3/4/2014 – Michigan 84, Illinois 53 – 22-7, 14-3 Big Ten – Outright champs

Good. In your face, Nanna Egwu. Good. [Bryan Fuller]

Before Ace took over full-time basketball preview duties, I wrote many of them. I eschewed "preview" to call these posts "Death From Above," because I thought it sounded cool. I fielded regular questions as to what the hell that meant.

If you want the deep background, "death from above" was a maneuver you could execute in walking-robot-wargame Battletech wherein your giant man-shaped robot would take off and attempt to land on the head of an opposing giant man-shaped robot. The goal was to crush the cockpit and pilot, rendering the exoskeleton inert, dripping ominous fluids.

I can only assume that all has been made clear after Michigan's high-arcing deep shots proved laser-guided at Illinois. John Beilein basketball is death from above.

Complete Illinois game notes, updated:

ILLINOIS NOTES

GRIII starts with layup
RAIN
LOL STAUSKAS I’M DEAD

— Ace Anbender (@AceAnbender) March 5, 2014

Assembly Hall (not that Assembly Hall) drips today.

----------------------------

The three pointer has always been the great leveler in college basketball. Poke a random NCAA tourney upset and you're likely to find a bunch of short guys firing in threes as the favorite struggles outside the arc.

John Beilein came of age as a coach in a milieu of random players barely recruited. He found success by taking spare parts and arranging them into a machine that rained in threes. This was generally effective but not as much as legend would have it. Beilein won regular season conference championships twice in ten years at Richmond and Canisius, and finished third in the gargantuan Big East in 2005-2006. His reputation rested on an upset of South Carolina as a 14-seed with Richmond and the Pittsnogle-era WVU team's runs into the Elite Eight and Sweet 16.

But he'd lifted teams without structural advantage. He made every team he'd had competitive after a one-year adjustment period, though, and that seemed like gold to a Michigan fan. At the time the prospect of a consistently .500 Big Ten team with the occasional third-place finish followed  by tourney upsets seemed like heaven. I was stridently in favor of Beilein's hire because I thought he'd turn Michigan into the kind of program that pushes Duke to the brink in the second round.

In that post I asserted that 21-14, 9-9 Michigan would be a one seed in an "exceeded expectations" tournament. I also asserted this:

I've been searching for a Michigan equivalent and in my memory can only come up with the '97 national title team. Unless there was a basketball team that outdid this year's—unlikely—I think you have to go back to 1969 to pull another team that so wildly exceeded what was expected of them.

To find a team with as good a claim to exceeding expectations as this 14-3 outright-Big-Ten-champs outfit that lost Trey Burke, Tim Hardaway Jr, and Mitch McGary you have to go back… uh… one year, when Trey Burke blew up into a Naismith winner and Michigan reached the national title game. The next potential candidate makes you reach back all the way to a team that shared a Big Ten title with Zack Novak at power forward… two years ago.

This is all very strange, not only to us, but to the guy who assembled this unlikely powerhouse.

"I don’t know what to think. I have this funny, quiet feeling where you set out to accomplish a goal and you accomplish it. It’s strange." [ed: –John Beilein]

— Joe Stapleton (@joe_stapes) March 5, 2014

The warmness inside you right now is thanks to the arc on the court that separates two from three.

-----------------

The great leveler levels because threes are great shots, amongst the best shots. Beilein structured his entire basketball career around that intuition, constructing small-ball outfits everywhere he's gone. Sometimes he had four shooters; sometimes he had five. One guy probed inside as the other four created space around the arc, giving everyone space and time to find shots at the rim.

While the mechanism has shifted as Michigan acquires ball-screen maestro after ball-screen maestro, the overall pattern remains the same. The bigs shoot 70% because the opponent can't let Michigan get threes off. The threes come when they come and go in at a high clip, and something Beilein is in charge of floats higher than they have been in a long time.

