Weekend Deathmatch: Dawkins Versus MAAR Versus Everybody

Michigan is bringing in not one but two basketball recruits this weekend as they seek to fill the holes NBA attrition has wrought on the roster. Michigan now has two slots open and possibly a third depending on the status of Austin Hatch. They will seek to fill at least one spot, obviously. A second late offer is less likely, but if you can get a transfer like Eron Harris…

…you get a guy like Eron Harris. Ditto Sean Obi. Guys with 31% DREB rates don't grow on trees.

But neither of those guys is on campus this weekend. Two gentlemen are.

Muhammad Ali Abdur-Rahkman

UMHoops put together a scouting video from an array of clips available on the internet. The first four minutes, which all come from one high school game, is the most illuminating:

Try to remember as you are watching this that it is high school and in high school many, many shots are flat-out terrible. Googling Aubrey Dawkins for the next section I discovered that his high school career ended when his team scored five points in the first half and ended up going down 35-25.

Anyway: MAAR's shot selection here would be terrible except he's in high school and the shots he's getting off are probably better than wide open looks from a number of his teammates. And he puts down a lot of his terrible, terrible shots. It's the open ones, whether it's at the free throw line or generally, that seem to need work. As UMHoops notes, one of the games here features five threes from MAAR, which is a major outlier for a guy who hit 1.9 a game.

Aubrey Dawkins

I do not want to guess at the collective net worth of the families represented here

Unfortunately there's not any equivalent video of Dawkins out there where you can see the overall shape of his game. There are only the highlight videos in which he never misses and dunks everything.

In them you do get some information. Dawkins has a diversity to his layup game, capable of getting off shots quickly when he gets to the rim from a variety of angles. His three point stroke is pretty high and decently fast. And he has impressive hops. Not GRIII level, but he'd probably be the most athletic dude on the team. He has that airborne pause you see sometimes where the guy takes his time dunking because he can. He can be an above the rim guy; MAAR is not.

Like many guys available late, Dawkins took a prep year after his high school career. That paid off with a scholarship offer to Dayton recently and now bigger outfits are sniffing around. As of last year, Dawkins was a two-star to ESPN who was Just A Shooter on the college level:

If Dawkins wants to take his game to another level, he must get better handling pressure while dribbling. His handle can get sloppy when defenders get into him-especially when he goes left. His jump shot is solid, but as he gets stronger it needs to get more consistent for the scoring guard position.

He's added a crossover to his game, it seems; he's probably more Hardaway than Stauskas or LeVert in terms of ability to create shots inside the rim.

While Dawkins took a prep year, MAAR's also older, so that's a wash.

New Challengers Appear

you're supposed to put them on your eyes bro

On the other hand, Michigan might be amenable to a fifth-year transfer who would not interfere with whatever they're planning for the roster down the road. When Ace took a look at available fifth years the pickings were slim; they've just gotten less so:

USC’s leading scorer, Byron Wesley, is has left the program because he was uncomfortable over his role next season, according to sources close to the situation.

Wesley, who could not be reached for comment, is considering Big Ten schools Indiana and Michigan and should be immediately eligible since he expects to graduate from USC this summer.

The 6'5" Wesley was impressively efficient for a miserable USC outfit, hitting 72/50/34 from the floor with high usage and taking care of the ball as the Trojans' undisputed go-to guy.

The question is whether Michigan can offer him the kind of role he wants with LeVert and Irvin slotted into the 2 and 3. This is a guy coming off 32 minutes a game; he's not going to want to be a 20 minute backup, and incredibly that's probably what he would be even after Michigan got raided by the NBA unless Irvin gets a lot of minutes at the 4. I know he was just a freshman but that seems like a pretty bad idea to have a guy with a DREB rate south of Nnanna Egwu playing your second-biggest spot on the floor.

If Wesley was three inches taller they'd be all over him; as it is, Sam Webb mentioned on WTKA that chatter about Wesley is coming from California, not locally. One dollar says Wesley's camp knows Nik Stauskas is NBA-bound but not much else about Michigan's situation.

Cole Huff is a large man who can stroke threes, but he's no center

A gentleman who is three inches taller is expressing similar transfer interest. He is Nevada F Cole Huff: 

No visit dates have been set yet for Cole Huff but Dayton Iowa creighton Vanderbilt Michigan are the schools he's most interested in

— clint parks (@Brotherhood05) April 18, 2014

FWIW, Huff was restricted from transferring basically anywhere on the West Coast, a restriction later lifted—but before that tweet from his AAU coach.

The catch here is that the stated reason for Huff's transfer was to play the 3, which he thinks is his NBA position. This is not likely to happen at Michigan, but if the real reason is "I hate my coach" or "I want to play in the tournament" or something then M would have a real shot.

At first blush, Huff looks like a good fit, an 82/50/40 shooter at 6'8" with a low turnover rate and a pretty good 14% DREB rate. Huff is in the same eligibility spot as Eron Harris: he'd have to sit next year and then would have two to play. At 205 he is probably a 3/4 at Michigan except in desperate situations, so his attractiveness depends largely on how plausible Mark Donnal is at the 5.

The fit is also less than ideal here since Huff has to sit out a year and duplicates a number of skills already on Michigan's roster in a way a rebound vacuum like Sean Obi does not. But Obi might go off the board to Duke this weekend and Michigan hasn't been involved just yet, so perhaps they perceive their needs differently than they look from the outside.