game previews

THE ESSENTIALS

OR DIE

THE THEM

Ah, Wisconsin. Tempo-clubbing, basketball-imploding, infuriating-non-call-generating, desperation-three-point-chuck-heaving, Kenpom-enthralling Wisconsin. How your presence enfouls all that is good about Big Ten basketball this year. Chernobyl: the basketball team. And so forth.

The Badgers' calling card is defense, and how, but we'll discuss their abilities in that department in the Tempo Free section. On offense, they've got one of the most bizarre breakdowns I've seen in many years of clicking refresh on Kenpom. Senior power forward Ryan Evans is Wisconsin's highest-usage and lowest-efficiency player. As statistical anomalies go, that's pretty amazing. Evans absorbs 26% of Wisconsin shots despite shooting 42% from the floor; he also shoots 42% from the line. He gets to the line rather frequently, but since that's to Wisconsin's detriment it's not a particularly good representation of his game, which is midrange jumper after midrange jumper. He is an excellent rebounder and, like almost everyone on Wisconsin, turns the ball over rarely.

Three players provide what offensive firepower the Badgers have, most prominently center Jared Berggren. Berggren is yet another 6'10" upperclassman who has three-point range and can beast you on the inside. Berggren is more beast and less sniper than, say, John Leuer; they all come from the same mold. Berggren rebounds at both ends, blocks shots without fouling, and has an incredibly low TORate for a guy his size. The main flaw in his game is 25% shooting on 75 threes. He's terribly underrated.

You probably know Ben Brust, a perimeter-oriented shooting guard hitting 40% from three. He is much less effective inside the line (48%; very rare trips to the line), and Michigan should close him out ferociously.

The third offensive cogs doesn't even start: freshman Sam Dekker. He's getting barely over half of Wisconsin's minutes despite shooting 55%/43% on quality usage. He's not the rebounder Evans is and isn't the defender; he's a much, much better offensive option.

Point guard Traevon Jackson is a high-turnover player who shoots 41%/30%. Michigan might well encourage him to shoot; Mike Bruesewitz tells you all you need to know about him with his last name. He's there to D up, rebound, and put up a small number of high quality looks. Like Berggren, he takes threes when they present themselves despite hitting well under 30%.

THE RESUME

Wisconsin had a weird finish to their season after that prayer by Brust. They lost in OT at Minnesota the next night, had consecutive whompings of Ohio State(!), Northwestern, and Nebraska, and then finished the year on a depressing slide. They lost to Purdue by 13 at home and at Michigan State by 15 in a game in which they put up a measly 43.

They finished the year with another desperation three, this one at Penn State. While Michigan had their own, worse struggles at Penn State, that ain't good. The Badgers finished the Big Ten season with the same 12-6 record Michigan did and won the tiebreaker for the fourth spot thanks to the Brust prayer and Michigan's lack of a return game.

THE TEMPO-FREE

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

The Badgers are a funhouse mirror version of Michigan. Both teams take care of the ball, force very few turnovers, never get to the line, and never put their opponents on the line.

The distortions come in defensive rebounding—Wisconsin is great and Michigan progressively worse—and eFG% at both ends of the floor. On offense Michigan is great, with Wisconsin scraping out a middling existence. On defense Wisconsin is great, with Michigan scraping out a less-than-middling existence.

THE PROTIPS

Run two guys off the line only. Preventing three pointers is a skill that Wisconsin has and Michigan should try to emulate. Dekker and Brust should be closed down with extreme predjudice; everyone else you can chill on save backup PG George Marshall.

Get handsy on D. If you're putting Wisconsin on the line that's only a slight downgrade in expectation, one that should be offset by an increased ability to get those stop things. Obviously, Evans is the main issue for the Badgers here.

For pants sake don't hedge the pick and roll hard. Look man, if Traevon Jackson wants to pull up, let him pull up. Don't unbalance your defense and invite Jared Berggren to beast on Trey Burke. Just go under the damn screen. This will not happen.

Brust P&R is another matter, but even then Michigan has to stop pointlessly getting its big well outside the three-point line, whereupon disaster occurs.

Make your midrange jumpers. Wisconsin's defense is so good because they get away with subtle murder. Refs don't want the bad man to yell at them. But also they cut off good shots. Hoop Math shows that nearly half of shots Wisconsin faces are two point jumpers, AKA The Devil's shot. Points per shot on the three categories:

• RIM: 1.1
• TWOS: 0.7
• THREES: 0.9

Michigan got off more threes than Wisconsin usually allows in the first game. They hit only five of 18.

