Diaries

Michigan's Men's basketball team ends its regular season with a win at Maryland. Having spent the fall polling fans about their feelings about football, it's time for our first fan satisfaction survey for basketball.

How do you feel about the Maryland game?
How do you feel about Michigan's regular season?
How do you think Michigan will do in the NCAA tournament?

Take the survey here: https://goo.gl/forms/Mh5O5FftVpLLzsEr1

For more information:

Introduction the Fan Satisfaction Index

There was just enough of this tonight [James Coller]

OFFENSE

	Corsi	House	Possession %
First Period	21	12	54%
Second Period	19	10	70%
Third Period	14	6	56%
Overtime	n/a	n/a	n/a
TOTAL	54	28	59%

Analysis: This was a similar output to the Notre Dame series, where Michigan jumped on ASU early and controlled most of the game until they got sloppy in the third period and took too many penalties. Just like their game last season, Michigan kept the puck and shot from everywhere on the ice.

They got deep in the House area early and finished three times in the first fifteen minutes. Sanchez scored off of a great pass from Marody that slid across the top of the crease. He also poked in a rebound a few minutes later to give Michigan the 2-1 lead. Michael Pastujov scored his fourth of the season on a rebound late in the first. Michigan tacked on a fourth in the second period after Warren circled the net and found Cecconi for a snipe from inside the dot. Michigan needed every bit of this…as we will get to the next couple of sections.

[After THE JUMP: unspecial teams]

Three people over the last few weeks have asked me if I had all of these. Most people didn’t even see them unless they downloaded and listened to old episodes. Brian suggested when I started making them that we could make them into a poster or something but I doubt anyone wants a 2017 reminder on their walls so here, they’re in a diary now.

And mid-year I started making them for the WTKA Roundtable too:

 

And I dunno if you care about MGoRadio covers but they’re in the same folder and it wasn’t easy getting Brian not to duck behind something when a camera came out so here are those:

[Ed-Ace: Bumped for some great film analysis that backs up a statistical trend we've picked up on recently. Added a couple notes and the pretty photo.]

Has Luke Yaklich devised a defense that makes Duncan Robinson effective? [Campredon]

On the podcast this week, Brian and Ace talked about how Duncan has improved his on ball defense from 23rd percentile to “almost” average (no numbers given but I assume somewhere in the 40th percentile). [Ed-Ace: He's since dropped just below that mark to 37th, but he's in the 63rd precentile as a post defender, which you will see is quite relevant.]

One explanation mentioned is that he seems to be defending the post more frequently than last year relative to defending the perimeter.  [Ed-Ace; 17.9% of his defensive possessions are on post-ups in 2017-18 compared to 5.5% last season.]  This is obviously something Michigan would want since he’s much more capable of using his length to make shots tough in the post rather than trying to guard the perimeter. 

If we have a hard time getting Moe Wagner good inside opportunities when he has 6’3 guys on him, surely Duncan can hold his own on non-centers in the post, especially since very few guys are good at posting up in modern basketball.  Unless you’re Nick Ward or Isaac Haas or Caleb Wesson, being asked to post up is like a home run hitter being asked to bunt.  It’s just not going to go well at an acceptable rate.

The challenge is that when you have a weakness on defense, offenses can usually leverage that weakness.  An opponent that doesn’t want to post up, but wants to take a guy on the perimeter should surely be able to put that guy in a position to need to defend the perimeter, right?

I noticed in the Wisconsin game that we’re countering this with what I’m referring to as the “The Duncan Rules.”  In certain instances we are applying a switching scheme on the weak side that essentially amounts to running a two-man zone that keeps Duncan in the paint.  And as far as I can tell (don’t have time to watch too much film on this), I’ve only seen it applied when Duncan, specifically, is defending a guy on the block on the weak side, with another offensive player on the weakside wing, and it's usually when a ball screen is being run on the other side of the court. I’ve picture paged three such instances.

[Hit THE JUMP for picture pages and some more notes on the defense.]

With Bill Connelly recently releasing his returning production rankings (link below), I wanted to take an admittedly more simplistic look at returning production on our schedule and in the Big Ten. I've started with the offenses and might do a defensive version if this is well-received.

 

I think the best barometer for what a team returns on offense is the raw percentage of yards produced from the previous season. For the purposes of this exercise, I have factored in Shea Patterson's 2017 statistics as if he were to be declared eligible in the fall, because by most accounts he will be. Numbers for every team in the conference and on our schedule in the chart below, sorted by Total Percent Returning.

