UM Hoops.com

John Beilein joined Sam Webb on WTKA’s Michigan Insider this morning to talk some hoops. You can catch the podcast here and here are a few highlights:

• Still in an exploratory stage, looking for some consistency but noted that DeShawn Sims had a great week last week.
• Manny Harris was able to go “pretty good” on Saturday and Sunday and is getting healthy. Just being careful because he gets sore after going hard for consecutive days. Hopeful that he will be 100% by the first game a week from Saturday.
• Would really like to see Anthony Wright step up.
• Darius Morris is a true point guard, he thinks like a point guard and guards like a point guard. All the upperclassmen are helping Darius along, feel good about him on the floor with four upperclassmen. Darius is playing multiple positions on defense but just the point on offense.
• Jordan Morgan’s return is delayed two more weeks, making sure to be cautious. Knee injury has taken away from what bounce he had.
• Ben Cronin has shown some flashes over the last week, a little bit more bounce and a feel for the game. Sneaky suspicion that he’s a gamer, might be able to step up in game action.
• Zack Gibson will be able to play the four and five, can move him around a bit more this year. Would like to be able to go big or small this year.
• Eric Puls and Blake McLimans are down the road guys, not in the rotation at this point.
• The three leaders of the team are DeShawn Sims, Manny Harris, and Zack Novak but they are growing into the role.
• Main goal is settling on a temporary rotation. Want to see how the team can adjust when they go big and get all the wheels turning. Want to settle on a 9 man rotation and could throw a 10th in the rotation at times.

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.

• If you missed it: Tim Hardaway Jr. committed to Michigan yesterday and Jordan Morgan will miss 4 to 5 months with knee surgery.
• John Beilein was named U-M coach of the year by Wolverine Magazine as voted on by all the U-M coaches.
• Vogrich is pick to click as freshman at Michigan
  Local fluff on Matt Vogrich
• Bartelstein took scenic route to Ann Arbor
  And some more on Josh Bartelstein
• Student season ticket sales for U-M basketball takes huge jump
  Over 2000 student tickets sold after selling only 480 last year. The bandwagon is open, I still feel like the student section needs to be expanded.
• Palmetto’s Tim Hardaway Jr. headed to Michigan
  Miami Herald on the Tim Hardaway Jr. commit, averaged 25, 10, and 6 as a junior. The Wall Street Journal also mentions Tim’s commitment.
• Tim Hardaway Jr. named 2nd team all-state in Florida
• Regan Chooses Virginia
  This isn’t a shock, and Michigan cooling on Regan has been well documented, but this is a good fit for the New York big man.
• Richmond, Thomas star at skills camp
  Casey Prather named top defender at Vince Carter camp. No mention of Smotrycz but he reportedly played quite well. You have to remember that about 2/3 of these Nike camps are closed to the media.
• Knight, Selby on point at skills academy
  McCallum named the top “floor general” by ESPN at the Deron Williams camp.
• Sam Webb talks Hardaway, Recruiting (WTKA audio)
  Podcast
• Jeff Jordan leaving team for academics. A surprising player continues to surprise. – Hail to the Orange
  I’m late on this story, but good luck to Jeffery Jordan

Summer Hoops

College basketball players are essentially on their own over the summer because of the numerous NCAA laws regarding off-season contact between a player and coach. This creates an interesting scenario where coaches are praised for development of players but they get very little hands on time with them during the off season.

Beilein makes up for this in a number of ways, the most important of which is his regiment of drills and tests. Beilein gives every player a specific set of drills and scores to meet in each one. When they come back to practice in the fall, every player is expected to exceed their goals on testing day.

Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims are taking skill development into their own hands this summer when they plan to work out this summer with coach Shane Warwick. Warwick is a long time coach who runs his own clinics and also works several NBA camps. Adam Morrison, Devean George, and Mike Miller are just a few of the players that have worked out with Warwick over the past.

It definitely seems like a good opportunity for Manny and DeShawn to continue to step their game up to the next level. It’s also a chance to interact with a coach who has had plenty of hands on experience working with NBA players and knows what it takes in the NBA draft.

Scheduling

The athletic department officially announced next season’s UConn and Kansas games. As previously reported, the Kansas game is scheduled for December 18th and UConn will head to Crisler on Sunday January 17th. There is also a return trip on the slate for Kansas, who will head to Crisler on January 8th, 2011.

This pretty much wraps up the notable opponents on Michigan’s non-conference schedule. One more time for review here is what we have (last year’s RPI in parentheses):

• Nov 26-29th – Old Spice (Play 3): Alabama (108), Baylor (43), Creighton (46),  Florida State (18),  Iona (216), Marquette (30), Xavier (14)
• Dec. 2nd – vs. Boston College (68)
• Dec 9th – @ Utah (13)
• Dec 18th – @ Kansas (11)
• Jan 17th – vs. Connecticut (5)

That leaves five unannounced games and judging by the list that I have seen, all five will probably hurt Michigan’s strength of schedule as it appears that the last five games will all be against teams that are in the sub-200 RPI range.

The fact that Michigan played six games against teams with an RPI over 200 almost cost them last year and it’s definitely frustrating that we might be headed down the same road. The full schedule should be released later this summer after the Big Ten finalizes the conference schedule.

Kearney Feeling Blue?

As expected, Brandan Kearney made a visit to Michigan last week along with his god brother (and 2011 power forward recruit) Percy Gibson. The visit reportedly went very well and it’s created plenty of buzz. The buzz started Thursday morning when Sam Webb spoke about Kearney’s visit on WTKA. Webb stated that the visit went as well as anyone could have hoped for and he had no doubt that this was a Michigan-Michigan St. recruiting battle with Michigan in the lead. That’s good news in itself considered Kearney visited Ohio State days earlier.

The radio buzz was just the beginning – Webb followed up his on air report with two huge post-visit articles. The first was an interview with Kearney’s dad ($) and the second was with Brandan himself ($). The quotes in there are good enough to make any Michigan fan excited. This is definitely one to keep your eyes on, despite the fact that Kearney is only a rising junior – sophomores can officially be offered on June 15th.

Kearney is currently trying out for the Team USA 16-U team. Rivals was on hand ($) but didn’t have anything specific to say about Brandan’s play. You can find video from the tryouts here, the team will be cut from 19 to 12 tonight.

Other Notes & Links

• IL Prep Bullseye reports that Michigan continues to focus on Alex Dragicevich as well as Alex Rossi and Duje Dukan. Rossi is a 6-foot-5 shooting guard from New Trier and Dukan is a 6-foot-7 wing from Deerfield HS.
• John Beilein ran his Father/Son camp over the weekend. The camp season is just getting underway. The Beilein Shootout (one day team camp) is scheduled for June 13th and  the Elite Camp (25-26) and overnight team camp (27-28) are scheduled later in June. These camps are huge for recruiting, they not only give Michigan a chance to host a number of big time prospects they also provide a stage for the next Stu Douglass to jump onto the scene.
• VIDEO: Zeigler vs. Anderson at Showdown in the Valley ($)
  Some more Zeigler video, he is very smooth offensively.
• Q&A with CJ Lee
  Odd circumstances for an interview, but a nice quick read.

To get started today I wanted to link to a WTKA podcast with John Beilein along with Sam Webb. Beilein touches on a number of subjects including Ben Cronin (the limp is gone), Kansas, Team USA, and the ethics committee. The interview is definitely worth a listen, especially during this slow stretch of June that just seems to drag.

Listen Now (MP3)

(HT: MGoBlog)