I don't have much hope that Michigan is going to break Wisconsin tendencies here, so the answer is Hardaway and Burke making their pull-ups. Pull-ups suck, but you can't get a blocking call on Wisconsin to save your life and Burke's floater is deadly. In the last game, Wisconsin continually sagged off Burke on the pick and roll; Burke hit 6 of 13 twos. That was almost good enough.

This is a terrible matchup for Stauskas, who may be Not Just A Shooter™ but has very little midrange game. In the first game he had five points on seven shots.

McGary: fight Berggren to a standstill on the boards. Self explanatory.

Do something, GRIII. Ditto.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 1.

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.

Hello. Brian again.

THE ESSENTIALS

ABANDON A LOT LESS HOPE THAN USUAL YOU GUYS

THE THEM

AHHHHHH I LIKE PRETENDING I'M AT THE DENTIST

On offense, Ohio State is Deshaun Thomas and a cliff. Thomas puts up almost a third of OSU's shots, connecting at a 52% clip from two and 40% from three, with an impressively low turnover rate. He's another one of those NBA prototype small forwards that gets drafted into duty as a "power forward" in college, and will provide a stiff test for Glenn Robinson III—and the team as a whole. With 6'5"+ guys at two of the other wing spots, Michigan may end up switching a lot of screens in an attempt to force Thomas into jumpers.

Thomas's box scores against the top opposition OU has played reveals a consistent level of production:

Michigan does not have an elite interior defender like Duke and Kansas, but neither are they as incompetent positionally at the five as Illinois is. Thomas will get his; Michigan would do well to force him to take two-point jumpers as much as possible. Note the assists, or lack thereof, as well. Not sure if that's on him or his teammates or a combination… either way, heavy rotation to him probably won't burn Michigan too badly.

The other star-type substance for Ohio State is point guard Aaron Craft, who hounded Trey Burke for most of last year. Burke's box scores versus OSU:

Craft forced Burke into 16 turnovers in three games. This year, Burke has twelve in his last 11 games and is averaging 1.6 per game against major competition. If Burke is going to be the national player of the year, this is the matchup he has to flip from last year. He can't be as efficient as he has been for big chunks of the year but he has to turn in something at least on par with his performance in Michigan's win last year.

Unfortunately for the Buckeyes, Craft has not picked up the offensive slack left by the departures of Sullinger and Buford. He remains a low-usage player of middling effectiveness, shooting 44%/33%. He does a good job as a distributor; OSU needs points from someone, though, and he doesn't appear to be the guy. Duke basically dared him to score and he responded with a 2 for 11 performance from two, 1 of 4 from three. He had seven points on nine shots against Kansas and only made two shots in the halfcourt against Illinois, adding two fast break layups off his own steals to crack into double digits.

Shooting guard Lenzelle Smith is a quality three-point shooter who is a liability once you run him off the line. He shoots 46% from within the arc, doesn't get to the line, and is under 60% when he does get there. Small forward Sam Thompson is a super-athletic sophomore without much game outside of leaping over people and dunking on their face—think Rodney Williams a couple years ago.

Ohio State has a rotation similar to Michigan's at the five, with Amir Williams and Evan Ravenel splitting minutes about down the middle. Neither has much post game; Ravenel is slightly more likely to put up a shot, and Williams picks up a lot of free throws—that he converts at a 50% clip. Williams is a shot alterer with a block rate above 10% and a high-volume offensive rebounder who gets in foul trouble frequently. Ravenel has some OREB game himself but is a less imposing defender at 6'8" to Williams's 6'11". He may get the occasional post touch.

That's six; OSU goes eight deep. Sophomores LaQuinton Ross and Shannon Scott are the primary post players. Ross is a high-volume, high-turnover black hole is an effective slasher and not much of a shooter. Scott has emerged into an assist machine and defensive menace—top ten steal rate—in his second year of being Not Trey Burke. He's not a shooter at all, with a 56/44/37 FT/2/3 shooting line.

THE RESUME

Ohio State had somewhat close games against powers that finished in defeat. OSU actually led Duke (at Duke) most of the way, but fell behind at the six minute mark and lost by five. A home game against Kansas was much the same way, with OSU leading for much of the first half before finding offensive stagnation and letting the game slip away from them. They had just eight points in the final ten minutes.

Less understandable than getting Withey'd was a 19-point blowout at Illinois; Purdue hung relatively tough at Mackey, but was never in serious threat of taking the lead. The rest of OSU's schedule has very bad; their only KP100 wins are against #92 Purdue and #85 Washington.

