I Do Not Apologize For The Headline

I mean, just watch this:

Michigan scoring on 7(!) different Horns sets this season: pic.twitter.com/Vc0brIzDe8

— Eric Shapiro (@eric_shap) December 8, 2020

See? (Here's a Horns explainer; the short version is these sets all begin with the power forward and center lined up with one at each corner of the free throw line or thereabouts.)

Throw a stick at College Basketball Strategy Twitter and there's a high likelihood you'll hit on a slick Juwan Howard set:

Juwan Howard Coaching Wrinkles:

Spain PnR

Another common set at the NBA Level. Looks very similar to standard top of key ballscreen action

The distinction?

Franz sets backscreen for roll-man, putting his defender in a stressful spot. He can shoot/attack closeout/dump to post pic.twitter.com/adgpQ241Ho

— LAbound (@LAbound2) December 10, 2020

It's of little surprise that the threat of Hunter Dickinson is making these sets more lethal. With this much variety in the offense, defenders have to make split-second decisions about how they're supposed to guard any number of different actions, and with the big man often drawing extra attention, wide open looks are opening up for the others:

Juwan Howard Coaching Wrinkles:

Chin Offense

The basic principle is 5-out spacing with a backscreen that isolates a favorable matchup.

This was a staple of the Beilein offense often ran for Glenn Robinson. pic.twitter.com/JgQxhBVykK

— LAbound (@LAbound2) December 10, 2020

Michigan now boasts the #6 adjusted offense on KenPom and the #10 two-point percentage; they get the 12th-lowest percentage of their shots blocked in the country. Sure, the lack of a top-tier opponent impacts the raw stats a bit, but Howard is also shaping the offense to his ideal and it looks great.

[Hit THE JUMP for how Howard helps Dickinson establish post position, Livers from midrange, defensive lapses, and more.]

Manufacturing Post Position

RED ALERT, BAIL [Campredon]

Dickinson doesn't seem to need much help scoring in the post. Howard is giving it to him anyway by running certain actions to make it easier for him to establish position down low and also encouraging Dickinson to do a lot of his work early in the clock.

On this first play, Chaundee Brown maneuvers across the paint from Dickinson, then sets an off-ball cross-screen, which lets Dickinson switch places with Brown and plant himself on the edge of the lane. The defender is still recovering when the entry pass arrives and Dickinson has the positioning he needs for a quick turn to his preferred left-handed finish:

Here's the same cross-screen against Toledo, this time set by Terrance Williams. The defender was overmatched but he also had no chance to anchor himself after running around the screen before Dickinson starts cruelly backing him down.

Howard has also cleared out the floor for Dickinson to go to work. You don't think of the center as a player you set up in isolation situations but that's essentially what's happening. The main way Howard accomplishes this is by setting up a high screen to one side of the floor while the three players not involved get the hell out of the way, then have Dickinson slip or roll out of the screen and post up instead of heading straight for the hoop. It's been quite effective:

Even when Dickinson isn't on the floor, overloading one side of the court has helped free up three-point shooters on skip passes when defenses commit too much to the strong side of the floor. In general, the spacing has been fantastic, which makes it hard to send help at the dominant big man without giving up an easy jumper.

Dickinson is also clearly encouraged to attack in transition. When he runs the floor, he heads directly for the rim and looks to post up, especially if the last defender back isn't a big man. 

It's easy to get good position when you do the work early and Dickinson runs the floor a lot better than expected. He's made every single shot at the rim this season, per hoop-math, and he's getting a lot of his shots up relatively early in the clock even though he leads Michigan in late-clock attempts:

Those middle ten seconds are particularly efficient; that's often the timing when Michigan is running their initial halfcourt action after getting up the floor, sometimes against an unsettled defense that isn't matched up, and they're getting a lot of assisted baskets at the rim in those situations.

Considering a couple of those late-clock shots were long chucks on broken possessions, Dickinson is also a lethal late-clock option, albeit on a small sample. He's working for the entire shot clock and it's hard to keep him contained for that length of time. If it hasn't been made clear by now, he's pretty, pretty good.

Three-Level Livers

added the Dirk [Campredon]

The German influence on this team extends beyond the presence of another Wagner brother. Isaiah Livers hit not one but two one-footed, Dirk-style fadeaways against Toledo. Adding this type of post game to his repertoire makes him that much more difficult to stop:

As the shot chart shows, Livers has been a true three-level scorer so far this season:

Combine this with Dickinson's dominance, Austin Davis' inside scoring, Wagner's ability to shoot or pass from the block, and the occasional flash from Brandon Johns, and you get what's been the most potent high-volume post offense in the country. When including passes that lead directly to shots, Michigan has recorded the 65th-highest rate of post possessions in the country at 13.1%.

