The latest edition of INSIDE THE FORT, including plenty of football, football recruiting and basketball information …
Starting with football recruiting …
Most of the focus, of course, is on those who are left on the board, but there are some outstanding players already in the fold. One could be the future face of Michigan football, according to some very close to it.
“There are people in Schembechler Hall who believe Brandon Peters is going to be Jim Harbaugh’s next Andrew Luck,” one said in pointing out how impressed the U-M staff is with the standout quarterback’s play at Avon, Ind., High School.
Luck, of course, excelled under Harbaugh’s tutelage at Stanford and led that program to new heights before going to the NFL, where he’s excelled with the Indianapolis Colts.
The 6-4, 195-pound Peters is quickly moving up in the rankings (he’s Rivals.com’s No. 8 Pro Style passer and No. 242 senior nationally, but he’ll make a move). There are some outstanding quarterbacks in his class, but Harbaugh and his staff wouldn't trade him for any of them at this point.
That five-star defensive tackle Rashan Gary will come to campus this weekend doesn’t mean he’s ready to end his recruiting process, but it can’t be construed as anything other than a positive for Michigan. While the Wolverines were hoping to get an official visit late in the process, there was no guarantee he’d even take one. Sealing one of those trips early is as good as anything.
The staff is also confident that, if necessary toward the end of his recruitment (if the Wolverines are still in a battle for him), Gary con be convinced to take an unofficial visit in late January, as long as he has a free weekend between official visits elsewhere.
His recruitment is constantly evolving, though often in subtle ways. In the late summer, it had turned into a battle between Michigan and Auburn, with Muschamp v. Mattison being the Main Event in that war – all else being seen as close enough to even for Rashan and his mother. Will Muschamp’s Auburn defense is fading fast, and while that won’t be a kiss of death for the Tigers, it’s a boost to other programs.
It’s a different set of SEC Tigers that now poses a large threat in his recruitment: LSU. Gary and his mother took a trip to Baton Rouge essentially on a whim during the summer, and Les Miles’ crew offered and immediately leapt into the race. It’s easy to see why that group is appealing to a defensive lineman, with their history of shuttling them from high school to the pros. Michigan will have to counter that this week.
We posted earlier this week about other sales pitches Michigan is expecting to use on Gary when he’s in town, and the effectiveness of each of them will go a long way toward determining whether Michigan becomes a favorite, or simply remains a member of the pack.
Things went very well last week for another five-star, Fresno (Calif.) Clovis West outside linebacker Caleb Kelly. Michigan was able to build a bond with his mother, Valerie (this was her first trip to campus, and U-M played it strictly by-the-book at their satellite camp in Fresno over the summer, with no recruiting chat to parents), and show off the aspects of the program outside of football.
Kelly became a huge fan of D.J. Durkin over the weekend, and the U-M defensive coordinator/linebackers coach would be the assistant he deals with most in his career. On the flipside, he sounded lukewarm about head coach Jim Harbaugh. There’s no denying Harbaugh is a bit of an oddball, often to positive effect, but sometimes his personality takes some getting used to. That Kelly liked Durkin a lot and knows he’d spend more time with him than the head coach balances it out.
We’re still feeling a heavy Michigan-Oklahoma battle here. Whichever makes the entire Kelly camp feel most comfortable – and looks like the best path to early playing time and the pros – will have an upper hand.
We’re not expecting Boulder (Colo.) Fairview 2016 defensive end/Buck linebacker Carlo Kemp to commit to Michigan on his visit this weekend, but we do believe U-M leads. He has three more official visits yet to take (with dates scheduled for two of them), and he’ll likely give each school a chance before ending his recruitment.
If the trip this weekend goes well, and U-M continues to pursue him hard, the Maize and Blue should maintain the upper hand.
One prospect who wouldn’t surprise us with a commitment (though it’s not one we think the U-M staff would ecstatic about, they wouldn’t turn him away) is Covington (Ga.) Newton 2017 running back Kurt Taylor. The Wolverines are a favorite for him, and easily his highest-profile offer.
On the other hand, he is a kid who enjoys some of the attention of the recruiting process, so trying to build a bigger offer list might be in the cards, too. That would serve the Maize and Blue well while they wait to see hoe he develops over his junior season.