THE TEMPO-FREE

It's hard to separate out what is real in these numbers and what is the schedule:

That looks capital-E elite and has the Buckeyes tenth in the Kenpom rankings, but it is built on a lot of dominating blowouts against bad teams. Games against major competition have gone less well… but other than that Illinois game, there's nothing there you can point out as a huge-huge disappointment.

THE PROTIPS

Burke vs Craft must be at least a draw. I don't think Michigan is winning a lot of games where Burke goes 1-11 from the floor with 8 turnovers. This is going to be a war; quien es mas macho?

Two point jumpers for everyone. Bizarrely, the only players who crack 40% shooting two point jumpers for OSU are Ravenel and Williams, and that's very small sample size. Thompson, Scott, and Craft are hovering around 25%. By contrast, Michigan has Burke above 50% and Robinson and Hardaway near it. Stauskas not so much, but only 13% of Stauskas attempts are two point jumpers.

If Michigan can keep OSU away from the rim, they should  be able to win HORSE against these guys. If they had some variety of pack-line defense they could run, that would be ideal. They don't, but they can help off just about anyone not named Thomas and they'll be fine.

Rebound on par. Through three games in conference, Michigan is second in both offensive and defensive rebounding, albeit against meh competition. On the other hand, Ohio State has played Purdue and Illinois instead of Northwestern and Iowa and is currently getting shot down on the offensive boards (8th) and doing well on defense (third). Part of Win At HORSE is battling the Buckeye to a stalemate on the boards. Without a lot of dual post action from either team and Michigan just about matching OSU's athleticism, that should be doable.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 4! Screw you, Kenpom! BOOM

Hello. Ace was tasked with important things like making Stauskas GIFs and a special treat to be unveiled a bit later, so I'll take over preview duties.

THE ESSENTIALS

The N stands for "nope."

THE THEM

Brandon Ubel must have gotten lost on the way to Wisconsin.
Also, two years ago Nebraska played something called Peru State.

According to Kenpom, the Huskers are the worst team in the league and only a Tim Frazier-less Penn State is anywhere close. A plurality of Nebraska's attempts will come from 6'5" senior Dylan Talley, who has Burke-like usage but shoots 35% from two. No doubt he is the guy saddled with late shot clock heaves that Nebraska's slow-it-down offense obtains plenty of. When he gets a three he knocks it down at a decent 35% clip.

Backcourt partner Ray Gallegos is mostly a standard-issue distance gunner—shots are two-thirds threes, no TOs, assists, or free throws. Unfortunately for the Huskers his plentiful threes are dropping at a 32% rate. When he does get a shot from inside the arc it tends to go down.

Center Brandon Ubel is probably Nebraska's best player. he gets to the line pretty well, hits 80% from there, and hits a little better than half of his relatively frequent twos. His rebounding is only okay and he doesn't do much defensively, but if there's a spot on the floor where Nebraska has any sort of size/athleticism advantage it's in an Ubel-Morgan matchup.

5'9" freshman point guard Benny Parker is almost nonexistent on offense. A third of the time he registers in the box score, it's because he's turned it over; in 15 games he's launched a total of 52 shots. For context, he shoots less often than Spike Albrecht.

There isn't really a fifth starter. Wing David Rivers gets just over half of available minutes; he is a statistical non-entity. 6'6" wing Shavon Shields is a turnover machine as well; his game looks like rim or nothing. Andre Almedia is the most interesting bench player because he's frigging enormous—6'11" and at least 350 despite being listed at 314—and manages to get off the ground enough to have a top-100 block rate and be the team's most effective rebounder on both ends of the floor. He only gets 40% of available minutes, likely because any more would kill him. I'd look for Michigan's athletic bigs to run the floor against the guy.

Finally, junior Mike Peltz makes me wish Kenpom tracked lowest usage: in 15 games he has put up 14 shots despite being on the floor a third of the time.

THE RESUME

Nebraska's best wins are against Valpo and Tulane, fringe KP100 teams. They've lost to Kent State, Creighton, Oregon, and UTEP by double-digits and got blown out by OSU in their Big Ten opener. They did beat Wake Forest and USC—two of the worst major-conference teams in the country—and led Wisconsin at the six-minute mark before falling 47-41.

THE TEMPO-FREE

This is a major-conference version of EMU with a grim offense and okay defense:

An okay defense relative to the rest of college basketball, that is. Nine Big Ten teams are 52nd are better; only Northwestern and Penn State are worse. They are the worst offense in the league by some distance.

They can't shoot threes, don't shoot many, keep opponent threes to a relative minimum, and offensive rebounds are minimal at both ends of the floor.

Drilling down, the best news for Nebraska is that they own the country's 18th-best free throw defense. Clutch, you guys, clutch.

