I think I started paying attention around the Fall of 2010 or so. I was a sophomore at Butler University and my fandom had taken a dip during 2008-2009 especially being away from my dad for the first time. I think subconsciouslyI was looking to fill that void a bit. I just remember somehow being aware that there was a blog that covered only Michigan called Mgoblog and wanted to check it out.
As my join date indicates, I lurked for a long time before making an account.
New Glarus pro tip, don't get obsessed with Spotted Cow. It's good, but their more traditional Belgian beers are the thing to focus on if you want to understand the hype.
Sardine is an amazing environment right on the lake. You can pair it with a walk on a particularly nice stretch of the bike path that goes around the lake.
I grew up on Yahara Place Park! Our house is directly across from the basketball court where they set up the stage for the Waterfront Festival. Speaking of which, check event calendars to see if any of the summer festivals are going on while you are there. That's another quintessential Madison experience.
If you go with 247 (who actually updates their rankings and opinions in the last year of recruiting cycles) you can add Aidan and JJ. Also, there are a few right on the cusp in the composite like Blake Corum, AJ Henning, Mazi Smith, and Ryan Hayes. Do you count Donovan Edwards at all?
I thought “Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts” to describe the 2013 IU basketball game was brilliant. That game really felt like it just one more thing had gone right they would’ve won. And it felt like there were 1000 tiny things that all went wrong to leave it that precariously perched at the end.
As a Butler grad, I'll point out that he was already at one of the highest accountability and highest character programs in the country. It's not like he was at a school that condoned this kind of behavior. I hope he gets help and turns himself into a better person, but a good environment was already there.
One thing that I think needs to be considered with every wing going forward is that the combination of Sanderson and whatever Juwan and co are coaching will make any transfer or incoming freshman wing be able to guard one position further than expected.
I say this because I remember going into the season everyone said Chaundee would probably be able to guard 3s and 4s, and maybe slower 2s, but certainly not PGs. Lots of folks were saying the same about Franz and Livers, and now it looks like Chaundee can guard 1-4, Livers 2-4, and Franz perhaps PGs all the way down to stretch 5s (maybe?). This gives me hope that guys like Houstan, Tschetter, Bufkin, and Barnes might have even more defensive range than anticipated, and same goes for any transfers in.
I think we might be saying the same thing. It's like they had their moment where the breakthrough was going to happen and not being able to seize on it left collateral damage beyond the losses.
Yes, sorry that was not clear because I forgot about IU. I meant earlier than The Game and pointed back to the Iowa game where the Speight injury happened.
I don't want to linger too long on football, but I think Seth's point about 2016 is a little deeper than it was given credit. Not only would recruiting have gotten better, but perhaps some of the coaching turnover would've slowed. The media would've been off the programs back a little bit. I feel like the ripple effects of that game were felt for a while.
I also feel like you could point a game earlier to the loss at Iowa. That feels like when the fork in road happened. Speight getting injured, the beginning of late season woes, a lot started then. It feels like that three game stretch (Iowa-FSU) is when the program destabilized.
This is one of the things I love about the UM fanbase, but especially the MGoBlog subsection of it. There are many people who have dedicated their lives, or a beyond hobbyist level of study, to a field they are passionate about. I have been very lucky to make my life as musician and I get paid to teach people about music performance and history!
Your pick has a better narrative anyway. The idea that Stalin is dead and "look what I can do now" unfortunately matches up well with the changing of the guard at quarterback. "Look at what our offense can do now" and of course the secret initials in the 10th symphony match with the coded messages to Donovan Edwards.
The things I'm referring to in the 5th are the sarcastic scherzo:
Did Craig correct himself on the symphony number? The Fifth Symphony is the one that is known for being subversive and thumbing its nose at Stalin secretly.
I absolutely agree. It is incredibly detailed and thoughtfully explained. It is what inspired me to start looking closer and trying to decided why a play ended up like it did.
I teach music history and theory at a medium sized university and I always tell my students that the explanation is often more important than the right answer. I think UFR has that quality. Even the times I disagree with Brian's assessments I can see the rationale and at least see what he saw.
