manny harris

Coming into the year, expectations were high for the Michigan basketball team. They were fresh off their first NCAA Tournament appearance in a decade, returning two of the best players in the Big Ten. They had to replace only walk-ons and a Canadian.

So that worked out great, right? Most Michigan fans probably would have told you that #15 in the nation was too high, but nobody would have had the audacity to tell you that the Wolverines would remain mostly healthy and still limp to a sub-.500 record. In its 18 defeats, the Michigan basketball team had found just about every way to lose. There was the time they were run off the court by an inferior opponent, the time they stayed in the game against a much better opponent despite missing one of their best players, the time they almost upset their instate rival but fell just short, and all variety of just not being the better team. Also times where Evan Turner hit a 37-foot prayer at the buzzer.

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There have to be reasons for these things happening, and no, Idiot Message Board Guy, that reason is not "JOHN BEILEIN SHOULD BE FIRED OMG."

Shooting

As with most John Beilein teams, Michigan was expected to bomb away from deep this year, and bomb away they did. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to tell them that they were supposed to, like, make some of those shots. For the season, they shot 41.6% from the field, and 29.9% from long range. This constituted 43.2% of their shots. Put it all together, and it results in a crappy 48.1 eFG% on the season. That's good for about 230th in the country. Last year, they shot 50.3 eFG%, and finished 117th.

For individual changes in shooting, I think we're going to need a...

Chart?

Chart. Players are arranged by the number of shots they took in 2009-10.

Every returning player except Manny Harris and Zack Gibson saw a reduction in their shooting percentage from last year to this. I didn't check how many of those dropoffs are statistically significant (I imagine not very many of them, if any).

Also, for all the talk about how Michigan "only lost two walkons," everyone seems to have forgotten (and I'm guilty of this as well) that Kelvin Grady was an important part of last year's team, and a true point guard with some experience could have helped Michigan a ton this year. While some of the variation is probably luck, a team-wide regression points to poorer overall shot quality, and that starts with the gutted point guard position. This is true both with and without the ball: last year Lee, Grady, and Merritt were 1-2-3 in three point shooting. The three headed point guard took more threes than anyone on the team—172—and made more of them. This year the point guard was no-shoot Darius Morris and two guys, Laval Lucas-Perry and Stu Douglass, who struggled massively with at the spot.

Size

OK, so I take it back: injuries actually might have played a significant role in the season. Michigan was expecting to have at least one more big man in Ben Cronin, and maybe another in Jordan Morgan. Cronin, a true seven-footer, saw his season (and probably career) come to an end in November thanks to a recurring hip problem that surgery couldn't repair. Morgan is just a freshman, and probably wouldn't have played a significant role on the team even if he hadn't had a shoulder injury that forced surgery and a redshirt.

With Zack Gibson and Deshawn Sims Michigan's only players above 6-8 (and in Sims's case, he's only listed as so), this team was never going to be able to play big. Sure, they could have used Gibson and Sims together a bit more, but that also carried a risk of one of them getting in foul trouble and not having either of them when the other needed a rest.

Zack Novak is not a true power forward. Anybody who has watched the game of basketball and notice that he doesn't even graze 6-5 can tell you that. But Michigan didn't have a ton of (read: any) other options. Criticizing Novak for not being tall enough seems a little unfair, since I think that's mostly out of his control.

So, for all the coach-fans that say Michigan should have gone big or pounded inside more or whatever, they really couldn't do it much more than they did. They went to Sims early in nearly every game, but the opponents would figure it out in short order, and the option would disappear when shooters didn't emerge as a serious threat. At 6'8"-ish, Sims always struggled against guys pushing seven feet tall and no amount of development can fix that when you're the biggest guy on the court.

Coaching?

It's natural to look at the coaching of this team as a potential weakness. For all the limitations of this roster, it was mostly Beilein-assembled, particularly the guys who we were supposed to be relying on as shooters and either couldn't find the basket (Stu Douglass, Zack Novak) or the court (Matt Vogrich).

On a micro scale, there were individual strategic decisions in games that probably didn't make a lot of sense, either. Something with some guy named Turner comes to mind, I don't really remember. But for every one of those, there was probably a positive moment that either went unnoticed or, in one painful instance, un-capitalized upon.