THE PROTIPS

Show up. The game will proceed from there.

Sag if you want to. Talley's the only guy on the team who's even mediocre at threes.

Iso Burke if you want to. This Parker kid is going to have to check Burke, which good luck, or switch on to a 6'5" player. Either way, he doesn't have a prayer of not getting lit up.

Don't wander off at halftime. Challenge: challenging.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 23

Elsewhere

UMHoops preview. Michigan needs to focus.

Why even pretend Burke has to compete for the Bob Cousy award? Moreover, if there are 20 "finalists," what do you call the guys when you cut it to ten and then five? I hate award PR.

NESBITT ASKS THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

When did it become OK to coo about Michigan basketball?

MY ANSWER IS SIX

At this rate, Caris Levert will be Andre Almedia by his senior year. Horford may return tonight. GRIII hype. He's still outside of Chad Ford's first round, blessed be Chad Ford.

Well, Mr. Baumgardner, I think Michigan will respond to adversity by not having any.

Iowa fans are all like "whoah." Opposing coaches are like "this gives me the heebie-jeebies," literally. Try not to watch most of the Iowa game again now that you have a link.

Gasaway: Michigan is good on offense. #science

Essentials

Again this preview assumes that Denard Robinson is basically a wildcat guy when he lines up at quarterback now. Hoke just reiterated that Gardner will start and Robinson will play "some quarterback," and by "some quarterback" he means "wildcat guy."

Run Offense vs South Carolina

happy thoughts

This was two things against Ohio State: Denard Robinson and disaster. Stripped of the one back with any credentials to his name by a gruesome injury to Fitzgerald Toussaint, Michigan all but abandoned any thought of running the ball with the men misnomered "running backs" in the first half, and then proved the wisdom of that decision—if not the wisdom of their second-half playcalling—by getting stuffed almost literally every time they touched the ball after halftime.

The results were grim. Vincent Smith and Thomas Rawls had ten carries between them for a total of 14  yards. Rawls gained a total of two yards on five carries while turning in this career lowlight:

That is likely the point at which we remember Rawls hype deflating entirely as he's relegated to Kevin Grady duty for the rest of his career.

It's not like Rawls is alone in that department. Toussaint followed up a breakout 2011 (1041 yards on 187) by dropping almost two yards from his per-attempt average, going from 5.6 a pop to 3.9. Vincent Smith managed 2.8; Rawls is actually at the top of the heap with 4.2 thanks to a couple of garbage time runs against Purdue and Illinois. When Rawls was forced into the lineup in earnest this November, the results were ugly: 32 carries, 57 yards, less than two yards an attempt. I'd be more receptive to the argument that Rawls saw a lot of short yardage carries that artificially depressed his YPC if he wasn't a major reason he saw so many of those carries by failing to get any YAC on the goal line.

Anyway. The failure of the Michigan running game is comprehensive. The interior line can't block, the tight ends are too young, the tailbacks miserable. Except…

In this context Denard Robinson's season is nothing short of miraculous. His historic season has been obscured by injury and interceptions, but here it is: 1166 yards on 154 carries, an average of 7.6 per despite missing games against Minnesota and Northwestern. That will be a record dating back to at least 1948 (100 carry minimum) if he keeps it above Ty Wheatley's 7.3.

Meanwhile no other player on the roster can grind out half of that outside of garbage time. It is time to shake our fists at the fickle whims of injury and Rich Rodriguez's offensive line recruiting, with a bonus shake at the motley collection of tailbacks on the roster.

…

…

…

keep shaking

…

ok one more

…

Ok. Now, the opponent.

South Carolina's got shiny numbers that are a bit distorted by their rampant sackage. They're 16th nationally, giving up 119 yards a game. Removed 40(!) sacks for 253 yards and opponents do get up to 4.0 yards a pop. This is a good run defense, yeah, but it's not on the same level as Alabama, Notre Dame, MSU, or OSU (when OSU isn't giving up 70-yard touchdowns). The defensive tackles are not pocket-crushers, the safeties like to shoulder-block people down after they get first downs and stand over them like idiots, which might be an asset when Denard breaks into the secondary if any of them have the chutzpah to try that against 16.

Is it going to matter? Probably not. In the game of "can Michigan run a football with Not Denard," bet on "no." Can Michigan effectively integrate Denard into a 20-carry presence if he's not playing quarterback? Well…

Key Matchup: I wonder if two months is enough time for Borges to figure out how to put Denard and Devin on the field at the same time. Denard's great; he can't beat out 10 guys going for him on the snap; just Percy Harvin the guy already and stop holding up a huge sign that says RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN when Denard is at QB. Also you can probably run Gardner some since it's the last game of the year.