Does anyone else do a watch-through the game before the UFRs come out and kind of try to figure out what you think is happening so that you can compare to Brian's notes?
The frame rate (I assume that's the term) of GIFs makes the ball fluttering up after Barrett's hit even more comical. It almost looks like stop-motion animation. It also makes Haskins' run even more teleport-y.
The issue is that he won't have the opportunity to show his skills against more like competition. Tschetter won't have the platform/venue to have a Cole Bajema-like rise up the ranks, because there won't be any AAU events.
Depending how his body develops and how he adapts to college ball, he could either be a poor man's Moe Wagner or a poor man's D.J. Wilson. He looks to be about 6'7" or 6'8" and shoots the ball well at the 3 point line. He likes slashing to the hoop and dunking hard, but he's going against a bunch of 5'11" munchkins in small town Minnesota.
He also shows some nice post moves and passing on his highlights. He has high upside as an offensive player, but probably not the frame to be an amazing defender. To me, he has the kind of athleticism that Stauskas had, in the sense that when he's on the attack he looks like a good athlete, but reacting probably isn't his strong suit. His highest upside is probably at the 5, but it will depend on whether he is big enough and can hold up in defensive situations.
I actually think they will be fine. I'm a Butler grad and followed closely during Holtmann's time. His number one skill was being able to McGyver the roster into a bubble team or better every year. A perfect example is his final year at BU. They lost two historically good players (Roosevelt Jones and Kellen Dunham) and two major contributors. The team actually got better and ended up as a 4 seed and had their highest ever finish in the Big East.
He's also the type of coach that maximizes a teams best attributes and minimizes its worst ones. This is good in that his teams usually perform well, but it does take away from game to game preparation. At Butler, the teams would always find their level and then never punch too high above or below it.
It has been discussed many times by Sam Webb that distance was a factor for his family and PSU might have been about as far as they were willing to go. Georgia seems very unlikely for that reason.
I guess we're all expressing the fact that it feels like some kind of curse/crunch time yips were acquired against Iowa, and it feels like it set off a cascade of woulda coulda shoulda, including the OSU game the next week.
Wilton was hurt on one of the final two drives of the Iowa game trying to scramble because they desperately needed some yardage. If they had just taken care of business earlier in the game he would not have been in that situation.
Also, I don't agree with Hoke's talent being the difference between the early Harbaugh years and now. There were big holes on the roster and there is plenty of talent now. The bigger issue in my mind is that the team is starting to feel like the late Hoke teams that didn't have a plan and the moment was always too big for them.
It really feels that way doesn't it. It just feels like if that game breaks a little different early on it would have set so many other things in motion. Wilton doesn't get banged up trying to salvage a stupid game. He's healthy and just a hair better in the next game. And the rest would be history.
When you say "run at full speed; maintaining conditioning & strength without setbacks- not there yet" does that mean he has had a setback while being monitored or is he being monitored and they have to wait to see how his body reacts?
I had a roommate in grad school who was diagnosed with UC. He had to drop down to the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast) and then build back-up. Every time he reintroduced a food he had to see how it would affect him both in the hours after eating and for a few days. So I'm curious if this is just a matter of seeing the reaction to workouts or whether there have been struggles already.
This is an unusual one because they ended up with him in the end, but would 2016 Shea Patterson enrolling early have beaten out Wilton Speight or at least been better than O'Korn in 2017? I know he wasn't THAT close to ending up at Michigan initially, but he did like UM.
Other than that I 2015 and 2016 weren't missing just one guy, and 2017 was too far gone. Any of the OTs would have helped greatly last year.
I actually think that Zion is the five star version of what I'm describing. He isn't up to the Beilein preferred level as three point shooter, but he can do pretty much everything average to excellent. He can dribble, can pass, can defend, can rebound, and obviously is a beyond superior athlete (none of the other guys fit that part).
However, I think Beilein's spent enough energy on the top 30 kids with marginal returns that he knows he could put that same energy into get two kids who are top 70 and maybe undervalued. Maybe they see a bit of an evaluating inefficiency for jack-of-all-trades prospects.
