22 - 23 Regular Season M Bball Snowflakes
1. Pray to the basketball gods they win 2 games in the BTT
2. Absolutely nobody should leave this team for the NBA
3. Find a fucking 4 in the transfer portal and tell Michigan admissions to fuck off
4. Run it back in 2023 w a loaded squad
Bufkin is already better than Poole was at Michigan. Although Poole didn’t just throw it at someone’s back at the end of the Houston game
Poole has his shining moment in Michigan lore. Bufkin most likely won't even get a chance. He's gotta come back next year.
Jett, Bufkin, and possibly Hunter are gone, but the good news is we’ll have TWill.
I know it's sarcasm, but I'm downvoting you because the reality sucks.
Care to place a bet on that? I bet they all come back.
Zero chance they all come back.
I kinda feel like the “pick and roll 35 feet from the basketball while the other 3 guys stand in place” play that we run 50 times a game isn’t working.
Not only that, but we run either Kobe or Jett off of staggered screens, but Dug is handling so high that he can’t even deliver the pass. Half the time we are at 15 seconds on the shot clock with a slow-developing option-A completely shut off.
Do we not do back door cuts anymore? On any given offensive possession the other team only ever has to defend two of our guys.
Tell us what plays Indiana runs they are they much more effective. The difference in these games have come down to execution, and it’s silly as hell that a team this competitive has so many folks with “tear it all down” syndrome. Indiana wasn’t running complicated plays that somehow made Woodson a genius. They won by a score because their guys didn’t bungle as much as or guys did. Is it Juwan’s fault that Thompson stripped Hunter? Or Kobe gets a rebound and doesn’t do his best Earl Watson?
They run the elbow the defender in the mouth and 1 play.
The get breathed on and go to the line play.
Another good one they ran was the kick the ball out of bounds play. That’s how you turn defense into offense.
Or the batt the ball out of bounds and retain possession play.
No, but it is Howard’s fault that he goes zone up 3 with 50 seconds left. 1. We SUCK at zone. 2. Even if we were fucking great at zone you DO NOT go zone there. I have a 7 year old son who was half watching while playing Mario Kart who said “why did he go zone?”
Howard makes some extremely head scratching decisions.
Shouldn't the coach be coaching them to execute better in those situations? If it's all on the players, the coach is even more replaceable.
Pretty obvious we have a talented squad, but that most teams have a much better player at one of the positions that they run their offense through to give us fits.
FUCK FUCK FUCK
We are the Nebraska football of college basketball. Losing every close game.
That's a character flaw. We had no problem observing that with Nebraska football. Time to face up to it with Michigan basketball.
That statement is so correct that my brain just exploded… i think.
We have no one on this team who wants the ball in the clutch. No one. And that explains why we’re abysmal in close games. If Jett is a lottery pick then I don’t even want to watch the NBA because that’s insane. Someone needs to get an NIL collective in place to keep Kobe around. We need a 4 who can play. Our roster is filled with 4s who can’t.
Very young team & they played like it all year. Next year should be better
How many times/ways can this team find a way to CHOKE at end of games..tnis is my LEAST fav Michigan team in Decades They are SO disapointing
Unpopular opinion: Hunter just isn’t as good as his numbers. He sure as hell isn’t as hood as he thinks he is.
other bigs have had their way with him this year. He must’ve given up 30 today. Granted tjd gets insane calls (the elbow to the face was a perfect example).
He’s a weird player offensively. He makes moderately difficult shots, but misses way too many easy ones. I think a big reason is because he’s not physical enough capitalize on his height. He has to settle for the hook, even against smaller players, when it’s on him to create his own shot.
We see the same thing with his rebounding. He just isn’t physical enough gives up way too many offensive rebounds and is horrible when it comes to contested rebounds. It’s embarrassing as a player when you get the clear out iso over and over again.
He’s at his best when others create for him for him to finish and when Reed is in. Reed does the dirty work that hunter just isn’t built for.
He had a few missed bunnies and turnovers in crucial minutes the last month. There were three in the final two minutes today alone. He missed Reed wide open under the rim towards the end of the game.
Hunter is a hell of a shot blocker though.
These things aren’t on Juwan.
Without Hunter we lose by 30 today. He played very well. He was. Matching up with with Dale Davis's kid as good as anyone..
The freshman all struggled. Tarris fumbled the ball away at least 5 times. If Jett doesn't get a catch and shoot he's invisible. He sits at the 3pt line covered and not cutting. Mac played ok in the last 10 of 1st half but seemed to be dribbling at half court while trying to run plays late in the game.
Tarris had 7 offensive rebounds in his limited minutes. He neutralized tjd. They didn’t clear out iso Tarris one time. We went on our first half run when Tarris came in.
tjd was 10-21 from the field. Almost all of his makes we’re iso post spin on hunter. He did not have such luck against Tarris. Thompson was 7-10 a few of those were one-on-one against hunter.
hunter was 8-13 in the paint against defenders he had 4”+ on. He should be dominating and he’s not.
Player development is on Juwan. Hunter is a junior who plays like a he’s a high level freshman at the end of his first season, except that his attitude is that he’s some tough, clutch player. In reality he’s Bill Laimbeer without the toughness or the game.
I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I’m going to borrow that assessment.
He's good, but not nearly as good as we thought he'd be by now; and certainly not great.
I must be misremembering (or there is some injury) because I thought he had pretty good hands, but he's shown the opposite too often this year.
He plays so tentatively at times - he looks more like a freshman to me than when he was a freshman. Would like to see him stick around to turn on the switch and really dominate games, which he hasn't done much this year.
