College basketball countdown: No. 5 Michigan Wolverines – Sporting News – “An opposing coach’s take: “You’ve got a point guard who had a tremendous freshman year. You’ve got a wing who had a tremendous freshman year and an OK sophomore year. Now, if Trey Burke can have a tremendous sophomore year and you can get (Tim) Hardaway back to shooting it consistently, and you add Glenn Robinson on the wing and Mitch McGary on the inside—they’re as gifted as anybody around. Obviously, (John) Beilein can coach ’em up. They’ve been very successful the last couple years, and they’ve got more talent now. John’s adaptable. He’ll make adjustments, but his style and what he wants done is very good for these guys. I think he’s got more flexibility with these guys, but it’s a freed-up system. He wants you to shoot the ball. There’s obviously structure to it, but I don’t think kids have any issues playing that way. They want to shoot the ball. When you’ve got more talent, you give them more freedom. Beilein will do this.””

CBSSports.com Top 50 point guards: 3. Trey Burke  – “Burke wisely returned to school because he could’ve easily slipped into the second round of the NBA Draft. That wouldn’t have been good. But leading Michigan to a possible Final Four this season will be really, really good. — Gary Parrish”

Top 25 Countdown: No. 9 Michigan Wolverines | CollegeBasketballTalk – “On paper, this Michigan team is a very easy one to fall in love with.”

The Bartelstein Blog: Big Win, Big Men Down Low, Big Swag  – “Two guys I want to really point out are Jon Horford and Jordan Morgan. Both guys are gym rats, always getting up jumpers, working on their post moves and their ball handling. In the first week of camp those two have really played great basketball. Rebounding, finishing around the basket, passing, pretty much everything you want out of a big guy, those two guys have shown. I get so many emails telling me we need to play bigger. Well this year you just might see that because those guys are showing they deserve to be on the court.”

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Jalen Rose: Chris Webber’s relationship with ‘Fab Five’ teammates remains distant – “I think that the timeout, and he may or may not ever admit this, I think that timeout really screwed him up emotionally,” Rose said, referencing Webber’s phantom timeout call in the 1993 NCAA championship game. “To the point where, he wanted to disassociate himself with the entire Michigan scenario, he wants to act like it never happened.”

Fab 5 Vs. Kentucky – ESPN Video – ESPN – “Jalen Rose, John Calipari, Michael Smith and Hugh Douglas debate who would win between Michigan’s Fab 5 and last year’s Kentucky team.”

Most influential college basketball teams – Sports Illustrated – “6. 1993 Michigan
The Fab Five wound up as Final Four bridesmaids two years in a row. But from their trendsetting shorts to the lengthy pro careers of Chris Webber, Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard, they put a much more lasting stamp on the game than Duke or North Carolina, the champions that eliminated them. The Fabs split the distance between the black-hat and white-hat champions, UNLV and Duke, that had immediately preceded them, leading fans to line up pro and con. The way Webber, Rose, Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson had consulted with one another before choosing Ann Arbor celebrated the empowerment of the recruited athlete, and prefigured the joint choice of the Miami Heat years later by three marquee NBA free agents. And their surnames graced the backs of so many souvenir jerseys that the Fab Five stand as spiritual godfathers of the Ed O’Bannon lawsuit against the NCAA — litigation that may wind up being their most lasting legacy.”

Michigan’s new backup PG Spike Albrecht works much better than last year’s solution  – Baumgardner on the back-up point guard situation.