UM Hoops.com

It’s that time of the year for college basketbal fans. There’s pretty much nothing happening; AAU is over, everyone is ready for football, and the November seems so far away. Luckily, official visits will start up with football season, but honestly, it’s football season. Add in some controversy about football players lifting weights and playing football, and basketball is probably the last thing on any Michigan fan’s mind.

Here are a few hoops-related tidbits to get your week started.

• As has been rumored, Casey Prather will visit Ann Arbor for the Notre Dame game.  He will head to Clemson this weekend, and the week of the 19th (vs. Tennessee). Notre Dame is a big visit weekend for the basketball team, there has been talk about getting Trey Zeigler on campus as well as a number of 2011 recruits.
• Jeremiah Davis was rumored to be visiting this weekend, but I haven’t heard much more on that, he was recently in Bloomington for IU’s Elite Camp.
• Carlton Brundidge is still feeling the Maize and Blue, from an Oakland Press update: “Although CB wouldn’t tip his hand to what school he’s going to select, he did say, “I’m leaning towards staying at home. I like coach Belien and Michigan a lot”
• Ben Cronin was the latest player to get the obligatory MGoBlue.com fluff treatment. Cronin talks about how happy he was last year during his limited playing time, the loss of his father, the love the students gave him, and much more.
• Draft Express named Manny Harris the #5 draft prospect in the Big Ten. I think 5th is pretty fair for Manny but I’m not sure about JaJuan Johnson at #3.
• Kelvin Grady is #2 on the depth chart at slot receiver, Howie Beardsley provides the fluff in the Grand Rapids Press.
• Marshall Plumlee received a Duke offer last week.
• Patrick Lucas-Perry takes to the gridiron and scores a touchdown on a 57 yard run.
• A Michigan Preps update with Percy Gibson ($), still no Michigan offer.
• If you are interested in NCAA rulings and such, Gasaway has some very interesting thoughts about the Memphis ruling.

I started out writing a breakdown of the shooting guard position but I realized that there was going to be a problem with these positional breakdowns: Zack Novak.

Zack is the wildcard. It’s hard to quantify lots of the things he does on the court and he doesn’t even have a true position. There has been talk in the comments here that Novak will be the odd man out in this year’s rotation. To those questioning Novak’s role next year I offer you one simple statistic: Zack Novak led Michigan in minutes throughout the Big Ten slate, not Manny Harris or DeShawn Sims but the freshman forward from Chesterton.

Zack Novak will play this year, and play a lot, the only question is where.

Continue reading ‘Position by Position: Zack Novak’

Michigan fans, local and national media (According to Mike DeCourcy, Michigan will be better than you think), and neutral observers are starting to pencil Michigan near the top of the Big Ten and punch their ticket to the Big Dance. John Beilein’s not ready for that quite yet.

“They can never assume because they were good last year they will have a similar season,” he said recently. “It just doesn’t carry over without a lot of hard work. That will be the biggest thing.”

Expectations are a double edged sword. On one hand, the buzz surrounding the program is as high as it has been in years. Student ticket sales are through the roof and Midnight Madness has been scheduled. On the other hand, living up to expectations is never easy.

In the rest of Mark Snyder’s article Beilein names the point guard battle the number one question coming into the season. Beilein knows that he can’t really control external expectations but that doesn’t stop him from trying to lower them with some generic coach-speak.

As outsiders, it’s sometimes hard to realize how far this program has come in two years. Beilein does a pretty good job breaking it down:

“I didn’t write it down,” he said. “But coming back from the Alaska trip (two years ago) was an eye-opener for us. We lost to Boston College and Harvard back-to-back after that. If you would have told me you’ll be .500 and go to the NIT in the second year, I would have said, alright. I thought we had a long way to go but some pieces fell into place.”

That dreadful stretch after Thanksgiving that saw Michigan lose to Western Kentucky, Boston College, Harvard, Duke by 28, and Central Michigan at home is something that would be easier to just forget. One year later, adding only two players to the active roster, Michigan knocked off Duke.

The on court improvement from 10-22 to 21-14 speaks for itself. But beyond that the recruiting picture has changed dramatically as well. Recruits that wouldn’t even sniff Michigan are now seriously interested or committing. Snyder writes that the practice facility should be approved in September. Yes, this process is slow but it also appears to finally be moving along.

As great as the turnaround was, there was no margin for error last year. If Michigan loses one more game, we are probably spending the summer complaining about Michigan’s collapse in Iowa City or their inability to win a big road game. Maybe we would be praising their NIT run, but likely we would be comparing last year to the late season collapses of recent history.

I think that most of the expectations that have been placed on this team are pretty reasonable. However, it’s important to keep things in perspective. Michigan proved that they belong last year, but consistency is always key. Regression is always possible, but it doesn’t appear in John Beilein’s track record. There is little to no reason to expect anything else but improvement.

That doesn’t mean I expect anything less than the company line to come out of John Beilein’s mouth — nothing is guaranteed without hard work.

Here is 10 minutes of Carlton Brundidge footage from his sophomore year (last year). I think the best way to describe Carlton’s game is to call him a “scoring lead guard” rather than a distributing point guard. In my opinion the only thing keeping his ranking down (he’s still in the top 100) is his height. But you can’t question his production, he fills up the stat sheet.

The recruiting videos page has been updated as well (linked up top).

HT: MGoBlog.

• Big Ten ShootAround: League’s elite aim for Final Four berth in Indy
  Plenty of Big Ten talk from ESPN… I’m a bit confused how Michigan doesn’t have a game on the “non conference games we can’t wait to see” list…
• RECRUITING NOTEBOOK: ROD ODOM, CARLTON BRUNDIDGE, CARSON DESROSIERS
  Carlton Brundidge plans to visit Michigan and Miami. MSU, Wake, Oklahoma, Providence, and Syracuse are showing interest. It’s becoming pretty clear that this fall is going to be filled with huge visitors in both the class of 2010 and 2011.
• Video: Kelvin Grady gets fresh start as slot receiver
  It sounds like Kelvin Grady will get some playing time this year. It’s hard not to root for the kid, he is definitely making the most of the situation.
• Selective enforcement? NCAA failed to admonish Duke
  Gary Parrish on the NCAA’s selective enforcement
• Calfeasance
  Gasaway on the Memphis story
• Changing NCAA Standards: Is Kansas Next?
  Gasaway expands on Parrish’s column