Livers

He seems to look and play a lot bigger this year.

And, once again a great team defensive effort. Somebody will beat them, but this is a hot group right now.

Was thinking about that. Livers and Poole played important minutes last year. I almost don't even think of them as Sophs.

Brooks also got a few minutes last year.

Teske is the real change. He doesn't even move or look like a 7 footer. Until he gets up to block a shot. He's a relentless defender. Even got on the floor and drew a foul in the first half.

Matthews has also made a big jump.

We're going to lose a few. Hopefully no more than 4. But at this point I think we are/could be better than last year.

Agree with both your assessments, dwoody and Joe.  And augment those players' marked improvements with the addition of [pleasantly] surprisingly-talented Iggy, AND of course the best coach in CBB, and it's awfully hard NOT to be fever-pitch excited about this team...

I think Livers is playing bigger because they asked him to. What I mean by that is, at no point last year (at least to my recollection) was there as scheme in which Michigan went small and played the 4 as a 5 on purpose as opposed to a means.

Mo was the obvious reason why but I think this off-season JB had Livers work to gain weight and play bigger with the understanding that there would be times early and often that they would go small ball, schematically speaking.

I think that's in part because they didn't know the type of play that they were going to get out Teske and Davis (which IMO has been very serviceable so far) and also they did know that they would have something special with Iggy.

Plus I think JB saw enough from Livers last year to know that he could handle it.

JMO. I could be way off. But it's a good topic for discussion if anyone else sees it differently.

It was interesting to me that when Air Force went zone and we were really struggling, JB put Livers in the middle where he could draw attention and either shoot, wheel to the basket or pass to the wing. That is something Teske can't really do. Given that we have shown some weakness against the zone (as in our 2 first games of the year), that would be an important counter to develop.