It's only right that at the pinnacle of Beilein's regular season career the threes would rain in at will. Dan Dakich keeps saying "the ball knows." While this is normally irritating to your engineering-oriented author, as Michigan rained in death from above yesterday it did feel a little like the three point line sought to repay him for the long years of faith and devotion.

Bullets

Well, then. There is very little to say about that game except "please Stauskas don't hurt 'em (except do)." Michigan shot 70% from three, goodnight, analysis over.

Other than the swelling three-point percentages from Michigan's shooters the main takeaway here was that Spike needs to take care of the ball better in the late stages of laughers when he is pursuing a double-digit A:TO ratio across the Big Ten season.

[Speaking of Spike, and since there's not really much to talk about game-wise, remember this site's obsession with NC State hobbit PG Tyler Lewis last year? Lewis was a McDonalds All-American despite being the same stature as Albrecht, and then he proceeded to do very little.

Lewis vs Spike, year two:

Lewis is stuck on a team that doesn't assist on many shots, stats are not the be all and end all, etc., but there's not much question who you'd rather have on your team. Hail this staff's talent identification. This has been Brian's Ongoing Obsession With Random College Basketball Players theater.

There will be no Nnanna Egwu section this time since he's pulled his DREB rate into the solid double-digits.]

But seriously. Strugging to say much of anything… oh, okay.

Jon Horford is really into Camus. There is just a shower of post-title photos featuring members of the team smiling an Jon Horford being Jon Horford, and thinking about things and stuff, deep things and hard stuff.

[Bryan Fuller]

Not even a locker room shot can rouse the corners of Horford's mouth from their slumber:

That's not his postgame photo role, and that's why having Andrew Dakich around is crucial.

MAKE 'EM SAY UNH

Like father, like son.

If I make a joke here I will get a nasty tweet from the man himself [Bryan Fuller]

Non-trivial Horford business. One game ago, Horford got a quick hook in the second half after Mo Walker went to work on him. In this outing, Morgan hurt his back trying to take a charge and was limited to seven minutes. Horford stepped in and picked up ten rebounds; Illinois was limited to five offensive rebounds. On the year, Horford's DREB rate is a McGary-like 26.1.

It's nice to see him bounce back. There have been a number of games this year when one center or the other was having a rough day until the other guy stepped in. Having that flexibility is a big help; hopefully the Morgan withdrawal was a precautionary measure only.

If push comes to shove the obvious move is to try to get through the last few games without him. The only thing at stake now is a two or three seed line.

Speaking of. Expect Michigan to PLAY SOME WEIRD GUYS in the Big Ten tourney. Beilein has always run out some WTF lineups when faced with the possibility of three games in three days, and with Morgan questionable, Max Bielfeldt may be called on for double-digit minutes. Having a 6'6" center is not conducive to winning the Big Ten tourney title, but I don't think Beilein cares one whit about that.

Nobody seems to. A lot of fanbases openly pine for a second-game exit so as to not have three consecutive games before a potential Thursday/Saturday NCAA tournament weekend. They should really just dump the thing and play a couple more conference games, but I don't think the NCAA would let that fly.

Defense? Illinois is a very bad offensive team (206th on Kenpom) but they got worse after Michigan dealt with them. After 1 PPP in the first half, Illinois couldn't do much of anything in the second. That marks consecutive opponents held under a point per possession. This is not exactly the Goin' To Work Pistons yet, but Michigan doesn't have to make a ton of progress in the D department to look like an (even more) dangerous tournament opponent.

No idea exactly why this improvement is going on. If they can maintain that through the next few games that would be encouraging.

Seed lines. Michigan is still stuck on the three-line with little upward mobility unless they can leapfrog the top ACC teams (Syracuse, Duke, Virginia) or pass Wisconsin by winning the Big Ten Title. Jerry Palm did pump Michigan over Duke given Duke's extremely weak road accomplishments and Syracuse is in a full-on tailspin after losing to Georgia Tech at home. (I told you about Syracuse.) If the Orange lose their season-ender against Florida State, a game that Kenpom predicts will be a nailbiter, they could drop to the three line and open up a slot for Michigan as a two. Virginia will provide competition there.

