Michigan v Arizona gamethread

I think this team needs to visit the Big House and spend the day counting how many steps the stadium has...

Dickinson can't even rebound against a smaller guy.

I would expect better ball movement and defense simply from coaching so that's the disappointing part when it comes to Howard. I know the team will get better, but some of that stuff should just be better. Having a ton of turnovers, barely any assist is a coaching thing. Izzo had a bad team last year and they still had very good assist rates.

Lost Smith, Livers, Brown and Franz last year. A first rounder and three 4-5 year players. 

Replaced them with the #1 class in the nation. Kobe Bufkin just turned 18. Yeah it’s going to take some time especially since Houstan has no confidence right now and he’s supposed to be a 35% 3 point shooter. 

The main issue with hiring a first time head coach was not knowing how to manage a roster for strengths and weaknesses. To combat that, the coach and much of the fanbase were desirous of top flight, 5* recruiting classes. Well, it does no good to have top notch recruits if the don't fit together. Ask Coach K and Coach Calipari over the last several years. 

I'm hopeful that Coach Howard's talent evaluation, roster management, and coaching improves. We're down this road now, he's not going anywhere. But, he's going to have to recruit for team needs and not stars. 

Not sure I ever saw Tommy Lloyd scream once at Gonzaga and he just went full Bobby Knight before the break 

on the glass half full side of things: Hunter will come back next year, Caleb will be a 3-and-done, and Brandon Johns will be out of eligibility after this year. 

Look … I need a win on Saturday.  I can’t take a whole winter of this lame ass basketball team sucking air all game and throwing bricks up.  

I take it back; it's a lot more than point guard play; this team is a mess. It's going to be a painful process to watch.

Edit: to watch Juwan fix it.

Juwan sending a message with the walkons in.

Frankie Collins and Kobe Bufkin need to play way more. Jones is not good enough right now and Houstan needs to get his confidence back. 

Unfortunately I think both Houstan and Jones (and you could make the argument Johns is there as well) are so far in their own head right now that they are not playable, and it seems like that energy is sinking the rest of the squad's energy. 

If it were me, I would sit those guys down and explain to them why I can't put them on the court right now. Try and get them back in the right head space. Right now they're so disjointed it's bringing down the energy from the rest of the team.

We have got to move better without the ball.  Too much standing around.

Thank God, it's over.

Whew boy. 

They didn’t want to be here tonight. Energy and execution not good. 

Everyone is saying Johns and Jones, but you can't not include Houstan here. He went 1-9, 1-9, and 2-8 from the floor in the last three games. He's a step slow on defense, and his release is just slow enough that college defenders are bothering his shot. I'm not giving up on him as a player over his career at Michigan. He's a few games in, but he's not going to suddenly be good in five games. 

I'd hope that Zeb comes back and I'd give Bufkin minutes and hope he knocks down some shots. The defensive rebounding is abysmal and Robbie Hummel was fair in calling out how bad the defense was as well. They have no spacing because they can't shoot, and Houstan also doesn't move well without the ball. 

Post Hunter more. Play Bufkin and (I realize this is batshit after what we've seen) play Zeb more. You cannot keep getting 38 minutes with Houstan shooting and playing defense like this. I feel like Juwan is about to lost Hunter. The only way to preserve his post game is by getting shooters on the court. That means giving minutes to Bufkin and Zeb and hope you can get him some air space. 

As bad as the O is. It’s really bad, no shooting at all, can’t pass, and no one can create their own shot. The D is even worse. They got whatever they wanted on pick & roll to the hoop. It’s embarrassing. Do they practice this stuff!?!

So this is more of a young team than a plug-in-play championship caliber team... for now.  Lot of work to do but better to have these problems exposed early in the season to identify your weaknesses and see where you have to grow.  Coach Howard and staff are up to the task.  Go Blue!  

Reduce Jones minutes to 20 ish minutes, play Bufkin more so he can develop, reduce Houstans minutes way more and maybe try out Barnes at the 3. Houstan plays as much as Eli yet he's just really bad right now, so you need to reduce them until he proves he can effective and efficient. Until you get more productions from the guards and the perimeter, most of these problems will still persist.  

If you have a young team where ball movement and shooting in the half court is a problem, I don't get why they don't try to push the ball more in transition. Try to generate easier offense for yourself when you can, so teams will crash the boards a little less and you can kill off some of those second chance points more.

For defense, I'll continue to say this, switch your ball screen defense back to the drop coverage. Clearly no one except Eli knows how to play it well and how to rotate. Losing shooters on rebounds and in transitions has just been a killer. 

I hate to harp, but I remember seeing Kam Chatman and realizing it just wasn't going to be what I thought. I get that feeling with Houstan as well, but I'm hoping he's a good player by his junior year. I will come here and eat crow if he becomes a good player this year because I don't see it. He seems more overwhelmed than Bufkin and Collins and Diabate. They all look young. He looks like the athletes are a bit too much for him, which is weird given AAU. 

Hopefully they get much better.  Was impressed with Collins at times tonight.   Overall, low energy and too many turnovers.  This team can rebound but is not shooting well, especially from 3 pt land.  

This team in the half court on offense is straight dukey. I know there will be improvement, but they don't run on the fast break, they don't shoot open 3s in the half court and they don't move off the ball well at all. I keep seeing this weird thing where a player will have a decently open 3pt shot on offense, only for a teammate to come over a set a screen on the defender, who isn't much of a threat to the shot, but in the process bring his own defender in to help double the man with the basketball. Like what the hell?

I know it's early but I expected alot more out of these freshman. They all play timid, besides Moussa, who is just raw. None of them seem ready to contribute, but unfortunately we are in a position of they have to play do to last year's attrition. Just not seeing the top ranked recruiting class here. Just going back from Beleins top true freshman players so many of them were much more ready to contribute as freshman. I could name dozens of players. And I don't think any of those guys were McDonald's all Americans. Maybe I'm wrong. But I just see a collection of players who don't flow well together. None of them can shoot. Houston reminds me of Zack Irvin so far. Hopefully I'm wrong. 

I mentioned this before, but they can’t run a low post offense without shooter to punish help and their shooting sucks ass.  They also don’t do a great job of feeding into the post, and waste time fucking around on the perimeter without really looking for a shot.  Houstan does this when he isn’t missing three pointers, but Jones sometimes does it too, and he’s not a guy with a handle good enough to be dribbling around like Chris Paul.  
 

In this game alone I saw Jones and Dickinson both give up easy shots to try and wait for contact and then the contact wasn’t a foul and they missed the shot. That’s a not smart.