basketball

there is absolutely no reason to click this link

3/10/2013 – Michigan 71, Indiana 72 – 25-6, 12-6 Big Ten

Bryan Fuller

One of my earliest memories of basketball was brooding over a narrow loss. I have no memory of who may have been playing but since at this point in my life I lived in Denver and regarded the Alex English-era Nuggets as a curiosity, it must have been some Michigan game that my dad put on.

What struck me is the infinite variety of moments I had to brood on. This free throw here, this missed layup there, that egregious foul call: 40 to 48 minutes of opportunities to not lose by a point. Basketball is weird in that way. Most sports come with thunderclaps from God. If you're caught on the wrong end of a scoreline you brood over, oh, I don't know, a friggin' Honduran defender with one goal to his name at any level being momentarily possessed by the spirit of Pele. Something titanic. A keystone kops attempt to tackle in the secondary, eight blown tackles on one play, somehow giving up a 5 on 3 shorthanded breakaway, etc. That goal. That massive refactoring of the world from something in which pleasure beckoned into one containing only sand and dust. THAT.

On Sunday, mere hours after Michigan had choked away a second consecutive Big Ten title, we were treated to the NBA equivalent of the bicycle kick linked above when DeAndre Jordan caused twitter to explode into a panoply of jokes about the murder and death of one Brandon Knight.

Like you 1) haven't seen it and 2) won't watch it again:

The Clippers were awarded two points! That is a lot of points to get on one basketball possession! The Clippers acquired a third thanks to a free throw! That made the Clippers lead by 22 points instead of 19, so it was super helpful in their efforts to victory.

Basketball is weird in this way. It's the highlight thing. Baseball highlights are hugely important near-replicas of every other baseball highlight you've ever seen (man swings bat, ball goes far). Basketball highlights are unique snowflakes with almost no impact on the outcome. Except, of course, in those odd situations when the things are balanced on a knife edge right at the end, and everything that goes wrong is one of the thousand papercuts that did you in.

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

My most recent basketball memory is brooding over a narrow loss. Also there are a couple additional narrow-loss broodings in there ranging from 10th to 4th most recent. I don't know, man. Michigan probably wouldn't have grabbed that share of the Big Ten title if the conference season was 1800 games long. If Morgan's tip goes down their collective margin of victory over the teams they hypothetically would have shared with would have been 4; their collective margin of loss was 34. They were 3-3 in conference games decided by five or fewer points. They lost to Penn State. In the end, they got a fair result.

That does not stop a man from running his fingers through his hair and thinking of a half-court shot at Wisconsin and Jordan Morgan's putback hanging on the rim, hanging on the rim, hanging on the rim. Change a brush of the finger on those, and Michigan is the team raising a banner all by themselves. There are many things to brood on, things that make no sense and can be blamed on no one except bloody fate.

This is why I basically shrugged when Michigan went out in the first round last year—they'd come from a much more fortunate place than they did this year and still got that banner up. They don't give banners for falling valiantly in the Sweet Sixteen. I'm not sure we should be talking about salvage after Michigan's best season that counted in a long, long time, but after Sunday a lot more rides on the single elimination portion of the schedule. If the season was a game, it's one against a very good opponent coming down to the wire.

Make a macro free throw maybe?

Bullets

REBOUND. Ugh, ugh, ugh. A cripplingly bad defensive rebounding performance is finally what doomed Michigan. Indiana recovered 57%(!!!) percent of their misses, with Oladipo snagging seven OREBs by himself. It's kind of hard to figure how Indiana didn't score more with that sort of second-chance rate. The end result of that bombing was to drop Michigan's defensive rebounding to 80th—they entered Big Ten play second in the country—and 8th in conference. They're actually worse this year in Big Ten play.

Much of this has happened just lately. This space was talking about how Michigan was in the upper echelon halfway through the conference season and holding their own as recently as a couple weeks ago. As mentioned after the Purdue game, the fives are a big issue: Morgan had six offensive rebounds but only two on defense; Michigan rolled out five different guys at that spot and got three defensive rebounds. Also, when Oladipo is going off like that someone isn't boxing him out: Tim Hardaway, who had two rebounds.

Generic mutterings about getting that fixed before the tourney go here.

Make your free throws, etc. I think it would have been good if Michigan had made the front ends of one and ones late. #strongtake

Good thing you didn't change the outcome of the game you guys. If a guy is gone for a dunk and someone prevents that from behind, is there a rule against that or not? A: yes, lol jk no. Even Clark Kellogg, last seen accusing his grandmother of fouling Cody Zeller, thought the obvious intentional foul was obvious. Michigan got neither the dunk or intentional call and ended up losing by a point. But at least they looked at it on the monitor!