At this point, it's far too early to even consider ditching the only coach who's taken Michigan to the tournament in the past decade. He has a track record of success at every level, and he hasn't done anything yet to show he's not capable of accomplishing that in Ann Arbor. For those who say "well he only lost walk-ons from a tournament team and went under .500," I reply: dude, you do realize that you just said this guy took a team to the tournament as he was forced to play walk-ons extensive time, right? As much as this team may have underachieved, it only looks worse because last year's squad overachieved so much by comparison.

Luck

There have been a lot of accusations over the past couple days that Michigan "underachieved" this year, which duh. However, those who say "Michigan only lost walk-ons off a tournament team should be in the tournament, bro" need to keep in mind that, as much as this team underachieved, last year's squad most definitely overachieved.

Luck most certainly played a role (F you, Evan Turner), and fortunately, Ken Pomeroy has a "Luck Rating" which measures a team's performance against expectation based on Pomeroy's rankings. Last year, Michigan was +0.004 in luck, 131st in the nation. This year? -0.086, 330th out of 347 D-1 teams. This team was horrifically unlucky this year, and slightly lucky last year, making the quality difference between the teams look much more severe than it actually was. In the end, Michigan finished 50th last year and 60th this year. The slide was real but not as severe as the numbers suggested.

For the record, this year's painfully inconsistent team was 238th in "Consistency" to Pomeroy. Last year's was actually worse at 266th.

Can It Get Better Next Year?

As the perpetually optimistic Michigan fan, I am inclined to say yes without even really thinking about the question. [Ed.: An exercise for the reader: if Tim is still perpetually optimistic, what short of a nuclear explosion centered on Michigan Stadium could cause him to lose this trait?] This team has to improve, right?

That partially hinges on the professional whims of Manny Harris. The eyeball test says he needs a senior, but he may be ready to move on. For what it's worth, Sam Webb suggests it's 65-35 Manny stays. The recruitment of Trey Zeigler is another huge factor, as he would be an instant-impact type.

The roster composition should be different next year either way, as Jordan Morgan and Blake McLimans will add some size. For the first time in Beilein's career at Michigan he'll have a true 4 for his system in the form of incoming freshman Evan "Metrics" Smotrycz. They'll have to be ready to contribute, since both of Michigan's post players are moving on after this season.

Michigan's shooting should (hopefully) improve after a decided downturn this year, and the roster should be much more experienced as long as Manny returns. Assuming "luck" is essentially random, the pendulum should swing back the other way (though that's not guaranteed - look at the football teams' turnover margin this fall), and hopefully break even at worst. If Manny comes back, it should be season in which Michigan contends for the NCAA tourney. Life on the bubble isn't satisfying four years into Beilein's tenure, but that's life.

The 2009-10 athletic season is on its way out, and bright times are ahead.

The Postseason Before The Postseason

The Big Ten Tournament walks a weird line between being the end of the regular season and the start of the postseason. It also happens to be Michigan's only chance to, like, make the postseason (they do not plan to accept a CBI bid if they don't make the NIT). In Round 1, Michigan faces off against the Iowa Hawkeyes in the 8/9 game, with a rubber match against Ohio State lurking if they should advance. Your full bracket, from the Big Ten:

To make the NCAA Tournament, the tall order of defeating Iowa, Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Purdue or Michigan State seems to be necessary. Basically what I'm saying is that there are only a couple basketball games left this season, so try to enjoy them.

Lists: We Is On Them

"We" being only DeShawn Sims and Manny Harris, of course. The Official Big Ten All-Conference honorees include DeShawn Sims as a Second-Team selection and Manny Harris as a Third-Team nod. Manny was named to the official First-Team squad in the preseason. Ohio State's Evan Turner was named the conference POTY.

Other outlets making lists include the Big Ten Network's Big Ten Geeks, whose squad (first team only, plus freshman of the year) includes no Wolverines (HT: UMHoops). The outstanding Michigan State (durr: oxymoron, durr) blog The Only Colors determines the Big Ten players who are most valuable based on PORPAG, whatever that means. Points Over Replacement Player Per Adjusted Game decrees that DeShawn Sims is worthy of his Second-Team consideration, and Manny Harris was one of the great disappointments in the Big Ten this year. Players of note:

The stat is imperfect - it only covers offense, and defensive rebounding is one of Manny's great strengths - but it indicates that he has a lot of offensive work to do, and would probably be better-served by staying in college for his final season.

