A Synopsis of Michigan Men's Basketball
So what are they all talking about? Michigan fans are all to well familiar with it. This is a synopsis:
Is the cause recruiting? Is Michigan basketball missing Franz Wagner, Jordan Poole, and others that have been drafted in the last 4 years, and recruiting has not replaced that talent? Or is the talent there, and it's the coaching? Other?
Do these two tweets sum up what many Michigan fans are feeling?
Whatever the case, what is clear is change has to happen. It's no fun to watch with a feeling that your team will be competitive.... until crunch moments come and the game is on the line.
From the 2021 class you lost 2 players who were not NBA ready to the draft and a guard to the portal. Honestly 1 2021 contributor in Kobe.
Some is on Juwan, some of it is just shit luck.
Except, will the 2023 class turn out? Two freshmen, x number of portal guys needed. Maybe he should get Lebron on the phone and convince him it is okay to come to Meeechigan. Or maybe try to get one of the few top unsigned 50-150 ranked guys to come in.
This is to say: not recruiting well every year is Juwan’s fault. OSU is finishing with a second straight Top 10 class despite having a losing record this year.
Attrition happens, but not successfully answering that is on Juwan. How he lost Frankie and has played Terry is on him. Yussef played decently yet will that keep him next year? Or will he let Terry not only take a scholarship spot, but a rotation spot after a regression that was worse than Brandon Johns’ stunted play.
I really thought this was Terry’s year, but his early season play warranted being replaced in the rotation by giving the unknown younger guys be given a shot.
You can certainly criticize some of Juwan Howard's decisions (especially in terms of roster management) but ... it's likely we'd have a very different outlook on things right now if Terrence Shannon had gotten admitted. If either U-M admissions had cut him a break, or if Texas Tech hadn't been petty and refused to let him stay on scholarship in the spring, this team quite possibly would be on another Sweet 16 run. Instead, he went to Illinois and became their leading scorer, while we had a giant hole at the 4 spot all season.
Shannon is not a 4. Juwan had a chance to take Emoni Bates and risk his higher ceiling against the external concerns or to take the Baker whose bread rises less than matzah. As a “Juwan apologist,” I’m not letting him off the hook for roster management and rotation decisions. Same way I was always a fan of Coach B but hated his early years rotations and recruiting classes.
Howard had early season to give chances to players who “were not ready” because he clearly blew their redshirts early. He wasted Barnes’ time here, wasted a year on developing Yussef for Terry, and even wasted Tarris’ growth by sticking to Terry over a 3-man rotation at the 4 and 5.
Terrance Shannon absolutely would have been the starting 4 for Michigan.
Shannon would have played the 4 here most likely. Llewellyn, Bufkin, Jett, Shannon and Dickinson would have been the starting 5.
It's just the sport right now. It's no longer amateur athletics and it's not quite pro. There's little benefit to staying in school - no one even pretends any more that there's any connection to the academic world. We yell at admissions over Shannon, and maybe for good reason because no one else gives a damn about whether players end up with an education.
It's no surprise that many coaches are struggling to figure out how to manage a roster in this new world. You need extra depth, but you can't recruit for depth because you have no idea who is staying and for how long. If you get a good one, he's in the draft. The portal gives a little and the portal takes a lot, but the portal is forever hungry.
Until whatever's left of the NCAA (hopefully it's not just a bunch of mid-level bureaucrats and the hamburger police) figures out how to work with the NBA the way it does with the NHL and its draft, this is what we've got.
I don't blame Howard, other than the temper issue.
People actually do still care about the academics. How often did the announcers talk about Howard getting his degree? How often do we praise senior laden teams that go deep into March?
Of course academics is going to not be emphasized by the fans or media or coaches….they literally care most about the games. Meanwhile, I just read an article about someone returning for a sixth year and going for a second masters.
Just because guys transfer for PT, doesn’t mean they don’t care about their degree less now than they ever did—that argument is just a way for fans to cry about players not staying because “a Michigan degree is better than Illinois degree.”
I think their needs to be a shake up in the staff. What does Howard Eisley do? I swear i never hear from him or see him coaching during games.
Haha. I was thinking the same thing about him.
It’s random luck. All basketball games are random luck
-Michigan Fan
Imo this team needs to find its work out warrior gym rat that will not stay out of the gym, always working on his game! And then get the team to follow him.
Basic observations from the season.
1) Sloppy with the ball, ball handling and footwork needed to be a lot better.
2). Communication with each other was foot at times but they didn’t play in sync together.
3). Passing was a struggle and reflective of communication.
4) Passive, not anticipating, reactive never forcing.
5) This team does not shoot it well! Missing too many easy shots let alone ever getting on fire. They need several clinics with Beilein and call in Jordan Poole this summer!
6). We have the coach, just need to put it together
It would be nice to see some guys stick around and develop over time. I would include the head coach in that statement.
My biggest problem with Juwan is his stubborn lineups. He often plays struggling players too many minutes many times when their backup is playing better.
