Michigan plays its first game of the year this Friday which means it’s time for our semi-annual “State of the Blog” update, which is available after the jump.

This will be our fifth season covering Michigan basketball and our second as an officially credentialed outlet. The past five seasons have seen their share of highs (NCAA Tournament wins over Clemson and Tennessee or last season at the Breslin Center) and lows (the 2009-10 season to start) but we can confidently say that the future of the program hasn’t been this bright for well over a decade.

The offseason has been exciting, newsworthy and entertaining. John Beilein has elevated his recruiting significantly, landing commitments from Max Bielfeldt, Nick Stauskas, Mark Donnal, Austin Hatch, Zak Irvin, Derrick Walton and of course Mitch McGary. Suddenly there’s a promising team on the floor and what could be an even more promising group on the horizon.

We’ve been along for every step of the journey, providing first hand recruiting coverage and video from a number of major AAU tournaments, events and camps this summer – for free.  Our original coverage took us across the midwest and we’re confident that it matched (and more than likely exceeded) that of our paid competition.

Kevin Raftery joined the team this fall and will serve in a similar role to Joe Stapleton’s last season. David Merritt is back for another season and will be focusing on multimedia features while sharing the perspective of a former player. Joe Eberhardt continues to serve as our resident recruiting expert in the state of Indiana – an ever important role given Michigan’s new recruiting focus on the Hoosier State. Josh Houchin will be back as well, serving as our video guru and helping with features like Five Key Plays.

We also continue to make improvements to the website. We’ve added Disqus Commenting, an improved system which should come in handy during game open threads this season. We’ve added new post types like Quick Videos, Posts, and Links to help aggregate and share more content in a timely manner. Player and recruit profiles are being revamped, a process which should be completed shortly after the first game.

When I created this site in December of 2007 I was frustrated that there was no dedicated resource to Michigan basketball. Four years later it’s impressive just how far the site has come, achieving more milestones and accomplishments than I would have imagined possible back then. The fact that we’ve made it this far just makes getting to the next step that much more important.

At this point the site has become more about you and all of our readers than anything that I, or any of our other writers, do. The comments section has seen nearly 50,000 posts and your support and participation continues to motivate us to continue to push forward.

Over the next few days and weeks, we’re reaching out to ask for your support. We’ve generally done this twice per year and the support that we’ve received has always been eye opening and appreciated. If you’re able to offer any support (no amount is too small), you can be confident that your contribution will go directly toward improving the site – every dollar helps us add new features, pay for road trips to cover games or recruits, and open more doors down the road.

If you’re able to donate, please click the Make a Donation button below or in the sidebar to the right:

Improving the UMHoops community and commenting section is one of the primary missions for our team. Earlier this summer we implemented the Disqus commenting system and the results have generally been positive. As we near the upcoming season we want to continue to make positive strides in the community. In order to do that we’ve made a couple changes and also have a request.

The most notable change is that new comments will be posted in real-time. Newly submitted comments will appear instantly without the need to refresh the page. This might not have a large impact now but should be a huge boost for in-game discussion.

More importantly we want to encourage everyone to register for the comments section. Registering will allow you to make a meaningful impact on the community and also make our lives easier.

Registration is easy and all you need is a valid e-mail address. The four step process is simple: (1) Click Post As… (2) Navigate to the Disqus tab (3) Click ‘Register a new Disqus profile (4) Fill out the required information (username, e-mail and password) and click Register.

You can also link up various social networking accounts and will be able to maintain the same posting alias while tracking old posts and likes. When you sign up for your Disqus profile you will be able to associate old comments you’ve made based on your e-mail address. Having more registered users should cut down on drive-by commenters and spammers while allowing regular users to build a reputation. It will also allow us to moderate the comments more efficiently by having a group of trusted users. During the season we may even require that comments from unregistered users require moderation before displaying.

