UM Hoops.com

The Numbers:

The Good:

• Passing
  Stu is vastly underrated as a passer. From the first time I saw him play in the Michigan jersey I was impressed with how confident he was with the ball, especially passing it. I also think that Stu is the best player on the team at feeding the post. The numbers back Stu up as a good, not great passer. His assist to turnover ratio was 1.7 to 1, 16th in the Big Ten, but his assist numbers weren’t quite so high with 2.1 assists per game but that translates out to 4 assists per 40 minutes, the same as Grady and Lee, and his assist percentage of 19.3% is also in the same ballpark as Michigan’s point guards. Stu definitely has room to grow in this regard but he definitely displayed the ability to pass the ball.
• Three Point Shooting
  The percentage isn’t necessarily gaudy at 33.5% but it’s not bad either. In the “hot” games he turned everyone into believers with his quick and pure stroke. The shot looks good all the time and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a big jump in Stu’s shooting percentage next year.
• Defense
  If I wrote this mid-way through the season I probably would have listed defense as a weakness. Stu improved by leaps and bounds on the defensive end of the court over the course of the year. He still has a long ways to go as an on-the-ball defender but he is one of the best in terms of fighting through screens and playing defense off the ball.

The Bad:

• Consistency
  Stu showed flashes of brilliance shooting the ball but really struggled with consistency. A lot of this has to do with being a freshman and being asked to do a lot from the get-go, as well as his role changing pretty dramatically a couple times throughout the season. Stu had 10 games without a three pointer, 10 with only one, and 15 with two or more.  This is a little bit too inconsistent in my book, if Stu could cut down on the 0-5, 1-7, 1-5 type games he could be very solid.
• Versatility
  Stu made two baskets and four free throws in the ten games where he didn’t record a three point field goal. He needs to develop at least one more key cog to his game whether it is a mid-range jump shot or the ability to drive the lane and maybe get to the lane. Adding another dimension to his game has to be the number one priority for Stu because when the three point shot wasn’t falling last year, Stu was very ineffective.
• Decision Making
  Stu clearly has ability to pass and shoot but he still needs to learn what is a good shot and what is a good pass. The alley-oops, three point shots from 6 feet behind the line, and bounce passes between three people need to stop. I give him a break because he is a freshman but if Beilein’s facial expressions say anything about how he really feels, you can bet that he let’s Stu know what’s a good decision.

The Future:

Point guard. There are a growing number of options at the two-guard on this roster and if Stu wants to keep playing big minutes he’s going to need to play the point. He’s not going to be a full time point guard but he needs to be able to play the position for 10-15 minutes per game. I think you definitely still want to play him at the two because that allows him to come off screens and get good looks from three point range. However Laval Lucas-Perry, Zack Novak, and Matt Vogrich will all be vying for playing time at the two-guard so being able to play two positions would be a great way for Stu to differentiate himself from the pack.

Grade: I’ve been struggling with figuring out a means to “grade” players in these report cards. I have basically two sides: grading versus expectation versus some kind of all-encompassing grade of production.

There were essentially zero expectations for Stu headed into the year. He was supposed to be a shooter but likely a ways off from being a contributor — after all he was just a 2-star recruit when he committed to Michigan. Stu also hit some huge shots this year, UConn and UCLA stand out, and his confidence continued to grow over the course of the year. Stu slipped out of the starting lineup in January but I really think that he started to believe that he belonged as the year progressed.

B-. Stu showed that he has the ability to fit into this team and showed flashes of great play but the lack of consistency and versatility are holding him back.

The 2009 class is in the books and I’m sure the Michigan staff will be excited to take this season’s momentum onto the recruiting trail. Right now there are technically two scholarships available but I would expect Michigan to take three in the class once everything works out. The biggest needs are at the wing and power forward positions — the debate would be what to do with the third scholarship.

High school seasons are pretty much in the book and that means it’s time for AAU ball. Kids like to put recruiting on the back-burner during their high-school season but AAU ball is all about recruiting. Things typically start to pick up and stock rises and falls quickly. The frustrating thing for Michigan is that a lot of the kids on the board are looking to make fall decisions rather than spring or summer.

