Melanie Maxwell/Ann Arbor.com
The Question:
What it says in the title duh. Note: other than Drake Johnson, who was obviously the inspiration for this.
The Responses:
Ace: Two years ago, it was hard to imagine Caris LeVert would make a list like this. After forcing John Beilein to burn his redshirt and contributing to the 2012-13 title game squad, he played an effective second banana to Nik Stauskas on a 2013-14 team that nearly made it back to the Final Four and set the (since surpassed) KenPom standard for offensive efficiency. The blueprint was there for LeVert to step into Stauskas’ role as a junior, play at or near an All-American level, lead a deep tourney run, and then face a difficult decision about whether to turn pro early.
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| Lucy will let him get back on the court next time, Charlie Brown. [Bryan Fuller] |
Instead, Michigan struggled out of the gate in 2014-15, suffering a few humiliating defeats as the team failed to gel around LeVert, who struggled to maintain his sophomore-year efficiency. As Michigan survived a last-second, game-tying attempt by Northwestern at Crisler in mid-January, LeVert went down clutching his foot while the rest of the team celebrated. On a seemingly innocuous play, he’d suffered a season-ending injury; without him, Michigan missed the postseason, and LeVert returned to try it again his senior year.
LeVert looked fantastic, putting up All-American-level numbers as the team’s centerpiece, and Michigan made it through non-conference play with a quality win over Texas and no bad losses. LeVert was poised to lead his team to a decent NCAA seed while cementing his standing as a first-round NBA prospect. Then, in the waning moments of the conference opener at Illinois, it happened again: LeVert stepped on a defender’s foot, rolled his ankle, and came up limping.
[Continue at THE JUMP even though you don’t want to, because you know you should, even if it’s painful. If you make it to the end there are 24 minutes of Denard highlights]
LeVert’s return seemed to be right around the corner for weeks, but when he finally stepped on the court again six weeks later against Purdue, something was clearly wrong. He limped through 11 ineffective first-half minutes, sat out the second half of a Michigan upset, and never played again for the Wolverines. Even though Michigan made the tournament, LeVert’s absence left a glaring hole that Zak Irvin and Derrick Walton couldn’t fill.
As he sat on the bench, LeVert received wholly unfair criticism from fans—none of whom knew the extent of his injury—for supposedly valuing his draft stock more than his current team, or lacking toughness, or various other BS. His attempt to return to the court set back his recovery, and after offseason surgery, he’s unlikely to be able to audition for NBA teams before June’s draft, where he’s now projected as a fringe first-rounder instead of the lottery prospect he was heading into his junior year.
LeVert may very well have a better NBA career than college career. That’s in part because his game should translate well to the pros; it’s also because his last two seasons in Ann Arbor went distressingly far off course.
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Seth: The gods' conspiracy against Butch's son Troy Woolflolk was so overt that The Shredder caught one of them in the act.
Tloy spent most of the 2006 recruiting cycle at the end of panicky clauses about future CB depth that started "Michigan only has..." Skinny and relatively late in his growth curve (5’10/176 as a recruit, 6’0/191 when he graduated), he should have been afforded the time to grow into a late career starter. Instead he was forced to burn his redshirt in The Horror thanks to Chris Richards orchestrating the St. Paddy's Day Massacre.
Then Lloyd retired, and Whoolfolk was saddled for the bulk of his career with arguably the worst position coach at Michigan since those were recruited from the English Department. As the secondary crumbled it became obvious that Michigan needed at least three Wilforks to plug all the holes. So of course rather than let him fill one and get better at it, his coaches tossed Tray all over the place in a nonsensical 3-3-5 he was expected to be leading. Meanwhile the local media took his tweets out of context, mangled his name, and tried to get his program dismantled over stretching exercises.
Going into 2010 Woorlfolk was easily the most important player on the defense, and was certainly in the best shape of his life…when he suffered a freak ankle injury. (Revisit the nadir of the RR era if you dare). Not only did that all but cripple his coaches’ hopes of winning enough games to keep their jobs, but after they finished Wroollfork's surgery for a dislocated ankle and tendon damage, they realized the bone was broken, and required a second surgery to fix it! He spent a year in bed, watching all that hard-earned muscle atrophy.
Butch Jr. took it all in stride, working his way back just in time to leave Game 1 on a cart. The question then became where to play him once he was himself again by mid-season. Boundary corner was the best fit, but Woolkorft’s own roommate, J.T. Floyd, went from disaster to unquestionably good in the single greatest one-year turnaround ever. Field corner was fine with star freshman Blake Countess. Free safety found an answer in converted spur Thomas Gordon. So where do you put him? Oh of course: in a car accident.
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Adam Glanzman/MGoBlog
Adam: Devin Gardner enrolled…
Excuse me.
