Western Michigan

I had not initially planned to do a Hockey Weekly this week because we had one last week and there isn't much new news to report on-ice. The team bulldozed the Wisconsin Badgers this past weekend, as expected, and now coast into their bye week in first place in the B1G standings, sending their four Olympians off to China. Unfortunately, the reason I decided to write this piece is two elements related to the program that have come out in the past week, one being a FOIA request made public pertaining to the murky WMU GLI cancelation, and the other being an MLive article detailing an ongoing investigation into the program. This will be a shorter piece than normal, as I'll quickly share a few takes on the Wisconsin weekend before then talking (briefly) about both of those off-ice matters: 

Badger Revenge 

On-ice, the Michigan Wolverines swiftly took care of business this weekend against a bad Wisconsin team. It was sweet revenge for the worst loss Michigan has suffered this season, when they lost to the Badgers at home back on October 29. Neither game was particularly close, 5-1 and 6-2 victories, though the second game had a wild flurry in the second period that temporarily made it interesting. Here's a few HockeyBullets from the weekend: 

- Ethan Edwards, continued. Last week I discussed the terrific play of Ethan Edwards, who has been coming on strong. This weekend he had the highlight reel moment of his season thus far: 

What a solo effort by Ethan Edwards! pic.twitter.com/Ub4xArJppy

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) January 30, 2022

Edwards continues to grow as the season rolls around and now it's showtime for him. With Owen Power out of the lineup attending a Team Canada Olympic camp in Switzerland, Edwards was bumped up to the top defensive pairing with captain Nick Blankenburg. That's a lot of responsibility for a freshman, because that pair will draw top assignments over the two weekends of games during the Olympics. Edwards seems up to the task, though, and I'm excited to watch him in this final month of the regular season. 

- Speaking of Edwards, the defense scores a lot of goals. The Saturday game saw the team's defensemen score 3/6 goals that Michigan scored and the team now has two defensemen with double digit goals in under thirty games played (Luke Hughes has 10 and Nick Blankenburg has 11). Add in Owen Power with 3 and Ethan Edwards now with 2 and, and that's a lot of goal scoring to come from your blue line. But scoring goals is not the only way that the back end contributes to the offense for Michigan. They are a central component of driving offensive play whether or not they're the ones who actually put the puck in the net, either by facilitating breakouts or controlled entries, joining the rush, or pinching down in the offensive zone to aid the cycle. That large role they play is why they get the goals, which often come on plays looking like this: 

Just filthy Luke Hughes pic.twitter.com/Uq3xplDPgt

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) January 30, 2022

Mobility is key for Michigan's blue line. An old-time(y) defenseman with skating issues isn't making the play that Luke Hughes makes. The goals Michigan's defensemen score look like that because skating are their big assets. The team has a stable of smooth skating defensemen who are comfortable moving up and joining the play, which is why they play a big role in the offense, and then sometimes they get rewarded with having the goals attributed to themselves alone. The Michigan Colorado Wolverines Avalanche, basically. 

- A nice weekend for the non-Olympic guys. It was decently reassuring that, in the last weekend of games before the Olympics, Michigan got some solid offensive contributions from players who will not be heading to China. After all, they are the players who will be leaned upon to deliver Michigan victories against MSU and OSU in a couple weeks. The first goal I really liked from that crew is this one: 

Phil has got us FIRED up! pic.twitter.com/RtSb3qmbic

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) January 30, 2022

Keaton Pehrson brings the puck down the wall and below the goal line before losing possession. 5th year senior Michael Pastujov gets involved in the ensuing puck battle, winning it and shielding possession of the puck to move it to the forehand, then delivering a good pass to a high danger area. There, Philippe LaPointe sees the open ice, moves to it, and receives the feed to wire it by the goalie. Beautiful play all around from three guys who will be in the lineup next time we see the team at Yost. 

Another goal I liked was this one by Mackie Samoskevich: 

Mackie Samoskevich is having himself a night! First three-point game since Nov. 20 pic.twitter.com/i9fd22nLMP

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) January 29, 2022

Edwards leads the entry, puck bounces around to Beecher on the far side, who slides down the wall and makes a nice pass to Samoskevich in the slot, who rips it by the netminder. Beecher, Samoskevich, and Edwards are all drafted players, but none are going to the Olympics, making them exactly the kinds of folks that will need to step up. This goal showcases how much skill will still be on the roster even when you subtract Beniers, Brisson, Power and Johnson. 