Also, Yaklich must have some level of input on this. As I understand it, he was the lead on Wilson, Castleton, and Carton. The slight tweak seems to have come around with his arrival.
There's a clear theme developing in UM basketball recruiting, and that is to take a bunch of 6'5" to 6'8" wings who can do a bit of everything. They don't need to be elite in any one aspect, just solid all around. Jalen Wilson, Cole Bajema, now looking at Peavy. You could even go backward and see how Livers and Johns could fit the mold too.
I'm not going to lie, when I refreshed my podcast feed and saw the Supplemental Podcast I was wondering the same thing. I live out of state and am not an alumnus so this podcast is one I'll skip over. Fingers crossed for the regularly schedule cackling about destroying another ranked team.
I absolutely agree. Thing that is so impressive is the ball handling and coordination combined with the length and height. There just aren't that many players to use as a comparison with that kind of length, athleticism, skill, and shooting, which is why McDaniels is such an enticing prospect. Maybe another more modest comparison is Wenyen Gabriel at Kentucky. He's another player that is 6'8" with Gumby arms, but a great deal of coordination and skill. He showed in the SEC tournament that he can catch fire from 3 as well.
I think Wilson is getting a bump because his floor is so high. Frankly though, I think his athleticism is a little underwhelming. I've only watched just this one video of McDaniels, but he looks like a top 10 prospect. I'm not saying that he will be this good, but a lot of his best attributes are Kevin Durant-esque.
As Golden State has shown it’s ok to have multiple good players at the same position. Brown and Hayward can both defend and rebound, Tatum will only get better, and most importantly you have the best coach in the league at finding a role for everyone. I think the Celtics keep ascending next year.
I can see your perspective. For me as a Butler fan, it just seems like a familiar pattern. There are also some questions of whether he'll be able to recruit at level higher than the skill level he already has on the team. At Butler, he had some big recruiting wins for Butler's caliber, but those are ones he'll need every single year at OSU.
I also want to see how he does in both tournaments this year. At Butler he seemed like a totally different coach in the regular season versus the post-season.
I can provide some clarity here as a Butler/Michigan fan.
Chris Holtmann is a very good coach, but we will have to wait and see how high his ceiling is. His salvage job this year is exactly what made him really good at Butler. He seems to have an uncanny ability to see what his roster is good at and then maximize that. For example here were his three seasons at Butler
14-15- Kenpom: 20 (O 64 D 8). He takes a good shot blocker surrounded by solid defenders to a 5 seed in the tournament
15-16- Kenpom 30 (O 15 D 97) After lossing all the best defensive options he pivots to a wide open offensive approach to salvage an 8 seed with a thin roster.
16-17 Kenpom 25 (O 20 D 49) Holtmann's most complete roster. This team was largely aided by a grad transfer and two traditional transfers in their final season. They swept Nova and Xavier
Now here comes the reassuring part. Looking at the fact that they swept two of the toughest teams in the conference you would think that Butler won the Big East. However, Holtmann seems to have a weird thing where his teams will turtle for five games at a time, and they always have another conference team that is their kryptonite (see PSU this year and Creighton last year.
Last year Butler, despite being as complete as it has been since Brad Stevens' final four runs, lost @Indiana State, @St Johns, home to Gtown, choked at home to Seton Hall to end the season. This doesn't even include the 20 point comebacks it took to beat Depaul and Georgetown.
Additionally, he did not win a conference tounament game in three tries, and performed exactly to seed in all three appearances in the NCAA tournament.
TL:DR Really good coach, but with some weird flaws that have me questioning whether he'll ever be a Final Four caliber coach.
A little bit of hyperbole, but I see what you’re seeing. He seems to have a real knack for creating space in the air and also getting the ball by any means necessary. It does remind me a bit of Jeremy Gallon actually, even though Bell is probably half a foot taller.
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I think I started paying attention around the Fall of 2010 or so. I was a sophomore at Butler University and my fandom had taken a dip during 2008-2009 especially being away from my dad for the first time. I think subconsciouslyI was looking to fill that void a bit. I just remember somehow being aware that there was a blog that covered only Michigan called Mgoblog and wanted to check it out.