Here is a quick run-down of who is on the board and how their high school seasons wrapped up. The list really hasn’t changed much since when I posted the 2010 hot-board a while back (will be updated soon). The main additions are Prather, Dragicevich, Payne, and Oliver. The three “firm offers” are Will Regan, Trey Zeigler, and Casey Prather but there is plenty of serious interest up and down the list. For more on every kid make sure to click through their category pages on the sidebar. You can find some video as well as the weekly recruiting wraps there.

Will Regan (6-foot-8, Nichols, NY)

Will Regan has emerged as Michigan’s premiere big-man target. The junior had a huge year for the Nichols School and he seemed to produce night in and night out. Nichols’ season came to a disappointing end against Canisius in the Manhattan Cup final but it there is no doubt that Regan is blowing up.

Michigan has been in good position with Regan for a long time. Academics are important to Regan and Michigan certainly fits the bill. A spring decision seemed imminent but several new schools including Villanova have started to show interest. Regardless, Regan has an offer and Michigan is in very good position.

Trey Zeigler (6-foot-5, Mount Pleasant, MI)

Trey Zeigler appears to have been the #1 wing forward on Michigan’s board for a long time. He is the son of a college coach and possesses all the tools including athleticism, basketball IQ, and shooting. Zeigler was named to the Class A all-state team and averaged 24 points and nine rebounds per game while shooting 48% from behind the arc.

Zeigler’s recruitment has been a bit of a roller-coaster in terms of speculation but the Zeigler family appears to have been true to their word in terms of time frame and plan. They have consistently stated that they want to take their time and not rush to a decision. The “big four” for Trey were Michigan, Michigan State, CMU, and UCLA but UCLA isn’t getting as much play of late. This will definitely be the recruitment to watch over the summer and you can bet that the rumors will be flying in every direction.

Casey Prather (6-foot-5, Jackson Northside, TN)

It’s hard to call Casey Prather anything but an athletic freak. The 6-foot-5 swingman was a finalist for Mr. Basketball in Tennessee as a junior and is garnering interest from high-majors across the country. Prather averaged 24.4 points and 11 rebounds per game but lost to Mr. Basketball award to Josh Jenkins who averaged over 40 points per game.

The odds of landing Prather are probably long but it appears there is some sincere interest. Vanderbilt appears to be the local school to watch out for but big dogs like UNC and Wake Forest have been in to watch Prather play.

Moses Morgan (6-foot-5, Palo Verde, NV)

Moses is a skilled wing forward from Nevada whose Palo Verde team fell just short of a state championship. Morgan appears to have bounds of talent but sometimes isn’t quite assertive enough on the offensive end. Commenter Ken in Vegas was at the game and produced this report.

Moses has been big on Michigan since he visited in the fall and his recruitment doesn’t seem to have moved much over the school year. Things should start moving a little more quickly over the summer AAU period.

Tim Hardaway Jr. (6-foot-5, Miami Palmetto, FL)

Hardaway Jr. is a wing guard from Palmetto High School in Miami. The son of NBA-star Tim Hardaway Jr., the three-star prospect visited Michigan this winter for the Duke game and Michigan appears to be in a pretty good spot. Hardaway has also received interest from Kansas State, Miami, Virginia Tech, and Florida State in recent months.

Continue reading ‘Recruiting Roundup: Class of 2010′

The five members of Michigan’s 2009 recruiting class have all wrapped up their seasons and their next destination is Ann Arbor. Here is a quick look at how they finished their seasons as well as how they may fit into the puzzle next year. Next, I’ll look at Michigan’s 2010 and 2011 targets and how they finished their seasons as well as what their recruitments look like at this point. Also, make sure to take a look at the recruiting videos section to see footage of Morris, Vogrich, Morgan, and McLimans.

Darius Morris

Darius finished his season on a high-note with a State Championship. Windward rolled through the Division V State Playoffs without much resistance. Darius scored 25 points, dished out four assists and pulled down a game high eight rebounds in the 69-53 win over St Joseph’s.

Darius had a great season and led Windward to a 29-6 record. He has a skill set that was largely absent from this year’s team with his ability to penetrate. There is certainly room for another creator on the floor and it always seemed like the offense ran best when Manny was driving and kicking to wide open shooters. There is plenty of playing time available at the point now that Merritt and Lee have graduated but point guard is one of the hardest positions to step into as a freshman. I think it’s safe to say that Darius is the most important recruit of the class of 2009.