Not that it matters much this year, as one of the most wide-open tournaments in memory beckons.

Glennwatch. Did some good things—couple steals, good work from within the arc, a three. Drove to the bucket for a basket, too. His steal lead to a fast break on which Tracy Abrams got a contest in that by all rights should have forced a layup attempt. NOPE. Dunk metropolis.

Afterwards Abrams looked like he'd seen the Ark of the Covenant.

ENHANCE [Bryan Fuller]

One negative thing: he's got to stop bringing the ball up when he gets a rebound. His handle is very vulnerable to open-court steals and he doesn't initiate much transition offense.

Also, he took a contested three-point jack. That is vaguely acceptable if you are Nik Stauskas who rains death from above. When you're at 27% on the year, don't take that shot. Taking open ones, okay. Those are still decent to good shots even for a guy locked in a sophomore slump as bad as Tim Hardaway Jr's. That hand-in-the-face stuff not so much.

Still, we can add this to the recent string of encouraging GRIII performances after 13 points on 10 shot equivalents.

Just when you thought he was bottled up. Stauskas is 12 of 17 from three in his last two games, pushing his season average to 46%. One of them was a contested jack in front of 6'11" Nnanna Egwu. Another was from the parking lot right before the half. Good lord.

This is why Michigan should not settle for long twos early in the shot clock, because at any time they can get a switch and have a guy take a pretty decent three point look.

The climb. Remember early in the year when people were projecting Wisconsin would walk away with the title because of schedule imbalance? Well, Michigan's single plays were Northwestern, Penn State, Illinois, and Ohio State. The only team not in the vicinity of the bottom of the Big Ten standings is OSU, and Michigan only got a road game against them. This is the opposite of a fluke.

THIS WENT IN [Bryan Fuller/MGoBlog]

I WAS NOT ALIVE THE LAST TIME THIS HAPPENED.

And you can't have one without the other...

I'M PRETTY SURE MICHIGAN JUST HIT ANOTHER THREE.

(Given the server overload, my desire to celebrate, and the number of words I've already written today, this serves as your postgame recap until Brian's column tomorrow. Short version: they made all of the shots, and they WON THE CONFERENCE.)

(Yes, I double-posted Muppets. I swear I'm sober. For now.)

I WAS NOT ALIVE THE LAST TIME THIS HAPPENED.

And you can't have one without the other...

I'M PRETTY SURE MICHIGAN JUST HIT ANOTHER THREE.

(Given the server overload, my desire to celebrate, and the number of words I've already written today, this serves as your postgame recap until Brian's column tomorrow. Short version: they made all of the shots, and they WON THE CONFERENCE.)

Raiding The Old Dominion

Michigan is once against looking to the state of Virginia, where they've pulled Derrick Green and Wilton Speight in the last two classes, for an infusion of talent. The Wolverines have put out offers to 2015 top-100 WDE Clelin Ferrell and heralded 2016 WR Scott Bracey, both of Richmond Benedictine College Prep. In a two-part article, Sam Webb interviewed Benedictine coach Greg Lilly to get the scoop on the pair ($):

Greg Lilly:  “Coach Manning has done a great job as far as recruiting the guys.  When he has had the opportunity to get to the state of Virginia has always come by and seen us and he has done a really good job when he has been here.  He is a very nice guy, personable guy.  I think he had a great rapport with the kids.  I can’t remember if it was in January or December, whatever that recruiting period was, but Coach Hoke did come in and stop by and let us know how interested they were in both kids.  I think both the guys, Clelin and Scott were impressed by that and honored by that.  We’re a small private school, 275 boys.  It is a military school, a catholic school.  There is obviously an emphasis put on their education and them wanting to go to good academic schools and be good student-athletes and obviously Michigan offers that opportunity.”

Ferrell and Bracey have been taking unofficial visits together, and Lilly said "they are going to get out there and see Michigan," when they take some trips this summer. It appears Michigan has a better shot with Ferrell—despite being in the class below him, Bracey holds more offers at the moment—though the Wolverines are in the mix for both.