Team	2018 Returning Pass Yds/2017 Pass Yds	2018 Returning Rush Yds/2017 Rush Yds	2018 Reurning Rec Yds/2017 Rec Yds	2018 Return Off. Production/2017 Off. Production	Total Percent Off. Production Returning
Michigan	2931/2259	1805/2310	2078/2226	6814/6795	100%
Wisconsin	2689/2689	3025/3121	2011/2689	7725/8499	91%
Purdue	3270/3270	1944/1970	2158/3270	7372/8510	87%
MSU	2793/2798	1614/2182	2289/2798	6696/7778	86%
SMU	3789/3823	2396/2397	1502/38/23	7686/10043	77%
Maryland	1721/1940	1881/1940	840/1940	4442/5820	76%
WMU	1978/1978	1469/2697	1584/1978	5031/6653	76%
NW	2873/3040	746/2264	1917/3040	5536/8344	66%
Iowa	2473/2473	305/1810	1689/2473	4467/6756	66%
OSU	626/3679	2607/3405	3659/3679	6892/10763	64%
PSU	3736/3772	939/2212	1404/3772	6079/9756	62%
ND	2326/2326	1598/3501	1099/2326	5023/8153	62%
Illinois	382/2098	1082/1267	1527/2098	2991/5463	55%
Indiana	1252/3188	1476/1561	1493/3188	4221/7937	53%
Minnesota	0/1513	1371/2178	1186/1513	2557/5213	49%
Nebraska	192/3330	1345/1290	2297/3330	38347950	48%
Rutgers	676/1387	454/1765	741/1387	1871/4539	41%

 

Some Notes:

• Obviously this shows how important it is that Shea be declared eligible. Without him, we return only 672 passing yards, which drops us to 67% returning overall (there's a slight chance that would cause Wilton to come back, which would put us at 76%). Some may point out that Shea accumulated his passing yards in a different system with different teammates, so it might not be accurate to simply transfer 100% of his production to our team for this exercise, and that is a fair critique. That being said, I think the larger point with including Shea's numbers is that Michigan is bringing in a guy who has started 10 games in arguably the best conference in the country - that is a huge talent and experience boost to an offense that is now plenty experienced outside of the QB position.
• Wisconsin brings back nearly everyone from the 41st ranked S&P offense. The only major loss is obviously Fumagalli. Fumagalli was Hornibrook's go to, so we will see if that affects their passing game. They do get Quintez Cephus back from injury, however. 
• Purdue loses their top two receivers, but brings back everyone else. Jeff Brohm should see more improvement this year and Purdue probably gets up to 8-4 or 9-3. A couple big boys in the conference need to make sure not to overlook them this year...or do overlook them and get upset, that's fine with me.
• Michigan State returns a lot as well, but they are dangerously thin at RB. Michigan also returns a higher percentage of receiving yards than MSU, which Connelly believes is most indicative of offensive improvement. 
• Ohio State's numbers are deceiving. They lost JT Barrett who had a great statistical year, which puts a huge dent in their returning passing yards and a significant dent in returning rush yards. However, in limited action, Haskins actually put up better numbers than JT, and, to make that even scarier, nearly 100% of OSU's receiving yards return. They lost far more on defense than they did on offense, but OSU's offense is going to be a problem this year as long Haskins transitions smoothly to full-time starter.
• The poor get poorer. Minnesota, Nebraska, and Rutgers are the only teams on this list that return fewer than 50% of offensive production. PJ Fleck has no Quarterback returning that has thrown a pass, and Scott Frost barely has one at Nebraska. Meanwhile, I had no idea that last year's pretty bad Rutgers was actually very experienced. Rutgers is hoping that losing bad seniors is actually addition by subtraction (except they lost an impressive RB in Gus Edwards and the electric Janarion Grant, so probably not).
• Finally, Notre Dame returns both QBs (one was okay, one was pretty subpar as a passer) who played last year, but returns less than half of both rushing and receiving yards, and are even thinner than MSU is at RB. Plus, this chart has not taken into account Offensive Line losses, which Notre Dame has suffered in losing two probable first rounders in LG Nelson and LT McGlinchey. I think they are going to struggle mightily to move the ball against us in Week 1. Penn State is in a similar situation with their QB (who is actually good) returning, but the vast majority of rushing and receiving yards departing, and they should see an offensive set back year as well.

 

Bill Connelly's Article: https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2018/1/31/16950222/2018-ncaa-football-returning-starters-experience

Captain Calderone with his signature snipe [Jamer Coller]

OFFENSE

	Corsi	House	Possession %
First Period	26	13	57%
Second Period	19	7	59%
Third Period	18	8	34%
Overtime	n/a	n/a	n/a
TOTAL	63	28	48%

Analysis: Michigan’s forecheck has been great throughout the weekend and it was on display again in the first period. They did not let Notre Dame out of their zone very often and created a number of solid chances.

Looking at their numbers overall, this is a great offensive performance. They took a lot of attempts and got into the House area for almost half of them. There is a reason that Cale Morris is a Hobey candidate, as was evident this evening. Michigan could have had a few more goals with as many good looks as they had, but Morris stole the show. For their lone goal, Dancs forced a DZTO on the boards, Marody dished to Calderone, and Calderone sniped one just off of Morris’s glove and into the net, therby concluding the scoring.

[After THE JUMP: anatomy of a sweep]