The other ref bitches are the usual except for the blatant goaltend on a Burke shot that hit the backboard before being rejected. Missing that call should be grounds for termination. It is black and white, and of course cannot be reviewed.

Death to timeouts, Part MCMVII. The last ten seconds were a terrifying whirlwind because Michigan had no timeouts. Michigan couldn't go to the sideline, decide their play would be "Trey, do something" and then see if Trey could do something. Instead Trey just got on with the doing of things. A neutral observer probably enjoyed that quite a bit. It amplified my terror, to be sure.

This is what all basketball games could be like if timeouts were drastically slashed. In these situations there would not be ten-minute stretches of financial service commercials occasionally interspersed by basketball midway through the second half.

Zeller. Despite putting four fouls on Mitch McGary in eight minutes of play plus five more on other Michigan centers, Zeller's ORtg was just an ok 108 because of six turnovers. And some of those came against McLimans and Biefeldt, both inexplicably inserted late in the first half despite Horford not having any fouls. It's a small thing, but all small things are important in a one point game.

Tom Crean: pretty much. I can't believe this guy is this guy:

At least he lets you know by looking like Dwight Schrute, and by saying "whoops, Ron Patterson, you are vaguely ineligible because we don't have a scholarship.*" Apparently Meyer's work in the state of Indiana is a source of conflict:

There have been unfriendly recruitments between Indiana and Michigan in last year. Major source of issues between staffs. Will leave it at that.

Beilein is getting his punches in between the lines:

“Michigan’s always going to win with class, and it’s going to lose with class,” Beilein said. “I’m proud of the way Jeff [Meyer] showed great poise.”

YEAH KILL 'EM PILOT WALTER WHITE

*[He was so ineligible he ended up at Syracuse.]

3/6/2013 – Michigan 80, Purdue 75 – 25-5, 12-5 Big Ten

You'd be forgiven if you hurled your cookies at the trough of Michigan's lurching roller-coaster of an evening last night. To go from 12 up to 12 down is a painful 20 minutes of basketball, and after the Penn State debacle the prospect of yet another gross loss way out of proportion to how difficult it is to play on the road loomed.

I went into "if you can't say anything nice…" mode on twitter; judging from the tenor on WTKA today many people who did not probably should have. Our reactions to the swings in basketball games are interesting: everyone is happy if Michigan had fallen behind by 12, gone up 12 in the second half, and saw their lead whittled down to five by the end. It seems like people judge these things like Kenpom's wingraphs do:

That black time when Purdue built their peak is the thing that seems to be lingering on in people's minds today, because Purdue isn't very good this year. I'm among the grumbly crowd today even though I think I should rationally say that the order of points isn't important just so long as you pile up the expected number before the end of the game, which Michigan just about did. While Purdue's not great, the line here was 6 according to both computers and Vegas, and Michigan was a free throw from hitting it.

And yet. It seems like Michigan's playing with fire and calling in Trey Burke to put it out once you accidentally get it on the cat and he spreads it through the house. Trey got that glint in his eye because Terone Johnson made at least one bad decision amongst his impressive barrage of lane runners:

Burke said he was spurred by some good-natured trash talk by the Boilers' Terone Johnson and his younger brother, Ronnie.

"Both of them. The Johnson brothers and a couple others," Burke said. "We knew it was going to be that type of game. Purdue is coming off a win at the Kohl Center in Wisconsin."

Burke said it was the run-of-the-mill trash talk, such as, "You can't guard me" after made baskets.

"I think it got me going — that shouldn't be something that gets me going but I was passive a lot in the first half," said Burke, who added seven assists and five rebounds in 37 minutes.

I cannot imagine what would possess oneself to poke something as spiky as Trey Burke. I guess 32 points on a bunch of tough shots. In any case, Burke activated alpha dog mode down the stretch and clawed Michigan back into the game, as he is wont to do and Michigan plays for a second consecutive Big Ten title on Sunday.

That's a lot of weight on one man's shoulders, even the player of the year. Kemba Walker teaches that it is possible for some dude to drag teams to glory; it's a lot easier when he's got significant backup. Michigan got it in this game… on offense. Right now anyone disqualifying Michigan from serious things because of a lagging defense is hard to argue with.

Photos

From Bryan Fuller:

Bullets

Trey usual. Burke had a couple of free trips to the line late but otherwise earned all of his 26. He earned most of those down the stretch. Those came on 24 shot equivalents. That's not a great ratio out of context. In context you're sucking up almost 40% of Michigan's possessions and carrying Michigan back from a huge deficit, so scraping above a PPP is pretty dang good. I'm not even sure the passivity Burke bemoaned is that big of a deal. The story of Michigan's first half offense was missing point-blank shots.