We want you to register so badly that we’re going to bribe you. Any registered users that comment on this thread will be entered into a drawing to win one of three free DVD copies of ESPN’s Fab Five documentary. The contest is open to new and old users alike, as long as you comment on this post with a registered profile before Friday at 7 p.m.

Several of our friends, rivals and companions in the Michigan sports realm have announced major staffing moves over the last month and now we want to take the opportunity to announce a move of our own. Kevin Raftery will be joining the team as a day-to-day correspondent in a role similar to Joe Stapleton’s last season. Raftery is essentially a utility man, he’ll cover games and press conferences, most likely dabble in recruiting and deal with any other duties that come up along the way.

Raftery is currently a senior editor at the Michigan Daily where he’ll be covering the Michigan football team this year. This spring he also traveled to Augusta to cover Michigan student Lion Kim at the Masters. He will still be invested in his football coverage at the Michigan Daily but you should start to see posts from him shortly and he will gradually post more as we draw closer to the season. You can also follow him on twitter.

Joe Eberhardt will continue to serve as our scouting eyes in the state of Indiana during the high school basketball season. Eberhardt provided a wealth of coverage during the July live-evaluation period and should prove a valuable resource as Michigan continues to expand it’s recruiting focus in the Hoosier state. As always you can find his state of Indiana-focused coverage at his website, IndyHSHoops.com.

Josh Houchin is on board to serve as our resident video guru once again. He’s working on finishing the season highlight video now and will also be assisting with our Five Key Plays features once again. In his free time he’s working on starting a media company, Idea Fusion Media, which you can find on Facebook.

Other Notes

• It’s no secret that things have been a bit slower here over the last month or two. We should start ramping up quickly as we move into season preview content as the start of practice is about a month and a half away.
• We’re always on the look out for additional help so if you have any sort of unique talent – photography, video, web development or anything else – drop us a line.
• We started a links module (top right tabs) back in June but let it die out, we’ll be posting links much more frequently in this space from now on (as well as our traditional links posts).
• If you have any suggestions or ideas for the site, never hesitate to fire off an e-mail.

The off-season is a great time to make improvements, big and small, to the site to help improve your experience. (We’re also able to use your generous end-of-season donations to add new features.) A couple weeks ago we revamped the commenting system, upgrading to a Disqus system that has received strong positive feedback thus far. Next up is an upgrade to the mobile version of the site.

The look is clean and simple but still allows you to do almost everything you would do from a web browser. All of the most recent posts are easily accessible and you can access the menu to browse through static content, tags and categories. You can post and read comments with a mobile optimized view and also watch all of our videos with the push of a button. We are aware of one feature that’s not working at this point, the recruiting profiles, but we’re actively investigating a solution.

We will continue to make tweaks to the new look but are also looking for your feedback. Fire up your smartphone, give the new mobile look a try and share your thoughts in the comments.

Site upgrades are always well intended but don’t always go as planned. About a year ago, we tried to install Disqus (one of the most popular commenting systems on the internet) and ran into all sorts of problems before reverting to our more standard commenting system. After persistent recommendations from Inside the Hall, we finally decided to make the jump.

Things seem to be working relatively smoothly at this point which means there should be plenty of new features to be tested out. The list includes:

• Social integration: You can post comments by using your Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Open ID or Disqus accounts. You can also share your comment through your social networking accounts as well.
• @ replies: Need to address someone directly? You can tag their name in your comment with an @ sign.
• “Like” functionality: Love a comment? Hit the “Like” button
• E-mail notifications: You can configure e-mail alerts for replies, mentions or new comments on a particular thread.
• Unlimited Threaded Comments: Threaded comments can now expand beyond 4 or 5 replies, a limitation of the old system.
• Attach Images: You can also attach images to your comments.

We want to encourage everyone to register a Disqus account, which can be done through the posting framework, to improve your experience. Registering will allow you to include an avatar with your comments, associate your comments with your account and enable a number of other features.

If you have any problems with the new commenting software, don’t hesitate to shoot me an e-mail.

