconsistently:

After receiving hundreds of submissions through the university's Facebook page, four peregrine falcon chicks that recently hatched in a nesting box atop University Hospital have been named Bo, Fritz, Lloyd and Yost.

The university selected the winning names after inviting the community to participate an online naming contest. The names reference former head football coaches Bo Schembechler, Herbert (Fritz) Crisler, Lloyd Carr and Fielding Yost.

This drives me crazy.

Etc.: Caris LeVert signs a thing, is now official. Hockey will play Cornell at MSG on November 24th, the day of the OSU game. Glenn Robinson continues to throw down dunks. 2011 four-star C Brian Bobek leaves the OSU team after plunging down the depth chart. Red Hot Chili Peppers troll Columbus.