2/21/2019 – Michigan 69, Minnesota 60 – 24-3, 13-3 Big Ten

If you could go back in time six months and give your past self a stupefying Michigan sports update, your #2 option would be "Michigan basketball is 24-3 and it's tough to decide whether Zavier Simpson or Jon Teske is our best player." We will not discuss #1.

The needle swung to Simpson after the Maryland game, when he had 12 points on seven shot equivalents, 8 assists, one turnover, and more or less shut off Anthony Cowan for a half. The pendulum swung back to Teske in this one: 17 points on 11 shot equivalents, two assists, five blocks. Even more stunning: 36 minutes.

Teske sometimes seems to take his foot off the gas a little bit in the post, whether that's marshalling his strength or trying to avoid foul trouble. But every game he does enough to hold whoever he's directly checking to meh numbers (Oturu had 18 points on 18 shot equivalents and a TO) while hedging everyone's ball-screen game into oblivion and coming in for help defense on the regular. There's a point in every game where Teske gets a closeup and my reaction is "my goodness that person is red," but dude just keeps going. Michigan would be dead in the water if he could only play 20 MPG like a lot of guys his size. He is Camp Sanderson's magnum opus.

Anyway:

That's Minnesota for you. It took Minnesota 28 minutes to make a basket outside of the paint. The Gophers had 18 points at halftime. Eight of these were on initial attempts. They were able to claw ten more out off of putbacks, which is a little frustrating since the Gophers haven't been that good at OREBs in league play and Michigan has maintained their DREBs much better than they usually do.

The margins are are pretty thin. Given the number of rebounding opportunities Minnesota had (47!) Michigan would expect to give up 12.5 OREBs; instead they gave up 15. This places it into a category where we're mildly frustrated about bounces.

In part because of the above this was a game in which the Gopher had a huge shot volume edge. They had 7 more OREBs than TOs. Michigan was –4. To hold a team with a shot volume index over one to 0.9 PPP means you are crushing them everywhere except the offensive boards.

wall up! [Ludeman]

Verticality. Part of the trouble the Gophers had was their tendency to run pell-mell at the rim and try to chunk something up. That style is why they lead the league in free throw rate. In this one it mostly led to very tough attempts after taking contact. This was most notable on two missed dunks where Teske walled up vertically and contested.

Doink pic.twitter.com/Y7uILIYeWu

— Noah Neidlinger (@candor_for_sale) February 22, 2019

Amir Coffey's bounced spectacularly outside the three point line; Teske was called for a foul on a near-identical Jordan Murphy play. (Murphy missed both FTs, ball don't lie.)

With the exception of that foul, though, the officials allowed Michigan to contest.

When verticality is called correctly it's such an excellent rule change, rewarding defenses for being in good position without flopping and placing a priority on open shots for the offense all the way to the rim. The best example in this game was not either Teske contest but Amir Coffey getting downhill only for Simpson to show. Simpson was outside the restricted arc (I think) but instead of trying to flop he went up to contest; Coffey bumped him, missed the ensuing tough shot, and Michigan rebounded. That is infinitely superior to a guy standing on the ground and falling over in the hopes of stopping the game with a foul call.

[After THE JUMP: attacking switches, finally]

Attacking switches. For years teams have been able to frustrate Michigan's offense by switching all screens. Depending on the personnel for and against this has varied from a desperation move (Haas-era Purdue) to a deadly gambit (teams that are more positionless).

One thing Michigan never did to try and attack this was dump it into the post when the center got a guard switched on him. I think I mean "never" literally. Well, no more.

Michigan's first bucket came when McBrayer got switched onto Teske. Michigan went at it, with Teske posting up and X leaving a bounce pass in the middle of the lane. Teske had to finish over Oturu coming over to help but got the roll. Bucket #2: Teske posts over Kalscheur. This largely halted Minnesota switching everything.

Not quite, though: later a similar dump-down vs Kalscheur drew help and Teske fired a bullet out to Poole for a knock-down three. Hell, Poole got a first half three off after Kalscheur left him when Teske tried to post up Oturu.

Beilein's aversion to posting is backed by Science(!)—post ups are one of the least efficient things a college offense can do. But the issues that crop up when folks can switch guards on your C with impunity have bit Michigan's offense the last couple years. Those switches lead to contested pull-up threes against bigs more often than not. Getting Teske involved on the block may make Beilein itch but it was extremely effective, and should be an option going forward.