- Erik Portillo, still good. Thanks to this weekend's performance (three goals against in two games), he's now up to a .953 SV% and a 1.54 GAA in nine games since Christmas. Michigan is 7-0-2 in those games and he's allowed two or fewer goals in eight of the nine games. Pretty good! 

[AFTER THE JUMP: one more take, and some off-ice deliberation]

Left to right: WMU’s Zach Terrell, Ohio’s Frank Solich, Kent State’s Terence Waugh

College football’s still a ways away, but now that we’re getting close to Memorial Day – when the national preview magazines start appearing at bookstores – we might as well take a look at the CFB landscape. While the sport’s third estate won’t receive as much ink as the superpowers and the playoff race, the mid-major conferences around the country are part of what makes college football so great. Now that the sport is divided into the Power 5 and Group of 5, there’s a decided hierarchy for the have-nots, but at least one of them is guaranteed a game against one of the big boys in a New Year’s Six Bowl. For the true college football fan, at least a cursory knowledge of the Group of 5 conferences is a must. Because of their regional proximity to the Big Ten, I’ll start with the MAC.

[article after the JUMP]

Some games are just games. When there are just games we just write the bullets. Don't forget Ace's instant recap.

12/4/2012 – Michigan 73, Western Michigan 41 – 8-0

So Michigan gets 7 and 9 points from Robinson and Hardaway as both shoot 3 of 10 from the floor and they win by 32. The new normal: better than the old normal. That was offset by a monster night from Trey Burke: 20 points on 11 shots, 7 assists, no turnovers, three steals. And onward.

Pick your sloppy point. Michigan is still working through long sections during which they look pretty sloppy, which probably shouldn't be a surprise with two or three freshmen on the court at all times. In this game it was early; in the previous two the rough patch was down the stretch. The net effect was about the same adjusted for level of competition.

To some extent that is basketball, but if they can just smooth out a couple of the rough patches by March…

/picks up paper bag

Tempo still slow, slow, slow. Michigan is 324th in tempo. I don't get it. It seems like Michigan is pushing the ball as much as makes sense for them to do. The Daily has an article headlined "Transition becomes Michigan's best option on offense" and I thought that was reasonable. A couple times in this game I thought Hardaway was going into two or three players when pulling it out and setting up the half-court offense was a better idea. And yet Michigan's tempo has barely budged. They're up under a possession a game from last year.

All I've got is this: Michigan takes care of the ball so well (13th in TO%) and doesn't force a whole lot of turnovers, leading to fewer short possessions that tend to lead to yet more short possessions when an open-court turnover turns into a fast break.

Supporting evidence: Beilein's teams at West Virginia forced a ton of turnovers and were a bit faster, ranked in the 270s and 280s instead of the 320s as Michigan's last four teams have been. Beilein's fastest team since 2003 was his first one at Michigan; that outfit had a lot of TOs, at least relative to Beilein averages.

It should be noted that the differences here are not huge: Michigan is about four and a half possessions away from the national average.

Fuller

Big shooting: more spread out but more of it. A game like the WMU game stands out because Michigan's bigs were collectively 9/11 from the floor and took zero jumpshots to get there. Most of their efforts were throwing it down off the pick and roll, with a coast-to-coast Morgan steal and layup thrown in for good measure.

Anyway: though the bigs' collective usage is never going to approach the 2010-11 version of Morgan, Morgan only played 60% of Michigan's minutes that year. He got up 225 shots, which he made at a 63% clip. This year Morgan and McGary are collectively getting 87% of Michigan's minutes and are collectively 43/66.

Since there are two of them the lower usage is made up for by more efficient minutes. Michigan played 35 games two years ago. If they get the same number this year those two bigs shooting 64% will have gotten up 289 attempts. Michigan keeps sucking bad attempts out of the offense.

Given that, what is the weak spot on Michigan's offense? Is it GRIII? I think it is. GRIII would have been the best or second-best player on almost every Michigan team since the Fab Five exited, and he's the perimeter-ish guy on the floor who has low usage and isn't Stauskas. His ORtg is 126, which is near the top 100. In this game I got a little annoyed at him because of context.

