<p>In the past I haven't really followed college basketball and I see recently Michigan hasn't had much sucess. Is there any chance that in the next four years Michigan will get to the NCAA tournament and do something?</p>
<p>depends on whether or not the new coach can work some magic</p>
<p>There's always a kind of cautious optimism for the basketball team. The past few seasons Tommy Amaker has done a good job at cleaning up the program after the booster scandals, but he's proven incapable of coaching the team to its full potential. New coach is John Beilein (pronounced Bee-Line) from West Virginia, and he seemed to fairly well thought of. He's very flexible with what kind of system he runs, and expects his players to be well-rounded. Two out of the three players Amaker had recruited for 2007 stuck with the team, and given how the third player acted, he seems like the kind of prima donna we wouldn't really want anyways. There were questions early on about how he would handle recruiting (aka, people thought whitey would be scared to recruit inner city Detroit/Flint), but that's not an issue.</p>
<p>The general perception of the Michigan basketball program is not that it's dead, but just that it's a sleeping giant. All it needs is the right kind of leadership to bring it back to life.</p>
<p>I don't follow basketball that closely or know the sport that well, but it seems to me that in the first season or two we might have some issues with depth and leadership. Jerret Smith is the only person coming back from the regular starting 5, and he was downright incompetent (we had a small lead with about 30 seconds left against Indiana, and the first thing he did when they got down court was pass the ball directly to Indiana). Deshawn Sims (little brother of the worst basketball player ever) and Ekpe Udoh were freshmen last year and kind of expected to be the future of the team, but Udoh was extremely outmatched when he was put up against Oden (relevant story: me and some friends were at an apartment one night. we were out on the porch, and kind of watching the tv in the next place over. sportscenter was doing something on Oden and had a headshot of him up. I asked my friend, who knows next to nothing about sports, how old he looked, and she guess he was in his 40s.). We might not necessarily have the raw talent to immediately put together a very successful team, but I think what we have is enough to start to build a very successful program in the coming years.</p>
<p>So based on what your saying would it be safe to say Michigan's main basketball goal right now is to come back to respectability rather than real success?</p>
<p>baby steps</p>
<p>I guess... I saw an article on espns site saying how Michigan has the most underachieving program in the sport, hopefully that will change now.</p>
<p>I think Tommy laid all the groundwork we need to have a clean, respectable program again. Unfortunately, he didn't also possess the coaching ability to make our players perform to thier abilities, let alone beyond that. Beilein's focus is going to be more getting back respect on the court. Obviously the goal is for success, but you can't expect it to happen immediately, especially with a program that's been as troubled as Michigan basketball. Recently, there has been some grumbling about our pre-conference strength of schedule. We always have a solid record, but don't really have the big game experience or wins to merit us a tournament contender. Hopefully in the next few years we'll see a tougher schedule that might make us look worse initially, but overall strengthen the program.</p>
<p><strong>EDIT</strong> and for what it's worth, Michigan would've been ranked #1 for most underachieving team by all 5 "experts" if one of the experts hadn't been Jay Bilas, who played basketball with Tommy Amaker at Duke back in college. He managed to not mention Michigan at all in his top 10, but did deem UCLA "underachieving" after they went to the final four the past two years.</p>
<p>dilksy i like and agree with almost all of what you say, but if you're implying that Deshawn Sims is Courtney Sims' little brother, that's way off base. Courtney is from Mass. and Deshawn is from Michigan. I assume that's what you meant because Courtney was downright bad at basketball, but for all i know, Deshawn does have an older brother that played somewhere else, which would make me look pretty stupid right now....</p>
<p>For whatever reason I thought they were brothers. I guess that gives me that much less reason to hate Deshawn. It was hard to keep myself from yelling "Jesus ****ing christ you SUCK" whenever I saw Courtney around campus. Especially after he misses a dunk at the most important point in the season. Probably second most devastating finish to a sporting event I've attended.</p>
<p>And FWIW, apparently Deshawn did have a younger brother who was shot and killed last November.</p>
<p>oh man...</p>
<p>i guess i can't bring that "muck fichigan" shirt to college</p>
<p>nah just playin</p>
<p>will be rootin for the Illini and Wolverines from now onwards</p>
<p>Yeah I read an article about how Deshawn was really depressed after the death of his brother and how he and some other team members stayed with Tommy Amaker and his family during the ordeal. That was part of the reason people speculated that Ekpe Udoh and Deshawn would leave following Amaker's firing. We've all heard this a million times, but Tommy is a class act, and he encouraged them all to stay at UM, and they, along with Manny Harris and Kelvin Grady (not alex legion of course) obliged. I think Beilein is the real deal though, and my stance is, if he can't get them to compete in the tourney, no one can.</p>