Howard Coaching Eval
1. Elite recruiter
2. Excellent in utilizing talent
3. High character
4. Below average talent development.
When he followed Beilein, where talent development was his greatest strength, all four components led to stellar seasons and Final Four runs.
Conclusion: JH needs to staff his weakness.
Side note: Beilein excelled in 3/4 as well.
January 5th, 2022 at 7:44 AM ^
Frankie Collins isn’t exactly killing it so far, although he’s shown flashes of potential. Mike Smith was already pretty good before he arrived on campus, at best you could argue that JH tweaked his game, but it’s not like he was here for two or three years.
January 5th, 2022 at 9:54 AM ^
Unless you are a 5 star, true freshman PGs very rarely play well. But Collins is absolutely a "good get" from a recruiting standpoint and has shown flashes in limited opportunities. So to say that JH is a terrible PG recruiter is just wrong.
January 5th, 2022 at 1:20 PM ^
19-20 Zavier Simpson says hi.
January 4th, 2022 at 11:52 PM ^
Premature criticisms
January 5th, 2022 at 12:21 AM ^
We should cut his pay in half
January 5th, 2022 at 12:39 AM ^
Howard should just play the younger players and develop these guys and hope for an NIT bid for some tournament experience.
January 5th, 2022 at 6:27 AM ^
100% this. The year is toast so look to the next. The biggest indictment of the coaching is having Jones play. There is very little evidence to support it. Slow, poor D, average shooter, poor distribution.
January 5th, 2022 at 1:20 AM ^
Hard to be impressed at this point.
He definitely deserves some of the blame.
I"m seriously wondering about his talent evaluation too.
Can he put together a roster?
And why is everyone regressing? Is anyone getting better?
Can he motivate? Why isn't anyone playing defense?
January 5th, 2022 at 2:11 AM ^
We don't know yet. 60% off the starters are new. Not just new to the starting lineup, but new to the team.
January 5th, 2022 at 4:14 AM ^
Houstan is so goddamn bad on defense and somehow equally as bad on offense. I dislike trashing a player but he needs to sit. He's not getting it done at all.
Dickinson is really good but he needs shooters badly. Right now everyone can just collapse down and like it or not HD is pretty easily frustrated and thrown off of his game.
Jones is playing better on offense. In my opinion he needs to score more than he needs to facilitate. He made a couple of crafty plays to get to the rim early. He missed both layups, but him shooting a layup is still a better option than what we come up with half of the time. He still sucks on defense most of the time
Diabete just oozes potential as we all know. Unfortunately he needs someone to feed the beast and we don't have that right now. Hes also easily frustrated.
Lack of a true PG is this teams downfall. Collins is too out of control. Jones and Brooks aren't point guards.
We aren't going to make a tournament this year unless.they completely flip the script. Let's hope their is growth over the rest of the season.
Let's try not to freak out until next season. Howard is a young coach. He's going to screw things up from time to time. I still absolutely feel that he is the best choice to lead the team.
GO BLUE
January 5th, 2022 at 4:40 AM ^
As long as he keeps getting top 10 recruiting classes, I'll give him as long as he needs to figure out the rest.
January 5th, 2022 at 9:09 AM ^
But that's the point- He won't keep getting top 10 recruiting classes if we don't contend.
January 5th, 2022 at 2:33 PM ^
That's not necessarily true. It's not like Kentucky has been racking up Final 4's lately, and they're recruiting just fine. I know they're a different animal, but so is Howard in terms of being young-ish, African-American, college/NBA star, having Chicago ties, and so forth. All the old heads are slowly leaving college basketball. Juwan has cleaned up so far.
January 5th, 2022 at 5:41 AM ^
Slow your roll…Didn’t you learn from judging Harbaugh too quickly? They lost the guts from last years team and everyone assumed they would pick up where they left off. It doesn’t work like that sometimes.
January 5th, 2022 at 10:37 AM ^
TBH, Harbaugh was ridiculed because of his record against OSU and MSU a little. The 2-4 season was just another data point, we thought. He adjusted, significantly. I love Juwan, want him to succeed so badly. Yet, he has to show more this season to keep recruits coming and to ease the concern the lack of improvement this year has shown. The team has shown no improvement this year.
January 5th, 2022 at 6:52 AM ^
the LACK of Improvement during the course of the season so far is VERY disturbing and does not leave a good look for Howard...
January 5th, 2022 at 10:06 AM ^
Are you high? The BIG ten play just started. Lack of improvement in 13 games? Hilarious.
January 5th, 2022 at 6:52 AM ^
the LACK of Improvement during the course of the season so far is VERY disturbing and does not leave a good look for Howard...
January 5th, 2022 at 6:57 AM ^
He clearly doesn’t have as good a team as we expected, but we need more information to know if that’s on him or if this is an aberration due to a few new guys not panning out. No one had an issue with his player development one year ago.