The tailbacks that have picked up recent offers are of a different variety – more quick-in-the-hole slashers than straight-ahead bruisers – so the style of running back(s) taken in the 2017 class can go in several different ways.
More recruiting …
There’s been some consternation on the board about a 2016 commitment who hasn’t been recruited by the new staff, especially as it relates to “them not just letting him know now” that they aren’t interested in maintaining his commitment.
The truth of the matter may be stranger than fiction, though. We’re hearing the prospect is the one avoiding that conversation with Michigan, not the other way around. It appears he knows that the bad news is inevitable, and has ducked the U-M staff when they’ve tried to relay it.
This move (or at least similar lines of thought by a prospect) are a little more common than you might think – but in the end, they’re a disservice to both parties.
The No. 1 tight end in 2015, Chris Clark, only lasted one game at UCLA and has now been officially released from the Bruins. He has set three official visits to Virginia, Pittsburgh, and N.C. State but if it were up to him, he’d end up at Michigan.
The Wolverine coaching staff however, has made it pretty clear that they’d rather not risk a roster spot and a 2016 scholarship on a player that hasn’t been able to live with his own decisions to this point. Clark has repeatedly expressed his interest in Michigan, even this morning, but the coaching staff is just not reciprocating.
Clark felt like he was pitched empty promises at UCLA and is very confident that he could flourish in Harbaugh’s system, especially after watching the tight ends in winged helmets through three games. Unfortunately for him, it’s not going to happen, and instead, he’s leaning toward playing in the ACC so he can be closer to home and still play at a high level.
Clark is trying to keep the door to Ann Arbor wedged open, but the Michigan coaches aren’t letting him in.
The Pipeline 9 is a familiar group these days made up of nine, in state prospects with Michigan offers. There are a couple of recruits in the group that are likely Michigan leans including St. Joseph defensive end Corey Malone-Hatcher and Detroit Cass Tech safety Jaylen Kelly-Powell, but none are leaning as hard as Warren De La Salle running back Allen Stritzinger.
The versatile running back is a three-star prospect and could actually play cornerback at the next level but Michigan running backs coach Tyrone Wheatley is the main contact for Stritzinger and he’s recruiting him as a running back. Stritzinger’s father is beyond high on Michigan and is actually encouraging his son to commit to the Wolverines.
Allen himself wants to take the process slowly, but his father insists that there isn’t a better mix of football and athletics than Michigan. Stritzinger is going to take his time as new teams get involved, including Notre Dame, but the Maize and Blue are in great shape to land him if he’s an immediate take.
Michigan doesn’t seem to be in great shape with any big-time running backs in the 2017 class, but they do appear to lead for Stritzinger and also for Taylor, who will be on campus this weekend.
****
To football now …
TheWolverine.com has an ongoing conversation with a former Jim Harbaugh player and his insights this week should excite fans over the possibilities of what’s to come.
Watching the UNLV game, and the consistency in which Michigan ran out of pro-sets, overloaded with tight ends/H-backs and fullbacks (often with just one wide receiver split out), the player wrote:
“It took Jim about two series to figure out that UNLV on their best day was no threat to Michigan. He probably figured that out before they even snapped the ball, but he didn’t want to get over-confident. But very quickly, he knew, and what you saw the rest of the day was one of the blandest game plans you’ll ever see out of Coach Harbaugh.
“He wasn’t going to show much at all because he wants BYU to get all discombobulated. Honestly, the closest game plan we’ve seen to what might be the real thing going forward was against Utah. Everything else has been a smokescreen.”
But in that Utah game, Michigan was slow out of the gate and wasn’t operating on all cylinders. The Wolverines’ still aren’t, but Harbaugh will account for that.
“I’ve never watched a football coach with a better understanding for what his personnel can do, and how quickly he moves on to the next game plan based off what he sees. He doesn’t give up on things that he believes will be successful, but he doesn’t force his offense to run plays they can’t execute,” the source said.
“He’ll do it a little bit here and there, build up confidence, and then he’ll unleash it when the team is ready to execute.”
The other thing this former player noticed was both a Harbaugh stubbornness and Harbaugh’s genius at work.
