Unverified Voracity Probably Used A Rolodex
Gattis, tracked. Michigan's pursuit of Josh Gattis was abrupt and fevered:
When Gattis arrived at the office, he and Tide coach Nick Saban had a conversation about the 35-year-old coach’s future. Gattis was hoping he’d get the shot to replace Locksley, but Saban said he didn’t want a first-time play-caller on offense. He wanted Gattis to help with the gameplan and install the offense, but someone else would call the plays.
“So, in order for me to show you that I’m good at calling plays, where I have the utmost confidence, I gotta go do that,” Gattis told Saban.
Around 9 a.m., Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh phoned Gattis, who said he was honored to get the call but asked to talk specifics.
“This is to be the offensive coordinator,” Harbaugh said. “You run your system. You run the offense. Your verbiage. Your terminology. It’s fully in your control.”
To say that's a departure for Harbaugh significantly undersells it. That's part of an extensive Bruce Feldman article at the Athletic* detailing not only the hiring process but why Michigan was sold on Gattis without so much as an interview:
Michigan had done its own due diligence on Gattis. Former NFL executive Tom Gamble had helped Michigan gather intel, calling around former colleagues of Gattis and tracking the young coach for two years. One of the people Gamble connected with was Joe Moorhead, the offensive coordinator who coached with Gattis at Penn State in 2016 and 2017 and now is the head coach at Mississippi State.
Feldman launches into an anecdote about the end of the 2017 PSU-Iowa game, which was a last-play win by Penn State on which Gattis sold Moorhead on changing a play on the fly because he'd seen the safety bite on a corner route. It worked:
It almost didn't work because PSU forgot to change the drag route underneath the post, almost drawing an underneath defender into position to get a PBU. Fun stuff.
*[My subscription expired yesterday and I was wishy-washy about renewing, and then I had to because there were three different things I had to read. Hope they're making money.]
[After THE JUMP: Martelli, breakfast cereal]
Martelli speaks. Phil Martelli was interviewed by a Philadelphia radio station and had some things to say:
"I spoke to him after his press conference last week and I said, 'Juwan, I know it was genuine and it was real, but the fact that you cried at your press conference -- first of all you grabbed me because I'm an emotional guy -- but No. 2, you grabbed every mother of every recruit in this country,'" Martelli said on Wednesday in a radio interview.
"'We can now go into every living room in this country because you're the real deal. You're not an NBA two-time champion. You're not a guy that played in two Final Fours. You're not a guy that played 19 years in the NBA. You're a real human being.'"
He also said he'd be taking recruiting trips back to Philly in October for the baseball postseason, so one thing Michigan will carry over is having a big baseball dork on staff.
Telephone. Martelli's hire was a bunch of coaches getting on the phone and working something out:
Back to Philly, he got a phone call, he said, from Calipari. “I want you to get off the phone,’’ Calipari told him. “Juwan Howard wants to talk to you," adding that Howard was going to interview at Michigan the next day.
That call wasn’t about hiring a staff. Howard was trying to get the job, figuring out what he needed to know. Calipari was putting him in touch with a network of college coaches.
“He wanted to have some ideas,’’ Martelli said. “Tuesday, he interviewed.” …
“From Stan Van Gundy to Jeff Van Gundy to Steve Fisher, people are calling, letting me know Juwan is kind of vetting me,’’ Martelli said. “Then we went into the Memorial Day weekend. We had another great, great, great conversation.”
And then Martelli started calling people about Juwan:
“People in the NBA are telling me he’s one of the top five guys in the whole league,’’ Martelli said. “Stan Van Gundy said, ‘I’m going to clinch this for you — he’s Jameer-like.”
Van Gundy had coached Jameer Nelson in Orlando. He knew what those words would mean to Nelson’s college coach.
This was sort of an impromptu search committee formed by the basketball coaching fraternity to hook up one of their members with a program that seemed to need him. Hopefully Martelli's connections are equally deep with high school and AAU guys.
Jabri Abdur-Rahim is a certified bucket. The Jersey native averaged 25.2 points per game for the Playaz on the EYBL circuit. @jabri404 pic.twitter.com/fxsBEkN7wI
— B/R Hoops (@brhoops) May 31, 2019
Early indicators. Howard's first two offers are to 2020s Jabri Abdur-Rahim and Joshua Christopher. Christopher is a top 10 player in his class with no crystal balls out currently; he has a brother who just signed with Arizona State.