January 5th, 2022 at 7:03 AM ^
Time to play for next year with his line- up. Coach up the future players, Now.
Johns & Jones regulated to bench players. Spot duty only.
Houstan, Moussa continue 20-25 mins, they will getting a BIG education for 2 months and will improve.
Kobe & Frankie split Jones 30 minutes.
Zeb apparently no backing on the staff, so a non-factor.
One of them has to emerge.
Coach up the future players, not gonna panic yet , Seen the same doom threads about JB's teams a few years back.
Somebody on the staff needs to start a defense 101 academy.
January 5th, 2022 at 7:08 AM ^
Ass thread.
Shooter's success is always a wild card.
January 5th, 2022 at 7:18 AM ^
Devante has been a mixed bag. Tonight he ran into guards who were bigger and quicker than him and spacing didn’t allow him to get to the basket.
Houstan is too passive, seems to lack confidence, and can’t finish at the rim. I just feel like he’s nervous or intimidated which is really affecting his shooting. But the kid shows flashes of brilliance at times.
Diabate is clearly just raw. Endless motor, incredible skill set, but just seems out of control at times. Also shows flashes of brilliance.
And of course, shooting and defense. They need to run better sets to get guys open. I thought the defense looked better tonight. There was more intensity but still too many wide open looks. But some of the shots Harper abs baker hit, my goodness.
January 5th, 2022 at 7:36 AM ^
Hopefully he’s realizing today’s NCAA BBall is about guard play and shot creation. Because that’s what we lack and is what has been killing us.
January 5th, 2022 at 7:45 AM ^
I thought letting Yaklich go was a big mistake and I think it’s starting to show.
January 5th, 2022 at 10:41 AM ^
Maybe, but he will likely be available again in another year. He is not doing so great as a head coach.
January 5th, 2022 at 5:52 PM ^
Its starting to show three years later including a year after team in which 4 of the top 7 guys never met the man? Pretty weird. The love on this blog for Yaklich is extremely divorced from reality. He's a fine coach whose coached in college for 5 years total who is currently struggling pretty bad as a head coach after not doing much at Texas to save Shaka's job
January 5th, 2022 at 7:47 AM ^
Our fans are the worst.
January 5th, 2022 at 8:44 AM ^
This person has to be a State fan.
January 5th, 2022 at 7:58 AM ^
My organized basketball career ended in the 5th grade, and those playing years prior weren't very accomplished, so I won't claim to be able to tell anyone how to coach. That said, I think that unless whatever kept him out last night lingers Frankie needs to get significantly more minutes. Jones has played better in the last few weeks, but this team needs a player who can be disruptive on both ends of the court. Collins has been, and likely will be, inconsistent and mistake prone but he can penetrate on offense and stay with opposing PGs on defense. It seems like when other teams go on runs we have a hard time keeping, and our inability to get open looks prevents us from sustaining our own runs.
January 5th, 2022 at 8:23 AM ^
this is fucking hilarious..... this is an OP that deserves a ticket to bolivia, worst take of 2022.
remember the leap that Big Country made after a year of being coached by Juwan?
January 5th, 2022 at 8:33 AM ^
Brooks and Johns seem to have regressed this year. They are the last of the Beilein guys. This team makes the same mistakes every game.
January 5th, 2022 at 8:43 AM ^
Idiot
January 5th, 2022 at 8:52 AM ^
I see two glaring weaknesses on this team. First is there's no apparent leader, no one who lifts the team's emotional level and keeps the fire going. Second is the defensive intensity is seriously lacking. Michigan's rise under Coach Beilein was completed when he realized and corrected this deficiency. There needs to be a defense-first mentality. Good offense flows from great defense.
January 5th, 2022 at 8:53 AM ^
Wow, I would have guessed that after the amazing success the team had last year, Howard was due at least a season or two before people started to criticize him. Guess I was wrong.
January 5th, 2022 at 9:23 AM ^
When a team is widely tipped to be a Final Four team in October and then looks like a team undeserving of even an NIT invite halfway through the season then I think criticism of the coach is fairly inevitable.
January 5th, 2022 at 10:11 AM ^
They were tipped just like DUKE is tipped every year. Last year coach Kryshevskisii quit. He literally quit. He refused to keep losing. He has a top 10 class every year. Not a lot of people in here that are criticizing Coach Howard have played one game in college and have actually never coached one game in anything. We lost three players to the NBA. Our ranking was based on our finish from last year, combined with the POTENTIAL of the rankings of our players. You cannot rank a team with any certainty on just plain potential alone.
January 5th, 2022 at 10:20 AM ^
I'm not saying all the criticism would be justified, I'm saying it's inevitable. Poor results lead to criticism. That's how it works in sports. The public turned on golden child Harbaugh pretty quickly too, so no matter your pedigree or reputation, if the scoreboard doesn't show the desired outcomes, people will come after you. I'm sure Juwan Howard knows that and isn't losing sleep over it (though he might be losing sleep over how his team is performing).
