12/29/2019 – Michigan 86, UMass-Lowell 60 – 10-3, 1-1 Big Ten

As a general rule, whenever Michigan plays an opponent and I think "oh, they have a hockey team" that opponent is going to show up with a 6'5" center and a point guard wearing a beret. One of their bench guys will have wooden teeth. UMass-Lowell has a hockey team. They put a freshman named "Connor Withers" on Jon Teske.

Connor Withers sounds like a guy Frasier gets into a condo board fight with and looked a lot like Cole Bajema getting switched onto Teske, except there was no switching. Withers is in that Caris/Castleton/Bajema genre of freshman basketball players who look like they grew two feet overnight and have to cover seven feet of bones in flesh inadequate to the task. But even basketball players who are shaped as differently as possible have a universal language deployed when placed into a physically impossible matchup, best demonstrated by this high school kid going up against Tacko Fall:

Still our favorite video of Tacko Fall

pic.twitter.com/GV5VTMaDrd

— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) December 10, 2019

"Coach, I don't know what you expect me to do against… this. Also, I am going to imply that I hate you without directly stating it. I hate you."

Anyway, Teske scored 25 points on 16 shot equivalents. Connor Withers was in the vicinity as this happened.

This does qualify as news. Teske put up 14 twos in this game, which matches a career high he set against Louisville earlier this year. Last year he had 11 in the season opener and never cracked double-digits again. Even when Michigan had overwhelming physical advantages Teske was a guy who'd occasionally finish at the rim off an assist and maybe shoot a few threes. Juwan Howard wants to play through the post and the team is much better at doing so this year. Teske's usage has shot up seven points.

Some of that is the team changing around Teske, particularly with Isaiah Livers out. Some of it Howard, certainly—this would not be happening on a John Beilein team no matter the options 1-4. And after years of disdaining post-ups, which have meh efficiency most of the time, last year's MSU games made it clear that Michigan couldn't get away without learning how to enter the post any more. The combination of a switchable center and Beilein's utter post aversion led to gross, terrible scoring droughts in a season sweep at the hands of See No Evil U.

Getting better at exploiting post mismatches was going to be project #1 for Michigan basketball, and then Beilein left. Michigan imported a guy who spent 20 years in the NBA making the post work without crazy athleticism. The fruits of that are beginning to make themselves known. It's going to be tough to win at Breslin (presumably) without Livers, but they won't go down the way they did last year if they do. Switching a point guard onto Teske isn't going to result in 10 points, like it did last year.

[After the JUMP: the other shift]

Meanwhile at the 4. Things got weird with minutes because this was a 20 point game for most of the second half, but Brandon Johns (21 minutes) and Colin Castleton (13) got the vast majority of time at the 4, with Austin Davis acting as Teske's backup at the 5 and 4 or so minutes going to walk-ons and the like.

Michigan did indeed look a little like last year's Minnesota team when Castleton was on the floor, mostly with Davis. There were a lot of high-low post action on which Michigan got a series of layups and more turnovers than is likely to fly against better competition. Part of that is Davis. To borrow a concept from football, Davis's catch radius is extremely limited for a 6'10" guy. You can see this whenever folks try to put it up for him at the basket. They're used to Teske and their passes fly over Davis's reach.

Part of that was the action feeling a bit robotic, which makes sense since Michigan probably hasn't been working on high post stuff much until the last week. When you're new to various actions you tend to repeat the default approach even when the defense is anticipating it, and a couple turnovers felt like Michigan not reading the defense and throwing it into a bunch of arms. Castleton did have three assists and one TO despite that.

Johns didn't have a ton of impact, with just four shots and one OREB in 21 minutes. One of those shots was an impressive post-up take, which is a skill he continues to flash every once in a while.

shall not complain about long twos [Campredon]

Issuing a Long Twos waiver. Eli Brooks should just shoot the ball. Here's his Synergy shot chart:

Brooks is 8/14 on twos just inside the line and 8/27 in floater territory. He is also very bad at the rim. Given the increased chance of a turnover once Brooks gets closer to the rim he should heavily bias his shots to jumpshots, at which he's been excellent this year.