AAAARRRGGGHGHHHH!!!!!!!
Devin Gardner enrolled at Michigan in 2010 as a composite top-100 player with the arm and legs to flourish in Rich Rodriguez's offense. He graduated five years later having suffered through three offensive coordinators, two position switches, one medical redshirt, and an assemblage of bodies that we called an "offensive line" in 2013 out of convention.
Gardner passed seven times and rushed seven times as a part of the offense he was recruited for before a back injury ended his season. Enter Brady Hoke and with him the incorrigible Al Borges. Gardner languished on the bench most of 2011 before switching to receiver for the 2012 season, eventually switching back to quarterback after The Very Sad Thing at Nebraska.
He looked excellent through the last five games of 2012 and the first two games of 2013 before a coordinator who thought running your head into a wall 10 times to open up one 30-yard completion was a tremendous strategy and an offensive line that finished 112th in adjusted sack rate (102nd on standard downs and 107th on passing downs) finally caught up to him.
In 2014 Gardner again had to learn a new offense. He was injured most of the season, lost his starting job at the end of September for dubious reasons before winning it back a week later, and generally looked like a shell of his former self, passing for almost two fewer yards per attempt.
All that bad luck and his worst break may not even be something that happened but instead what didn't happen; it's hard to see Gardner not having a resurgent season under Jim Harbaugh's tutelage, let alone what might have happened if Harbaugh was hired in 2011. Poor damn Devin Gardner.
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Brian: Staying with Hoke-era follies, nobody got smacked in the face by fate as badly as Blake Countess did when Michigan moved to a man-press system in Hoke's last year. Countess was All Big Ten as a crafty zone corner who loved to bait opposing quarterbacks into bad idea throws, but he was never an elite athlete.
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| Crafty zone dudes didn’t really fit in grabby athlete era of Big Ten corners. [Fuller] |
Michigan decided to get more aggressive on defense at the same instant they moved Roy Manning, a linebacker who coached linebackers (and running back at Cincinnati) to cornerbacks as Hoke shuffled deck chairs on the Titanic. In retrospect the problems with this should have been obvious when early-enrolled freshman Freddy Canteen smoked Countess in that year's spring game, but he was All Big Ten. At the time we got hyped about Canteen; three years later nobody really knows what position Canteen is playing.
There were no illusions left after Notre Dame's Will Fuller was more or less completely uncovered for four quarters in the disaster that was the (to date) final Michigan-Notre Dame game. Michigan was committed to the new scheme, though, and Countess was incapable of playing it against even guys way less scary than Fuller. That's how 400 passing yards ceded to Rutgers happens.
Things got so bad that Countess decided to grad transfer despite seeming like a starting cornerback at last year's spring game. Maybe he was put off by Wayne Lyons coming in; Lyons barely played. Countess started for Auburn, which is mostly relevant for the purposes of this post because of one Leonard Fournette.
Countess was only eligible to play in that game because he tore his ACL covering a punt against Alabama. When the universe uses your extra year of eligibility to put you in front of Leonard Fournette as a 180-pound safety, you know it's out for blood.
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BiSB: We tend to think of snakebitten players as the ones who didn't pan out. But I'd argue that the most snakebitten player in recent Michigan history was one of the most successful and beloved: Denard Robinson. Denard came in as raw athlete that most schools would have stuck at running back or corner, and within a year of working his ass off and earned the starting job. His true sophomore season was a revelation; he scored 32 total touchdowns and averaged 329 total yards per game. He was a Heisman candidate for much of the season. He was the smiling face that was going to lead Michigan out of the brief but uncomfortably deep chasm.
Then, The Process sent spread-father Rich Rodriguez out of town and brought in ProStyleManBall-advocates Brady Hoke and Al Borges. With a monster season on his resume and an available redshirt in his pocket, Denard could have transferred to any of a dozen spread-happy schools and presumably consumed the Earth like the delightful demon-god that he was. But instead, he spent his junior season under center in a nonsensical offense. He chose to be a loyal songbird in a cage.
By the next season, Michigan had kiiiiiiinda figured out how to use Denard, and despite some ugliness against Alabama and Notre Dame, Michigan was 3-0 in the Big Ten, and looked like they were in good shape to win the Leaderlegend Division. And then…
Upchurch
Somewhere in the depths of my Saved Drafts folder there is an unfinished Denard requiem piece entitled “Moonlight Graham.” Denard saved Michigan’s 2011 season, to our boundless joy and probably his own personal football detriment. He ended his career as a running back on a mediocre offense. He never seemed bitter (though the idea of “Bitter Denard Robinson” doesn’t seem possible), but despite accounting for over 10,700 yards and 91 touchdowns, and countless “holy crap did you see that” moments, the depths of “what if” run as deep with him as with anyone.