So what secret weapon does Michigan have that Gonzaga and Baylor do not? This might come as a surprise to many die-hard college hoop fans but I actually think it’s coaching and it’s the main reason why I’m placing Michigan in the Zags’ and Bears’ class as national contenders.
All year long I’ve been putting Gonzaga and Baylor on a pedestal and all but advancing them to the NCAA championship game. Both the Zags’ Mark Few and the Bears’ Scott Drew are among college basketball’s best coaches but Michigan’s Juwan Howard brings a unique experience to his coaching resume that helps him stand apart from those two future Hall of Famers.
Howard played for 19 years in the NBA and coached for six seasons under Erik Spoelstra, who led Miami to NBA titles in 2012 and 2013 when the former Michigan Fab 5 standout was finishing up his pro career with the Heat. Howard even outlasted all his Fab 5 teammates in the NBA. Perhaps you’re wondering what the big deal was learning under Spoelstra? Well, Spoelstra might just be the most under-rated coach in NBA history and learned his craft assisting one of the all-time greats, Pat Riley.
But that’s just part of what this is all about. There’s been a misconception that’s been persisting for years that the best coaching is done on the college level and NBA coaches just turn their players loose. My father, Dick Harter, coached for nearly 20 years on the college level and another 20 plus years in the NBA. I remember being surprised when he told me in his first NBA season assisting Chuck Daly, with the Detroit Pistons in 1983, that way more coaching was done at the pro level than in college. Even as I began my own college coaching career a few years later, I was still skeptical of my father’s rather startling revelation until he became Riley’s assistant with the New York Knicks in the early 1990’s. I remember him handing me the Knicks’ playbook, which possessed a heftiness that would have given Tolstoy’s War and Peace a run for its money.
A rather imposing figure roaming the sidelines at 6-9, Howard is now calling some of those same plays at Michigan and his wide variety of sets might be college basketball’s most difficult to scout and contain. The Wolverines’ high octane offense is putting up nearly 77 points per game playing in the rugged Big 10 and can beat you in many ways. Michigan is 19-3 overall and 14-3 in league play competing in the nation’s best conference.
Of course, Howard wouldn’t be making a run at national Coach of the Year honors with mediocre talent. Three of Michigan’s starters, center Hunter Dickinson, guard-forward Franz Wagner, and forward Isaiah Livers, are expected to play in the NBA someday. The Wolverines’ starting lineup is a nice blend of experience and talented youth. Guards Mike Smith and Eli Brooks and Livers are seniors with a wealth of college experience. Brooks and Livers were freshmen and both started some games on a Michigan team that lost in the 2018 NCAA championship to Villanova. And like his coach Howard, Smith brings a unique CV to Michigan, having joined the Wolverines after leading the Ivy League in scoring at Columbia.
But the biggest difference-makers from when I watched Michigan barely squeeze by Penn State early in the season, and the reason I’m placing the Wolverines in Gonzaga and Baylor’s class, are 7-1 freshman Dickinson and 6-9 sophomore Wagner. In the Michigan games I’ve tuned into recently, Dickinson has really improved his passing out of the post to make the Wolverines’ outstanding 3-point shooting even deadlier, and Wagner has become much more assertive on the offensive end. Embarrassing confession to make: it’s a wonder I was even able to notice Wagner’s offensive transformation, as I saw Wagner on the back of his Michigan jersey at the beginning of the season and thought his name was pronounced like it sounds in English. I must have missed my foreign language pronunciation session in school because the Berlin native is actually pronounced “Vogner“. I finally caught on when TV announcers began calling out “Vogner,” more frequently when his offensive game took off.
As I move the Wolverines into college basketball’s elite class, it’s worth noting that they have a strong bench like both Gonzaga and Baylor. Wake Forest transfer Chaundee Brown is an elite perimeter defender and Austin Davis and Brandon Johns are up-front reserves who are capable of scoring double figures on any given night. Brown and Davis are seniors and Johns is a junior, making Michigan one of the most experienced teams heading into the NCAA’s.
But probably the Wolverines’ most valuable bench asset has been Associate Head Coach Phil Martelli. The former St. Joseph’s head coach was one of Howard’s first hires when he took the job and Martelli’s elderly wisdom on the sidelines has surely made his transition to the college game easier. Not that these two coaches should have ever been working together in the first place. After coaching at St. Joseph’s for 24 seasons and making it to post-season play in 13 of those seasons (including an Elite 8 run with future NBA guards Jameer Nelson and Delonte West in 2004), Martelli was foolishly let go by Hawks Athletic Director Jill Bodensteiner in 2019. Martelli’s replacement Billy Lange is 11-41 in his two seasons at St. Joseph’s and Hawks fans are already calling for his removal. Seems to me justice would better be served if Bodensteiner was fired instead.