Sidebar Tweaks

We also made some small tweaks to the tabbed area at the top of the sidebar. We shuffled the tabs around and more importantly replaced the recent comments section with a links module. Similar to the m.go.licious feature on MGoBlog this is a collection of links that are worthy of sharing. Quite a few of these may end up in links or bullets posts down the road, but this should be a nice place to browse if you need some extra reading material.

Our third full season is in the books and it was quite a journey with a full spectrum of highs and lows. The season was not only a joy to watch and follow, it was a great opportunity to continuously improve our coverage. We continued to provide all of the typical content that you have come accustomed to – previews, recaps, analysis and recruiting features – but were also able to add to our base.

Our goal is to be the primary source for Michigan basketball coverage on the internet. We probably aren’t there yet, but will keep working until we are. We added Joe to the mix as our credentialed correspondent and he’s provided over 175 posts and 200 original videos in the last year. We added the Five Key Plays feature, which seems to be a tremendous hit, and also added David Merritt to the mix with some original content. We handled our end of the bargain, with over 400 posts this season, but, most importantly, you did your part as well. Every open thread, recap and preview was filled with endless thoughtful debate. Your comments are certainly the driving force behind this website. The average number of comments per post this season was almost double the cumulative average over the last three years.

I also need to thank four people specifically. Joe Stapleton has been tremendous for the last year. Whether it was running between AAU gyms, trudging his way to media availability or skipping class to cover a game, he’s been an invaluable resource. Josh Houchin has turned into our resident video guru, churning out videos for Five Key Plays and always being ready to cut whatever clip we might need. David Merritt volunteered to play a part in the site, composing videos and snapping photos on road trips while sharing his analysis as well. All three have had a direct impact on the quality of content increasing by a significant margin. Joe Eberhardt has also consistently provided us with quality recruiting information, scouting and video from the state of Indiana.

You all knew this was coming, but running the site isn’t free and we like to reach out to you twice a year to ask for your support. We’ve traveled across the midwest following this team as well as covering AAU and high school games. We are not asking for a monthly donation, and by no means should you feel obligated. If you are able to offer some support, it will go directly toward the costs of supporting the site(travel, gas, writer compensation) and will enable further growth going forward. You can donate at anytime by clicking the button in the sidebar, or with this link below:

As great as this season was, we hope the majority of you hang with us through the off season. We’ll have plenty of wrap up content – player evaluations, statistical musing and whatever else – and we are also ready to dive into the thick of recruiting season. It should be a fun ride, especially with the momentum that this last season has provided.

In an effort to bolster our social media presence we have a pair of quick announcements.

Social Media Mailbag

Mimicking our good friends at Inside the Hall, we are going to begin hosting social media mailbags. You can submit questions to us on twitter or on our Facebook Fan Page and we will answer them with regular posts on the blog. Submit your questions now and we’ll start answering them this week.

Facebook Contest

We are also making an effort to increase our presence on Facebook, so we’re going to bribe you to like our page. Anyone that Likes our Fan Page within the next week within the next week will be entered in a drawing to win a pair of Michigan Basketball Holiday Packs — which include tickets to the Bryant, Purdue, and Penn State games as well as a free Maize Rage t-shirt.

As a bonus, if we reach an admittedly lofty goal of 1,000 fans, we’ll double the prize and give away a second set of tickets.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re looking at the latest version of the website. The new design was long overdue and will hopefully be a much needed improvement. We’ve also moved to a new server which should mean less “Internal Server Error” and faster load times. You can obviously see the new design for yourself but here are some highlights worth pointing out:

