floor slap watchdog

2/16/2020 – Michigan 89, Indiana 65 – 16-9, 7-7 Big Ten

Sports fans are prone to wild swings in mood, often with little justification. Everything that just happened will keep on happening, and this goes double when things are bad. Back when I ran the Blogpoll voters tended to overrate their own teams a hair when things were going well, but it was a dead certainty that they'd under-rank them significantly after a loss. Every voter, every time.

Lose painfully for a month and your perspective gets jaundiced. When Michigan played at Nebraska a few weeks ago they were down Zavier Simpson and Isaiah Livers. Then Franz Wagner got in foul trouble. Michigan spent a big chunk of the first half with Adrian Nunez and CJ Baird on the court. Our photoshopper-in-residence Abraham wondered on twitter why he was watching a random MAC game, and I laughed sardonically.

At some point in January I said I wanted to sim to the end of the season and get the Howard croots on campus. This season felt like a snakebit write-off: Livers couldn't stay on the court, the trident was haunted, Michigan would get a million good looks they miss while opponents poured in every variety of garbage known to man.

At the same time I tried to argue that Michigan's January was a massive statistical outlier that could not last, because Michigan was not the second-worst team in the country at all things from behind the three-point line. And lo:

Those five games are the five they've played in February.

Michigan is starting to look like Michigan again but the key is playing this way through March (and staying healthy) via @ethan_sears https://t.co/U1qQIU8WDS pic.twitter.com/2sqv103WZd

— Dylan Burkhardt (@umhoops) February 17, 2020

The situation is now flipped. Michigan's probably ahead of its skis a little. But you've seen the shots. You've seen Michigan tee up open corner threes over and over again as the opponent issues a contested jack from NBA range. Reality is somewhere between 59 and 1. It's a lot closer to 1.

[After THE JUMP: The Mona Lisa of floor slaps]

1 hour and 35 minutes

The Sponsors

We can do this because people support us. You should support them! The show is presented by UGP & The Bo Store, and if it wasn’t for Rishi and Ryan we’d be writing for The Athletic if we're lucky.

Our associate sponsors are also key to all of this: HomeSure Lending, Peak Wealth Management, Ann Arbor Elder Law, the Residence Inn Ann Arbor Downtown, the University of Michigan Alumni Association, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, The Phil Klein Insurance Group, FuegoBox and The Athletic

1. Hoops vs Indiana

starts at 1:00

Archie Miller: great basketball coach! All those dunks and layups all come from sticking to this insane strategy of high hedging vs X, even after Michigan had 41 points because of it at halftime. Everyone except the centers had a 128+ and after Franz they're all in 140. IU's three-big lineup leads to Michigan going zone. That Davis guy went 9/9, with more than half of them garbage buckets. Brandon Johns is like a cornerback with closing speed: closing feet!

[The rest of the writeup and the player after The Jump]

Derrick Walton led M's late charge with great transition play. [Bryan Fuller/MGoBlog]

They should've known.

Detroit hung with Michigan for most of a rather ugly game, thanks to the hot hand of Juwan Howard Jr. (24 points) and the cold first-half shooting of Michigan. With just 5:38 to play, the upset watch remained in effect with the game tied at 52.

Then Detroit slapped the floor.

Michigan put the game away with an 11-0 run.

If you're confused about the correlation, ask a State fan.

The Wolverines couldn't buy a bucket in the first half, going 10/29 from the field, including an uncharacteristic 3/12 mark from beyond the arc. Neither team looked very good, nor did the officials, who couldn't decide whether to call the game tight or let everything go. The Titans scored on the half's final possession to take a 28-27 lead into the locker room.

The second half didn't begin so well, either, as Detroit extended their lead to four points during a rough stretch for Michigan freshman Kameron Chatman. John Beilein wasted little time going to what would be his best lineup of the night, lifting Chatman for Spike Albrecht and inserting Max Bielfeldt at center. Both provided the support Michigan's three backcourt stars needed; Albrecht dished out four assists, knocked down two threes, and added a steal, while Bielfeldt hauled in five boards and even dished out a couple assists himself.

That allowed the big three to flourish. After a rough first half, Caris LeVert went on a tear in the second stanza, scoring 17 of his team-high 21 points in the final 20 minutes; he also pulled down nine rebounds to nearly tally a double-double. Zak Irvin became the main beneficiary of Walton's fast break exploits, knocking down a couple second-half transition threes on his way to 18 points. Walton finished with 16 points of his own, grabbed three rebounds, and handed out three assists.

Outside of Howard, who needed 24 shot equivalents to score his 24 points, and an usually efficient Brandon Kearney (14 points on 5/6 FG), nobody on Detroit could get much going offensively; Michigan kept the Titans almost entirely off the offensive glass and forced most of their shots to originate from the perimeter, and eventually the Titans flat-lined, going through long stretches of the second half without being able to score.

Michigan managed to weather a bad shooting night to eventually come away with the win, but concerns are mounting as the three stars have been forced to bear what could be an impossible load to carry long-term. The Irvin/LeVert/Walton troika scored over 77% of the team's points tonight, and the freshmen expected to fill major roles either looked lost on the court (Chatman, DJ Wilson) or were disturbingly absent from the rotation as the game wore on (Mark Donnal, Ricky Doyle).

That's to be expected, in part, on such a young team with such obvious go-to players, but when the competition steps up significantly on Monday—when Michigan faces an Oregon team in Brooklyn that beat these same Titans by 18 earlier this week—the lack of secondary options is going to become a serious problem.

For now, Michigan's survived unscathed, and there are encouraging signs—one of those, somewhat surprisingly, on defense, where they've owned the boards. Sometime soon, though, this team is going to need one or two of their freshmen to grow up in a hurry.