For future reference. Returning starters is always a handy 10,000 foot metric for projecting a college football season and Phil Steele has helpfully assembled a comprehensive list. The Big Ten:

Big 10

Theoooooo! I want this to happen so bad:

A name to watch in Michigan's search for a linebackers coach: Central Florida DC Dave Huxtable.

Yes, it is for the dumb reason. Rudy. Vanessa.

Rodriguez mentioned during his impromptu halftime presser that he expects to have a linebackers coach within a week of signing day. This seems to point to Huxtable as a strong possibility since there'd be no reason to wait on scooping up an unemployed guy like former South Florida and Clemson DC/LB coach David Blackwell. However, Rodriguez has temporarily deputized recruiting coordinator Chris Singletary so he can go on the road and this is reason enough to wait.

Huxtable seems like a good choice. He's been the DC at USF for two years and before that was the linebackers coach for four years. Conference USA is a tough place to get a read on opponents since sometimes you get bombed by a BCS power through no fault of your own, but the conference stats are impressive:

Last season [2008], the squad ranked first in Conference USA in three categories - rushing defense, pass efficiency defense and tackles for loss. UCF recorded 8.62 tackles for loss per game, which ranked third in the country. The Knights were second in the league in total defense, holding foes to just 333.75 yards a contest.

In 2009, UCF was 4th(!) nationally in rush defense, sixth in sacks, and 13th in TFLs but the pass defense dropped off a cliff—83rd in efficiency and sixth in the conference. The end result wasn't terrible. UCF ended up 48th in scoring D despite getting bombed by BCS schools Miami, Texas, and Rutgers.

Olivia.

The most heavily scouted Grand Ledge-Jackson game of all time. With multiple scouting reports out there that go out of their way to say that MI C Jon Horford doesn't wow you, it's safe to say he kid is not a monster recruit. And he's a half-foot taller than anyone on Jackson's team, so those guys are all future chemists.

That does not stop the indefatigable local bloggers and e-journalists from descending on the Grand Ledge-Jackson game in droves. UMHoops was there. So was AnnArbor.com. We have what may be a first: redundant free third-party-generated highlight film of a three-star recruit.

Brave new world, this. As for Horford, he remains a skinny guy who people compare to Courtney Sims. Is that a compliment? Well… sort of:

He has a nice quick drop step and he knows how to use his pivot foot in that way that seems like it should be traveling but definitely isn’t and it’s just a good move. He has great touch around the basket and is an exceptional finisher given his frame. He is also a very, very good passer. Horford was double-teamed almost every time he touched the ball, and he almost always found the open man. Very good instincts on offense.

He's paying the most attention to Michigan and Providence because they're paying the most attention to him:

“Michigan and Providence are probably the two following me the closest,” Horford said. “I show them a lot of respect because they show me respect.”

How many Providence new media folk were at your latest game, Mr. Horford? The choice is clear. (If the answer is three I'm going to be super pissed.)

PREWB! Eric Lacy calls for Oren Wilson and Myles White, the two Spartans who played in the Alamo Bowl and hid their involvement in the PREWB, to get the gate for "making a mockery" of Dantonio's standards. It's about as firebreathing as newspapers get. Sample sentence:

White, 19, also has shown plenty of immaturity and unwillingness to fully disclose his reprehensible actions.

If Dantonio follows through as suggested, the body count from the incident would be up to eight. Will he? White has to be on his final chance after two previous incidents; Wilson hasn't been in trouble before and might get off with a serious suspension. In any case, it was dumb. There's video of this. They're going to figure out you were involved eventually.

(HT: TOC.)

Annual item. The annual DocSat defense of the recruiting-industrial complex in handy chart form:

…and there are many useful players who end up short of All-American status. Here's betting an evaluation of all-conference teams shows a similar distribution.

Please don't go. Manny Harris's broken jumper has bumped him off NBADraft.net's 2010 projections entirely; he now shows up as a 2011 player. UMHoops talked with Aran Smith of said site and got a take on whether or not Manny is NBA ready and if he'll return for a senior season:

Harris is one of the best college shooting guard in the country, but scouts question his ability to hit outside shots. He’s not an overwhelming athlete and doesn’t do anything well enough to offset his subpar outside shooting. He’ll have a chance to get drafted, but scouts are no longer mentioning him as a potential first rounder.