[Hit THE JUMP for a quick recap of last weekend's visits, the latest on Brian Cole and several other 2015 prospects, and more.]

THE ESSENTIALS

Right: Nice work, boss. [Fuller]

THE STAKES

This section is very simple now that a share of the conference crown is secured. If Michigan wins, they're the outright Big Ten champs.

If Michigan loses tonight and MSU beats Iowa on Thursday, the Spartans can grab a share of the title with a win at Ohio State coupled with an Indiana upset at Crisler on Sunday. Wisconsin is also not out of it; in fact, with Purdue and @Nebraska left on their schedule, the path to sharing a title is easier for the Badgers than the Spartans. Regardless, any Michigan victory will secure the program's first outright Big Ten title since 1986, and they'll have to lose both remaining games for another scenario to come into play.

THE PREVIOUS MATCHUP

Didn't happen. Illinois is one of Michigan's single-plays this season, so this is the first and only matchup between the two in the regular season.

THE LINEUP CARD

I've done away with the SIBMIHHAT column, which caused nothing but confusion, and replaced it with each player's offensive rating, which is more informative anyway. The formula for calculating an individual's ORtg is too complicated to post here; Basketball-Reference has the rundown if you're curious. At minimum, just like with team offensive efficiency, you want to have an individual ORtg above 100. The best ORtg in the country among players using at least 20% of their team's possession is 131.8 (TJ Bray, Princeton); Nik Stauskas is 24th at 123.9.

Projected starters are in bold:

THE THEM

Three straight Illinois victories, capped by an upset at the Breslin Center (thanks, guys!), have lifted the Illini out of the Big Ten basement after winning just one of their previous 11 games. They've won with defense in this stretch, holding Minnesota, Nebraska, and MSU to a combined 0.84 points per possession; none of the games cracked 60 possessions.

While the Illini defense has been solid throughout the season, they have the worst-shooting offense in the conference on the other end, and a look through their lineup brings forth some awful numbers, like these: point guard Tracy Abrams, a decent passer and solid on-ball defender, takes nearly 24% of the team's shots when he's on the floor—he's shooting 38% from two and 27% from three.

The team's best offensive player is Rayvonte Rice, a bulldog of a guard—6'4", 235 pounds—who takes over a third of his shots at the rim, hitting them at a 62% clip, per hoop-math. He also gets to the line at a high rate, hits 72% of his free throws, and boasts an impressively low 11.2 TORate for a player that relies so much on creating off the dribble. He's not much of a shooter, however, making 29% of his two-point jumpers and 33% of his three-pointers. Rice is statistically the team's best defensive rebounder, which is impressive for him and much less so for the team.

Coach John Groce replaced two seniors, Joseph Bertrand and Jon Ekey, with freshmen Kendrick Nunn and Malcolm Hill in the starting lineup six games ago; in that span, Illinois is 4-2, and the lineup is slated to remain the same tonight. Nunn takes nearly as many threes as twos and connects at a 40% rate from beyond the arc. Hill is holding his own as an undersized four, doing a decent job on the glass while making up for poor shooting from the field by getting to the charity stripe at a 54% rate and hitting 80% of his free throws. Ekey falls into the "just a shooter" category, which isn't too good when hitting just 35% from three, while Bertrand is a worse-rebounding, better-shooting version of Hill, and he gets to the line less often.

The starting center is 6'11" enigma Nnnanna Egwu, who still hasn't put it all together in his junior season. He's a great shot-blocker and solid offensive rebounder, but his 14.6 defensive rebounding percentage is alarmingly low for a center of his size. He boasts a solid mid-range jumper, but his post offense is so poor he's shooting just 44% on two-pointers. For some reason, he's attempted 23 three-pointers, of which he's hit five.