He only had to be a complimentary piece when he was a freshman. That team was pretty loaded. It is a lot easier to hide deficiencies when a player is the 3rd or 4th option.
This team is essentially Scott Frost’s Nebraska. There isn’t a lack of talent, there are elements of really good play design, and there are flashes of a team that could be very good, maybe even great. A team that if it could play to its potential on a night to night basis, could win a lot of games.
But when it’s time to shit or get off the pot, they just vomit all over themselves and can’t get out of their own way. There’s just some mental block they can’t get past and it’s same story, same ending, new day every freaking time.
The lights get too bright, the stage gets too big.
I think it's because there's so much youth and that youth is not the Fab 5.
Youth is part of it, sure. But this team, after today, has lost 11 games by six points or less, Frost’s teams had an absolutely absurd losing record when the score was within a TD. I think he was something like 5-20, and had lost 8 of 9 games in 2021 that came down to one score.
There’s some very striking parallels there. Youth or no youth, this team, like Nebraska under Frost, does not know how to close out close games. I’m not smart enough to know what reason why, but facts are facts. Eventually, pal, you need to just figure it out to where you can at least close these games out on an occasional basis.
Worst end of game play. 2 chances at end of regulation and don't even get a shot off. They're young but Dickinson is not.
Face it, this team is not well coached. How many times are 5 guys going to stand and watch while an opponent drives in for a layup? It’s one thing if your going up against a fast break type team but Illinois and Indiana are not. The lack of going after loose balls shows this team lacks determination. Michigan deserved not to get the call on the dribble off the Indiana guys foot when the Michigan player just stood there and watched it. All he had to do was take one step and pick it up but chose to be lazy.
That was actually Williams. He would have been picking it up right next to the sideline and the ball was very clearly off IU. It was the right play in a game where refs are not so, so bad.
One word to describe this team....unprepared
And they lose by 2 on the road to a ranked team, in OT? 👍🏼
Yeah - you can call Indiana a "ranked" team all you want....the fact of the matter is our end of game strategy is awful...our shot selection in crucial moments is terrible....our pick and roll offense is unwatchable.....there are more than enough talented players on this team to win at least 14 games in the 2023 version of the B10 but yet again, another lackluster year. So yeah, I'm glad you're happy with a 2-point road loss to a "ranked" Indiana squad.
I get your points but why are you using quotes for ranked? They are ranked, and a very good squad. Diggingback from 14 down on the road isn't easy.
If Michigan gets in a late game situation...it may be time to run pick and roll with Kobe and let him create and hit the open guy and let HD roll to the rim as a rebounder...The forcing it to Dickinson plan hasn't gone well of late. Not even blaming, HD. Teams sit on it.
Juwan is A at strategy and identifying talent, but a D at teaching young players how to play at an elite level.
A good NBA coach coaching college basketball. He either finds a coach that can teach how to play or we’re in for another couple frustrating years just like this one.
The Beilein ex players always used to say that he would go over every potential end of game scenario in film prep like a madman, but they were always super prepared to respond as a result. Our guys never look like they know what to do when the opponent sniffs out our primary action or throw out a surprise, especially late in the game.
What one coach’s former players say versus what you think about current players isn’t an equal comparison. Have you asked what Juwan’s players say about end of game preparations—or are you just going with your selective memory for which ends of games Coach B’s guys didn’t blow?
I mean, that ring we got by not blowing a huge lead against Louisville was great.
That's fair, its more of a comment that this team usually doesn't look very comfortable in late game situations. They get flustered and panic, usually resulting in a poor decision being made. To me, that screams that the opponent is doing something they didn't expect and they don't know what to do. The fact that it seems to happen with a high degree of regularity is concerning.
There were certainly a fair share of situations where Coach B's guys didn't get it done either (he did have 100+ losses here after all). However, I do feel that Coach B's teams with a comparable level of talent generally didn't panic and make those lethal micro-mistakes like our current guys do, even if they came up short in the end.
I don't mean to get in a fight -- I hear your point -- but that's youth, man. Not handling pressure well at the end of games is classic youth. And we're a crazy young team. It really bodes well for the future.
I hope you’re right. Youth is playing a role for sure, and you don’t learn and get better without experience. Trial through fire is the best preparer for future adversity. However, there is also concern since this theme was also present in years 1 and 2 when they weren’t super young (we just weren’t in as many close crunch time games back then, to their credit). Believe the current staff is now 1-11 in games coming off a timeout offensive possession to either win or tie. That encompasses many players, upper and lower-classmen alike
Kobe and Dug and Tarris just happen to improve on their own? I give your post a F for logic.
This isn’t a team getting blown out every night with guys not getting better. Your fandom is the problem, not Juwan’s coaching.
18-19yos don’t just fix their games completely in one semester.
Yes, young players do in fact get better with experience. It is also true that his player development isn’t an F in that they regress. The juniors on this team were both highly recruited players who haven’t gotten significantly better over the past three years outside of the rate of playing more college basketball and becoming older.
we watched five years of this with Amaker.
Once again if Howard's coaching isn't part of the problem and it's solely on the players, how can Howard possibly get credit for any improvement they make.
Losing this many close games is not on the players. The only team I think that has played this many close games is Wisconsin and they do it on purpose because they're not good and terrible on offense and want low possession games.
I do not understand how you could possibly think the only reason they're bad in close games is because of the players. Even if you do think that, Howard is responsible for the roster, he has to have some blame.
I have experienced the 5 stages of grief this season with this team. I am finally at the final stage of grief and have accepted that this was a horribly coached team this year that should have never been in the situation they are in.
Looks like we will get that #1 seed in the NIT though.