New Point guard.

Just passing along info. that I received today.

http://www.scout.com/player/190653-xavier-simpson?year=2015&s=162

this is absolutely mind boggling. I'm not sure how Beilein could recruit Cassius Winston for over two years (offered over a year ago) and then take Xavier Simpson at the last minute.

I have it on good authority that Simpson and UM had virtually ZERO contact with each other before August of this year. Also, I checked and he literally visited Wisconsin the week before and for the past few months he was considered a Wisconsin lock. The only other school in the mix was Illinois and they were a long shot.


I have no idea how this happened but November cant get here fast enough because I'll be holding my breath until he can sign is LOI then.


Cassius Winston will now end up at Sparty no question about it. If Simpson changes his mind before he signs his LOI then UM will be absolutely screwed. there will literally only be plan D and E guys left.


Hail, do you have any thoughts/insight/ideas on this?

I really like what I'm hearing about Simpson in terms of his leadership, defense, and passing shills AND free throw shooting!

his tape is impressive and he's a clone (phiscally) of winston. I'd just like to know what happened for Beilein to drop two years of work on Winston and let Simpson commit basically overnight.

sandyeggo_blue wrote:

this is absolutely mind boggling. I'm not sure how Beilein could recruit Cassius Winston for over two years (offered over a year ago) and then take Xavier Simpson at the last minute.

I have it on good authority that Simpson and UM had virtually ZERO contact with each other before August of this year. Also, I checked and he literally visited Wisconsin the week before and for the past few months he was considered a Wisconsin lock. The only other school in the mix was Illinois and they were a long shot.


I have no idea how this happened but November cant get here fast enough because I'll be holding my breath until he can sign is LOI then.


Cassius Winston will now end up at Sparty no question about it. If Simpson changes his mind before he signs his LOI then UM will be absolutely screwed. there will literally only be plan D and E guys left.


Hail, do you have any thoughts/insight/ideas on this?

Michigan had about a 50/50 shot at Winston and Beilein could have definitely played those odds. The problem is, Beilein has been burned by a handful of his top targets the past few years; James Blackmon in 2014, Derryck Thornton, Jaylen Brown and Luke Kennard in 2015, and Tyus Battle in 2016. Swinging and missing on the 50/50 chance with Winston could have been devastating from a recruiting standpoint.

Winston had been on campus like 10-15 times on unofficials. He had plenty of time to fall in love with the program. Simpson stopped by for one unofficial on his way home to Ohio following his Wisconsin visit. He fell in love with the staff and program. Michigan wasn't even one of his top 4 programs and was a huge Wisconsin lean, but loved what Beilein and company had to offer. Those are the players this staff wants and Beilein wasn't going to pass Simpson up on a 50/50 chance on Winston.


Simpson is an incredibly quick/crafty defender. He's definitely better than Winston defensively. He doesn't have a great shot and isn't the offensive player Winston is, but Simpson excels in scoring off the pick and roll. Michigan loves to run the pick and roll so it could be a very nice fit.

hailtoyourvictor wrote:

Michigan had about a 50/50 shot at Winston and Beilein could have definitely played those odds. The problem is, Beilein has been burned by a handful of his top targets the past few years; James Blackmon in 2014, Derryck Thornton, Jaylen Brown and Luke Kennard in 2015, and Tyus Battle in 2016. Swinging and missing on the 50/50 chance with Winston could have been devastating from a recruiting standpoint.

Winston had been on campus like 10-15 times on unofficials. He had plenty of time to fall in love with the program. Simpson stopped by for one unofficial on his way home to Ohio following his Wisconsin visit. He fell in love with the staff and program. Michigan wasn't even one of his top 4 programs and was a huge Wisconsin lean, but loved what Beilein and company had to offer. Those are the players this staff wants and Beilein wasn't going to pass Simpson up on a 50/50 chance on Winston.


Simpson is an incredibly quick/crafty defender. He's definitely better than Winston defensively. He doesn't have a great shot and isn't the offensive player Winston is, but Simpson excels in scoring off the pick and roll. Michigan loves to run the pick and roll so it could be a very nice fit.

I completely understand JB not wanting to play his 50/50 odds with Winston given the past targets that burned MICHIGAN. In fact I'm fine with it.

I guess what I didn't know was that Simpson stopped by to visit on his way home from Wisconsin. That makes total sense now. Before knowing that, the only thing I could think of was that Simpson  just wanted to play close to home.


I also just read that Simpson reached out to Bacari Alexander. I would have bet that it would have been the other way around and I would have been dead wrong.

Very cool story on how this all went down, if what I'm reading is actually how it happened.

Big win for JB and MICHIGAN basketball.

Thanks again for the scoop Hail. You clearly have the best BBall program knowledge on this board.

Yeah, it's incredibly sweet how it went down. Cassius Winston tweeted that Michigan was no longer an option on Monday. The basketball forum I post on went into meltdown mode about Beilein missing another target and how Michigan was going to have to settle for a Plan C point guard: Te'Jon Lucas (unranked) or Mike Bibby Jr. (unranked). Simpson was set to announce at 2:30pm Monday and it seemed like it was way too late for Michigan to get involved. Then BOOM, Michigan lands a consensus top 100 PG (as high as #55 on Scout). Those few hours were pretty fun. It went from feeling hopeless in the recruiting game to "Wow.... nice".

And thanks for the compliment. I don't post much because not many people here care about basketball in the offseason. Things pick up pretty nicely during the season, though.