Lee Aaliya (bball commit from Argentina): "still needs to be admitted"
I was perusing the annual "Holy cow, Camp Sanderson really transformed these guys!" article from MLive, and was blissfully reading how everyone was going to be bigger, stronger and faster and came across this record scratch:
George Washington III, the lone freshman, has added muscle to his 6-foot-2 frame. (Another potential freshman, Lee Aaliya, committed in late August. Michigan hasn’t announced his addition. The center from Argentina has not yet enrolled at the university. A staff member said he still needs to be admitted.)
What in the hell? Does admissions not only have issues with Texas Tech, Stanford University, Faber College, etc...but now they're going to cause an international incident?
Can someone get this fixed? How was this not prioritized so Juwan Howard knew, one way or another, whether this young man could matriculate at U of M or not?
September 13th, 2023 at 8:35 PM ^
I wondered why this site hasn't covered him literally at all, I just assumed it got lost in the football shuffle.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:47 PM ^
Could be a Messi situation... I'll show myself out.
September 14th, 2023 at 10:17 AM ^
Sounds like the only Sané and logical thing to do in this situation.
September 14th, 2023 at 10:34 AM ^
Sane is German.
I do hope they work this out, Aaliya is quite Dybala.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:47 PM ^
Did the basketball program hire dudek by mistake?
September 13th, 2023 at 9:17 PM ^
I mean, it's a guy who committed on August 26th and we're now at September 13th. It may, in fact, take some time for an international student to get all of his paperwork filed and reviewed by a university that is likely dealing with a ton of additional things during the end of the August.
This place always cracks me up when it comes to academics and process - we LOVE to talk about how UM holds athletes to an academic standard and follow "the rules" but also get bent out a shape when something like admittance to takes more than, like, a week. I'm guessing that since he's a freshman and he's training with the team he's got a good chance of being admitted, but UM is the type of place that is actually going to require you to provide all the relevant information in an application before letting you in, and that's likely to take more time especially for international students.
If he doesn't get admitted then let's complain but right now this feels like normal administrative timeframes.
September 13th, 2023 at 9:59 PM ^
The clock didn’t start August 26. They started recruiting him seven weeks ago. Why isn’t there some staffer doing pre-clearance work (eg checking out his school, his transcript) to make sure Juwan isn’t wasting his time? U of M can’t find the personnel in its $215 million athletic department budget to fund staffers to do or be a liaison for this data gathering work?
Why compare this to a “normal” process? Athletes are not normal, in terms of how the university treats them. Athletics has their own academic support building, their own tutors, their own medical staff, their own counselors, etc.. Yes, they have to “follow the rules” and pass classes based on work they perform, but no one believes admission standards for athletes are the same as for Joe Average students; so why should the admission process (in terms of time taken) be the same? Just because it takes a typical student from Buenos Aires 3 months to get evaluated doesn’t mean a basketball recruit should take the same amount of time.
September 14th, 2023 at 9:30 AM ^
Maybe they did all the work but it still takes time - I'm not arguing that UM doesn't take a long time but that's also sort of the deal at a lot of schools. If this goes sideways absolutely UM should be held accountable but right now people are preemptively freaking out about a guy most didn't even remember UM signing because of a comment in an article.
Yes athletes are different and have different admissions standards but they're still standards and the process by which they process them through the machinery seemingly doesn't deviate much from the student body generally. If you want to argue that should change then I'm on board, but as we saw with Hinton, with Shannon, with a bunch of other guys who did get through - Jackson, Burnett, Nkamhoua - they've got a system and it can be cumbersome and bad but they'll stick to it. Getting preemptively worked up about it doesn't really seem reasonable at this point, and also isn't something I think Howard or anyone can do to affect.
September 14th, 2023 at 12:00 PM ^
I wasn't worked up before, but now I am with all this apologia getting posted! We've had a multiple year issue with admissions, and nothing seems to being done to fix it. To me, this is an indication of a larger problem, regardless of whether this particular player gets in (which I assume he will).