For better or worse, Illinois is stuck with Egwu at the five. Freshman backups Maverick Morgan and Austin Colbert play spot minutes, and while their finishing at the basket is well ahead of Egwu's, both players commit a lot of fouls while failing to provide Egwu's shot-blocking. Also, both are somehow worse on the defensive boards; Colbert's 7.2 DR% is the worst among any qualifying Illinois player—that's 1.1% lower than Spike Albrecht's rate.

THE RESUME

Victories at Minnesota and Michigan State in the last couple weeks have bolstered an otherwise poor Illinois resume. Their other Big Ten wins either came at home (Indiana in OT, Nebraska) or at the expense of Penn State. The Illini's best non-conference win is either a two-point road win over #78 UNLV or a one-point neutral-site triumph against #60 Mizzou.

THE TEMPO-FREE

The Illinois defense ranks third in the conference in efficiency, and they've sparked the recent win streak by forcing a bunch of turnovers, as you can see in this chart from the Big Ten Geeks:

Relying on forcing turnovers, especially in the low-error Big Ten, tends to produce results of high variance; Illinois has been very good defensively in the last four games, but they've also been lit up by the likes of Wisconsin (1.34 ppp in Kohl), MSU (1.18 at Ill.), Iowa (1.14 at Ill.), and Wisconsin again (1.21 at Ill.)—aside from last weekend's game in East Lansing, Illinois has had a difficult time shutting down the conference's best offenses.

Offensively, they're not good: Illinois is dead last in the Big Ten in two-point shooting (40.9%) and tenth in three-point shooting (31.2%) while getting to the line at the league's second-worst rate. Scoring points is the goal of basketball, and it's rather difficult to do without putting the ball in the hoop. Not helping matters is their below-average rebounding. Add it all up and the only Big Ten team with a worse offense is Northwestern.

THE KEYS

Play in control. Turnovers sparked the Illinois turnaround of late. Michigan boasts the league's second-lowest turnover rate. Taking care of the ball as the Wolverines usually do will go a long way towards winning this game; even though Illinois isn't great in transition, they still score more effectively on the break than they do in the halfcourt.

Exploit perimeter matchups. Illinois is going to have to defend either Nik Stauskas or Caris LeVert (probably the latter) with a player three inches shorter. Expect a healthy dose of high screens for whomever gets this matchup, especially given how willing John Beilein has been to let his stars rise and fire over shorter defenders whenever they get an opening. 

Cool the hot hand. Kendrick Nunn is 10/15 on three-pointers in his last three games, all Illinois wins—Michigan can't afford to lose him on the perimeter in what should be a tight, low-possession affair. Nunn's also turned the ball over nine times in those three games, so dialing up the pressure should mitigate his effectiveness. He'll likely be Caris LeVert's responsibility, and while LeVert's quick hands should force some turnovers, his tendency to forget to challenge shots could come back to bite Michigan. 

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 1

(Yes, the projection changed by a point since last night, when I drafted this post. I'm doing the KenPom Appeasement Dance as I write this.)

Elsewhere

UMHoops preview. Maize n Brew preview. John Groce, this wasn't very smart:

According to LeVert, Illinois assistant coach Dustin Ford called him about a week after Groce took the Illinois job. He told LeVert that Groce would be reaching out shortly to discuss Illinois.

The call never came.

A few days later, on May 11, 2012, LeVert committed to Michigan during an official visit.

LeVert, of course, had been an Ohio commit when Groce was the head coach there before he took the Illinois job. Oops.

Jon Horford confirmed that he plans to return to the team for his fifth year. He graduates this spring.

Pat Forde goes in on John Calipari. Yes, you'll enjoy reading that.

Previously: Purdue & Minnesota (GRIII Edition)

Of course Spike Albrecht is familiar with the "Big Balls" dance that originated in the (terrible) sequel to a classic baseball movie before being popularized as a basketball celebration by Sam Cassell.

Huevos.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the GIFs, featuring Nik Stauskas making Andrew Dakich do Andrew Dakich things, Jordan Morgan's old man strength, Jon Horford's zen calm, and much more.]