• MitchMash: My Eight Minutes With Denzel
  Feature on Denzel’s son who plays for Windward including a nice pic of Denzel with Stover and Morris’ dads

Matt Vogrich

I mentioned this a couple days back but Matt pulled in some very nice awards over the last couple weeks. He was named First Team All-State as well as Gatorade Player of the Year in Illinois.  Vogrich also finished the season with very good numbers: 21.9 points, 7.2 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.3 steals per game. Matt became the all-time leading scorer at Lake Forest this season and helped them to a 23-4 record including a Conference and Regional Championship.

His three point shooting percentage (32%) has been the subject of some criticism but I think that’s a bit unfair. Vogrich is the guy on Lake Forest and he is called on to do a lot more than shoot jump shots, that almost guarantees that he isn’t getting the best looks. I will side with the scouts that watched him play over the last year, they describe his three point shot as nothing short of phenomenal.

At 6-foot-4 Vogrich will add another weapon to Michigan’s offense. He seems to have more penetrating ability than last year’s freshmen and can still stroke it. The biggest issue is that Matt is very skinny and will have to work on getting into Big Ten shape. There is also a lot of depth at the 2-guard: Douglass, LLP, and Novak can all play the two but I think we could see a little of Stu at the point as well Novak backing up the three.

Jordan Morgan

It was an up and down year for Jordan Morgan. Over the last few years it seems like Jordan will have a great game on one day and then be invisible the next.  The great games show the flashes of potential and make you understand what Beilein sees in Jordan but the bad games raise just as many questions.

Morgan had 28 points and 11 rebounds in a 85-82 district win over Southfield but U-D Jesuit’s season came to a close against Detroit Pershing. U-D has been in a constant struggle to get past the Doughboys but they fell just short to Pershing yet again in a three point loss ($).

The way this team needs size I find it hard to believe that Jordan won’t get a shot. Throw the ball out there and see who wants to battle down low next year — that’s who should play. With Sims, Gibson, Cronin, Morgan, and McLimans there are certainly more bodies, that’s a start but big men tend to be projects rather than instant impact guys.

Blake McLimans

Blake wrapped up his season a while ago and production wise his season wasn’t much to write home about. It was a step up in terms of talent level for Blake, playing in NESPAC versus his old high school league, and that’s a tough transition. That’s also something that could help him down the road and make him more prepared to play at Michigan.

McLimans brings length and skill down low; he can dribble it pretty well and definitely shoot it.  Those are both traits that Beilein values so you can see why he got the offer. However I don’t know how effective he will be banging in the paint in the Big Ten without some added size. With the influx of big men I think at least one of them ends up red-shirting so Blake will certainly have some proving to do.

Eso Akunne (pref. walk-on)

Gabriel Richard lost to Inkster in the Class B regional final, 52-44. Akunne scored 17 points and pulled down eight rebounds in the loss which capped a remarkable season. Gabriel Richard finished 22-3 on the year and Eso finished 5th in Mr. Basketball voting.

The thing I love about Eso is that he has a mid-range game. Looking back at the season there is really no one that has a pull-up jumper on this whole team. Manny loves to take it all the way to the hoop, Peedi loves the turnaround jumper, but there is no one that can get in the lane, pull-up, and knock it down (coincidentally, Manny could really use some work on his mid-range game this summer). The problem with Eso is that he is still only 6-foot-3 and there’s nothing he can do about that. Over the course of his career I think Eso will be one of those guys that just finds his way onto the floor despite his size.

I don’t have a lot of time tonight but I thought I’d throw together a quick links post. There are a few more non-Michigan links than normal but there are some interesting reads. I’m working on finishing up the big recruiting update and that should be ready tomorrow.

