What Bagmen? Michigan MBB 2020 Recruiting Class Ranked #4
The narrative this year has been that Michigan will never win anything of note because we are too principled or something. But those principles haven't prevented us from having the #4 recruiting class in the country in men's basketball for the Class of 2020, behind only Kentucky, Duke, and UNC.
To me, the lesson is: stop making excuses. It is possible to have Michigan's academic standards, and Michigan's follow-the-rules principles, and still win—both on the recruiting trail and on the field or court.
January 2nd, 2020 at 9:09 AM ^
It is like someone already mentioned the "new coach shine".
At some point though the coach and program don't sell itself...you have to back it up with something and that's why Harbaugh is struggling.
People on here say "Well we have to recruit better!" Okay? Do you not think 18 year olds making a decision where to play don't see the same things a lot of fans do?
It's why Harbaugh should get one more year, because if it doesn't get better now there's a pretty good chance it never will.
January 2nd, 2020 at 9:09 AM ^
Howard knows the bagman personally, yet you assume he isn't utilizing him?
#TeamBagMan4Lyfe
January 2nd, 2020 at 9:11 AM ^
Good for Michigan basketball.
However I always feel the need to remind Holier-than-thou fans that Michigan was embroiled in one of the largest bagmen scandals in ncaa history.
January 2nd, 2020 at 12:04 PM ^
Do you really think you need to remind ANY of us of that?
Also lets remember that he was not technically a "bagman" for Michigan hoops since he started paying them - and others - in high school regardless of where they went to school.
It was when the players asked for tickets for him that he became a booster under NCAA rules and then the problems ensued. Shame on us for not looking harder at him.
January 2nd, 2020 at 1:44 PM ^
Don't feed mgojohny. He's an Online State troll.
January 2nd, 2020 at 6:09 PM ^
When the title says “What Bagmen?” for some reason I felt the need to send a memo
thanks for the clarification that Martin was school agnostic...supposedly
January 2nd, 2020 at 1:45 PM ^
One of the largest bagmen scandals in NCAA history that people actually know about*
FIFY
I guarantee that everything done by places like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, Louisville, Kansas, Arizona, etc. all MASSIVELY dwarfs what occurred at UM with the FabFive...but since the NCAA and everyone else looks the other way when it comes to schools like these, nobody finds out all the details.
But the NCAA, other schools and coaches, and even reporters (in our own state for craps sake!) LOVE to tear down UM every little chance they get. A few football players STRETCH for a few extra minutes and the whole sports world loses its mind...but "personal loans", fake classes, boosters buying parents new houses, cars, cash payments, multiple players caught using PEDS during the playoffs, etc. all get a "meh" from the general sports world and everything is soon forgotten.
January 2nd, 2020 at 1:52 PM ^
just in case the snitching bootlicker contingent wasn't represented in this thread...
January 2nd, 2020 at 9:19 AM ^
I think we're overthinking here. 17 year old kids don't care about tradition unless they are legacy. They care about winning and getting to the next level. Michigan basketball may have less tradition in our minds, but in the minds of recruits, it's a winning program that consistently sends its players to the NBA. Howard has turned it up a notch with this charisma, but the key is the underlying foundation.
January 2nd, 2020 at 9:22 AM ^
It also helps that some Bball players only need to stay for 1 year. Probably can get away with minimum classwork for 2 semesters and bounce VS a 3 year program for football.
January 2nd, 2020 at 9:59 AM ^
In addition, the roster is smaller. If 1/3 of your roster are borderline admits, that's only 4-5 basketball players, but that's 28 football players. Much easier to squeeze an extra guy or two past admissions than 5 or 10.
January 2nd, 2020 at 9:45 AM ^
Agree. People make excuses to protect themselves from having to face the reality of things. The reality in football is that Harbaugh is not getting it done. Kudos to Juwan for doing what people said was not possible under Beilein. He's a stud.
January 2nd, 2020 at 9:51 AM ^
The only thing separating this from a good Beilein class right now is Isaiah Todd.