“How many power sweeps did they run against UNLV? Four? Five? I think it was six but the sixth was called back for a penalty. One by one, they got better and better at it,” he said. “Now why did he do that? To glorify his own ego that he knows better than everyone else that this will work?
“Absolutely not. He knows it’s going to work because the strategy is sound, because they executed it in practice, and because he and his staff – you can’t believe how good they are at this within a game – knew they could coach those guys up on the sideline and they would see improvement by the next series, by the next quarter, by the next half.
“And you know what, that’s exactly what happened. The last two they ran, I think they used [Drake Johnson] on both of them and they were one man away from going to the house. Those were blocked by the linemen perfectly.
“If the tight end gets to the last defender, the safety, and that’s a really hard block to make – and the coaches know it – but if he does it once, it’s a touchdown.
“Now, how does that play work in their favor this weekend? Because Coach Harbaugh is like a chess master, he’s always thinking one series, one game, one month ahead. I guarantee you we’re going to see variations on that power sweep this weekend. I think we’ll see last week’s iteration just to show that to BYU early, like, ‘Hey, all that work you put in this week to stop this, well here it is. And here it comes.’
“And then you run it again, and then the next time, something is different about it but the defense doesn’t know what, and then something is different about it even more, maybe it’s a fake, maybe it’s a reverse, maybe it’s a trick play, but something is coming because that’s how he operates.
“Everything he devises has multiple goals: to be successful on that play, to be successful later in the game because of that play, and to be successful in the next game or later in the season because of something he’s shown defenses.
“I’m very excited to watch them play this week and next and the week after that because wheels have been set in motion. I watch it and the next quarter, there’s a slight tweak and I just can’t stop laughing because I can see the machinery working in his head.
“He’s not always going to be successful. Sometimes defenses make the right call, someone makes a great play, his own offense fails to execute, but I hope Michigan fans appreciate what they’re watching because Coach Harbaugh is one of those rare coaches that is so good at what he does that he can think two, three, five, 10 moves ahead without it impacting the potential of the play at hand. It’s incredible.”
****
Finishing with basketball and recruiting …
We continue to hear very good things about the 2015-16 team, and how deep it could be. Redshirt freshman big man D.J. Wilson continues to make a move and will be hard to keep off the floor, some close to it have said. If redshirt sophomore Williams college transfer Duncan Robinson plays in games the way he’s played in practice (where again, he’s broken all of Nik Stauskas’ shooting records), he’s going to be a potential All-Big Ten player down the line.
German frosh Moritz Wagner is an even better shooter than expected, and he is going to be a force at the four (in time).
Michigan will go 10 deep at times, which means someone who might be capable isn’t going to play. That always opens the door for some attrition, and without speculating on who it might be … well, we do expect some next year.
That’s why the door isn’t completely closed on 2016 recruiting. U-M will continue to evaluate players and potential prep standouts, including Cleveland Beachwood’s Maishe Dailey (6-5, 180). We first wrote about Dailey this summer when head coach John Beilein went down and saw him. His film is intriguing, to say the least.
And U-M continues to watch him closely. Dailey was on campus recently, and he’ll be a potential spring or prep addition. It’s clear they really like him, much more than his two-star rating. He’s been hurt quite a bit (and was for his junior and spring AAU seasons), so it stands to reason he’d be one of Ohio’s best-kept secrets.
As of now, Michigan would have 14 players on the roster next year, which can’t happen. Onsted, Mich., three-star big man Austin Davis could prep (as we’ve said), but again, attrition seems likely. It’s clear that the U-M staff is still recruiting 2016 in addition to 2017 and 2018.
We expect at least one, maybe two offers to go out this weekend. Utah four-star Brendan Bailey will go on a mission and probably be a 2018 when it’s all said and done, but U-M will likely try to seal him up on his visit this weekend. He loves Michigan, but his team has ties to Gonzaga (the camp there) … they’re the primary competition.
Bailey is Rivals.com’s No. 48 senior nationally.
Milwaukee Rufus King’s Jordan Poole could get the first 2017 offer. Assistant LaVall Jordan and head coach John Beilein have paid the 6-4 shooting guard plenty of attention … Rivals.com’s No. 104 junior is a great fit and is very high on the Wolverines. He’ll be in town this weekend, too, as we reported last week.