[HIT THE JUMP for CLOWNEY THE DRAGON]

Previously here: Ace FFFF! glewe looks at Ohio State's charmed existence so far. Lanyard program.

Essentials

This preview assumes that Denard Robinson will play a similar role to the one he did against Iowa, still minus about all of the throwing.

Run Offense vs OSU

wall of fame sports describes Hankins as a "road grater"

Yerg. After weeks and weeks of struggles against mediocre or worse Big Ten defensive lines, Michigan is staring down the barrel at John Simon, Jonathan Hankins, and company. Ace: 

The front four is very, very good. Behemoth DT Johnathan Hankins demands two blockers on the interior; while he's mostly a space-eater, he'll make a few plays that show off frightening quickness, which is why he'll be a top ten NFL draft pick. Garrett Goebel is solid, not spectacular, at the other tackle spot—while he doesn't make a lot of plays, he holds the point of attack well. Nathan Williams is also in that mold—not a huge playmaker, but not a weak point. That allows Simon to do what he does, and Michigan would be wise to avoid him as much as possible.

Abandon all hope all ye who try to run between the tackles.

Ohio State has rebounded from some rough early outings to shut down the Big Ten's assortment of feeble offenses. In the league all comers have been crushed save Nebraska and Wisconsin. The Huskers got one huge play and an assortment of moderately-sized ones en route to 253 yards on 41 carries, 6.2 a pop. Taylor Martinez threw three interceptions and Nebraska still put up 38 points and around 450 yards. Wisconsin had a similar outing minus the huge play, grinding out 242 yards on 52 carries. This was almost all Montee Ball, who neared 200 himself and needed 39 carries to do so.

Michigan is caught between those teams' offenses, except when they try to run the ball from under center they get bags of despair instead of yards. This sucks, as Etienne Sabino's return has seen him move to SLB when OSU is in their base package with converted fullback Zach Boren—like, converted a few games ago—the starting MLB. Wisconsin profited from that weak spot, as Ace noted; it's doubtful Michigan can manage it.

So what does that leave? The inverted veer game from the shotgun and a satellite of plays around it, plus Denard jet sweep type action, Fritz-type action, and maybe just giving him the dang ball on conventional running plays because why not. Michigan showed a diverse array of stuff last week; this has no doubt sent the Ohio State coaching staff into a tizzy preparing for it; Michigan knows this and is preparing counters; Ohio State knows this and is preparing for counters they haven't yet seen but can probably guess at since there's little new under the sun in football.

They can get stuff here. Ryan Shazier is much better this year but still retains some of those Ohio State Defense Alcohol symptoms: he is the cause of, and solution to, all problems.

Using Denard as a jet/veer/option/whatever threat is imperative. He can't be in the game without Michigan faking a handoff to him and using him as a potential dumpoff threat to keep the heat off. So Michigan must run that stuff on the ground as well. I'm guessing Michigan debuts a Devin/Denard/FB-type backfield in this game and uses Denard as the veer back and just, like, you know, the guy who takes handoffs. Running back.

That exists separately from the snaps Michigan must hand over to actual running backs on downs where Gardner is operating from pro-style sets. Since the dawn of Gardner, Thomas Rawls has 27 carries; these have gone for an average of 2.4 yards an attempt. A lot of those have been short yardage, yes, but one of the reasons a lot of those have been short yardage has been Rawls's general inability to power out the yards a guy like him is supposed to. The difference in YAC between Rawls and Iowa pounder Mark Weisman was eye-opening; several times since Gardner entered the lineup Michigan has been reduced to third- and fourth-down Gardner run/pass rollouts.

A Rawls carry that gains more than two yards will be a pleasant surprise. Michigan's other options are Vincent Smith, who has 11 carries for 23 yards in Big Ten play, and redshirt freshman Justice Hayes, who has three carries for –2 yards in all games not against UMass and Illinois. This is where millions of voices cry out for Dennis Norfleet and are suddenly silenced, but if you're going to put your miniature true freshman on the field that's pretty much putting Denard out there—he's not blocking anyone, so you might as well just go with Denard.

So, Al, what can you do with Fritz and friends?

Key Matchup: Borges vs seeming mismatch up the middle. No one's going to blame the guy if the run game can't make any headway given the relative NFL prospects of the offensive and defensive lines here, especially without Toussaint. If Borges can get some big plays out of this Devin/Denard combo by winning rock-paper-scissors matchups and confusing the opponent that'll be a bonus.

[HIT THE JUMP FOR erm]