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:23 AM ^
Have you seen the kid play? I'll take that separation every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
January 2nd, 2020 at 11:28 AM ^
I mean I agree. I'm just saying Todd is the difference. If Beilein were here we'd be at least looking at a class as good as Zeb, Dickinson, Williams. Possibly much better if some reports are to believed (Like Webb saying Kessler would have come).
Obviously getting the Todd level players had been the thing Beilein had not been able to. And there's a decent chance some bag was involved there.
January 2nd, 2020 at 9:53 AM ^
Or, perhaps he is recruiting well because unlike Beilein he is actually using bagmen, like the vast vast majority of top Bball programs?
January 2nd, 2020 at 9:58 AM ^
Hopefully we are using a bagman.
January 2nd, 2020 at 9:59 AM ^
What's more realistic here?
- Michigan was able to build the 4th overall class without bagmen.
- Michigan started using bagmen.
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:10 AM ^
Honestly, the first one. Howard is a big time name who clearly is connecting well with these kids. The performance in the Bahamas was HUGE for recruiting. Players all over the country were hold up with their families watching college basketball that entire time and Michigan was the stand-out.
It is highly unlikely, to the point of implausible, that a coach connected tangentially as a player to one of the biggest recruiting scandals in college basketball history comes back to the same school and immediate begins funneling money to players during an on-going FBI investigation into college basketball corruption.
Like I said above, are we on a possible path toward such things? Possibly, more so than under John Bielien. But I do not think it is happening now.
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:13 AM ^
Honestly the most logical answer is that Michigan has always had bagmen and Beilein was just a mediocre recruiter who didn't want or couldn't connect with one and done talent. Everybody cheats. Yes there are varying degrees and some schools are much worse and do much worse things, but everybody cheats.
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:27 AM ^
I love these 'everybody cheats' comments without offering a shred of proof.
Yes, plenty of programs cheat, and there's information out there about that. Since the Ed Martin scandal I haven't seen any info of M bag men or such. M was scared into submission.
January 2nd, 2020 at 12:54 PM ^
Amen brother Gruden. Preach it.
January 2nd, 2020 at 4:30 PM ^
Its the internet and its the past so there is literally no way I could ever convince you. If you want to believe every school that is a top 10 recruiting in either sport is cheating but Michigan isn't you can tell yourself that story. It isn't logical or practical but nothing I type is going to change that.
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:34 AM ^
I disagree AK, to the extent that there is any implication that Beilein was aware of it. I don't think players under Beilein received any form of compensation, and believe that players with a proclivity toward seeking that out were excluded from consideration. I think he was clean. Full stop.
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:46 AM ^
I knew a few of the players from a group project in a class that had trey, spike, caris, and gr3 in it, and also was friends with one of the student basketball managers, of course they got benefits. It wasn't Kentucky level benefits and it was Beilein looking the other way rather than overseeing it all but the idea that we were a 100% squeaky clean program that followed every NCAA rule isn't true. Football players were also getting benefits under both Rich Rod and Hoke and for the athletes that cared to know there was a list of classes or GSI's that were willing to let players cheat. These things and much worse happen at every single school, I had a family friend at FSU in the 90's and the players would get literal paper bags filled with cash after every win, it doesn't make anyone a bad person. I just hate the holier than thou comments.
January 2nd, 2020 at 12:55 PM ^
ya, because getting a free pizza is similar to getting a bag of cash after a win. sure, both are against the rules, but to equate the two is just plain dumb.
January 2nd, 2020 at 4:34 PM ^
Its a lot more than a free pizza, its payment, its cheating in classes, its shit to family and handlers and its all happening. It isn't buying the parents houses worth millions and selling them to families for a dollar like happens at other places nor is it working with the shoe companies directly to funnel an entire bullshit ring at the AAU circuit and help facillitate backroom shady deals with people who want to profit off the kids. But it isn't just free pizza.
January 3rd, 2020 at 8:25 AM ^
I am a day late to this party, but for those who didn’t notice, ak47 exposed himself as an Ohio State troll a few days ago. Pay no attention to him, and be aware that there are many trolls on this board who hide their identity.