January 5th, 2022 at 9:01 AM ^
I was high on the team to start the year but they have a horrible makeup.
You have hunter but if you don't surround him with shooters, he has no room to work.you have to have PFs to stretch the floor, ours don't.
We need to start recruiting taller PGs.
Last, there are three kinds of offensive basketball players nowadays that are "useful." You have your slashers/drivers, shooters, and elite players are both. Right now we don't have a player thay matches any of those barring Eli but his role has expanded which ultimately hurts his game.
January 5th, 2022 at 9:24 AM ^
Impossibly early to be making that kind of evaluation
January 5th, 2022 at 9:37 AM ^
I cannot get into Howard or Martelli's head but I have to wonder if they saw issues with this team at the beginning of the fall they knew they wouldn't be able to get worked out in a year.
When you boil it down, the main problems are:
- Diabate is not a 5 but he is not a stretch 4 at this point in his career
- Out of players that have stuck around four years at Michigan I do not recall one more inconsistent that Johns. Donnal might be second.
- Dickinson needs to play with gunners and high level distributors to be an elite force, of which we have none
- 1-3 defense has been a tragedy
I told a friend of mine early in the year this team could be in trouble as the team had little floor balance. It's January now and I do not see this as a problem that is going to get fixed this year. No one other than Brooks looks confident shooting 3's right now and due to his height he's going to be limited in the looks he gets. If this team had elite defenders 1-3 they could probably still be okay, but when you're getting almost no distribution and shot making 1-3 coupled with poor defense.....you end up where Michigan is at right now.
January 5th, 2022 at 10:00 AM ^
Its too early to pass definitive judgment on Howard, but his honeymoon is clearly over. We only know three things about this team: (1) the defense is beyond horrific (and that's coaching), (2) Jones isn't even a low-MAC level talent; and (3) Houstan is beyond soft and potentially the most overrated 5* ever to come to Michigan.
January 5th, 2022 at 10:09 AM ^
You say it's too early to pass judgment, yet that's a lot of judgment in your post. Probably a better post if they look the same at the end of the year.
January 5th, 2022 at 10:07 AM ^
Loved Beilein and love Coach Howard. The team just hasn't clicked and maybe it won't. Perhaps Beilein would have had the team clicking faster, but he wouldn't have the talent on the roster either. I've not given up hope until and unless we miss the tournament for a couple years in a row.
January 5th, 2022 at 10:18 AM ^
This thread is silly. But I will say one thing I don't understand at all.... why isn't Zeb Jackson starting..... Jones am sorry to say is a liability, yet Howard keeps starting him. Yes, Zeb had a cold shooting streak last year when he played, but one has to look past that and see his talent. Now yesterday its speculated he will transfer, and I think this is terrible. What am I missing ? Why hasn't he been starting ?
January 5th, 2022 at 10:25 AM ^
Yeah, the OP is either trolling or just an idiot. You're going to judge development on less than 2 months of this year and ignore the last 2 seasons?
January 5th, 2022 at 10:47 AM ^
you must be new here
January 5th, 2022 at 10:45 AM ^
Think its wildly early to comment on talent development. Not to mention the idea he rode Beilein's back on talent development is nonsense. Franz never played for Beilein, neither did Hunter Dickinson and they were our two best players last year. Eli Brooks has been better under Howard, Mike Smith and Chaundee Brown never played for Beilein, etc. Last years team and run was basically entirely Howard
January 5th, 2022 at 10:45 AM ^
I think this thread is incredibly premature. However, I am curious as to why he continues to trot out three forwards, and while I loved his sets the last two years, as a layman, it doesn't seem to me that the offense is putting guys in position to succeed.
Also on defense last night, it appeared that at times we were running some sort of zone/man hybrid type of defense. They appeared to be in zone when the ball was at the top, but as soon as it dropped to the free throw line extended, we dropped into man. Maybe we weren't running that, but it looked strange none the less. Anyone else notice that?
January 5th, 2022 at 1:34 PM ^
Because even though Houstan is a forward, he's supposed to be able to crush it from 3.
January 5th, 2022 at 10:47 AM ^
Ehh I'll give him the benefit of the doubt this year. He had a pretty darn good first year and then an amazing second year. The argument can be made that he did it with Beilein players, but Beilein never had his hands on Franz or Dickinson. Those two guys were huge components of last year's run, and that development is all on Howard. He found two pretty good to very good complementary piece in Mike Smith and Chaundee Brown. Their respective development at Michigan is also squarely on Howard's shoulders. Neither were Beilein guys.
If the team continues to struggle next season, then Howard and Michigan have a problem. But this year, I'm willing to give him time to figure it out. Howard didn't just forget how to coach.