Recruiting (incl transfers) are the lifeblood of a program. The Hinton issue is pathetic. I would love to see a detailed explanation, with his permission, from a U of M person why "all my bio credits" didn't transfer from a top 3 degree program. No student, let alone recruits, should be saying:
I took an intro writing class last semester, and I was like, ‘What’s going on? What’s going on? I took this class freshman year (at Stanford).’ It was crazy.
It *is* crazy. Why is a Stanford intro writing class not good enough for Michigan? And why wasn't that explained in a clear way to the student? There is too much "We're Michigan, We're Different. Deal with it." without any actual proof that these different standards are being applied in a rational way for the student and for the school. It didn't affect Hinton's decision b/c he had other connections to Michigan, but other students/recruits might not have that and say, "the hell with this." Way too much "well, that's how we do things around here" is being used without an examination of whether it could be done better.
September 14th, 2023 at 4:27 PM ^
"It *is* crazy. Why is a Stanford intro writing class not good enough for Michigan?"
Well... based his transcript that was posted... it was a sub 100 level class, and it was only 1 quarter (only 2/3 long as Michigan's freshman English class).
So he took a sub level 100 class, that was 10 weeks long instead of 15.
September 13th, 2023 at 9:28 PM ^
wonder if this have anything to do with the school year in Argentina running from March to December.
September 13th, 2023 at 10:05 PM ^
Translation: admissions is still a total clusterfuck. I wouldn’t rush out and buy his jersey. SMH
September 14th, 2023 at 12:37 AM ^
I know we all mocked Cardale Jones for saying, "I didnt come here to play school," but the fact is that most of these football and basketball players don't. They're majoring in sports, their transcript is their excellence in their sport, and no matter how shitty they are at school they raise the prestige of the university more than all but the most amazing and successful of students. As long as they pass NCAA requirements they should all get admitted, period. Who is harmed if somebody spends 3.5 years at a shit university, comes here to kick ass in a sport, and leaves with a Michigan degree?
September 14th, 2023 at 9:08 AM ^
I don't believe there is anyone in Michigan's Admissions Department who gets some masochistic joy out of watching our athletic teams squirm over which kids will get in and which kids won't, but I do wonder if Michigan is the only major academic/athletic institution in this country that makes the admissions process unnecessarily hard for student-athletes to navigate, after said student has already been admitted to the school, for no good reason?
Not talking about lowering the academic standards to get in, but after the kid has already proven they have the chops to make it as a student at UM, are we the only school out there that makes that post-admission process this difficult?
September 14th, 2023 at 10:00 AM ^
My god. I can’t believe how many people feel it’s urgently necessary to lower academic standards just for a few athletes. Plenty of athletes transfer in; some don’t have the grades. If they don’t have the grades, they probably aren’t able to hack it academically at Michigan. It’s a university first.
September 14th, 2023 at 6:24 PM ^
Yeah, beating Kansas isn't important, whats important is that our bball team's players had a slightly higher gpa than theirs in high school...Who gives a fuck as long as they pass ncaa requirements, they will raise the prestige of the university with wins not by being slightly smarter with respect to kinesiology. Letting in great athletes who aren't up to snuff otherwise doesnt hurt the university, not doing so does.
September 14th, 2023 at 10:01 AM ^
My god. I can’t believe how many people feel it’s urgently necessary to lower academic standards just for a few athletes. Plenty of athletes transfer in; some candidate don’t have the grades. If they don’t have the grades, they probably aren’t able to hack it academically at Michigan. It’s a university first.
September 14th, 2023 at 10:18 AM ^
So people here are clamoring for priority treatment in expediting the international student process for a basketball player though there are likely hundreds of other international students who’ve been in the process of coming longer. All because it fits a narrative that allows theM to belittle Howard and for their conspiracy theory-adjacent reasoning.
September 14th, 2023 at 11:07 AM ^
Well wish him luck with wherever he ends up. It was a good run.
September 14th, 2023 at 5:11 PM ^
We could lose coaches over this.