The Wolverines have scored an otherworldly 82 points on 54 post possessions; their 1.52 PPP ranks fourth in the country and they're surrounded by teams that don't post up much. The next major conference team to come near that efficiency on a high volume of post plays is, to nobody's surprise, Luka Garza's Iowa with 1.22 PPP on 79 possessions. Even when Michigan's numbers inevitably fall back to earth when they hit more viable competition, the start is so lofty that I expect they'll still be among the elite.

Losing Shooters

the scouting report was clear about not letting this happen [Campredon]

While Michigan's overall defensive performance against Toledo was strong, they showed an alarming habit of turning shooters loose on the perimeter, particularly Spencer Littleson, a career 40% three-point shooter who went 4-for-6 from beyond the arc on Wednesday night.

It's be easier to fix if we could place these issues on one player. Unfortunately, it was a team-wide issue, which leads me to believe the squad has work to do with defensive communication. On this play, Littleson starts in the near corner, then swaps places with another player before working across to the other side of the court. Mike Smith, the initial guy on Littleson, expects Livers to switch onto him, but Livers is late to recognize this—you can even see him turn his head as if realizing at that moment that the switch is happening, which may mean Smith didn't call this out—and can't get out to really contest the shot: 

Wagner had a great game defending on the ball even when shots were falling on him, but I have no idea what he's doing on this play, when he sinks all the way into the paint to provide help that isn't at all necessary on an innocuous drive. Meanwhile, Eli Brooks is caught between two shooters, and Littleson gets one of the easiest halfcourt looks he'll have all year:

These are experienced players who weren't noticeably bad at guarding shooters in their previous time at Michigan. I suspect these issues stem from the turnover at point guard and center, the two positions that are required to do the most communicating. I'm both hopeful this improves as the season wears on and expecting a couple of these breakdowns per game for the time being.

Chaund33

unabashed gunner Chaundee Brown, as we all expected [Campredon]

I don't need to tell you that Chaundee Brown's shooting has been a revelation. While I suggested he could be a better spot-up shooter than we expected coming into the season because of his good career free throw shooting and the poor offensive environment at Wake Forest, I doubt anybody expected he'd be 12-for-26 on three-pointers five games into the season.

I wanted to highlight a play from Sunday that displays his ability to hunt shots beyond standing in a corner. He reads defenses like a senior. When UCF went to a 2-3 zone in an attempt to slow down the offense, Brown did something that can be harder than it looks, relocating into open space, spotting up an extra couple feet behind the arc to provide a passing angle for Brooks, and stepping into his shot:

Michigan's offense and spacing are helping Brown; he's also doing a lot of work to help himself.

The Johns-At-Center Sample Is Too Small To Be Of Much Use

With Austin Davis' status still uncertain at the moment—we haven't had any official word since he left the Toledo game with a "lower leg injury" and didn't return—I went back and looked at all of Brandon Johns' possessions at center. The problem is that most of them occurred when he was surrounded by bench mob chaos, rendering much of that time uninformative.

He's played only four offensive and seven defensive possessions at center this year in non-garbage time. Those possessions have gone well but it's a minuscule sample. Watching the Toledo game, it looked like he knew where to be on the couple relevant plays before they emptied the bench; he did a nice job switching onto a guard and stopping a drive before a blown switch away from the ball (add it to the list) led to a three that wasn't his fault. The data we have from last year is also scant—about a game's worth of possessions—and indicates high offensive potential and work to do on defense:

We'll see how much Johns is needed at center when we get the injury report on Davis. He's got the size to handle himself in the post against bigs who aren't in the Kofi Cockburn mold and Howard can pick the spots to use him unless Dickinson gets into foul trouble. I think he'll be able to stay afloat well enough on defense—and perhaps even keep it around the same level by unlocking a full switching scheme—that the killer spacing on offense is going to make these positive lineups to have on the floor.

Etc.

You can almost see Nate Oats' brain trying to override what's coming out of his mouth to no avail. After Michigan had three 2021 commits move up in the latest 247 update, they kept two in the top ten overall on ESPN's refreshed rankings while Frankie Collins (#40) and Kobe Bufkin (#49) moved into the top 50. M holds steady as ESPN's #1 class. Ethan Sears gets the inside word on the frantic short-notice preparation for Toledo.