I honestly didn't watch yesterday's game very closely until the final minutes. I thought YoYo looked pretty comfortable when he played. He has size and appears to be athletic. I thought offensively he made some good passes, especially his lob feed to HD in traffic for the easy bucket. Maybe the best feed to HD I've seen from anyone on this team. But anyways my point is why was TWill given so many minutes over YoYo? Is YoYo that bad on defense? Maybe I'm in the minority but YoYo passes the eye test from me just needs more minutes and experience. Why didn't we see him all year? I mean really Cheddar and TWill?
YoYo was injured during the season, limiting him to 42 minutes of game time prior to the Vandy game. That probably limited his practice time too. Coaches are going to go with known quantities down the stretch. TWill is getting blamed for the turnover with ~20 seconds left, but HD needed to relax and make a good pass there. Same thing with Dug’s turnover prior to that. TWill averaged only 1.3 turnovers per 40 minutes this season. He just picked a bad time to have a bad time.
If he commits to becoming a better player over the offseason, I can see him filling that Race Thompson/Mason Gillis role. He’s never going to be a Malik Hall, but if he can defend, rebound and hustle, he can be part of the solution.
Per Shaw Michigan played 53 Q1 & Q2 games this year. That seems like a lot.
Record is accounting for multiple seasons
Anyone who wants Juwan Howard fired is a goddamn idiot.
He's a young coach and he experienced some growing pains this year. He's still been extremely successful as our Head Basketball Coach.
Juwan took the keys of a well oiled BMW from Beilein and has it driving like a sputtering Dodge. In a very short time.
So you're an idiot...
It's okay doesn't bother me at all
Edit: It's absurd that people expected Juwan to come in as a rookie head coach and duplicate what Beilein did. Let's not forget the Coach B had 80 gazillion years as an extremely successful D1 head coach.
Pull your goddamn heads out of your goddamn ass
He isn't an idiot because he has a differing opinion than you. My hot take is that this was the very likely scenario of hiring a head coach with very little resume and no idea of his coaching chops. I had hoped that he would be fine, but I am disappointed with how the team is trending. I see too many players that don't understand their roles on the team, which causes a kid like T Williams to be put in spots where he cannot contribute.
I really don't see Warde doing anything in the near future regarding Juwan's coaching status. I think he gets a pass this year and next before removing him would be considered.
Hopefully Juwan can develop the team and get more consistent success.
The 12-26 in Quad 1 sounds bad. I guess I'd like to see what a team like Indiana has done in those games or whatever a peer school is. But 21-32 in Q2 is probably worse because it accounts for those other games.
No reasonable person has watched the last two seasons and been really excited about what they've seen the last two years on the court. There is an odd narrative that somehow Howard isn't responsible for this roster management stuff, which I don't buy. Not sure why it's all free pass for roster and style of play.
Hope next year is better.
Indiana is probably similar because they kinda sucked last year and really needed our collapse in the BTT last year to get in.
Climate change: NOT the result of irresponsible corporate polluters and deregulated industrial environments.
Proliferation of mass shootings: NOT the result of overly permissive gun laws and high levels of gun ownership.
Shitty, no-fun-to-watch basketball season in which we repeatedly choke on our own nuts at the end: NOT the result of poor in-game coaching, poor roster construction, poor talent evaluation, poor player retention, and poor mental preparation.
There, I politixxed it. Juwan Howard, guns, and polluting megacorporations: certainly NOT to blame!
I swear the same twits who argued for keeping Phil Coke as the Tigers "lefty specialist" reliever forEVER are here right now arguing that this shit-smeared saltine of a season is somehow not 98% the fault of the head coach. Ugh. It's exhausting.
Oh my!
They are Scott Frost’s Nebraska. Basketball edition.
They have talent, they run good schemes, they show flashes every game of of having the potential to be a very good, possibly great team.
But they are mentally weak. Terrified to make a mistake, and when the game gets tight in the closing minutes, they try so hard not to make a mistake that they just become their own undoing. The only thing you can count on them to do is make just enough mistakes to let the other team win.
This has happened enough times to where the only real excuse they have left is that this is just who they are. This isn’t youth. This isn’t bad luck. It’s just who they are.
I think there is a more Michigan basketball based analogue. This seems a lot like Amaker-era ball to me.
A few very talented players with an underwhelming supporting cast that never comes together well enough on offense or defense to win the close games and take a step forward without 2 steps back.
Very nice, in depth, analysis....but this season can be condensed into this simple gif:
March 19th, 2023 at 10:05 PM ^
You don’t fire a guy who has succeeded in the past after one bad season. Howard’s shown enough to stay and no one sane thinks he’s in danger of losing the job right now. But next season needs to be good.
I hear it repeated around here that close games are coin-flips. If that’s true Howard should avoid the casino. Hitting at most 3 heads out of 13 flips (his record in one possession and OT games) is just under 5% probability. I can’t aggregate that with the 2 possession stat without double counting overtime games. But for 2 possessions and OT, tossing at most 8 heads in 27 tries is under 3%.