As my join date indicates, I lurked for a long time before making an account.
New Glarus pro tip, don't get obsessed with Spotted Cow. It's good, but their more traditional Belgian beers are the thing to focus on if you want to understand the hype.
Sardine is an amazing environment right on the lake. You can pair it with a walk on a particularly nice stretch of the bike path that goes around the lake.
Greenbush is about as good as it gets. I particularly loved any of their cherry donuts and any of the fritters as a kid.
I grew up on Yahara Place Park! Our house is directly across from the basketball court where they set up the stage for the Waterfront Festival. Speaking of which, check event calendars to see if any of the summer festivals are going on while you are there. That's another quintessential Madison experience.
You're correct, my brain is definitely experiencing some Mandela Effect here.
Without breaking any paywall protocol, Sam made a post within the last hour on 247's board that is neutral and didn't shut the door.
If you go with 247 (who actually updates their rankings and opinions in the last year of recruiting cycles) you can add Aidan and JJ. Also, there are a few right on the cusp in the composite like Blake Corum, AJ Henning, Mazi Smith, and Ryan Hayes. Do you count Donovan Edwards at all?
Gavin Wimsatt might do it in the same season for Rutgers!
I thought “Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts” to describe the 2013 IU basketball game was brilliant. That game really felt like it just one more thing had gone right they would’ve won. And it felt like there were 1000 tiny things that all went wrong to leave it that precariously perched at the end.
As a Butler grad, I'll point out that he was already at one of the highest accountability and highest character programs in the country. It's not like he was at a school that condoned this kind of behavior. I hope he gets help and turns himself into a better person, but a good environment was already there.
I just can't believe it wasn't Grayson Allen!
One thing that I think needs to be considered with every wing going forward is that the combination of Sanderson and whatever Juwan and co are coaching will make any transfer or incoming freshman wing be able to guard one position further than expected.
I say this because I remember going into the season everyone said Chaundee would probably be able to guard 3s and 4s, and maybe slower 2s, but certainly not PGs. Lots of folks were saying the same about Franz and Livers, and now it looks like Chaundee can guard 1-4, Livers 2-4, and Franz perhaps PGs all the way down to stretch 5s (maybe?). This gives me hope that guys like Houstan, Tschetter, Bufkin, and Barnes might have even more defensive range than anticipated, and same goes for any transfers in.
I think we might be saying the same thing. It's like they had their moment where the breakthrough was going to happen and not being able to seize on it left collateral damage beyond the losses.
Yes, sorry that was not clear because I forgot about IU. I meant earlier than The Game and pointed back to the Iowa game where the Speight injury happened.
I don't want to linger too long on football, but I think Seth's point about 2016 is a little deeper than it was given credit. Not only would recruiting have gotten better, but perhaps some of the coaching turnover would've slowed. The media would've been off the programs back a little bit. I feel like the ripple effects of that game were felt for a while.
I also feel like you could point a game earlier to the loss at Iowa. That feels like when the fork in road happened. Speight getting injured, the beginning of late season woes, a lot started then. It feels like that three game stretch (Iowa-FSU) is when the program destabilized.
Man, a 7 trillion for Brandon Johns is pretty disheartening. I thought this was a game that would've fit his skill set.
This is one of the things I love about the UM fanbase, but especially the MGoBlog subsection of it. There are many people who have dedicated their lives, or a beyond hobbyist level of study, to a field they are passionate about. I have been very lucky to make my life as musician and I get paid to teach people about music performance and history!
Your pick has a better narrative anyway. The idea that Stalin is dead and "look what I can do now" unfortunately matches up well with the changing of the guard at quarterback. "Look at what our offense can do now" and of course the secret initials in the 10th symphony match with the coded messages to Donovan Edwards.
The things I'm referring to in the 5th are the sarcastic scherzo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S3MSyrdZfg
And then the generally grotesque underpinning to some of the peppier parts.
Hypothetically Jeter should be back on the inside and Welschof should take another step forward and potentially challenge to start.
Did Craig correct himself on the symphony number? The Fifth Symphony is the one that is known for being subversive and thumbing its nose at Stalin secretly.