 

[Ludeman]

A capital idea. Michigan started 0/3 from three on three wide open looks, and if you're like me your main thought was "here we go again." They did not go again. Michigan hit 13 of 28 attempts; everybody who attempted one hit one. Michigan was able to exploit the relatively paint-bound Murphy on screens and one pick and pop, with Brazdeikis and Livers going 3/6 on open looks. Teske hit three second-half pick-and-pop threes, the latter two back-to-back daggers to stomp the game flat. And Poole broke out of his slump.

But first!

In praise of Robbie Hummel. For my money, Hummel is the #2 color guy who works Michigan games. (#1 will always be Raftery.) He brings a great mix of analytics knowledge and on-court experience and he never says HEY KIDS THIS IS HOW TO BASKETBALL. He's shouted out UMHoops on occasion, and in this one he had a stat of unknown origin but extreme import: Poole is shooting 50% on uncontested threes and 30% on contested ones.

The moment when you hear Jason Benetti on play-by-play but don't know the color guy is a tense one.

Speaking of Poole. Hey, he got some open looks and converted them. 5/10 is an emphatic slump buster. One of his makes was from NBA range and was kind of a bad, tough shot. The rest were in-rhythm, and as Hummel noted an in-rhythm Poole is a deadly shooter. Michigan did a good job of putting it right in the shooting pocket for him.

Poole also drew Gabe Kalscheur and limited him to 8% usage. His one make was semi-transition on which Matthews and Poole were undecided about which guy was going into the post and which was going to the wing. Since the guy in the post was Oturu, Matthews should clearly have been in the post. So that's on Poole, but if that's the only three you give up to Kalscheur you've done your job.

[Ludeman]

Team Castleton. Brandon Johns was out with the flu so Colin Castleton got the four minutes Teske wasn't on the floor. He did pretty well with them. He didn't look out of place on defense; he was able to challenge Coffey into a miss after he beat Matthews clean (take a picture of that one); the only buckets ceded he was involved with were OREBs after he needed to come off the five to provide help.

He only had one offensive involvement of note: a deep post touch on which he faked the defender into the air and missed the ensuing bunny. The defender came down on his back for one of the more dubious no-calls in the game.

DDJ got three minutes and ended up finishing a fast break for his only real involvement.

Read this. Oral history of the 1989 championship team. Bruce Madej remembers an event with chagrin:

Madej: I put on my answering machine — “This is Bruce Madej,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I know what you’re calling about, but I’m tired, and I need my sleep, because it’s going to be a long day tomorrow, and I gotta get this done. So if you need an official statement, the University of Michigan athletic department does not have any comment on this, period.” And I said, “Call me in the morning.”

Mills: We get a call at maybe one in the morning, two in the morning from coach Fisher. Frieder is saying, telling us that he’s accepted the job at Arizona State.

Higgins: It was a shock.

Madej: I have my clock radio set to WJR on, and all of a sudden, first thing, J.P. McCarthy says, “Well, last night, big rumors going on that the University of Michigan is going to lose Bill Frieder to Arizona State just days before the NCAA Tournament.” … He says, “We couldn’t get an official statement, but we got Bruce Madej’s answering machine.”

And I’m sitting there going, “Oh, God.” And they played the whole thing. My wife goes, “That isn’t our answering machine.” And I just say, “Suzette, it is.”

Stay for Bo chewing out various basketball players, plane tickets in hand.

A recruiting weekend. Michigan is bringing in some guys this weekend:

• 5* 2020 combo guard Nimari Burnett, who's originally from Chicago and says he's known Yaklich "since he was a little kid."
• 4* 2020 PF Scooby Johnson, who's got an offer and seems to be a likely member of the class.
• 4* 2020 PG Zeb Jackson, a commit.
• 5* 2021 PG Khristian Lander. IIRC Brian Snow posted something on the 247 board saying that he was a guy for Michigan fans to keep an eye on since he grew up a fan.
• 2021 PG Julian Roper.
• 2022 wing Emoni Bates. Wouldn't get your hopes up for this one as Bates sounds like he's going direct to the NBA if that's possible—and it almost certainly will be.

I don't think anyone is expecting a commit.