Michigan is once again facing an early mass exodus from a trio of its players to the NBA, with freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis, redshirt junior guard Charles Matthews and sophomore guard Jordan Poole all deciding to remain in the 2019 draft.
Players departing school early for the pros became a common trend under former head coach John Beilein, though three leaving in one season occurred only one other time during his tenure (after the 2014 campaign, when Mitch McGary, Glenn Robinson and Nik Stauskas all left early).
During his 12 years on the job, Beilein saw a total of 12 players depart early (including this year's trio), with six of the 12 leaving after their sophomore campaign, and Brazdeikis even exiting following his freshman season.
Beilein obviously won't be around next season to coach the replacements, but did an outstanding job of replacing the talent he lost early each time he was faced with the issue.
Yes, there was often a drop off the following year at each respective vacated position, but seldom was there a significant one.
To further exemplify that, we've taken a look at the 12 athletes who left Michigan early under Beilein, and how each of their replacements fared the following year.
Note: there hasn't always been a clear answer as to who each exiting player's official replacement has been the following season, so we took our best guess on each.
Filling the shoes of someone who leaves early for the NBA obviously puts plenty of pressure on each respective newcomer the following year, but almost every U-M replacement player has performed incredibly well in that role.
In fact, of the nine replacements listed on the chart above, seven of them posted above average statistics, while one of the two who didn't (Derrick Walton in 2014), performed admirably replacing Trey Burke on Michigan's 2014 squad, playing a key role in U-M's outright Big Ten title and Elite Eight appearance.
Ricky Doyle was the lone replacement who underwhelmed on the chart, only averaging 6.1 points and 3.2 rebounds per game in 2015, while taking over for Mitch McGary (who actually competed in just eight contests in 2014 due to injury).
The case could also be made that two of the replacements on the table were actually upgrades over their predecessors (Zak Irvin over Glenn Robinson and Charles Matthews over D.J. Wilson), as both Irvin and Matthews (in 2015 and 2018, respectively) posted better statistics than the players they took over for.
The question now becomes who replaces Brazdeikis, Matthews and Poole in 2019-20, and how successful those replacements are under new head coach Juwan Howard.
The reason it's so difficult to predict who those new athletes will be is because U-M still has three open scholarships to fill, which may all wind up coming by way of grad transfers.
Until those open slots are occupied (or at least two of them), one must assume that sophomore guard David DeJulius and junior guard Eli Brooks will fill the shoes of Poole, while junior forward Isaiah Livers will undoubtedly step into a starting role, with perhaps sophomore forward Brandon Johns to follow.
It's not out of the question to think that some kind of trio out of the aforementioned players could help combine to make up for the losses of Brazdeikis, Matthews and Poole, especially when considering that athletes such as DeJulius and Johns (for example) were both four-stars and top-100 recruits out of high school, while Livers is now a veteran who has National Championship Game experience under his belt.
Still, it will take massive freshmen-to-sophomore year leaps from the likes of DeJulius and Johns to help fill the void left by the trio, and while Beilein's players consistently proved they had the ability to make that kind of jump, Howard's obviously have yet to do so.
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