• Court Vision with C.J. Lee: The Change, The Unknowing Future, The Pride
  The final CJ Lee blog — this is absolutely a must read. I can’t say enough about the heart of this senior class and I’m definitely going to miss them.
• Beilein to be on CBS Thursday and Friday
  A little face time for the head man
• PER on Trial
  This is NBA related but TrueHoop takes a look at PER and whether it is possible to come up with one number to quantify an NBA player.
• PER Diem: March 25, 2009
  The article that triggered Henry’s post — Hollinger has added Value Added and Estimated Wins statistics to his model. KJ played around with a similar idea with college hoops earlier this season.
• Probe: UConn violated NCAA rules
  Is this really that surprising?
• Two special siblings, one extraordinary bond
  A great read about Kalamazoo Central wing-forward Devin Oliver and his family.
• Postseason Evaluations: Landon Milbourne
  A couple paragraphs down the author talks about how Milbourne learned how to guard bigger players by watching Sims. This is something we didn’t talk about that much this year, Peedi did a tremendous job defensively at the five despite being only 6-foot-7 and he also stayed out of foul trouble.
• Bacon, Arnold talk AA News changes (audio)
  I haven’t touched on the Ann Arbor News closing but MVictors has a couple good podcasts. The thing I’m going to miss the most is the local prep sports coverage. I also hope that the people putting together AnnArborNews.com have a lot better clue about setting up a website than the MLive folks.
• Knicks sign Courtney Sims to 10-day contract
  Yet another King Court signing
• The Puppetmaster
  Warning: Only read this if you want to feel sick. I’m tired of people feeling sorry for Blake Griffin.
• How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke
  Relatives are not the only ones foolishly trusted with athletes’ money. One up-and-coming guard in the NBA allows his entire fortune to be managed by his former AAU coach, who has the player’s power of attorney. In a meeting with Butowsky in December, the guard’s dad admitted that he has no idea who the son’s accountant is and said he wanted a financial “intervention.”
• 3.19.09 NCAA Basketball Tournament – Michigan vs Clemson HD mp4
  Torrent
• Bracket Breakdown: The Super 16
  Other teams are still playing basketball. Pomeroy runs through some log5 predictions and notes on the Sweet 16.

Now that my first full season of blogging is history I wanted to take a step back and look at the last year and a half. Behold, the state of the blog address (I’m not very creative when it comes to headlines).

15 months ago I grew to be frustrated at the lack of a quality Michigan basketball blog. I was a big fan of the Big Ten Wonk but Gasaway had gone on to greener pastures beyond just the Big Ten. I had also become an avid reader of the Detroit Tigers Weblog and could barely make it through a Tigers game without constantly refreshing the comments page. Somehow I wanted to attempt to bring the quality analysis of the Big Ten Wonk and mix it with the community of the Detroit Tigers Weblog.

I have been making webpages for ages so the first step was easy. I jumped in head first and started blogging. The writing still has a ways to go but I feel like my biggest success has been in creating a community. I have been simply dumbfounded at how many people read and comment on my posts. Since I started the blog there have been 1,123,114 page views and 9,865 comments on 559 published posts. I make a point to try to read every comment that comes through (they get forwarded to my e-mail) and I enjoy every one of them.

My main reason for writing this post is to thank each and every one of you that have ever posted a comment, sent an encouraging e-mail, donated money, or visited the site at all over the last fifteen months.

My second reason was to talk about what comes next and make sure this isn’t your last visit between now and November. The site actually grew over the course of last summer so I’m confident you all will stick around.

For the next week or so I’m going to take a bit of a break — there will probably be mostly links posts while I recover from the grueling stretch of blogging over the last couple weeks. Starting next week I’ll be doing a “report card” review of the entire roster, something that I started last year but never finished. It’s safe to say I have a little bit more positive momentum to carry me through that process this year.

I’ll also be focusing on recruiting all summer. First I’ll recap how Michigan targets finished their high school seasons and where their recruitments seem to be right now. After that it is on to AAU season when recruiting really picks up and we can only hope that this summer is as entertaining as the last.

I started a notes page for next year’s schedule, this was a popular page last year and basically it is just a running list of any scheduling information that has leaked out. So far it is a bit bare but you have to start somewhere I suppose. I’ll also be here to cover any other breaking news surrounding the basketball team and I’m sure we can find a couple other topics to debate this summer.

I also moved the site to a new server, there shouldn’t be any problems but DNS updates can be a bit finicky. The new server is faster and should also be more reliable which should help alleviate some of the issues over the last couple months.

Thanks for sticking with me for the first fifteen months, hopefully the next year is even better.