/breathes into paper bag

Speaking of context. Trey Burke, who has been only okay shooting so far this year, was 8 of 11 and scored 20. I wrote that sentence and then looked it up to check. Burke twos are going in at an excellent 57% clip, which places him… fifth on the team.

/paper bag no longer works

Stauskas crazy stats watch. After missing two of four free throws he's down to an almost-human 89%, but going 3/4 from behind the line pushes his 3PT% on the year to 64%(!!!) and keeps that efficiency off the charts: 2nd in true shooting, 3rd in eFG, 3rd in ORtg. He picked up four assists in this one, too, including a couple of those pick and roll jams.

Western largely got the message about Stauskas and was able to limit his attempts to six—eight if you count the free-throw generating events, but one of those was off an offensive rebound. The beneficiaries of that were the bigs.

I'd like to see a little more of the offense run through Stauskas putting it on the floor. A couple of buckets in this game came when he drove, passed it out to the perimeter, and then Hardaway or Burke drove again, passing to a post for an easy layup or and-one. Both are in that highlight reel above. Reason this seems to work so well: you have to close Stauskas out so hard that help defense has to come over really early—on the and-one Stauskas only takes a couple steps—and then when the second guy gets the ball he gets an extra rotation and by that point if you're still effectively covering a post player well that's pretty dang impressive.

Stauskas also had a couple moments on the pick and roll, one a quick-release three, the other a Burke-like bounce pass for a McGary dunk. What I am trying to say is that Stauskas is really good. He could play some spot minutes at the point even.

Defense? It's hard to complain too much when the opposition shoots under 30% but Jim Jackson kept pointing out that Michigan's hard hedging put them in bad positions when opposition players were allowed to make easy passes for a series of layup-type-substances in the first half, and I was like "yeah" and grumbly.

Michigan adjusted shortly thereafter and then Western was close to helpless. I still think there's something just not there with the defense yet. I can't quite put a finger on it. Overall they're probably better because they've got the athleticism to rebound a lot more consistently, so it's got to be a lack of a guy who seems like a really good perimeter defender to harass the opposition's best player.

Fuller

Horford helps out. No shots from Michigan's third big in ten minutes but five rebounds, one on offense, plus a couple other plays that didn't make it into the box score: he deflected an interior pass that led to a fast break, got a tap-out that led to an offensive rebound that I think gets credited to someone else and D-ed up on a couple of other possessions.

A good night for SOS. NC State came out on top of a nip-and-tuck battle against UConn; Northwestern went to Waco and beat Baylor. The rest of the Big Ten held serve against low-level competition, though Illinois had a scare against 3-6 Western Carolina. Their chances of beating Gonzaga: not great.

Albrecht > McDonalds AA (Detnews)

Speaking of NC State. I watched the second half of that game and still can't get over Tyler Lewis, their hobbit backup PG, being a McDonald's guy. When he came in Ryan Boatright's eyes got wide and he got to the lane for a couple easy buckets before Gottfried yanked Lewis. He's 5'11" and is truly indistinguishable from Albrecht; his one contribution to the offense was missing a tough jumper from around the free throw line after failing to get past Boatright.

Sanity checking the eye test with season stats: a third of NC State minutes, 17% usage, huge TO rate, 5 of 13 on the year from two and 0 of 3 from three. Albrecht is in fact a much better player statistically.

How anyone could look at Lewis versus Stauskas and rank the guy seven inches shorter way above the 6'6" assassin is inexplicable. The hobbit was at Oak Hill and Stauskas is Canadian. End of plausible explanations. I even find that dubious since Stauskas was all over the AAU circuit.

I can't wait for Lewis to be an okay player as an upperclassman and for this section to be used in an article on how he has Overcome The Critics.

Photos. From Bryan Fuller:

Elsewhere

This happened:

ANN ARBOR -- Midway through the first half Tuesday, Michigan fans got a first-hand glimpse at the eccentric personality of freshman big man Mitch McGary.

During a media timeout, McGary was featured during a pre-recorded, university-produced question and answer spot on the arena's large video screen.

But in the process of answering questions like "what's your favorite movie" and "who is your favorite singer," the 6-foot-10, 260-pound power forward broke out into song.

But not just any song, a Justin Bieber song.

Recaps from Holdin' The Rope, the News, and UMHoops. Baumgardner on Burke. Interviews with McGary and Burke. Bielfeldt sprained his ankle in practice, wore a boot on the sideline last night, and will miss a week or two.