Also: don't turn down threes. He's done this on occasion and it drives me nuts; he's shooting 42/47 and has more twos attempted than threes. Even a kinda-bad three from Brooks is going to be a better shot than most stuff inside the line.

While we're here, Zavier Simpson's chart is incredible.

That is a total of seven shots in the midrange.

let the birdman fly [Campredon]

Let's complain about the ninth guy in the rotation! These two most recent games may have been the last opportunity for Cole Bajema to batter his way into the tail end of the rotation, and he got 11 and 4 minutes. Bajema filled up the box score in his brief cameo here, with a bucket, two steals, a block, and a TO.

Meanwhile, Adrien Nunez got 30 minutes across these two games. He fouled out in 13 minutes against Presbyterian; in this one he had 6 points on 7 shot equivalents, two turnovers, and a number of questionable defensive moments. Nunez must be a knockdown shooter in practice to still be in the conversation for playing time given what we've seen on the floor so far. I'm surprised that Bajema hasn't slid past him for ninth-man minutes. In limited opportunities he's looked like he's got the proverbial Sauce.

Outlier stats watch. Michigan's up to 4th in preventing 3PAs and are second in preventing assisted buckets. Their TO rate continues to improve; Michigan is now up to 56th. Not Beilein territory but a shot pretty much straight upward after some problems early in the season.

Renassaince painting, walk-on edition. Luke Wilson canned this:

[Campredon]

Everyone except X went nuts.

Taking stock. Michigan's nonconference schedule is done with a 9-2 record, high-major wins over Creighton, Iowa State, UNC, and Gonzaga, and losses at Louisville and at home to Oregon.

Unfortunately, the major development across those opponents has been UNC imploding. They got hammered by OSU, lost by 9 and 13 to Virginia and Gonzaga, and lost at home to Wofford. They've plunged from #6 in Kenpom to #46. Cole Anthony did miss the last three games, but that's not going to be a tentpole win. Torvik's projection of the NCAA field has UNC 30(!) spots away from a bid.

Michigan's other opponents are holding up better. Gonzaga has won every other game and is widely projected as a one-seed. Oregon's only losses are to UNC and Gonzaga. Creighton's Kenpom ranking has recovered 20 spots after they got annihilated by SDSU; they've picked up wins over Texas Tech, Oklahoma, ASU, and Nebraska since. T-Ranketology has them an 8 seed. UL lost at Kentucky in OT and, oddly, to Texas Tech. Their resume right now is mostly the W over Michigan, but Kenpom projects them to go 16-4 in conference play.

Add it up and Michigan's projected as a four-seed as Big Ten play resumes. That's ahead of expectations.

T-Ranketology is wild, by the way. Projections of note as nonconference play comes to an end nationwide:

• Nine Big Ten teams in and just five ACC teams. Rutgers(!) gets a play-in game, and the first teams out are Wisconsin and Minnesota. Illinois is also in the running at #14 out. The whole league has designs on a bid except for wretched Nebraska and Northwestern outfits.
• Penn State is projected as a five seed. That seems generous since PSU probably isn't going to end up with any nonconference wins of note unless Georgetown overcomes a ton of departures, but they're top 25 in both Torvik and Kenpom. Mike Watkins has bounced back to his sophomore form, which is giant for them.
• Iowa is also projected as a 5, though these projections don't take Jordan Bohannon's injury into account. Iowa briefly had the #1 offense in Kenpom and are currently 3rd as Fran McCaffrey's mission to replicate pre-Donlon/Yaklich Beilein teams continues unabated. Iowa is 91st in defensive efficiency.
• Last year's national championship game features two teams that have fallen off massively: both Texas Tech and Virginia are projected as 10-seeds.
• Lavall Jordan's Butler is projected as a two seed.
• Notable teams projected to miss the tourney: Texas (which would give Shaka one bid in the last five years and would have to be it, you'd think), Providence (lost to Northwestern, 146th in offensive efficiency, remember when people paid to talk about Michigan sports were saying they'd take Ed Cooley over Juwan?), and every team in Josh Christopher's top four aside from M. Just sayin'.
• If you're wondering what a projected 25-6 record with a win at Duke gets you as a Southland Conference team, apparently not much. Stephen F Austin is projected as a 14. SFA did lose to the other two top 100 teams they've played, which are Rutgers and Alabama.