Could Have Gone Better
1/14/2009 – Michigan 51, Illinois 66 – 13-4, 3-2 Big Ten
Most Michigan fans expected a loss against Illinois yesterday, and the Illini duly provided said loss. UMHoops and others have covered the main reasons why, but here you go in pictoral form:
Illinois' gumpy 7-foot center can ball, man. I was worried what he'd do to Michigan on both ends of the floor before Michigan's first game against the Illini only for Weber to take him off the floor much of the night because he was worried about Tisdale's defense. That was a mistake he didn't repeat.
Meanwhile, DeShawn Sims fell prey to some rim-outs, was bothered by Tisdale's length, and couldn't finish at the rim a couple times and ended up 3-14. That's the ballgame right there. If Sims isn't a major threat to produce inside and there's a 7-foot shotblocker lingering near the hoop no one is going to get an open three or a backcut and the team's going to shoot around 32.2%, give or take a tenth. This I retroactively predict.
Some bullets:
Walkons and white guys featured for about four minutes in the first half and a couple in the second, and that seemed like a bad idea. Sims, Harris, and LLP all on the bench? Urgh. I guess it worked out, sort of.
Stu Douglass put in better minutes in this game than he had in other recent contests, coming up with a couple of good passes and a corner three, but he also took another inadvisable NBA-range three.
I was pretty frustrated by the lack of productive offense. I don't know nearly enough about basketball to tell you why Michigan couldn't get good looks, but there seemed like there was way too much one-on-one stuff, either because the ballhandler wasn't looking for teammates or those teammates weren't cutting to spots on the floor where they'd be useful. Team is still very young and all that, but the offense seemed more, you know, offense-y early in the season.
It wasn't bad luck that Michigan shot 27% from 3; the only really good looks I remember were Stu's aforementioned corner three and one LLP three in transition that didn't go down.
January 15th, 2009 at 11:52 AM ^
January 15th, 2009 at 1:54 PM ^
January 15th, 2009 at 1:58 PM ^
January 15th, 2009 at 2:08 PM ^
January 15th, 2009 at 3:26 PM ^
January 15th, 2009 at 9:47 PM ^
January 16th, 2009 at 1:39 PM ^
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