College basketball’s offseason is hitting top speed with NBA Draft decisions, transfer portal madness and NIL deals. Dylan and Brendan disucss the latest on Michigan and Michigan State’s roster situations including Frankie Collins, Jaelin Llewellyn, Max Christie, Moussa Diabate, Caleb Houstan, Julius Marble, Emoni Bates and much more.
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Nick
The thing about playing unproven players is that this is what Michigan did for all of Belein’s tenure and they had tremendous success. Every year we’d look at transfer targets and talk about how Michigan needed to add this or that, and they never did (aside from Simmons who hardly played, and Matthews who had to sit out a year). I specifically remember people wanting Matt Mooney heading into the 18-19 season because people thought we couldn’t rely on the unproven Jordan Poole and Eli Brooks.
I’m all for adding a transfer or two under the right circumstances, and clearly adding a transfer guard to this roster was warranted. But you also have to trust the guys you bring in (and the coaches charged with developing them) and give them a real opportunity to grow and show what they can do. You can’t expect certainty at every position, every year.
umhoops
I get this point, but that 19 team brought back Simpson, Matthews, Teske, Livers as proven experienced rotation players IMO. Michigan needed Iggy to fill a spot and Poole to fill a spot.
This year’s team could hypothetically bring back Hunter Dickinson as a proven experienced rotation player. That leaves 4 spots not 2 (really 1.5 IMO).
Nick
I guess this is more about what I like as a fan than what’s best in terms of wins/losses. I love watching a freshman Derrick Walton start on the 14-15 team as a facilitator then developer into the big-time shot maker who led UM to a B10 tourney title as a senior. Today, UM would never hand over the keys to a true freshman point guard of Walton’s incoming rank, and who knows how his career at UM would play out. I was looking forward to a similar four-year journey with Frankie (no one come at me with Walton v Frankie freshman shooting numbers, that’s not the point).
The winning moments mean more to me when I’m invested in the players as opposed to a bunch of one-year mercenaries.
umhoops
I just don’t think that is necessarily true. Franz Wagner, Caleb Houstan, Moussa Diabate, Hunter Dickinson all started and played huge minutes as freshmen in key roles.
I don’t think you can say that Frankie Collins not playing much as a freshman is because of a core philosophy as much as it is about Frankie Collins not being ready to play. If Dug McDaniel looks awesome this year, he’ll play.
Walton was really good as a freshman.
alliteration
Yeah and Walton had the conference POY next to him and a future pro in Caris LeVert. You can afford to play a freshman pg next to those guys. Granted Walton fit right in and could play off ball and be an overall benefit, but there’s nothing about Howard’s coaching that makes me think he wouldn’t have played Walton.