The national championship is Monday night, and things have changed a bit since our first look at the matchup between Michigan and UConn.
For the Wolverines, Yaxel Lendeborg, who injured his ankle and knee, is expected to play. And UConn’s Solo Ball has been in a boot since UConn’s win over the Illini.
It’s hard to know how that will play out, but UConn’s margin of error is probably thinner.
Both are expected to play, and there’s no point in holding anything back, because no one is playing after Monday
night.
Michigan spread their minutes around more than UConn Saturday. Michigan had to play more guys because Lendeborg got hurt and only played 14 minutes, but otherwise, the starters went for 22, 25, 30, and 32 minutes respectively, and had nine players in double digit minutes.
Will Tschetter got 15 minutes, mostly in relief of Lendeborg, while Trey McKenney got 27 minutes, and Roddy Gale got 30.
Elliot Cadeau finished with 4 fouls, while Morez Johnson and Alda Mara got 3 each.
For the Huskies, the starters played 35, 35, 31, 30, and 28 minutes respectively, with seven players in double digit minutes. Silas Demary picked up four fouls, and Malachi Smith got four off the bench.
Tarris Reed, Braylon Mullins, and Eric Reibe got three each. Smith burned four in 9 minutes, while Reibe got his in just 5 minutes.
That, along with Solo’s possible limitations, makes UConn’s margin for error much less than it appeared Saturday evening.
However, balance that against this: Danny Hurley has proven to be a superb tournament coach, and Michigan has to control Reed, who has proven to be a real handful.
Speaking of Michigan, Dusty May has made it clear that he won’t take the UNC job. That means that May, Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd, Iowa State’s TJ Otzelberger, Vanderbilt’s Mark Byington, and Boston Celtics GM Brad Stevens have all either explicitly said no or negotiated a better contract.
The last guy on the elite list of coaches UNC targeted is Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan, and he’s made it clear that he won’t discuss the job seriously until his season ends on April 12th.
Byington might still bite, but his buyout has gone up substantially.
So who else is potentially on the list?
Well, two names have come up: Baylor’s Scott Drew and Texas Tech’s Grant McCasland.
Drew is a great fit in many ways, but his success has really trailed off since winning the national championship in 2020-21. That team won 28 games. From there, Baylor has won 27, 23, 24, 20, and this year finished 17-17.
Drew may have seen better days.
As for McCasland, he’s a terrific young coach. Alas, he, too, signed an extension, which was announced late Sunday evening. His deal extends him for six more seasons and is worth $31.5 million. The buyout is now $10 million.
So it may be time to aim a bit lower, and that’s alright. The ACC has always excelled at finding great young coaches on the rise. UNC hired Dean Smith when he was an assistant. Mike Krzyzewski was at Army; Jim Valvano was at Iona. Bobby Cremins was at Appalachian State, and Lefty Driesell and Terry Holland were both at Davidson before moving to Maryland and Virginia respectively.
So who is available who is young and promising?
- Takayo Siddle, UNCW
- Flynn Clayman, High Point
- Brooks Savage, ETSU
- Kimani Young, UConn
- LeVelle Moton, NCCU
Siddle and Clayman are both nearby. Siddle grew up in Eden and knows the historical ACC as only a native of the region could. He’s been quite successful at Wilmington, averaging 25.2 wins over the last five years and 27 in three of those, including the last two. That’s much harder to do at a school like Wilmington than it is at a bigger platform.
Clayman would be a risky hire, but if you weren’t impressed by High Point, you weren’t paying attention. That team was beautiful. Do you think UNC fans could pull for a team that played like that one did?
Hell, yes. Bonus: both are quite young, with Siddle, 39, and Clayman, 37.
Risky hires? Yes. Big risk, and potentially huge rewards.
Savage has been less successful at ETSU, but is well-regarded, and Young is widely expected to be. head coach soon. Bonus for Savage: his kids are named Waverly and Sloane. They’ll fit right in in Chapel Hill.
Siddle is probably the safest bet of these, but UNC will eat buffalo chips before it hires a coach from UNCW.
As for Moton, he has done a tremendous job at Central and might be hugely successful in Chapel Hill, given the increase in resources that he’d have.
We’d like to propose a more radical solution, one that we think most UNC fans could embrace or, at least, live with. However, it would take some tweaking to make this work.
Marcus Paige.
Yes, he’s young (just 32) and untested, but he’s well-regarded by his colleagues in the profession.
But his youth could work in his favor when it comes to persuading players to come to Chapel Hill, whether high school talents, or from Europe, where he played professionally, or from the transfer portal.
Hiring the right staff would be key, but the Family could help here. We could imagine hiring guys like Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace, in some capacity. Stackhouse was average at Vandy, but he knows the game and the UNC system, and his NBA reputation would help. As for Wallace, he has a brilliant mind for basketball that gets obscured by his hot-headed nature and his sometimes goofy demeanor. But that guy’s basketball IQ is very, very high
You could flesh out the staff with various other former Tar Heels if you chose, which would buy you some patience from the fans. Would Michael Jordan be willing to play some sort of a role? Possibly, if it meant keeping the Family going.
For Paige to succeed, you’d need two things most of all: first, a gifted and relentless GM. Second, an older coach who would serve as a consigliere of sorts. You know, a guy who is out of coaching, but who had some success. He wouldn’t need to spend a ton of time in the gym. Most of his work would be just getting Paige up to speed. In fact, it might be a 1-2 year part-time job, a chance for a guy to just dip his toe in a bit.
Ideally, it would be a local guy, who maybe even goes to the games a lot, and who really wants UNC to succeed.
Fortunately, there is a guy who fits this description precisely: Ol’ Roy Williams.
He’s never coaching again, but he knows the program, presumably holds Paige in high regard, and would have a chance to rebuild the Family in a way that could take it 20-30 years into the future.
Obviously, the risk would be high, but if it worked?
The reward could be staggering.
If Williams isn’t interested, maybe Stackhouse would be. But if not, here’s another guy who could play that role: former Kansas State coach Jerome Tang.
Yes, he flamed out at K-State, but Baylor’s decline started when he left for the Wildcats. As a coaching consigliere, he could help Paige get up and running and teach him things he must learn.
As you might have guessed, we think highly of Paige. Structure his early UNC staff well, and that guy might knock it out of the park.
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