Watch for reports on the visitors early next week or Sunday.
Starting with football recruiting …
Most of the focus, of course, is on those who are left on the board, but there are some outstanding players already in the fold. One could be the future face of Michigan football, according to some very close to it.
“There are people in Schembechler Hall who believe Brandon Peters is going to be Jim Harbaugh’s next Andrew Luck,” one said in pointing out how impressed the U-M staff is with the standout quarterback’s play at Avon, Ind., High School.
Luck, of course, excelled under Harbaugh’s tutelage at Stanford and led that program to new heights before going to the NFL, where he’s excelled with the Indianapolis Colts.
The 6-4, 195-pound Peters is quickly moving up in the rankings (he’s Rivals.com’s No. 8 Pro Style passer and No. 242 senior nationally, but he’ll make a move). There are some outstanding quarterbacks in his class, but Harbaugh and his staff wouldn't trade him for any of them at this point.
That five-star defensive tackle Rashan Gary will come to campus this weekend doesn’t mean he’s ready to end his recruiting process, but it can’t be construed as anything other than a positive for Michigan. While the Wolverines were hoping to get an official visit late in the process, there was no guarantee he’d even take one. Sealing one of those trips early is as good as anything.
The staff is also confident that, if necessary toward the end of his recruitment (if the Wolverines are still in a battle for him), Gary con be convinced to take an unofficial visit in late January, as long as he has a free weekend between official visits elsewhere.
His recruitment is constantly evolving, though often in subtle ways. In the late summer, it had turned into a battle between Michigan and Auburn, with Muschamp v. Mattison being the Main Event in that war – all else being seen as close enough to even for Rashan and his mother. Will Muschamp’s Auburn defense is fading fast, and while that won’t be a kiss of death for the Tigers, it’s a boost to other programs.
It’s a different set of SEC Tigers that now poses a large threat in his recruitment: LSU. Gary and his mother took a trip to Baton Rouge essentially on a whim during the summer, and Les Miles’ crew offered and immediately leapt into the race. It’s easy to see why that group is appealing to a defensive lineman, with their history of shuttling them from high school to the pros. Michigan will have to counter that this week.
We posted earlier this week about other sales pitches Michigan is expecting to use on Gary when he’s in town, and the effectiveness of each of them will go a long way toward determining whether Michigan becomes a favorite, or simply remains a member of the pack.
Things went very well last week for another five-star, Fresno (Calif.) Clovis West outside linebacker Caleb Kelly. Michigan was able to build a bond with his mother, Valerie (this was her first trip to campus, and U-M played it strictly by-the-book at their satellite camp in Fresno over the summer, with no recruiting chat to parents), and show off the aspects of the program outside of football.
Kelly became a huge fan of D.J. Durkin over the weekend, and the U-M defensive coordinator/linebackers coach would be the assistant he deals with most in his career. On the flipside, he sounded lukewarm about head coach Jim Harbaugh. There’s no denying Harbaugh is a bit of an oddball, often to positive effect, but sometimes his personality takes some getting used to. That Kelly liked Durkin a lot and knows he’d spend more time with him than the head coach balances it out.
We’re still feeling a heavy Michigan-Oklahoma battle here. Whichever makes the entire Kelly camp feel most comfortable – and looks like the best path to early playing time and the pros – will have an upper hand.
We’re not expecting Boulder (Colo.) Fairview 2016 defensive end/Buck linebacker Carlo Kemp to commit to Michigan on his visit this weekend, but we do believe U-M leads. He has three more official visits yet to take (with dates scheduled for two of them), and he’ll likely give each school a chance before ending his recruitment.
If the trip this weekend goes well, and U-M continues to pursue him hard, the Maize and Blue should maintain the upper hand.
One prospect who wouldn’t surprise us with a commitment (though it’s not one we think the U-M staff would ecstatic about, they wouldn’t turn him away) is Covington (Ga.) Newton 2017 running back Kurt Taylor. The Wolverines are a favorite for him, and easily his highest-profile offer.
On the other hand, he is a kid who enjoys some of the attention of the recruiting process, so trying to build a bigger offer list might be in the cards, too. That would serve the Maize and Blue well while they wait to see hoe he develops over his junior season.