Abdur-Rahim already had a Michigan visit scheduled and may have been his leader before Beilein left. Dad and Howard are acquainted. 247 just bumped Abdur-Rahim up about 60 slots, which makes him a composite top 50 player.
Michigan did get in contact with New Mexico grad transfer Anthony Mathis, but he immediately went off the board to Oregon. That was wired from the start, it appears. Mathis is an Oregon native.
You again. Michigan will travel to Louisville for the B10/ACC challenge:
2019 Big Ten/ACC Challenge matchups pic.twitter.com/yDCGvfuu1m
— Anna Negron (@ItsAnnaNegron) June 6, 2019
That might be rough despite Louisville's first round exit at the hands of Minnesota last year. They were 20-14 but 23rd in Kenpom and return three starters, including their star Jordan Nwora. They've also added grad transfer Lamarr Kimble, played for Phil Martelli at St Joe's, and a six-man recruiting class featuring five-star PF Samuel Williamson.
Good to see the NCAA is on top of it, what with the whole Bowen-thing-while-still-on-hookers-probation setting the program back for exactly one year.
The line retreats. The NCAA has adopted the international three point line for men's basketball. I think everyone's on board with that as basketball gets more and more three-heavy. The revamped line was tested out in the NIT and did have an impact, albeit a small one:
Teams in the 2019 NIT averaged 23.1 field goal attempts in the tournament from behind the arc, compared with 22.8 3-point attempts in the 2018-19 regular season. The 3-point shooting percentage of teams in the 2019 NIT was 33%, compared with their regular season average of 35.2%.
I like a mix of basketball things in my basketball so I approve. The other proposed rules (shot clock reset to 20 on an OREB, techs for hate speech, live ball timeouts for coaches in the last two minutes) also passed.
Kamloops still sounds like a breakfast cereal to me. Far-future hockey commits Connor Levis and Mats Lindgren were both drafted by the Kamloops Blazers, and are currently in camp out there deciding on what to do:
Here are quotes from @blazerhockey GM Bardsley, head scouts Fox and Sandland, Connor Levis, Mats Lindgren and goalie Dylan Garand on future of Levis and Lindgren, first-round #WHL Bantam Draft picks who are verbally committed to Michigan. pic.twitter.com/tr46xaghMA
— Marty Hastings (@MarTheReporter) June 2, 2019
Sounds 50/50 at best. Maybe reading this tweet will help.
For absolutely NO REASON WHATSOEVER, I'm going to post a list of the skaters who played juniors for the Kamloops Blazers and played in the NHL this year:
— Yost Built (@YostBuilt) June 4, 2019
Rudolfs Balcers
Joel Edmundson
That is all. Exactly 100 games played in the NHL this year for their entire alumni base.
51/49!
Etc.: talking with the new Big Ten commissioner, who will be functionally the same as Jim Delany but hopefully less liable to say laughable stuff.
I recommend listening to the Martelli interview if people get the chance. He sounds like the one of the most Philly of Philly guys, and I say that with affection. Brendan Quinn, who grew up as a St. Joe's fan, said in a podcast that Martelli used to call into Philadelphia sports talk shows to talk about local sports other than his own team. He will probably be fun to have on the staff, and I look forward to seeing how he fits into AA.
I'm starting to panic a little about MBB. Looks likely we are out on Franz and Wilson, which means we have 10 scholarship players next year and three of those leave after the season. So we'll have 8 on scholarship for 2020 with so far Jackson committed. Juwan is playing from behind already and needs to sign a huge class. I sure hope Eisley can recruit...
Next year will likely be pretty rough on the offensive end of they don't add anyone. And, as you say, the following season's team looks like it will be very young. This is where Juwan Howard being who he is relative to Michigan may be more than a nice bonus. It might help buy him some much needed patience.
We aren't out on Wilson yet. Juwan hasn't even met with him yet
Man, I can't hate Calipari. Maybe I've been in KY too long, but he actually seems like a pretty nice dude who just flat-out connects with people. I am also impressed that he usually gets his fleet of hyper-athletes to play hard.
He may be a bit shady, but it turns out everyone is, and I don't think he's anywhere close to the worst when it comes to that stuff.
Exactly. Really nice of him to arrange coaching contacts for Howard to prep for his interview. Cal & Harbaugh are buds too.
Also from that article:
Another thing that will be different — Tom Izzo is the coach at the big rival.
“He texted me on the morning of the Final Four, getting ready [for Michigan State’s game], telling me how I was in his mind and in his heart,’’
Good to know Tom Izzo reached out because he felt really bad for Martelli, yet feels nothing for the assault victims of his players.