Meanwhile it was the usual in A:TO: 7-1, and he added the three or so steals that's becoming customary*. He had a number of those one handed-floaters where he puts the ball up and yoinks his hand back like it is a hot potato:

These go in more than it seems they should. (Fuller)

When Michigan was climbing up their second-half hill, Trey alternated between being an alpha dog at people and seeming super pissed off when other folks—usually Stauskas—were not getting him the ball. Stauskas was getting to the line consistently. This is the only thing that saved him from the wrath of Burke.

Speaking of…

*[Q: Trey gets credit when he pokes a ball out from behind and it goes to another player, right? Or is it the guy who secures the ball? If it's the latter Trey probably got shortchanged since his teammates corralled some balls that were set free by his on-ball D.]

Ouch. (Fuller)

Hello Mr. Stauskas, nice to see you again. Michigan's shiner-sporting Canadian got a sly "not just a shooter"-type compliment early in the game when he drove into the lane. Everybody drink. By the end of it Stauskas had attacked the basket so consistently that the announcers did not even bother to mention he could do things other than shoot when he drew his third shooting foul of the half. IIRC, one of his trips to the line was a freebie when he got hit away from the basket with Michigan in the bonus; even so his ratio of attempts inside the line to attempts outside was 8:4.

He also locked down DJ Byrd, who had three points on seven shots and couldn't find an uncontested three all night. It was his best game in a long time.

You'd like him to hit more of those swooping layups, I guess, but at least he's now getting the block/charge calls he wasn't earlier in the year. He suffered some truly horrendous decisions on those early in the year. Refs probably assumed he was just a shooter. No more! For now.

Rough night for Mitch. 3/4 shooting but only 13 minutes, 3 fouls, two TOs, and zero rebounds. Michigan got beat up on the boards 24%/38% and the bigs take the brunt of the blame there. McGary, Horford, Bielfeldt, and Morgan played 42 minutes and acquired five rebounds between them, with only two of those on the defensive end. Yech.

It seems like Tim Hardaway is not shooting well even when he is sometimes. Tim was partially responsible for the missed bunny parade; he still finished 3/7 from both inside and outside the arc. That is… pretty good, actually. Yeah, a couple of those buckets came in transition but when one is a thunderous and-one that came because you made a move to get past a guy trying to take a charge that's still a point earned.

And yet it seems like Hardaway scuffled. I don't know man.

Hi I'm Matt Vogrich. Hi Matt.

I'm leaving now. I'm Matt Vogrich. Bye Matt. Thanks for hitting a three this time.

Halftime run: all right OH WHAT THE… Michigan came out of the locker room seemingly poised for Beilein Patented Halftime Adjustment run, getting the first two baskets out of the break. Then they scored two to Purdue's 11 over the next five minutes. Oy.

The sixth-most irritating thing about college basketball refereeing. Guy puts two hands on midsection of opponent and gets away with it. Happens 92.3% of the time. Should be a clear-cut call: bring both hands down to check opponent, make even vague contact, call.

Sliding. Kenpom's reflecting the eye test when it comes to Michigan's defense, which was floating in the high 30s midway through the conference season but has now slipped to 60th—coincidentally the exact place they finished 2012. If they stay there, some team is going to raid them and there's nothing Burke or anyone will be able to do about it.

It's disappointing. You'd think that they'd move the other direction since they're so young and hypothetically getting better faster than older teams who are closer to a full grasp of what their coach wants them to do.

Stupid half court heave and stupid Penn State game. Without those, Michigan has locked up a share and Indiana is playing for one.

Random thing about hypothetical tourney matchup that will almost certainly be irrelevant. Whenever someone posts a bracket and says they like or do not like the matchups therein there is always the guy who says they will boil themselves alive if VCU is a potential second-round matchup. I say bring the Rams on:

John Gasaway ‏@JohnGasaway

VCU 100% dependent on (huge) TO margin. A-10 opponents actually shooting better than Rams.

I'll take that strength versus VCU's many other weaknesses in the matchup game.

Now everyone will kill me if we lose to VCU in the second round. I should have said nothing.

THE ESSENTIALS

"I want to be a nacho man
nacho nacho man
I want to be a nacho man
who makes engineering"

-"I Tap Plains For Mana," Purdue fight song

THE THEM

Michigan hasn't seen Purdue since January 24th but the Boilers remain about the same team they were back then: a bunch of bricklayers who can get to the bucket surrounding mercurial man-mountain AJ Hammons. Hammons turned in his worst game of the season (two points, two rebounds, two turnovers in 24 indifferent minutes) and Michigan ran away late with a comfortable 68-53 win. Two games later he'd thunder in 30 points against Indiana, albeit in a 37-point loss.

