terrance shannon

I am ready to call it: the tourney streak is over. Michigan is currently the 25th team out on Torvik, currently estimated to have an 0.1% chance of receiving an at-large bid. They've got about an 8% chance to sneak in by winning the Big Ten tournament, largely because the league is very very bad this year.

This is quite a fall for a team that is coming off four consecutive Sweet 16s and was a one seed two years ago. How did we get here? Let's assess.

The Number One Recruiting Class In The Country was fool's gold. Michigan's heralded recruiting class of 2021 has one player in a meaningful role: Kobe Bufkin.

The two five-stars were essentially busts as college players. Caleb Houstan was a mediocre, streaky, defensively-meh wing who contributed nothing when his shot wasn't falling—which it almost never was outside of Crisler. Moussa Diabate was less frustrating but was a 20% usage guy who had middling efficiency. He had a lot of promise as a defender, but offset that promise with a lot of freshman mistakes. Both guys left to be second-round picks and are currently buried on NBA benches, so Michigan ended up playing a couple of middling players for heavy minutes—Houstan especially was inexplicably un-benchable—and those growing pains are benefiting this team in no way whatsoever. You can argue that having Houstan and Diabate around last year is worse for this year's team because other players would have more on-court experience.

Meanwhile, Frankie Collins transferred away from a near-certain starting job after Michigan added Jalen Llewellyn in the transfer portal. Collins is not exactly good at Arizona State. He's shooting 40% from two and his TO rate is over 20. But he's improved his shooting, adding 20 points to his FT% and hitting 33% of his threes; he's also got a massive assist rate that's 24th nationally. He's ASU's highest-usage player; his ORTG of 100 is bad… but it's 10 points higher than Dug McDaniel.

The other two players, Isaiah Barnes and Will Tschetter, were always long-term projects. In year two it appears neither is ready to take on a significant role. They're both averaging 4 minutes a game. This in and of itself isn't a big problem except for the fact that the aforementioned three players are not here.

If there's a lesson to be learned here it's that certain five stars aren't worth it. You have a guy headed for the lottery? Ok, get him. One-and-done second rounders are not worth bothering with. Also, try to avoid players who have not spent more than one consecutive year anywhere since middle school. 

[Campredon]

Bufkin is good, and it's probably not a coincidence he's in the recruiting sweet spot that hits around #50. He was the #46 composite prospect, which is out of the range that the NBA is going to take you even if you're not any good yet because there are only so many people with NBA-capable bodies in the world. It is in the range where you can expect to at least get the "hey, NBA, check it out" year from a player.

[After THE JUMP: more bad things! No good things!]