I absolutely agree. It is incredibly detailed and thoughtfully explained. It is what inspired me to start looking closer and trying to decided why a play ended up like it did.
I teach music history and theory at a medium sized university and I always tell my students that the explanation is often more important than the right answer. I think UFR has that quality. Even the times I disagree with Brian's assessments I can see the rationale and at least see what he saw.
Does anyone else do a watch-through the game before the UFRs come out and kind of try to figure out what you think is happening so that you can compare to Brian's notes?
Oh no, not Thomas Merton! At least he'll have time to contemplate while he quarantines.
The frame rate (I assume that's the term) of GIFs makes the ball fluttering up after Barrett's hit even more comical. It almost looks like stop-motion animation. It also makes Haskins' run even more teleport-y.
The issue is that he won't have the opportunity to show his skills against more like competition. Tschetter won't have the platform/venue to have a Cole Bajema-like rise up the ranks, because there won't be any AAU events.
Depending how his body develops and how he adapts to college ball, he could either be a poor man's Moe Wagner or a poor man's D.J. Wilson. He looks to be about 6'7" or 6'8" and shoots the ball well at the 3 point line. He likes slashing to the hoop and dunking hard, but he's going against a bunch of 5'11" munchkins in small town Minnesota.
He also shows some nice post moves and passing on his highlights. He has high upside as an offensive player, but probably not the frame to be an amazing defender. To me, he has the kind of athleticism that Stauskas had, in the sense that when he's on the attack he looks like a good athlete, but reacting probably isn't his strong suit. His highest upside is probably at the 5, but it will depend on whether he is big enough and can hold up in defensive situations.
I actually think they will be fine. I'm a Butler grad and followed closely during Holtmann's time. His number one skill was being able to McGyver the roster into a bubble team or better every year. A perfect example is his final year at BU. They lost two historically good players (Roosevelt Jones and Kellen Dunham) and two major contributors. The team actually got better and ended up as a 4 seed and had their highest ever finish in the Big East.
He's also the type of coach that maximizes a teams best attributes and minimizes its worst ones. This is good in that his teams usually perform well, but it does take away from game to game preparation. At Butler, the teams would always find their level and then never punch too high above or below it.
Are you referring to Jay, Jim, or both?
It has been discussed many times by Sam Webb that distance was a factor for his family and PSU might have been about as far as they were willing to go. Georgia seems very unlikely for that reason.
It was nice to see Nunez make some shots, but he's a problem on defense.
I guess we're all expressing the fact that it feels like some kind of curse/crunch time yips were acquired against Iowa, and it feels like it set off a cascade of woulda coulda shoulda, including the OSU game the next week.
Wilton was hurt on one of the final two drives of the Iowa game trying to scramble because they desperately needed some yardage. If they had just taken care of business earlier in the game he would not have been in that situation.
Also, I don't agree with Hoke's talent being the difference between the early Harbaugh years and now. There were big holes on the roster and there is plenty of talent now. The bigger issue in my mind is that the team is starting to feel like the late Hoke teams that didn't have a plan and the moment was always too big for them.
It really feels that way doesn't it. It just feels like if that game breaks a little different early on it would have set so many other things in motion. Wilton doesn't get banged up trying to salvage a stupid game. He's healthy and just a hair better in the next game. And the rest would be history.
When you say "run at full speed; maintaining conditioning & strength without setbacks- not there yet" does that mean he has had a setback while being monitored or is he being monitored and they have to wait to see how his body reacts?
I had a roommate in grad school who was diagnosed with UC. He had to drop down to the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast) and then build back-up. Every time he reintroduced a food he had to see how it would affect him both in the hours after eating and for a few days. So I'm curious if this is just a matter of seeing the reaction to workouts or whether there have been struggles already.
This is an unusual one because they ended up with him in the end, but would 2016 Shea Patterson enrolling early have beaten out Wilton Speight or at least been better than O'Korn in 2017? I know he wasn't THAT close to ending up at Michigan initially, but he did like UM.
Other than that I 2015 and 2016 weren't missing just one guy, and 2017 was too far gone. Any of the OTs would have helped greatly last year.