January 2nd, 2020 at 12:14 PM ^
Sorry, but I have to follow the PED principle here. In sports like cycling and track, PEDs are likely everywhere; if someone is winning in those sports (and lots of others--notice how seldom athletes get tagged for PED use in sports that prize size, speed, and endurance like soccer or basketball), they are almost certainly using PEDs.
Same goes for recruiting. If you assume that teams that recruit in the top ten are dirty (let's see--in football the last few years we have teams like Bama and OSU, and also FSU and Texas and USC and Ole Miss, and before this season Clemson almost never broke the top ten; in basketball you have Duke and Kentucky and Kansas, but also UCLA and Arizona and Texas and MSU and LSU) then the idea that Michigan's multiple trips into the top ten under Harbaugh were isolated rays of purity is implausible.
There are lots of levels of corrupt. It has been theorized, but never firmly established, that at the worst offenders the coaches directly engineer systems of payments to players. Ole Miss football got dinged this way. But there are also programs where there are organized booster networks that operate just outside of the knowledge of the staff, and other schools where there may be no such organized system but you have isolated instances of people "helping" players.
I can believe that Harbaugh and Howard do not have any conscious association with rule-breaking. It's possible that people like Beilein actively discouraged it. But I am confident that Michigan has had good players that we have cheered for who have received various benefits outside of the rules. From simple stuff to more complex stuff.
And a lot of it happened before they ever committed to a school. If you read the bagman article, that's a lot of what they described; money that was provided without any promise of commitment. Many of these top athletes would be exposed to it. Why wouldn't they take the cash?
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:10 AM ^
You do realize the most logical answer is that Michigan does in fact have bagmen and Beilein was just a mediocre recruiter right?
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:14 AM ^
This is why the 2016 OSU loss haunts the UM football program. Win that, go to the playoff, and our recruiting outlook would be a lot different.
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:17 AM ^
JH still has recruiting to do: he needs to get isiah todd to actually go to college.
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:20 AM ^
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:25 AM ^
Ace on Twitter is positive that Michigan is paying its players. Surprised no one talks about it.
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:53 AM ^
which ace?
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:26 AM ^
The football team has had highly rated guys too including Daxton Hill and quite a few from New Jersey. Football classes are larger and we need to string together multiple top classes in a row to have top talent
January 2nd, 2020 at 11:28 AM ^
We'd be in a lot better position if the recruiting was just more consistent. We have some good players but the nature of football is that opponents will pick on your weak spots, and almost every year we've had some proverbial cyans in nature if not quite in the MGoBlog charts.
Inherit a badly coached O-line with a few good tackles and we ignore tackles until it becomes a problem. Get some elite DEs and Michigan basically forgets to recruit DTs for three years. Get a nice run of All-American caliber CBs and CB recruiting stops.
I don't get it. We don't necessarily need to replace our All-American caliber pieces with similar pieces, but they seem to replace them with nothing. You're not going to find another Mo Hurst every season but that guy stayed a year longer than he needed to and his incredibly obvious departure to the NFL still caught everyone flat-footed. If we'd even had a Matt Godin de-frosting in the oven then the beginning of the season looks different from having Ben Mason and Jordan effin' Glasgow moonlight at DT. And next year we're going to do what at CB?
These aren't the kinds of problems you fix with 5-star talent. These are problems you create to waste 5-star talent.
January 2nd, 2020 at 1:07 PM ^
I grant you that it appears to be the case, but there are so many intangibles here. And I'm speculating here (which seems common in this thread)...
We have a name brand cashe with a very good, but not excellent, product on the field - so we have to work harder to get exceptional recruits.
Additionally, if a recruit knows that he's going to have to wait two years to get any playing time he may be less likely to commit here vs a name brand cashe with better product on the field. If he has to wait, why not go to a better product?
January 2nd, 2020 at 1:55 PM ^
And yet teams like OSU, BAMA, LSU, Clemson, Georgia, Oklahoma, etc. all recruit excellent talent EVERY SINGLE YEAR and have depth upon depth upon depth at just about every single position, which requires highly talented guys to sit on the bench and wait for their turn. We know this happens because every single year these sorts of teams simply "reload" rather than begin a whole new rebuilding cycle like we do.