• Recruiting Profiles: We are replacing the hot boards with recruiting profiles. These profiles will have basic information about Michigan recruiting targets and also a listing of all previous posts tagged with that prospect’s name. The profiles are listed by class here: 2011 / 2012 / 2013.
• Newsstand: A compilation of our favorite RSS feeds and tweets for the latest news across the college basketball world on one page.
• Player Profile Pages: Updated statistics, season trends, and a listing of each player’s game-by-game bullets. Profiles can be accessed from the drop down menu above, the roster page, or the depth chart. Example: Zack Novak
• Past Recruiting Classes: This page is a listing of previous recruiting classes dating back to 1961. Many thanks to Ron White for supplying the content.
• Recruiting Videos: A live-search enabled listing of all recruiting videos that have been posted on the blog.
• Related Posts: At the bottom of each post you will find five auto generated related posts.
• New Archives Page: Made to be a little easier, you can now search a listing of all posts sorted by date and more.
• Google Search: Instead of the basic WordPress search, which seemed to never work, you can now search the archives using a Google powered search engine.
• I need to thank Ben Schaaf of Snow Fox Design for being the point man on the new design. This would have never happened without him.

There will obviously be some growing pains but we are confident that this will be a huge step toward taking the site to the next level. We will have significantly more content this year, mostly due to our new presence on press row, and want to try to make everything easier to find. If you do find an error or have a suggestion, please shoot me an e-mail.

We also are going to use this as an opportunity to start our semi-annual donation drive. We have put in a significant amount of work to try and improve the site over the last several months and think we’ve done a great job:

• We acquired a press pass and added Joe to the team to make it worthwhile.
• We ramped up our recruiting coverage – attending nine events this summer and providing scores of free recruiting updates, scouting, and video.
• Finally, we put together this new design and added the features outlined above.

Unfortunately none of this is free. The best way to make all of this happen and help us continue to improve the site is to ask for your help. There’s no need for a monthly donation or anything like that but any donations are a huge boost to the site and allow us to continue to push the envelope. You can rest assured that your contribution will go directly toward the costs associated with the site. To contribute, click the button below:

Season three is in the books. It definitely wasn’t as exciting or enjoyable as season two but I think that this community continued to develop nicely despite Michigan’s on court struggles. This season’s disappointing results prevented any sort of astronomical traffic growth but we still saw a nice bump in traffic and plenty of good additions to the community. More information about the plans for expanding coverage and how you can help the site out by donating after the jump.

Expansion is in the works. To this point, the blog has been almost entirely a solo effort mixed with various guest contributions. This year I managed to add in some recruiting & scouting content thanks to a contributor who went by the pen name Calvin Smith. Calvin attended and filmed a number of high school games this winter and I think I’m correct in assuming that the content he provided was appreciated and valuable.

Over the next year, the plan is to give Calvin an even bigger role on the site. Calvin is going to shed the pen name and go by his real name, Joe Stapleton. Stapleton covered the basketball team for the Daily last year and will continue his duties at the Daily next year (except covering the football team) but he will also cover the basketball team for UMHoops.

Having multiple contributors is a bit of a balancing act but several of our friends have been quite successful. Everyone from The Only Colors to MGoBlog to Inside the Hall. Why not join in on the fun?

The plan is for Stapleton to essentially be the UMHoops credentialed journalist (this has been OK’d by the hoops media guys). The one who watches the games from press row and attends press conferences and media availability (basically a hoops version of Tim from mgoblog). This is valuable content that I have wanted to include but didn’t have the means to include without reducing the quantity and quality of the other content that I produce. Adding Joe to the mix means that we can bring new content to the table and we have someone who already knows what he’s doing because he covered the team this year.

The second part of the plan involves ramping up the recruiting coverage. A lot of the recruiting coverage on this site has been an aggregation of content from the caverns of the internet. One of the greatest recruiting services that I think this site has provided has been the recruiting roundups which are basically a summary of recruiting statistics, scouting reports, and interviews. Recruiting roundups will continue as they were before but we are going to start providing more original content on the recruiting trail.

Joe is going to hit the road and try to make it to several AAU events this summer with a new camcorder in hand. Covering the AAU circuit will allow us to provide much more original content including scouting reports, videos, and interviews. Inside the Hall is a prime example of basketball recruiting coverage done right at the blog level that we will try to emulate.