I hope there is a small, very cramped place in hell for people like Tom Izzo.
It would have to be very small & extremely cramped for that tiny fuck to feel uncomfortable.
He was kind of a twerp when he was younger but the crash-out in the NBA seemed to have knocked him down a peg and since then he's definitely come off nicer. He seems to care about his players, knows he's recruiting guys who will probably leave after a year, and yeah, he can coach and motivate. Wasn't just shady business that got UMass and Memphis to be good while he was there, and it's not as easy to win with a fleet of one-and-done top recruits as people thought, it's not like Coach K has been making it work any better than Calipari has.
Living in KY now, and surrounded by UK fans, my take is he is the same coach he was at Umass and Memphis. The only difference now is that he coaches at a school that doesn't necessitate the same level of shenanigans to pull in the elite players. The fans/alumni handle the heavy lifting when it comes to perpetuating "SEC values", enabling Coach Cal to maintain an image of integrity. Once a turd, always a turd...
I agree with this - I used to not like Calipari but I've done a 180 on him. I think he's a genuine person. Can manage personalities. And to the degree that he is shady, well, so are most folk. He HAS been cleared by the NCAA twice.
I think some younger folk don't appreciate - what he did at UMass back in the day was incredible. Basically an whinier/more petulant version of Brad Stevens at Butler, except a generation earlier. Would have won a title at UMass, except bad luck that their exceptional 1995-96 team was in the same year as a more exceptional Kentucky team.
The whining and petulance has gone away over time, as it does with many folks who age. I don't hold that against him.
That UMass squad with Marcus Camby was damn fun to watch. A good buddy is a huge UK fan and even he was rooting for UMass that year.
Camby was something else. I recall UMass beat Kentucky at the Palace in the old "Great Eight" to start the 1995-96 season. Kentucky would have won a best-of-7 series but that UMass team sure could punch with them.
Not to mention Connecticut - the actual #1 overall seed in that tournament (and why UK and UMass met in the semis). Man, there were some super teams in that era.
Seeing as the Athletic is expanding coverage and adding writers, it seems relatively safe to assume they're doing ok.
Meanwhile I'm looking at an ad for an office phone booth on the sidebar while typing this out.
I hope they are but the constant deep discounts on subscriptions is a familiar "show the VCs how many subs we have so they keep funding us" move.
They would need an incredible number of subscribers at those price points (I'm paying $2/month for example) to get to profitability.
It's hard to make fun of Kamloops when I live so close to Kalamazoo...
My first double post!
The WHL has some incredible team names.
Team names or place names? I think of team names as Blazers, and place names as Kamloops.
Techs for hate speech? How on earth are they going to enforce that?! So pretty much no more trash talk.
So, you don't know what hate speech is? Or do you think hate speech qualifies as a reasonable version of trash talk?
Good to see the NCAA is on top of it, what with the whole Bowen-thing-while-still-on-hookers-probation setting the program back for exactly one year.
Just fuck it.
FUCK IT.
FUCK IT.
FUCK IT.
Just go ahead and arm the bagmen with the Michigan money cannon and let them blast away at anything that moves.
I don't care if we do it.
I don't care if we get caught.
There is no point in caring, because nobody else does.
$$$ game on, bitches.
As spoiled as we are with Quinn, the lack of Michigan football coverage on The Athletic (as they are currently without a beat writer) has been a disappointment, but to see Feldman be the one who covers them at the moment is exciting. I’ve always enjoyed following him.
Feldman launches into an anecdote about the end of the 2017 PSU-Iowa game, which was a last-play win by Penn State on which Gattis sold Moorhead on changing a play on the fly because he'd seen the safety bite on a corner route.
Where have I heard this before. Oh, yeah:
Michigan in double-overtime against Indiana, and the record-setting touchdown pass that one of his assistants, Jedd Fisch, dialed up from out of nowhere.
It was a 25-yard toss from Jake Rudock to Amara Darboh (sic*) that proved to be the winner, a stop-and-go route that wasn’t on the call sheet — “It’s not even on the wrist band,” Rudock said — and wasn’t practiced at all during the week. They’d repped it in training camp, and earlier in the season, Harbaugh said.
Not that changing plays on the fly is an inherent hallmark of offensive capability, but Harbaugh needs some fearlessness in his OC.
*IIRC it was Chesson
That Atlantic article on Gattis was really good. It's got me very very excited for this up coming season to see how he can transform the offense. Hopefully we can hang onto him as long as possible, but that man is destined to be a HC somewhere soon.
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