When you are a head coach you have to plan for a lot of things to happen to your basketball team including losing players to transfer and the NBA. You could say, you always need a Plan B.
John Beilein must have had a ton of Plan B's on the chalk board the last few weeks. The Michigan basketball program lost 2 seniors to graduation in Stu Douglass and Zack Novak, 3 transfers in Evan Smotrycz, Colton Christian and Carlton Brundidge and possible NBA draftees Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway, Jr. If you are keeping score at home, that would 4 out of 5 starters and Michigan's 6th man heading out of Ann Arbor.
That didn't happen and Hardaway and Burke are coming back. "I felt like I wasn't ready," Hardaway Jr. said. "I felt like I had a lot to work on. … I was very disappointed in myself and how I played in the season and I felt like I could’ve done better to help this team out."
With Michigan's strong recruiting class with new ESPN 5 star player Glenn Robinson III, 5 Star PF Mitch McGary and 4 star shooting guard Nick Stauskas, Michigan now all of sudden looks pretty good next year. Don't forget Michigan picked up another PG this weekend in 3 star Spike Albrecht. Spike can give Trey some rest during the game and play the distributor role. I expect him to play about 10 minutes a game to give Trey a break or if he gets in foul trouble.
Carlton had a nice upside but had health issues this year and probably should have red shirted, so his loss can be replaced by good recruiting. Christian was brought in for defense and rebounding but really never saw the floor. Evan was a tough match-up when his head was in the game but clearly was not happy most of the Big Ten season. Evan when focused was a good player and I believe he felt he was a starter and a guy that needed to be on the floor more. I think he will look for a program where he can play more minutes.
To wrap this up, the future looks bright for these Wolverines next year. I would say the window to get to the Final 4 is pretty short, because I don't expect Burke and Hardaway to be back for another year and look out if one of the incoming freshman have a big year as well.
- There have been plenty of rumors of what was going on at Florida and why Urban left. This Sporting News article really lays out some bad stuff. If this is true and he continues this practice he won't last at OSU mostly with the NCAA keeping a close eye on who and how they are driving the C-BUS. Now, I am really glad he wasn't available when Michigan was looking for a coach.
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