shuffle series

Hassan Haskins
How Haskins was freed [Patrick Barron]

Michigan's quarterback-centric running game has been a shell of itself this year. Our understanding is Shea injured his oblique on the first play from scrimmage against MTSU, and has since been loathe to keep the ball on reads. Since Michigan spent all offseason transitioning to an extremely read offense, this was a bad development.

I wrote a few weeks back how Army used this to their advantage by having the backside LB option the backside, flying outside when he read a mesh point to force a keep read against a crashing DE and slanting DL.

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Shea compounded the issue by letting the backside LB off the hook when he didn't fly far enough outside. With Patterson not able to keep, Michigan shelved the zone read stuff, ably demonstrating (as much as the awful camera angle allows anyways) why a zone read is important if you're going to leave a guy unblocked:

That brings us to this week, when the flerp doodly poop experts themselves came to Ann Arbor. For most of the afternoon, Michigan ran from the shotgun without bothering to read anybody while Rutgers Rutgered. When you run from the shotgun without a zone read you don't get much—there's a lot of ground to cover from a stopped position after the handoff. As such Michigan's ground game met safeties after three yards and ground out another two because Rutgers for most of the day. In other words, we got to see just about zero of Michigan's real offense as long as the starters were in.

But Shea wasn't the only quarterback who played Saturday. Up 38-0 with 1:32 remaining, Michigan put in Joe Milton, and flipped the quarterback keeps back to the On position. It was our first chance since literally the season's first snap to see what the Gattis offense is trying to do. And it was actually kind of interesting. Wanna see?

[After THE JUMP: R-E-S-P-E-C-T, s-o-r-t-a]

Ace pointed out a basketball coaching site yesterday that had a bunch of Beilein stuff and one thing led to another and this happened, because apparently this is just what I do.

Trying to see stuff in a basketball game was an interesting change of pace, since even with my Analytical Goggles on there's a lot of stuff that just seems to happen because players are good or not good. This aspect of football is obscured somewhat. A lot of coaches say The Expectation Is For The Position with a straight face—I don't think you've ever ever heard a basketball coach drop that.

Anyway.

The initial post Ace pointed out was a couple sections of Michigan's offense called "chin" and "shuffle" in which the center moves out to the free throw line and acts as a low-pressure fulcrum connecting two halves of the floor.

What struck me about chin/shuffle is how they use the center as a conduit, opening up space without putting undue pressure on what's usually the least skilled offensive player on the floor. Meanwhile, the other four positions rotate through a variety of spots, eventually becoming interchangeable parts looking for the half-step they need to attack or shoot instead of reset.

Michigan runs a variety of looks off of this, each of which probes the defense for an easy bucket before reverting to a high ball screen on which the guy receiving the screen has three options.

I set to watching the NC State game again to find examples of how this works, and came across an example of the two-post offense getting Morgan open underneath for two (eventually).

Setting The Offense

This is a bit of an oddity since it's a two-post lineup but the principles are the same; here the offense will work around the lack of a three-point threat from one of the wings thanks to a busted NC State defensive assignment.

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The above is the on-court equivalent of this:

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For reasons unexplained the document consistently calls the two-guard in this offense a "trailor" instead of a "trailer" or I guess a "tailor". Supposition: he is a trailer who is suppose to tailor some offense. YEAH

So here the post has "flashed" but McGary just kind of set up at the line as Burke brought the ball up the court. The things in the document are an idealized version of the real world, I find. For instance, in one of the ways the offense starts is by dumping the ball to the center and then having the point and "trailor" cut to the basket.

The document:

Once 5 catches the pass, 1 and 4 [ed: the "trailor" yes I will eventually have to either fix that or drop the quote marks] SPRINT backdoor to the block. 5 looks for either 1 or 4.

Real life is dang perfunctory relative to an all-caps exhortation to SPRINT. The document does admit a bit later that "It is not common for either player to be open of [sic] this cut" and asks the 2—Morgan in this play—not to be "robotic". On this play the initial movements of Burke and Hardaway are soft jogs to their spot.

On this play Michigan is running "shuffle" instead of chin. Shuffle looks like chin when they start the play, but starts like this:

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dotted line is a pass

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Once Morgan receives the pass, Burke and Hardaway jog to the spots they're supposed to get to…

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…and McGary extends to the top of the key to receive a rote pass from Morgan. No one has made a decision yet.

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Meanwhile, a conveniently-timed graphic notes that eight minutes into the game Hardaway has more points than the rest of Michigan combined. Naturally he is going to receive lots of defensive attention. The guy checking Hardaway is CHECKING HARDAWAY in his brain.

McGary now has a rote pass to make of his own, this one a swing to Stauskas.

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"5 pops high, 3 reverses through the 5 to 2," sayeth document

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Hardaway sets a "shuffle screen" on Morgan's man; Hardaway's man is looking at that graphic and going "oh man I better check Hardaway"; Morgan gets hand-wavingly wide open underneath the basket.

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Stauskas dumps it down; Morgan misses, gets his own rebound, and finishes.

Meanwhile, Michigan has already executed the next part of the play with McGary screening whoever shows up on Hardaway.

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If NC State had covered Morgan appropriately this was likely to be a quality three-point look for Hardaway.

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"5 [McGary] sets the down screen for the 4 [Hardaway],
4 comes off the screen looking to shoot or curl it for a mid-range jumper.
2 [Stauskas] looks for 4.
After the screen 5 can look to slip to the basket or straight cut the FT line. 2 looks either for the lob[!] or at the elbow."

As it is, it's a layup for Morgan, eventually.

Things And Stuff

There aren't really many player takeaways on a short open layup that Morgan misses, gets back, and puts back. If we're trying to figure out some things about how Michigan runs offense, a lot of these broad early strokes are going to be off, as well. But…

A lot of the early movement in the offense is the process of getting into a play. On this play Michigan makes three passes and sends four players in motion before anyone has a decision to make. When Michigan dumps it to the center and then runs around and whatnot they're not really expecting to get a shot out of that, they're just moving into a variant of one of their standard looks.

Whoever is open is open. In half-court sets the guy who gets the ball is just going to be the guy who is open until nothing works and Burke has to create or die off a pick and roll.

Probe, reset, probe, reset. This is not a good example because Michigan just gets a quick easy bucket, but the document suggests the rhythm you can pick up watching Michigan play sometimes as situations happen over and over on the same possession as Michigan searches for the edge.