basketball

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.

3/3/2013 – Michigan 58, Michigan State 57 – 24-5, 11-5 Big Ten

left via @detnewsRodBeard / right Eric Upchurch

Sports are hard, and even great players usually succumb to their hardness. When the hockey team had TJ Hensick, when they were tied or trailing late I spent all moments with Hensick on the bench pining for his next shift, and mostly was disappointed when nothing happened. I mean… Denard Robinson. That guy was so great that he ran through two Ohio State defenders and teleported to the endzone, and yet that first sentence is a large chunk of his Michigan career epitaph.

There's a reason Wikipedia describes Casey at the Bat like so:

For a relatively short poem apparently dashed off quickly (and denied by its author for years), "Casey at the Bat" had a profound effect on American popular culture. It has been recited, re-enacted, adapted, dissected, parodied and subjected to just about every other treatment one could imagine.^[2]

Probability is an implacable thing. When we turn our lonely eyes to hero du jour in our time of need, the odds are stacked against us. If you're great you move that needle only slightly. Your brain is all like

They thought, if only Casey could get but a whack at that -
They'd put up even money, now, with Casey at the bat.

Your brain is kind of dumb, and Casey at the Bat is great at telling you that. Your brain listens but does not hear.

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

My dumb brain was contemplating a blown ten-point lead against Michigan State on the heels of a blown 15-point lead to Penn State and had decided basketball was a pudding and the universe a fake. Michigan State had the ball, the game was tied, and the shot clock was no longer relevant. Earlier in the year Michigan had lost when a no-hoper went in, and my dumb brain was assuming that would always happen forever.

Burke did this.

The thing about this is that Burke developed that move midway through the season and now deploys it a few times a game. He really ramped it up after his first game against Aaron Craft, seemingly because Craft just pissed him off. A few times a game Burke will muster his energy, hike up his shorts, and go looking for trouble on defense. That's part of his ever-expanding game.

That breakway layup off the from-behind steal is a thing I can see him gearing up for now, and I saw it then, and because my brain is dumb it'll burn that into my memory and not the other times when Casey struck out. 

It'll go there next to Braylonfest and Mario Manningham and Ernest Shazor killing that guy and Phil Brabbs and that one time I turned on a basketball game with Michigan down 15 to Wisconsin with six minutes left and saw Daniel Horton eat that deficit into nothingness. It'll probably be the first thing anyone involved with this rivalry thinks about when Trey Burke is brought up. It was the kind of thing that's the first thing on the highlight reel when they put your number in the rafters.

That he followed it up by robbing Michigan State of a chance to respond is icing on the cake. After Ben Brust, any shot in the air with a chance to beat Michigan is going to be two seconds of awful anticipation no matter how likely it is to go in. Trey Burke is both awesome at basketball and extremely protective of my emotions. He curls his lip and tilts his head and probably says "damn" and takes basketballs away from people who should not have them after 38 minutes of carrying twelve teammates and 12-thousand-some people in Crisler on his back.

Bullets

Dawgs. This program has had a couple of nasty dudes at point guard the past few years. I hope Derrick Walton can inherit that.

Your excuses are lame. Both Izzo and Appling claimed that there was some sort of confusion about timeouts before Burke picked Appling's pocket, which is a pretty weak explanation since Appling has clearly decided no TO is coming when he spins and moves to the center of the court. Y'all got robbed straight up.

Life is strange. Michigan loses to Penn State, then beats Michigan State despite going 0/12 from three. I quiver at the thought of playing Purdue. Everyone will turn into crows and play crowhockey, or something.

Obligatory video review complaint. Nik Stauskas got busted open by a wild Branden Dawson elbow, required 12 stitches and was not able to return—probably because he was concussed—and no foul was assessed after an interminable break. It looked like this:

If that's the way you're going to call it, fine. It was inadvertent. But then stop with the interminable reviews. Apparently nothing is a flagrant foul, so stop looking for them.

It's strange how different sports legislate themselves. If hockey was reffed under basketball rules, every post-whistle scrum would come with two ejections, but in basketball you can crush a guy's face and as long as you weren't looking at him it's cool. That's some sort of penalty in the other two sports where elbows get involved, hockey and soccer, and probably a red card/major. In basketball, nope… but only one sport stops the game incessantly to look at these sorts of incidents. I don't get it man.