So no, I disagree that we aren't getting exceptional recruits because they're opting for immediate playing time elsewhere. Does this happen? Of course it does happen. But it's more the exception (at the moment) not the rule...we'll have to see how things end up unfolding now that the transfer portal is gaining momentum. But, even with the transfer portal, baring some nonsensical sob-story by a player to get immediate eligibility, they'd still have to sit and wait a year before playing so it's not like they can just transfer and all their problems are immediately solved.
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:31 AM ^
Howard is a very unique coach and he can sell something worth much more than a quick bag of cash. Basically, Howard has so many NBA connections that he can pretty much guarantee these players that they will get strong consideration from the league. When Howard was hired Jalen Rose publicly stated that he was going to use all of his resources to ensure Howard was successful.
Belein wasn’t able to have guys like Pat Riley and LeBron James call up recruits and say, “this coach is the best.”
Howard is also just cool and has tons of AAU connections.
Finally, in football there are very few players who are guaranteed to go to the league. They have to spend at least three years in the program and the classes you take in year three are much more difficult than the ones you take in year one. If a BB player plans on being a one-and-done, then they don’t have to really worry about taking difficult classes and it’s easier to be broke for one year than three.
Basically, basketball isn’t football and we should just be grateful that we have Howard rather than allow our luck in one sport to just make us more sour about another.
January 2nd, 2020 at 10:40 AM ^
Congrats to Howard, but a first year basketball coach's recruiting isn't very comparable to football recruiting
January 2nd, 2020 at 11:09 AM ^
More like Guido Sar-douchy, amirite?
January 2nd, 2020 at 11:30 AM ^
The connection was some guy had Saddi's phone number
January 2nd, 2020 at 2:02 PM ^
In an effort to save the rest of you time looking this up, here is the Reader's Digest version:
"Louis Martin Blazer, a former Pittsburgh-based financial adviser turned government witness, testified Tuesday that he paid college football players from several programs from around 2000 to 2013-14 in hopes of becoming their financial adviser once they turned pro. "
"The schools listed, per multiple reports, were Pittsburgh, Penn State, Michigan, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Alabama and North Carolina. Blazer did not offer any specific names and is scheduled to be in court again Wednesday. "
"He said he's never paid a college football coach."
January 2nd, 2020 at 5:23 PM ^
In an effort to save you some time, let me suggest that programs who were just mentioned in a federal investigation and trial into illegal payments of players should probably not continue to repeatedly post threads about how 'holier than thou' and honorable their teams are.
The number of these posts on this blog are fucking ridiculous. Its as if your IP addresses don't receive traffic from Freep articles, and sites.
Michigan had an entire fucking era of its basketball program erased for shit's sake. Do you all lack so much self-awareness that you literally believe you are above reproach?
Stop this stupidity.
January 2nd, 2020 at 11:23 AM ^
With those FBI indictments to 4 assistant coaches, we have a chance to gain some ground !
Who the fuck is going to risk jail time from felony charges ? The FBI is watching MBB. Going to be a relatively clean period over the next view years for MBB recruiting.
Wish the Feds would hit college football.
January 2nd, 2020 at 11:48 AM ^
Claiming OSU cheats to get better players in football makes it easier to accept. I don’t actually believe they cheat anymore than any other school. They get better players because of their success. The exact same can be said about our basketball team. We are getting better players because of our recent success and guys want to play for our coach.
January 2nd, 2020 at 1:21 PM ^
I find it extremely ignorant to believe that Ohio state needs to cheat to get better players than us. This is just a stupid excuse that people who can’t explain why we keep losing to them use to make themselves feel better. Mayb Ohio state did at one point but now they can get whatever player they want. Only schools that might have higher dibs is Clemson Alabama and maybe LSU. I’m one of the biggest Michigan fans there are. my family who is entirely Michigan fans think I’m a little too crazy about everything Michigan. But even I was saying why would a football recruit choose Michigan if offered a scholarship from any of the schools I mentioned. Clemson didn’t start recruiting at such a high level until they won a National championship. So stop blaming the bagmen and internet classes. If you win they will fucking come. It’s that simple
January 2nd, 2020 at 12:50 PM ^
Or in basketball now we are doing what every other program does....