Michigan Basketball: Franz Wagner got robbed and disrespected

Michigan basketball got some nice honors but Franz Wagner really got robbed and should have been Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year. 

If you need a good laugh, check out the All-Big Ten honors doled out yesterday because the selections were comical.

At least they would be if great players like Franz Wagner and other Michigan basketball standouts weren’t robbed. The All-Big Ten Defensive Team, you know should probably include some players from the best defense in the league. Well, not in the Big Ten.

Wagner, who should have been in the running for and probably should have won Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, if you follow metrics at all, which it’s clear that Big Ten voters do not, was not even selected first-team All-Defense.

What’s even worse is that despite having the league’s best defense and winning the conference championship, Michigan basketball didn’t have a single player on the All-Defensive team, which truly is hard to fathom, unless of course, you realize, the people picking these teams are about as effective as the people the Big Ten hired to officiate them.

Now that’s saying something.

But this isn’t a new phenomenon.

It’s almost incredible that the Big Ten didn’t fudge things up by giving the Big Ten Freshman of the Year award away to someone other than Hunter Dickinson, who was also a First-Team All-Big Ten selection.

https://twitter.com/MichiganOnBTN/status/1369332494487683073

Curiously, out of the media and the coaches, the Wolverines got just one First-Team pick, which is ludicrous when you realize that Michigan basketball won the conference.

The fact that Wagner was a First-Team selection shows you how little basketball the voters watched because I have no other explanation.

Sure, if you just looked at Wagner’s stats, they may not wow you. But he scored 13.7 points and shot 40 percent from 3-point range. Franz should have been Defensive Player of the Year but the fact that he got so little recognition is just ridiculous.

Why even have these teams if you’re going to spend so little time and effort putting them together?

Isaiah Livers also deserved much better than third-team All-Big Ten. But that’s the way it goes and really, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.

Wagner and the Wolverines have the Big Ten trophy (no matter how much Illinois wants to pretend otherwise), plus the 6-foot-10 German is going to be a first-round pick soon.

Still, the people who put these teams together should be embarrassed. Even a novice knows the best defensive player on the best defensive team should have least made first-team all-defense.