Morgan defense watch. After Dan Dakich pointed out that Nix always-always goes over his right shoulder when making post moves it's been something that's stood out to me as I watch MSU play, and in this one it was obvious. In that tendency you could see where Morgan is a superior on-ball defender to McGary.

Against Morgan, Nix put up a bunch of contested shots on which Morgan positioned himself such that Nix would take a bump as he tried to go up. In scattered matchups against McGary it was clear McGary had not absorbed the scouting report; Nix got him for a bucket by threatening to go to the middle of the lane and then spinning over his right shoulder like he always does. Morgan, on the floor at the same time, was visibly irritated at McGary—he probably said something along the lines of "he ALWAYS turns over his right shoulder" or "RTFSR*."

Despite that make the difference in Nix's efficacy was dramatic. Morgan played nine minutes in the first game; Nix went 6 of 9 from the floor and had 3 assists to no turnovers. Morgan had 24 in this one; Nix went 2 of 9 with 2 assists and six turnovers, with one of those makes the aforementioned bucket against McGary. Morgan's absence in the first game was definitely a contributing factor to the ugliness therein.

*["Read the frondling scouting report."]

Upchurch

Mocking floor slap for the win. State did the team floor slap thing in the previous game, and did it in this one, and Big Tough Mr. Men got an alley-oop on their face this time, whereupon Michigan responded with sports sarcasm:

via mgovideo

Sports sarcasm is the best. You can tell it is mocking because 1) everyone knows MSU's about to call a TO, and Trey does it twice. I enjoyed that.

McGary FTs. Having Mitch McGary receive the inbounds pass at the end was clearly not the best idea, but Michigan put themselves in a situation where that was possible by using up all their timeouts early. When MSU tripled Burke it was a scramble off the make and the other options were Horford and a covered LeVert.

1) Dump basketball timeouts. End game situations are more chaotic and fun without them.

2) Don't call all of them, especially when you're just setting up a play instead of preserving a possession.

McGary other game. A mixed bag. Like the rest of the bigs he shares in the issues rebounding. One DREB in 21 minutes is Nnanna Egwu level output. He was efficient offensively, going 4/6 from the floor and hitting 3/5 FTs, and he generated a few of those shots himself with two-bounce drives and a nice short corner turnaround. He's showing things that should lead to an increased offensive role as he develops.

Paging Caris Levert. (Upchurch @ right) With Stauskas knocked out four minutes in, Caris LeVert got starters minutes. He did okay with them, scoring eight points on 4/8 shooting from two, missing three attempts from deep, and getting a couple steals. He was mostly guarding Gary Harris; Harris had an eh day with 16 points on 16 shot equivalents.

As long as Stauskas isn't suffering ill effects from the concussion I don't think he'll see his playing time cut much if at all… as long as he's not doing the things that caused Beilein to explode at him in the Penn State game. Competition for that spot will improve it, and if Caris is reliable enough to get him 16 minutes instead of eight Michigan can rest Tim Hardaway a bit more.

Statistical extremes. Take your pick as to which was more of an anomaly: Michigan going 0-fer from three or MSU coughing up 18 turnovers to Michigan's 7. I'll take the former since Michigan is a notoriously low-turnover team and MSU has had their share of issues. Also in the anomaly bucket: MSU rebounded half their misses. While not entirely unexpected, that is extreme.

Speaking of the rebounding. Hammered. Michigan went with the dual-big lineup for nine minutes; it didn't help much. As mentioned, McGary just had 1 DREB. Morgan had four, Horford none in four minutes. If the ball wasn't bouncing to a guard chances are Michigan did not get it.

Michigan's rebounding is reverting after another nonconference season in which they found themselves top-ten. After entering Big Ten play #2 in DREB they're down to 45th. They're fifth in Big Ten play, still a major step up from last year's ninth but not an earth-shaking paradigm change.

Burke fall down make fast break. Michigan State exploited a couple of things to get some early fast break opportunities off of makes: 1) Burke falls down a lot after he tries layups and 2) he never gets a call on this even if someone has bashed him to the ground. You'd like to see him keep his feet, but it's hard to see how in a lot of these situations.

Drinkin' your milkshake part 2. Drake Harris visited last weekend. This weekend…

Devin Gardner changes his twitter handle like every two weeks.

I hear tell he's supposed to be back next weekend, too? Dios mio, man.

And just the end:

Forget something guy? /Thorin.

Watch it again. Then re-read the texts from your Sparty brother/friend where he blames Appling for everything. Then watch it again.