The tailbacks that have picked up recent offers are of a different variety – more quick-in-the-hole slashers than straight-ahead bruisers – so the style of running back(s) taken in the 2017 class can go in several different ways.
More recruiting …
There’s been some consternation on the board about a 2016 commitment who hasn’t been recruited by the new staff, especially as it relates to “them not just letting him know now” that they aren’t interested in maintaining his commitment.
The truth of the matter may be stranger than fiction, though. We’re hearing the prospect is the one avoiding that conversation with Michigan, not the other way around. It appears he knows that the bad news is inevitable, and has ducked the U-M staff when they’ve tried to relay it.
This move (or at least similar lines of thought by a prospect) are a little more common than you might think – but in the end, they’re a disservice to both parties.
The No. 1 tight end in 2015, Chris Clark, only lasted one game at UCLA and has now been officially released from the Bruins. He has set three official visits to Virginia, Pittsburgh, and N.C. State but if it were up to him, he’d end up at Michigan.
The Wolverine coaching staff however, has made it pretty clear that they’d rather not risk a roster spot and a 2016 scholarship on a player that hasn’t been able to live with his own decisions to this point. Clark has repeatedly expressed his interest in Michigan, even this morning, but the coaching staff is just not reciprocating.
Clark felt like he was pitched empty promises at UCLA and is very confident that he could flourish in Harbaugh’s system, especially after watching the tight ends in winged helmets through three games. Unfortunately for him, it’s not going to happen, and instead, he’s leaning toward playing in the ACC so he can be closer to home and still play at a high level.
Clark is trying to keep the door to Ann Arbor wedged open, but the Michigan coaches aren’t letting him in.
The Pipeline 9 is a familiar group these days made up of nine, in state prospects with Michigan offers. There are a couple of recruits in the group that are likely Michigan leans including St. Joseph defensive end Corey Malone-Hatcher and Detroit Cass Tech safety Jaylen Kelly-Powell, but none are leaning as hard as Warren De La Salle running back Allen Stritzinger.
The versatile running back is a three-star prospect and could actually play cornerback at the next level but Michigan running backs coach Tyrone Wheatley is the main contact for Stritzinger and he’s recruiting him as a running back. Stritzinger’s father is beyond high on Michigan and is actually encouraging his son to commit to the Wolverines.
Allen himself wants to take the process slowly, but his father insists that there isn’t a better mix of football and athletics than Michigan. Stritzinger is going to take his time as new teams get involved, including Notre Dame, but the Maize and Blue are in great shape to land him if he’s an immediate take.
Michigan doesn’t seem to be in great shape with any big-time running backs in the 2017 class, but they do appear to lead for Stritzinger and also for Taylor, who will be on campus this weekend.
****
To football now …
TheWolverine.com has an ongoing conversation with a former Jim Harbaugh player and his insights this week should excite fans over the possibilities of what’s to come.
Watching the UNLV game, and the consistency in which Michigan ran out of pro-sets, overloaded with tight ends/H-backs and fullbacks (often with just one wide receiver split out), the player wrote:
“It took Jim about two series to figure out that UNLV on their best day was no threat to Michigan. He probably figured that out before they even snapped the ball, but he didn’t want to get over-confident. But very quickly, he knew, and what you saw the rest of the day was one of the blandest game plans you’ll ever see out of Coach Harbaugh.
“He wasn’t going to show much at all because he wants BYU to get all discombobulated. Honestly, the closest game plan we’ve seen to what might be the real thing going forward was against Utah. Everything else has been a smokescreen.”
But in that Utah game, Michigan was slow out of the gate and wasn’t operating on all cylinders. The Wolverines’ still aren’t, but Harbaugh will account for that.
“I’ve never watched a football coach with a better understanding for what his personnel can do, and how quickly he moves on to the next game plan based off what he sees. He doesn’t give up on things that he believes will be successful, but he doesn’t force his offense to run plays they can’t execute,” the source said.
“He’ll do it a little bit here and there, build up confidence, and then he’ll unleash it when the team is ready to execute.”
The other thing this former player noticed was both a Harbaugh stubbornness and Harbaugh’s genius at work.
“How many power sweeps did they run against UNLV? Four? Five? I think it was six but the sixth was called back for a penalty. One by one, they got better and better at it,” he said. “Now why did he do that? To glorify his own ego that he knows better than everyone else that this will work?