…

I am on the fence on him leaving this year. Harris could be reaching that point where leaving could be in his best interest. He has to weigh the benefits of earning a degree or whether he feels ready to take his game to the next level.

Harris returning would obviously be a huge plus for Michigan, and getting drafted in the second round is worse than being a free agent. If he spends the entire offseason working on his shooting and takes a step forward as a senior, maybe he could get that life-changing guaranteed contract. Or he could just leave now.

DeShawn Sims is an NBA tweener, BTW, with a long and fruitful career in Europe ahead of him, which sounds about right.

Etc.: FL S Rashad Knight commits to Rutgers. The Tulsa World breaks down where D-I players hail from. Michigan is pretty eh, unsurprisingly. (HT: Doctor Saturday.) Apparently the Manny Harris suspension was not a fight.

1/26/2010 – Michigan 56, Michigan State 57 – 10-10, 3-5 Big Ten

Compelled to chip in on that occurrence. Thunder not meant to spoil. Zack Novak versus Kalin Lucas mandatory representation of last night's game.

I spent like 20 minutes looking for this because South Park Studios doesn't let you start clips at arbitrary points. But it was worth it. I present last night:

It's not like a win would have done much except make it more likely Michigan gets to .500 and therefore snags an NIT bid, but the basketball program fell into the state where Beat Rival is your season long ago. It would have been some vague redemption for this cursed year. It wasn't, obviously, because that's just the way 09-10 works. When it's all over I'll burn something in commemoration. Possibly the world.

Anyway, items:

Warn't a foul. Or rather it probably was but it was never going to to get called. (See Tim's post for the image getting passed around.) Sims pushed off to get open and fouled the State player about as much as he got fouled anyway. Still almost went down.

1-3-1… bzzt. When Beilein went into the 1-3-1 on the last possession I thought that was a mistake. The 1-3-1 is an extremely high pressure defense that offers up a lot of easy two-point looks. You're up one and playing a team that doesn't have a lot of shooters or take a lot of threes. If you're going to go into a zone it should be a post-packing one that tends to allow open looks from three, like the 2-3 Michigan has played infrequently. Also, the last time Michigan went to the 1-3-1 MSU sliced it open for a layup and a foul.

MSU didn't get a great shot but it was an open one from reasonable distance.

Start carrying razors. It's too bad that Laval Lucas-Perry doesn't have enough grit to bleed like a hemophiliac after getting elbowed in the nose, because other than the pool of blood that foul he took was a carbon copy of the one that got Manny Harris ejected last year. It would have been equally outrageous if Kalin Lucas had gotten the boot, of course, but shouldn't it have at least been a flagrant? You can give someone a flagrant without ejecting them and that elbow was face level. LLP did not have his face in the Kramer position where he just begs you to turn his cartilage into soup.

Paging the ghost of Gavin Groninger. It is ugly when you bring in a guy who can do exactly one thing and that guy can't do the thing. This is Stu Douglass, who's got an eFG% of 43.9 with a 15.6 usage rate. He's making 34% of his twos and 31% of his threes. I still think he's the best passer on the team and would be useful if he could hit the broad side of a barn with a nuclear bomb. It doesn't look like he can. Maybe he's just not getting many good looks? Last year he was only 33% from three, though. There's a lot of evidence that he's just not the shooter he needs to be.

Novak's kind of in the same boat—his 3PT% is an ugly 29%—but brings more Eckstein with him. Thanks to his relatively frequent rebounds his 2PT% is a healthy 54%.

Roster management. It's not Beilein's fault that Robin Benzing got stuck in Germany one year before the NCAA passed legislation to make kids like him—amateurs who have played on pro teams—eligible or that Ben Cronin's hip imploded, but not getting a big with any ability to play this year is a major failing. If Jordan Morgan could play at all yet he would be out there, missed practice time from his injury or not. Same with Blake McLimans. Beilein has a lot of guys who develop over the course of their careers; the team really needed someone to contribute right away.

Also, I know Kelvin Grady was not very good defensively, but he did make 36% of his threes last year—second on the team to CJ Lee—and would be useful. Were extreme amounts of pine that influenced him to take up football necessary? Would Grady have stayed if Beilein suggested he stick with it?