I actually think that Zion is the five star version of what I'm describing. He isn't up to the Beilein preferred level as three point shooter, but he can do pretty much everything average to excellent. He can dribble, can pass, can defend, can rebound, and obviously is a beyond superior athlete (none of the other guys fit that part).
However, I think Beilein's spent enough energy on the top 30 kids with marginal returns that he knows he could put that same energy into get two kids who are top 70 and maybe undervalued. Maybe they see a bit of an evaluating inefficiency for jack-of-all-trades prospects.
Also, Yaklich must have some level of input on this. As I understand it, he was the lead on Wilson, Castleton, and Carton. The slight tweak seems to have come around with his arrival.
There's a clear theme developing in UM basketball recruiting, and that is to take a bunch of 6'5" to 6'8" wings who can do a bit of everything. They don't need to be elite in any one aspect, just solid all around. Jalen Wilson, Cole Bajema, now looking at Peavy. You could even go backward and see how Livers and Johns could fit the mold too.
Thank you for the hard work! We all thoroughly appreciate it, even when we are being whiny.
I'm not going to lie, when I refreshed my podcast feed and saw the Supplemental Podcast I was wondering the same thing. I live out of state and am not an alumnus so this podcast is one I'll skip over. Fingers crossed for the regularly schedule cackling about destroying another ranked team.
I absolutely agree. Thing that is so impressive is the ball handling and coordination combined with the length and height. There just aren't that many players to use as a comparison with that kind of length, athleticism, skill, and shooting, which is why McDaniels is such an enticing prospect. Maybe another more modest comparison is Wenyen Gabriel at Kentucky. He's another player that is 6'8" with Gumby arms, but a great deal of coordination and skill. He showed in the SEC tournament that he can catch fire from 3 as well.
I think Wilson is getting a bump because his floor is so high. Frankly though, I think his athleticism is a little underwhelming. I've only watched just this one video of McDaniels, but he looks like a top 10 prospect. I'm not saying that he will be this good, but a lot of his best attributes are Kevin Durant-esque.
I can see your perspective. For me as a Butler fan, it just seems like a familiar pattern. There are also some questions of whether he'll be able to recruit at level higher than the skill level he already has on the team. At Butler, he had some big recruiting wins for Butler's caliber, but those are ones he'll need every single year at OSU.
I also want to see how he does in both tournaments this year. At Butler he seemed like a totally different coach in the regular season versus the post-season.
I can provide some clarity here as a Butler/Michigan fan.
Chris Holtmann is a very good coach, but we will have to wait and see how high his ceiling is. His salvage job this year is exactly what made him really good at Butler. He seems to have an uncanny ability to see what his roster is good at and then maximize that. For example here were his three seasons at Butler
14-15- Kenpom: 20 (O 64 D 8). He takes a good shot blocker surrounded by solid defenders to a 5 seed in the tournament
15-16- Kenpom 30 (O 15 D 97) After lossing all the best defensive options he pivots to a wide open offensive approach to salvage an 8 seed with a thin roster.
16-17 Kenpom 25 (O 20 D 49) Holtmann's most complete roster. This team was largely aided by a grad transfer and two traditional transfers in their final season. They swept Nova and Xavier
Now here comes the reassuring part. Looking at the fact that they swept two of the toughest teams in the conference you would think that Butler won the Big East. However, Holtmann seems to have a weird thing where his teams will turtle for five games at a time, and they always have another conference team that is their kryptonite (see PSU this year and Creighton last year.
Last year Butler, despite being as complete as it has been since Brad Stevens' final four runs, lost @Indiana State, @St Johns, home to Gtown, choked at home to Seton Hall to end the season. This doesn't even include the 20 point comebacks it took to beat Depaul and Georgetown.
Additionally, he did not win a conference tounament game in three tries, and performed exactly to seed in all three appearances in the NCAA tournament.
TL:DR Really good coach, but with some weird flaws that have me questioning whether he'll ever be a Final Four caliber coach.
Winovich also went out at one point and looked like he was in mild pain. He came back in a few plays after.