Michigan Senior Day Thoughts

Photo Credit: Thomas Beindit

Sunday is Senior Day for Michigan. Read about it below:

Michigan Senior Day Thoughts

Previewing The Roster: Guards

I'm reaching the end of basketball preview season and I've already went through Michigan's wings and bigs for this year. Last up are the guards.  Michigan's guards should be outstanding this year and have repeatedly received love from the basketball analysts and national media.  Michigan loses very little at the position and brings in a few players that have the chance to make a major impact both now and in the future.

Last season, Trey Burke, Tim Hardaway, and Stu Douglass dominated the position.  Once in awhile, Beilein would bring in Matt Vogrich or Eso Akunne, but this was a position primarily dominated by those three players.  Douglass will be gone, but all the other guys are back for the season.  This was Michigan's strongest positional group last season and the loss of Douglass shouldn't be too significant of an impact for the position and team, especially with the recruiting additions.

New recruits that could make an impact the position this year are Spike Albrecht, Nik Stauskas, and Caris LeVert.  Glenn Robinsion III could get a little time at the 2 spot, but I don't see him doing anything significant at the position.  I think he's a much better fit at the 3 and he does play the 4 in the smaller lineup for Michigan, so I don't see him being at the 2 for very long, if at all.  So after adding the new recruits, that gives us 7 players that will likely be making contributions in the backcourt for Michigan this season.

Michigan vs. Northern Michigan: Quick Reactions

So now that I've had a few hours to digest Michigan's first exhibition of the season, I think it's a good time to give some comments on what happened tonight, especially for those that weren't able to see the game.  There were a lot of expectations leading into the game and for the most part, I thought Michigan did a pretty good job living up to them.  Of course, nothing's going to be perfect during the first game of the season, but for a team losing two starters, two captains, and the team's best 6th man, they did pretty well.

I'll start with the obvious.  The starting lineup for tonight was Spike Albrecht, Matt Vogrich, Tim Hardaway, Glenn Robinson III, and Jordan Morgan.  Obviously, Spike only got the nod because Trey Burke was suspended for the first game, but it's still pretty significant for a true freshman who didn't have a lot of recruiting hype to start the first game.  I didn't expect Vogrich to start, but given that Mitch McGary doesn't seem fully ready (I'll cover this below) and Jon Horford is out with injury, it's not that surprising.  Vogrich was the best option at the time and he did pretty well.  The last three starters seemed pretty obvious and I projected them to start earlier this year.

Previewing The Roster: Wings

This is my first of three positional group previews for the 2012-2013 Michigan basketball season.  This could very well be the most interesting positional group for Michigan because of the depth and flexibility of the position.  The guards and big men are not solidified by any measure, but projections for the way they will be set-up for the coming season are pretty straightforward in comparison to the way the wings could end up.  Even a quick glance at the roster will show the confusion about which players will dominate this role.

Of the 15 man roster, there are 4-7 players that could end up playing on the wing this year.  The reason I'm using a range is because several of these players including Josh Bartelstein, Corey Person, and Nik Stauskas have the potential to play some other positions on the floor.  All three are listed as guards, but each of these guys could easily play the 2 spot and some of them like Stauskas even have a shot at playing the point in the future.  In Beilein's system, there isn't a ton of difference between the 2 and the 3 spots, which means there is a lot of crossover between the wings and the guards.

Previewing The Roster: Josh Bartelstein

One of the lesser known players on Michigan's 2012-2013 roster is Josh Bartelstein.  Not only because he is clearly a "depth" player, but also because his slight contributions have actually been decreasing during his career.  He may not get time in any significant games this year, but he does play an important role for the team in terms of depth for both this season and beyond.

Bartelstein will be a senior, but has done little during his career.  His first year was the 2009-2010 season, but he played in just 5 games and averaged 2.6 minutes.  He played in 11 games last year, but his average time decreased to 1.3 minutes per game.  One could argue this is because Bartelstein took a step back, but I I would credit this more to circumstances.  If you look at last season, many of the games were close for long segments of time, which makes it hard to get bench players like Bartelstein on the court.

Previewing The Roster: Matt Vogrich

Well, we're starting to get to that special time of year again.  When college football season is roaring and college basketball is just around the corner.  With that in mind, we're officially going to start previewing the team that will take the court for Michigan this season.  Arguably, the best way to do this is to go through the entire roster.  There's no specific order for our roster previews, but we're starting with one of Michigan's more prominent role players, Matt Vogrich.

Vogrich will be entering his senior season with mixed expectations and performances.  He was a 3* recruit when he committed to Michigan back in 2009 and has improved largely from his freshman season.  However, he took a step back in his junior year.  Not just in production, but he played an average of 3.3 fewer minutes per game last year than he did the year before.  Typically, when a player's time is reduced from their sophomore to junior year, it's a sign of one of two things.  Either newer players are stepping up and taking the playing time, or the player has taken a step back.  Unfortunately for Vogrich, there wasn't much roster transition at his spot last year, which probably signals that  it was more of a step back.