Manny. It's annoying but it's accurate to append the "…being Manny," isn't it? He's indisputably the best player on the team. Without him the Purdue game was a writeoff. He scored sixteen points, led the team in assists, and had five steals.

But holy crap: he's a 28% three-point shooter this year. Last year he was a 32% shooter. So why is he taking three contested three-pointers on which he does nothing except hold the ball and jack it up? He did the same thing at the end of the Alabama game this year, too. He just jacks up shots he has no business taking. It's one thing if he gets an open look—he was one of two on those—but to just hold the ball and then launch a bad shot without even attempting to run the offense is supremely lazy. Michigan probably converts at least one of those possessions otherwise, which is slightly important in a one-point game. I find him really frustrating.

Kenpom oddity. Michigan is now 58th in the Kenpom rankings, hardly off their pace from last year when they were 50th.

How this? Well, Kenpom also has a "luck" measure, which is basically the difference between your record and what Kenpom would expect your record to be given your performance. This year Michigan is 337th of 347 in this metric. Last year they were 131st, which is slightly above average. Related UMHoops tweet:

If my calculations are correct. Michigan is 2-6 in games that are within 4 pts in the final 2 minutes.

One more way in which this year is like having tiny gremlins stretch your scrotum across two counties.

Purdue 69 Michigan 59, Michigan 10-9 (3-4 Big Ten)

Even when I assumed Manny Harris would be hitting the court in West Lafayette with the rest of the Michigan team, I thought Purdue would pretty easily crack an 11.5-point spread. When word got out that he was suspended for the game, I was expecting a blood-letting. At times, it did look like that. But somehow, Michigan managed to scrape out some good possessions and keep the game close. There is no such thing as a moral victory, but this had to be about as close as it gets.

DeShawn Sims was just about all Michigan had working early, but Zack Novak chipped in to help out, finally beating his shooting bugaboo (4-7 from beyond the arc). Sims showed why he's such a great player, carrying the team on his back at a time when Purdue probably could have quintuple-teamed him with no risk of anyone else scoring.

Sadly, Michigan only plays the Boilermakers once this year, and it leaves with a taste of "what could have been?" had Manny participated. As it is, we saw the Michigan team we've known for most of the year: Not bad, but outside of the two stars (or one in this game), not good enough to win the big ones.

BULLETS

• Why, Manny, why? I'm also pretty interested in hearing how a practice can get chippy enough for a guy to get suspended for unsportsmanlike conduct. That was his first missed game in 85 career contests.
• There's no plausible reason that Matt Vogrich should pretty much ever get a rebound, but time and again he manages to do so. He had two defensive rebounds, and one offensive that the boxscore doesn't credit to him, for whatever reason.
• Even when he doesn't shoot well, it's safe to say that Zack Novak is the third most important player on the team. When Manny doesn't play and Novak is actually dropping bombs, his impact to the team is elevated even further.
• My eye for the intricacies of basketball is admittedly untrained, but it really seemed like Stu Douglass had a poor game defensively. There were times that his lack of effort really jumped out at me.
• Purdue is a ton more talented than Michigan at nearly every position (even Sims has competition with JaJuan Johnson), and without Manny, they managed to keep it close. That sucks for now, but does bode well when Beilein gets more of his own players.
• The Wolverines have been rebounding surprisingly well of late. They were only out-rebounded by Purdue by a margin of 4.

Up Next

The Wolverines host in-state rival #6/7 Michigan State on Tuesday. On short rest, and potentially without Manny for a second consecutive contest, things could get ugly. It is a Maize Out, so pick up your gear today or tomorrow, or plan to show up early: the first 3,000 fans to Crisler will receive a maize t-shirt.

In case you missed it in Tim's preview, this happened:

"Manny has made great strides both on and off the court over the last three years," Beilein said in a release. "Unfortunately he used poor judgment on Friday. It is best for Manny's future if he stays home and sits out this Purdue game. We will meet with Manny and the team again when we return to determine if he has learned enough from this suspension to rejoin the team for Tuesday's game. I am confident that this learning experience will be valuable in the future to both Manny and our basketball program."

Punch thrown? I can't think of much else that would warrant a suspension. Maybe Chris Kramer snuck into practice and Harris gave him a flaming elbow drop.

This reinforces my opinion on Harris's potential departure: he's not likely to go in the first round, but he's probably going to leave anyway. He and Beilein are not on the same page, it appears.