14
Thursday, June 3, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.
Dickinson declares for NBA
Draft while retaining eligibility
Paul Nasr: The NCAA failed Michigan,
and softball as a whole
After
an
accolade-filled
freshman
season,
Hunter
Dickinson is testing the NBA
waters.
Wednesday
afternoon,
Dickinson
announced
that
he will enter the NBA Draft
while signing with an NCAA-
certified agent in order to
retain his college eligibility.
“It has always been my
dream to play in the NBA, so it
is important for me to gather
information
before
making
this
decision,”
Dickinson
posted on Twitter. “I look
forward to getting feedback
and I am excited for the next
steps of this process.”
The
7-foot-1
Dickinson
burst onto the scene as one of
the nation’s premier centers,
dominating the Big Ten as a
freshman. He averaged 14.1
points, 7.4 rebounds and 1.4
blocks per game across 28
appearances,
23
of
which
were starts. He was named
Second Team All-American,
First Team All-Big Ten and
captured Big Ten Freshman of
the Week honors a whopping
seven times.
Dickinson
becomes
the
second
Michigan
underclassmen
to
declare
for the draft, joining Franz
Wagner,
who
declared
last
month
following
his
sophomore
season.
While
Wagner is a projected lottery
pick,
Dickinson
has
not
appeared in many mock drafts.
Should Dickinson stay in
the NBA Draft, it would be
a major loss for Michigan.
With fifth-year senior center
Austin Davis not taking an
NCAA waiver to return for a
sixth season, the Wolverines’
depth at center is limited
to Dickinson and incoming
freshman
Moussa
Diabate,
who
projects
as
more
of
a power forward. In that
scenario,
it’s
likely
that
Michigan
would
need
to
search outside the program
for options.
Dickinson will have until
July 7th, ten days following
the NBA Draft Combine, to
withdraw from the draft.
Dickinson
proved
to
be
a major factor in many of
Michigan’s
signature
wins
this
season.
He
notched
11
points,
15
rebounds
and 5 blocks in a road win
over Wisconsin on Feb. 14
following
a
23-day
pause,
scored 22 points against Ohio
State in a top-five matchup on
Feb. 21, and limited National
Player of the Year frontrunner
Luka Garza to a season low 16
points in a Feb. 25 win over
Iowa. In the nation’s toughest
conference, Dickinson never
looked the part of a freshman
for the Wolverines.
Much of Dickinson’s success
can be attributed to Michigan
coach Juwan Howard. The
two frequently work together
on one-on-one film sessions,
and Howard’s past as a former
big man at both the collegiate
and professional level have
helped Dickinson.
Sleepless in Seattle.
For the Michigan softball team,
a long weekend in the Pacific
Northwest turned even longer in
the early hours of Monday morning.
After dealing with 14 innings of
NCAA Player of the Year finalist
Gabbie Plain, Michigan was sent
packing back to Ann Arbor. The
double–header
sweep
abruptly
ended the Wolverines’ promising
season, yet they were denied the
opportunity of a night’s stay in
Seattle before heading back home.
Instead, they had to endure
a near-instant turnaround. At 4
A.M. PST, Michigan was at Seattle-
Tacoma
International
Airport,
checking in its large travel party for
a 6 A.M. flight to Detroit.
After already feeling wronged
by being sent to the West Coast
instead of hosting a regional,
Michigan coach Carol Hutchins did
not appreciate the travel schedule
thrust upon her team. She took aim
at the NCAA in a series of tweets
from the airport.
Having
just
completed
her
37th season as the head softball
coach at Michigan, the winningest
coach in NCAA softball history is
no stranger to the NCAA and the
way it conducts its business. She
does not shy away from calling the
organization out either.
This past March, for instance,
disparities between the men’s
and women’s NCAA basketball
tournaments were laid bare on
social media. Hutchins and her
team made their voices heard in
the matter, directly criticizing the
NCAA for its failures.
Hutchins has become a titan
in activism for equality in sports
throughout her storied career.
Her Title IX fight has been well-
documented,
and
tremendous
strides have been made since
Hutchins
began
coaching
at
Michigan in 1985.
There is, however, a long way to
go.
Despite all the progress, there
continue to be roadblocks. When a
group of athletes lay it all on-the-
line in elimination softball, battling
late into the night, a 6 A.M. cross-
country commercial flight early the
next morning becomes one of those
roadblocks.
The Wolverines’ grievances with
the NCAA earlier in the week were
directed towards the organization’s
disregard for their body of work on
the softball diamond this season.
They were sent west, forced to
face an underseeded Washington
team that they would eventually
succumb to, and then sent home
immediately afterward.
“(The NCAA softball committee)
disrespected our entire conference.”
Hutchins said after the selection
show on May 16. “(They) absolutely
did not do a very good job.”
Hutchins believed the NCAA
did not truly know the teams it
was evaluating, an outcome she
foreshadowed earlier that week.
And her prophecy came true.
The COVID pandemic caused
major schedule changes in sports
throughout the NCAA landscape.
Cutting down on travel decreases
the amount of out-of-conference
games teams can play, and limits
their abilities to show postseason
NCAA committees how they stack
up to the rest of the nation when
seeding rolls around.
This became less of an issue in
sports like basketball. In basketball,
the NCAA has been refining its
NET rankings to aid committees
in team evaluations over the last
couple of seasons. With NET, teams
are evaluated using a far more
holistic approach, one that goes
beyond simple strength of schedule
via
opponents’
records
alone.
NET uses multifaceted analytics
to
provide
greater-accuracy
evaluations of teams, giving teams
that opted for more-local schedules
due to the pandemic a fair-shake in
tournament seeding.
That type of high-level, complex
data was unavailable for those
JARED GREENSPAN
Daily Sports Writer
PAUL NASR
Daily Sports Writer
MADDIE HINKLEY/Daily
The NCAA not only failed Michigan, but the sport of softball.
Read more at michigandaily.com
Read more at michigandaily.com
JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily
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