Hammons maintained a high level of production the next few games but has gone cold of late, scoring six points in three of his last four. He did have a good game against Iowa with 12 points and 9 rebounds despite being limited to 18 minutes with foul trouble.

Overall, Hammons is only a decent shooter; he is a high usage, extremely-high block guy who rebounds okay for a seven-footer. Jordan Morgan and company will probably encounter a much more motivated version of him this time out. If he's shooting over a defender, okay.

The guys surrounding Hammons are mostly guys named Johnson. Terone, the junior, is the only one who can shoot it from the outside. He's at a 35% clip. Ronnie and Anthony are at 15 and 21, respectively. All of them shoot about 41% from two—ugh—and the more-heavily-used Terone and Ronnie are under 60% from the line. Those are ugly numbers from your highest-usage players, especially when they're coupled with a high TO rate from Ronnie.

The non-Johnson starter is DJ Byrd, a remorseless chucker who somehow manages a TO rate above 20 despite launching 77% of his shots from behind the arc. Sometimes well behind the arc, as Nik Stauskas found out in the last meeting. That meeting was the foundation for a short-lived Tim Hardaway Lockdown Defender meme after Byrd went from 11 points in the first half to 0 in the second half, but six of those points came on threes that were either banked or shot from 35 feet.

He's a less extreme Marshall Henderson, but he's knocking down 37% of his somewhat inadvisable threes. Since no one save backup wing Raphael Davis gets an appreciable number of twos in at a 50%+ clip, that is Purdue's best shot by some distance.

Purdue will run out large men like Sandi Marcus, Travis Carroll and Donnie Hale when Hammons is on the bench or they're looking for a little more size. Carroll is invisible offensively and has Egwu-level rebounding rates (ie, decent offense, terrible defense); Hale puts up an array of midrange jumpers that fall at the usual 42% rate. Marcus is a clubbing OREB guy who mysteriously only gets 16% of Purdue's minutes despite having good numbers. Must be bad positionally.

The only perimeter backup of any note is the aforementioned Raphael Davis, a freshman who shoots okay in limited opportunities but turns the ball over a great deal.

THE RESUME

Purdue's coming off by far their best performance of the year, a 69-56 win at the Trohl Center. That's God's work, Boilermakers. DJ Byrd was 6 of 9 from behind the line, Terone Johnson managed to shoot 50% from the floor on 14 attempts, and Purdue was +6 in OREBs largely because Wisconsin couldn't grab an offensive board to save its life.

This brought them to 7-9 in the Big Ten, king among the conference dwarves. Their other conference wins have mostly come against teams with no shot at the tourney, with exceptions at home against Iowa (in OT) and Illinois (by seven in the opener). But hey Michigan lost to Penn State so everybody's nervous.

THE TEMPO-FREE

Four factors, now conference-only (small sample, yes, but numbers are equally skewed by various cupcakes on the non-conference schedule):

Purdue shoots poorly and doesn't quite make up for a large TO deficit with good rebounding. Fast break points should favor the Wolverines, as Purdue is 11th in the league at giving up steals and 12th at acquiring them. They're also 11th in free throw shooting, 10th in 2 point shooting, and last in threes attempted, because obviously.

All of this would be much more assuring if not for Penn State, of course.

THE PROTIPS

Keep them away from the bucket without sagging off of Byrd. Surprise, right? Michigan picked up their pick and roll defense in their most recent game after the mother of all wakeup calls and should be on point here, but the defensive suck is a much larger trend than one good game against the Spartans. In any case, help off guys and force short pullups, prevent layups, and keep DJ Byrd from doing what he did against Wisconsin and Purdue won't touch a PPP.

Sag off pretty much anyone else. Maybe not Terone Johnson, but he's the nominal PG so that's more a matter of being alert to a jack coming your way.

Pick and roll Hammons. Hammons is a force inside, but he's a bit sluggish on the perimeter and can be foul prone when he's trying to move and defend at the same time. Meanwhile Hammons's backups are nowhere near the defender he is. Or rebounder. Or shooter. Hammons is a lot better than other big guy options.

No easy buckets. If Michigan has a choice between giving up a layup and putting a dude on the line, put the dude on the line. Only Byrd is a quality FT shooter on this team. You'll save yourself some points by making them earn transition opportunities at the line.

Shoot a three pointer. And preferably some additional three pointer after the first one. Hammons makes life difficult inside. Winning games without making threes is hard.

Don't suck on the road no mo'. srs

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 6.

Elsewhere

Hammer and Rails also predicts the same thing Kenpom does. UMHoops preview.

Michigan more likely to be second or fifth than third or fourth.

Baumgardner column; good, but to you I say Kemba Walker, sir.