Some of this might be shooting a little too high. There’s no guarantee on how many AAU tournaments we can make it to or even afford to attend but we are certainly going to do our best. Camcorders, gas money, and hotels aren’t cheap but we think we can make a valiant effort at the least.

Before and after each season I typically ask for your support through donations and this year is no different. Your support goes miles toward supporting the site and I can’t explain to those of you who have donated how much it means. That being said, maintaining the site and producing quality content is extremely time consuming and taxing. Advertising revenues aren’t enough to support this site, especially if we want to continue to grow. Your contributions are welcomed and whole heartedly appreciated. There’s a donation button on the side bar at all times but you can also click the button below:

In short, the standard content that you have received from me over the last 2.5 years will remain the same. We are just going to attempt to add a significant chunk of content to what we already have. The goal of this site has always been to be the best source for Michigan basketball content. Because of that, adding Joe to the mix was almost a no brainer; hopefully more is better.

For information on the past, present, and future of this site as well as how you can help support it, click through to read after the jump.

It’s finally basketball season once again. The most exciting Michigan basketball season in over a decade provided a breath of fresh air to a frustrated fan base and, luckily, drove many of you here.

I started this site in the middle of the tumultuous 2007-2008 season and I was worse at blogging than that 10-22 team was at basketball. Yet for some reason, some of you found the site and came back for more. 100 readers per day became 1,000 and then the basketball team took care of the rest. A few big wins over UCLA and Duke to kick start the 2009 season and the bandwagon was full, people headed here in droves.

I want to thank those of you who have found your way to this site, whether it’s once, twice, or a thousand times. The site has continued to grow and without all of you readers, commenters, and e-mailers the site would be nothing.

Along the way this site began to consume more time than I ever expected. From writing game previews at 8:00 AM on a Sunday morning to posting recruiting news at 9:15 on a Friday night and writing NCAA tournament previews during midterms, I’ve loved every minute of it.  740 posts, 17,900 comments, and over one million visitors later I’m proud to have established a Michigan basketball community.

But last year is over and we’re starting fresh. The off season was fun — I love following recruiting and Michigan landed three commitments. Reliving last year through report cards, positional breakdowns, and whatever else I could come up with has certainly been a great way to keep the season alive. But here we are, diving in head first into the new season.

However, keeping the site up and running with fresh content is a tough adventure for just one person. The problem is that this site has not only become time consuming but expensive.  Last year’s traffic forced a move to a more expensive server where the site will be stationed yet again within a week.

I have no intention of ever charging people to read this site. And yes, there are banners on the site. – and they cover about 1/20^th of the time I put into writing, researching, editing, and everything else involved with running the blog.

Many of you have generously donated money in the past and I want to thank you again. Donations help me keep this site going and prevent me from drowning under the weight of the site.

I am always looking for ways to expand coverage on the site. I would love to expand recruiting coverage in some ways but am very limited financially. I am also working to get a redesign completed as well as add some new functionality. This year you can expect the same basics as last year with previews and recaps of every game with complementary live blogs, analysis, recruiting information, and links. Of course, if you have an idea, don’t hesitate to e-mail suggestions.

The best way to not only expand coverage but also keep up with everything else is to ask for donations. You should by no means feel obligated, but if you are able to donate, rest assured that your donation would be very much appreciated. You can donate through PayPal by clicking the donation button below (also stationed conveniently in the sidebar).

Basically, I love doing this. I love Michigan basketball. I love having a community of people to come talk to about Michigan basketball year round. I love that when Michigan beats Duke or Clemson I can come here and read hundreds of comments. I love when Evan Smotrycz or Carlton Brundidge commit to Michigan and I can talk about it here with Michigan basketball fans in the middle of the summer. I’m not going to stop doing this anytime soon.

Having said that, it does take a lot of time and I’m only a college student. There are obviously enormous time commitments that go along with not only running this site but with school. If you donate anything, it’d be greatly appreciated. If you can’t, please keep coming back. This will be a great season, and you can count on this site to be there for every twist and turn. Go Blue.