Can Coach Beilein Survive Another Season Like This?
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Come on MC, an NIT run means nothing. Also, I guess we have a different definition of what a successful season is. Making the NCAA shouldn't be the goal at Michigan.
It should be the minimum goal.
If next year is rough, I think fan support starts to collapse unless we get an elite recruit or two committed. Attitudes would be very different right now if Battle and Langford were signed for next year. We'd be hearing a lot more, "Can't do much with Caris and Spike out, but next season will be fun."
Beilein has been really close to landing a lot of top guys over the past few recruiting cycles, but for the sake of fan perception, he really needs to land some of them now. And I hope he does, because I love the guy.
Serious question. Who could be possible replacements? In today's college basketball world it seems like the only way to get recruits it's by getting your hands dirty with AAU/high school coaches, that being said is anyone recruiting at a top level and doing it with integrity?
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Archie Miller and Chris Mack are popular names thrown around. And both would be good choices IMO.
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Gregg Marshall is also a possibility
He's had chances to leave before and hasn't. So I'm not sure he's a legit candidate.
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Somebody mentioned his name on this very blog a few days ago.
lol. He's not coming back to college unless it's to a blue blood. He's got the Celtics massively overachieving yet again. He's a great coach. But I don't see him coming back anytime soon.
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Do I enjoy us finishing in the bottom half of the conference and losing all but one big time game this year? No. Do I enjoy missing the tourney? No. But to suggest that Beilein would be fired after next season if we win 20 games again is completely asinine, IMO. Finally, you do realize next year is going to be a struggle (more than this year). We basically are relying on the same exact thing we had to much of this year (and I think Walton and Irvin are at their ceilings).
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I thought we were a top 10 team going into this season. Losing Caris and Spike hurts, but its not like last year where we had a skeleton crew and it was a miracle we stayed on the bubble for most of the season.
This year we have guys he wanted available to take Caris and Spike's roles.
I have way too much respect for the guy to be calling for his head but this season has really dimmed my enthusiasm for our future under coach B.
Good thing we have Harbaugh.
I saw the growth of Dawkins, Irvin, and Rawk last season. I've been expecting Derrick Walton to blow up for 2 years. I completely bought into the hype of Duncan Robinson. I thought Doyle was going to have a big year and their was enough bodies behind him that center would at least be passable while around it would be A+. I thought we'd finally have depth and upperclassmen.
My opinion of Coach B was pretty high the last 5 years or so. I thought he was a top 5 coach and maybe the best in game coach in the game. Could't make that argument this season, obviously.
I don't like this argument. Michigan has everything in place to be a strong basketball program, and indeed we were one from 2011-14. We can't blame facilities or sanctions, and we've been successful very recently (we've raised banners during the careers of our upperclassmen). If we're now at a point where we're lowering expectations back to where they were at the beginning of Beilein's tenure, something is wrong.
I'm hoping that these past two years turn out to be outliers due to the injury toll but I don't know. I felt more optimistic a year ago, when it felt like the team was getting better game by game but was just outmanned.
We didn't "lose" Biefeldt.
That was a coaching "choice"
I like Spike, but no one was calling him the second-most important player on the team before he was lost to injury. People were actually questioning whether he'd fit in the rotation at all.
Yes, we would be better with those two in the lineup. But they were around when we got embarrassed by Xavier, UConn and SMU. Their loss doesn't explain everything.
I don't recall anyone questioning how Spike would fit in the rotation. The guy was a senior and has played major minutes every year. Then he's gonna ride pine for his senior year? Come on. He's probably our 3rd-best player behind Levert and Irvin. And Spike was not around during those losses. I can't recall if he played in them because I wasn't able to watch, but even if he did, the guy was nowhere even close to his abilities with 2 bum hips.
is next season. Back to back poor seasons and unfortunately he would be gone.
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Define "almost every year".
And comparing this team to the Amaker years is a total straw man. We were recovering from a crippling situation, I don't understand how anyone can seriously make that argument.
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It was Beilein. Let's not suddenly deny him all credit.
Amaker never reached the tournament and left behind a terrible team in Beilein's first season. From 10-22 in 2008, Beilein took us to the national title game in 2013 and outright Big Ten title in 2014. Up to then he was having an amazing tenure.
The problem is that he hasn't kept it up and it's not clear that he can get us back to that level, especially since he isn't a great recruiter. He's older and possibly not far from retirement, and maybe he's losing some of the fire he used to have (witness our regular slow starts to games).
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In Big Ten play Amaker went 43-53 (.448). His overall record was padded by terrible non-conference schedules.
This year has been the most Amakeresque of Beilein's tenure, both in terms of our sloppy play and our extremely unimpressive victory total.
Again. Far from crippling. Amaker took over a team that was 37-51 in its three previous seasons and made them consistent 20 game winners. Amaker did the heavy lifting. Beilein was supposed to take us to the next level, and for awhile, it looked like he did. Now, it seems we are right back at the same level Amaker got us to after the Ellerbe era.
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As I said, he was mediocre. Ellerbe was downright bad.
The hiring of Ellerbe - who had been fired by Loyola of Maryland after posting a losing record there - was one of the dumbest moves ever made by a Power 5 school.
Amaker stopped recruiting guys who beat their classmates with belts and/or were so bad in the classroom they flunked out. The mere fact of having a team not entirely composed of loathsome characters* allowed us to regress closer to the mean, though we still weren't good enough to make the tournament.
*Plus LaVell Blanchard and Chris Young, two guys who absolutely deserved better than the crap program they had to play for.
Hey, I'm as upset with the current state of the program as anyone. But it's pretty irrational to attribute the turnaround to Amaker, a guy who had a losing conference record and never made the field of 64.
Amaker was good at beating up non-conference cupcakes, and winning in the NIT (10-2 record here), but not so much at winning against quality teams when it counted.
Beilein's done a good job for the bulk of his tenure. However, he doesn't seem to be doing as good a job now. The two are not contradictory positions.
Nobody is attributing a "turnaround" to Amaker. Let's also not pretend that Beilein was taking over a "crippling" situation. Amaker won more games in three of his last four seasons than Beilein won last year and will likely win this year.
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