“Absolutely not. He knows it’s going to work because the strategy is sound, because they executed it in practice, and because he and his staff – you can’t believe how good they are at this within a game – knew they could coach those guys up on the sideline and they would see improvement by the next series, by the next quarter, by the next half.
“And you know what, that’s exactly what happened. The last two they ran, I think they used [Drake Johnson] on both of them and they were one man away from going to the house. Those were blocked by the linemen perfectly.
“If the tight end gets to the last defender, the safety, and that’s a really hard block to make – and the coaches know it – but if he does it once, it’s a touchdown.
“Now, how does that play work in their favor this weekend? Because Coach Harbaugh is like a chess master, he’s always thinking one series, one game, one month ahead. I guarantee you we’re going to see variations on that power sweep this weekend. I think we’ll see last week’s iteration just to show that to BYU early, like, ‘Hey, all that work you put in this week to stop this, well here it is. And here it comes.’
“And then you run it again, and then the next time, something is different about it but the defense doesn’t know what, and then something is different about it even more, maybe it’s a fake, maybe it’s a reverse, maybe it’s a trick play, but something is coming because that’s how he operates.
“Everything he devises has multiple goals: to be successful on that play, to be successful later in the game because of that play, and to be successful in the next game or later in the season because of something he’s shown defenses.
“I’m very excited to watch them play this week and next and the week after that because wheels have been set in motion. I watch it and the next quarter, there’s a slight tweak and I just can’t stop laughing because I can see the machinery working in his head.
“He’s not always going to be successful. Sometimes defenses make the right call, someone makes a great play, his own offense fails to execute, but I hope Michigan fans appreciate what they’re watching because Coach Harbaugh is one of those rare coaches that is so good at what he does that he can think two, three, five, 10 moves ahead without it impacting the potential of the play at hand. It’s incredible.”
****
Finishing with basketball and recruiting …
We continue to hear very good things about the 2015-16 team, and how deep it could be. Redshirt freshman big man D.J. Wilson continues to make a move and will be hard to keep off the floor, some close to it have said. If redshirt sophomore Williams college transfer Duncan Robinson plays in games the way he’s played in practice (where again, he’s broken all of Nik Stauskas’ shooting records), he’s going to be a potential All-Big Ten player down the line.
German frosh Moritz Wagner is an even better shooter than expected, and he is going to be a force at the four (in time).
Michigan will go 10 deep at times, which means someone who might be capable isn’t going to play. That always opens the door for some attrition, and without speculating on who it might be … well, we do expect some next year.
That’s why the door isn’t completely closed on 2016 recruiting. U-M will continue to evaluate players and potential prep standouts, including Cleveland Beachwood’s Maishe Dailey (6-5, 180). We first wrote about Dailey this summer when head coach John Beilein went down and saw him. His film is intriguing, to say the least.
And U-M continues to watch him closely. Dailey was on campus recently, and he’ll be a potential spring or prep addition. It’s clear they really like him, much more than his two-star rating. He’s been hurt quite a bit (and was for his junior and spring AAU seasons), so it stands to reason he’d be one of Ohio’s best-kept secrets.
As of now, Michigan would have 14 players on the roster next year, which can’t happen. Onsted, Mich., three-star big man Austin Davis could prep (as we’ve said), but again, attrition seems likely. It’s clear that the U-M staff is still recruiting 2016 in addition to 2017 and 2018.
We expect at least one, maybe two offers to go out this weekend. Utah four-star Brendan Bailey will go on a mission and probably be a 2018 when it’s all said and done, but U-M will likely try to seal him up on his visit this weekend. He loves Michigan, but his team has ties to Gonzaga (the camp there) … they’re the primary competition.
Bailey is Rivals.com’s No. 48 senior nationally.
Milwaukee Rufus King’s Jordan Poole could get the first 2017 offer. Assistant LaVall Jordan and head coach John Beilein have paid the 6-4 shooting guard plenty of attention … Rivals.com’s No. 104 junior is a great fit and is very high on the Wolverines. He’ll be in town this weekend, too, as we reported last week.
Watch for reports on the visitors early next week or Sunday.
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