During every college basketball season, there’s always plenty of talk of bulletin board material to motivate players, and I’m wondering if Howard has some of his own to motivate himself? After Howard was hired by Michigan, Detroit talk radio show host Mike Valenti (not surprisingly a Michigan State grad) spouted off to his audience. A cliff note version of Valenti’s trash talk: “Hiring Juwan Howard is nothing more than a PR stunt and an admission you couldn’t get a quality candidate in here.” When Michigan beat Michigan State last week to clinch the Big 10 title (something Howard was unable to do in his two years with the Fab 5), Dickinson took to Twitter to needle Valenti and defend his coach. A loyal gesture for sure. All things considered, under Howard’s outstanding leadership, the Wolverines have true team unity heading into the NCAA’s.
Switching gears, if you’re an Illinois fan you might be seriously questioning the legitimacy of my blog, much like politics goes these days. After all, the Illini blasted Michigan by 23 points early last week. With that being just one game, I wanted to see if Illinois belonged on the top tier list and watched the Illini’s game at Ohio State over the weekend. Granted, Illinois scored the game’s final nine points to claim an exciting 73-68 victory. But from my view, it was more Ohio State finding a way to lose than Illinois winning. As a college coach, I was always generous with shot selection, wanting my best player’s to feel confident taking a big shot in any situation. But the three shots Duane Washington (the Buckeyes’ second-leading scorer) ricocheted off the rim in the closing minutes even had me begging for mercy. Besides, at 20-6, Illinois has three more losses than Michigan, including a 13-point setback to Baylor earlier in the season. Still, I would like to give Illinois some well-deserved love. If I had to pick the next best team after Gonzaga, Baylor, and Michigan, it would be the Illini. My main reason: freshman point guard Andre Curbelo has really picked up his scoring down the stretch, averaging 15 points over his last five games. His Magic Johnson-like passing ability will make him one of the most exciting players to watch in the NCAA’s.
Finally, as this long awaited NCAA tournament is now just a little more than a week away, I would like to name my most under-rated team and most under-rated player. These were not difficult choices for me to make.
My under-rated team is Oregon, which looks to be a middle-of-the-pack seed on Selection Sunday but could be a potentially scary match-up for any of the top-seeded teams in the NCAA’s second round. The 19-5 Ducks have been one of the hottest teams in the country, winning 10 of their last 11 games. In this crazy Covid-riddled season, Oregon not being ranked in last week’s AP Top 25 poll was odd to say the least, especially considering the Ducks have been hit as hard by the virus as anybody. For the past three seasons, I’ve been compiling a rather extensive list of the country’s most under-rated coaches and Oregon’s Dana Altman would surely top it. There is no better coach in the country at getting his team to peak in March Madness than Altman. It’s no big surprise the Ducks have been playing their best basketball in February heading into March. The run has also matched the return of 6-5 point guard Will Richardson from a pre-season wrist injury. Similar to his coach, Richardson is highly under-rated. When I recently scanned a list of the NBA’s Top 100 draft picks on one reputable website, Richardson was nowhere to be found. Richardson is a very good all-around player, and I have a hunch he’ll be playing in the NBA someday.
My choice for the all-underrated player will probably not be in the NBA someday but Loyola Chicago center Cameron Krutwig has completely slipped under the radar as a college player. At 6-9, Krutwig is probably under-sized to make an NBA roster as a center, but I have not seen a college player this season who is more valuable to his team. It was mind-boggling to me that Krutwig did not make the Wooden Top 25 Finalist list. Heading into NCAA’s, the Ramblers are 24-4 mainly because of the overall game of their gifted center. Krutwig is one of only four players in Missouri Valley Conference history to have 1,500 points, 800 rebounds, and 300 assists along with Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird, and Hershey Hawkins. Joining an elite list with some of basketball’s all-time greats is impressive and Krutwig’s 300 plus assists from the center position are eye-opening. Robertson and Bird were considered two of the best passers in NBA history but they were perimeter players. Krutwig (who looks more like a bouncer than a basketball player) has essentially created a new position, point center, in Loyola’s equal-opportunity offense. And his versatility goes beyond the basketball court. He is his team’s best student and even plays the harmonica. Krutwig’s favorite song to play is Hall and Oates’ Maneater. How ironic, because he’s been gobbling up opponents ever since his freshman year in 2018 when he helped lead the Cinderella Ramblers to the Final Four.
I feel like I’m on a little bit of a roll with my complaints at this point so I’ll blog off with one last pet peeve. Why have half-court logos become so obnoxiously over-sized in the college ranks? Thought this was a fast food issue. When you’re best 3-point shooter can knock down more than 30 percent from the logo, it’s way too big. Period.