2/27/2020 – Michigan 74, Wisconsin 81 – 18-10, 9-8 Big Ten

I had a brief panic in the Purdue game when David DeJulius checked in. His new hairstyle made me think he was a Purdue player, so for half a possession I tried to map Michigan players onto people who they were not. It was briefly disorienting. The silver lining was that it prepared me for Michigan's first half against Wisconsin.

The Badgers did to Michigan what Michigan does to opponents. At halftime Michigan had gotten up just three attempts from behind the line. They finished with 10, their lowest number of 3PA since at least 2007-08. On the other end of the court, Michigan's defense was barely recognizable. Wisconsin got buckets of wide open threes and got to the rim at will, often on pure isos.

It's the kind of thing that's hard to process in real time. It was baffling to watch Isaiah Livers get driven by Brad Davison. Even someone who has recently had a dissociative moment watching basketball checks to make sure he has not become a cephalopod after the third Trice/Davison strong take.

Michigan allowed this parade to the rim without any compensations. This was a matchup between the #2 team in the country at shoving opponent usage into the midrange and the #348 team at getting to the rim. (Tied with Elon, to be specific.) Wisconsin tore it up at the basket and got their usual number of threes off:

Stat	Wisc O	Mich D	THIS GAME
Rim/FGA	24%	33%	31%
Mid/FGA	31%	39%	24%
3PA/FGA	45%	27%	43%
Rim FG%	57%	58%	76%(!)

I got off the "play Eli Brooks less" train almost two months ago but let me reiterate: that was a bad take. Even if there was a point deep into the season when Brooks was shooting 0% from three against decent teams, that was a bad take. I've seen Eli Brooks stupefy Cassius Winston. Nobody on this Wisconsin team is driving Eli Brooks.

That was problem #1. Problem #2 was Michigan having no idea what to do with Micah Potter until about 10 minutes left when Michigan went with a smallball lineup featuring Johns at the 4. There were a couple moments when Austin Davis was tasked with checking Potter on pick and pops, and the inevitable happened: Davis sagged off a 45% three point shooter because he's a low-post banger with limited athleticism. Teske, too, got caught in no-man's land:

That's a whole different problem when it's Potter instead of Teske.

Problem #3 was Michigan trying to implement a switching regime that's a departure for them. That put guys who aren't switchable on islands and resulted in a lot of confusion and bad positioning. The big lineup was particularly susceptible to missed assignments, probably because Michigan hasn't played it all season:

Add it up and you get Michigan's worst defensive performance in a long time. Not only did Wisconsin score a bunch of points the way they got those points were point blank looks at the basket and threes that probably should have gone down at the rate they did.

This has been a trend in Juwan Howard's first year. Michigan's first outing against a lot of teams has been rough, often in ways that seem like coaching points. Iowa and MSU running off makes, Illinois pounding Michigan on the offensive boards, etc. Return games against these teams have seen Michigan adapt to their previous programs; game two losses to Iowa and Illinois weren't due to systems or the execution thereof. The former was a spectacular refshow, the latter Michigan bricking a bunch of free throws down the stretch.

If Michigan gets a Wisconsin rematch in the Big Ten tourney it won't look much like this game.

[After THE JUMP: even with all that]

aaaaaaaaaargh [Campredon]

For all that. Whenever your team loses a relatively close game you're haunted by previous events that didn't go your way. It's worse in basketball, the most coulda-shoulda of all sports. Football, baseball, and hockey all regularly spit out one-score games that aren't all that close. The margin in any close basketball game is because one of your dudes missed a free throw or someone banked in some garbage.

This game is high up in the annals of Michigan basketball coulda-shoulda because David DeJulius had back-to-back fast break layups in the first half; he missed both. Wisconsin had guys trying to get trail blocks in on both, which must have sped him up. I still spent the last three minutes of gametime with those plays repeating over and over in my head.

Wisconsin's defensive approach didn't really work. Michigan put up 1.12 points per possession despite missing a number of bunnies. In addition to the DDJ layups mentioned above, Austin Davis had two point blank looks he missed and a couple of Simpson shots at the bucket improbably bounced out. Even without arguing about missed bunnies, anything resembling Michigan's usual defensive output and this is a loss.

The big lineup: apparently not. Without Brooks Michigan went with Brandon Johns at the 4 and bumped Livers/Wagner down a spot. This was at least partially responsible for Michigan's ugly first half defense, though there were still plenty of issues when Michigan had a two guard lineup.

This was a game where having the flexibility to go with three guards would have been nice to have. Michigan continues to be a really good team when it has its top eight guys available and a mediocre one if anyone is absent.

dribble picked up; this turned into a layup [Campredon]

Franz, though. Another highly encouraging game from Wagner, who had 17 points on 10 shot equivalents. Just one turnover in there, and his usual block or steal if not multiples of one or both. Wagner's buckets were a combination of cuts and impressive drives. He's a big, agile target on those cuts to the basket.

The drives, though: yowza. On a couple it looked like Wisconsin had forced a tough shot, and then Wagner rose up with his crazy gumby arms and it turned out we were looking at another layup.

A tough-ish one, maybe. But a layup. He's now shooting 60% from two in Big Ten play, and he's been on a tear over the last four games: 20/27(!) from two against Wisconsin/Purdue/Indiana/Rutgers. All of those teams are in the tourney conversation; all except Indiana are in the top half of Big Ten Ds.

Michigan turned the ball over to him and let him go on several second half possessions.

didn't make up for defensive deficiencies on offense [Campredon]

Davis is a situational player. I don't think Davis can play against legitimate stretch fives. Not only does he have issues checking guys at the three point line but Wisconsin's ability to spread the floor exposes his defensive issues. Trice drove right past him for an and-one at one point; as mentioned before Wisconsin guards are rim averse, and Trice is the most rim-averse. When Trice tried the same thing against Teske he got blocked so hard that Teske ended up spiking the ball into the court.

He's a useful guy when the opposing 5 isn't much of an offensive threat. Wisconsin has two legitimate stretch 5s so there was nowhere to hide him.

What is the rule when you get blocked and the ball goes nowhere? Aleem Ford was going up for a dunk in the second half when DeJulius raked at the ball. Ball came out, didn't hit anything, Ford grabbed it and landed. I, and all of Crisler, was expecting something to get called there. Nothing was, and Ford went up for another shot, fouled by Teske.

If Ford hadn't lost possession of the ball momentarily that would have been called a tie-up. It feels like that situation should also be a tie-up because it's functionally identical: guy gets blocked, still has ball in his hands when he lands.