Basketbullets: Purdue Part 2

It's not just about creating turnovers...

They could stall us into getting into our offense forcing us late into the shot clock.

We all know what that means: Trey Burke 1-4 ISO

I don't like our chances if that our offense for the majority of the game. It hasn't worked thus far, I can't see it working then.

Trey isn't going to turn the ball over, I don't care who's playing defense. But we've seen teams disrupt our rhythm and force us out of any type of real offense with the pressure.

About the VCU thing, can you explain? We seem to really struggle against press/ball pressure. Aaron Craft clearly disrupted the offesnse and took Burke out of his comfort zone. Also, Penn State ran press quite successfully for a few stretches of the game. I'm quite concerened about VCU/Louisville style defenses

There is something fitting about Nik playing with a black eye...could the be Canadian...

..those are the "normal" uniforms, right?  It's getting hard to keep up with wardrobe around here.

I posted this in another thread but your observation about people being pissed when we're down 12 is exactly what I experienced with my brother this morning.  I didnt see any of the game and only followed the last minute on my phone and I was happy as could be today and looking forward to Sunday.  We "survived and advanced" by winning a B1G road game by five points.  A pretty good result given our recent road woes.  

My brother, on the other hand, is pissed today.  He watched the game and was bitching up a storm about the lack of desire on defense, the lack of rebounding and the lack of just about everything not named Burke.  He is worried about Sunday and more worried than ever about the B1G and NCAA tourny's.  I think he's still reliving the time we were down 12 points and has yet to start enjoying the win.  I had to remind him about five times "we won right?" until he stopped fussing.

Maybe the moral of the story is to stop watching the games if you're a "glass half empty" type person like a lot of Michigan fans (like my beloved brother) can be.

Near the end of of the season, every team looks back at games they could have won/lost. Michigan is no different than any other team in the country. Pundits predicted before the season the IU - Mich game would have title implications. It wasn't the predicted path, but we got our wish.

When you say second round do you mean the round where Michigan lost in the tourney last year or the round where they lost two years ago?  

I'm not making excuses - only observations.

When we were up 21 to 7, I was watching via gamecast on my cellphone and I noticed some things - we were getting called for foul after foul after foul after foul and that's what gave Purdue the spark to come back (in addition to missing easy shots). A lot of those fouls were on missed opportunities for defensive rebounds that Purdue just put back in the net because they have a tall guy. This portion of the game (around the 12 minute mark of the 1st half) corresponds to the begin of the swing up on the KenPom graph to Purdue's side.

Don't you notice something? They call fouls on those offensive-rebound-put-back shots 90% of the time! When I was watching the game later on, I noticed that Purdue players were often times being hit by other Purdue players and that was the source of the foul. How can you be expected to play good defense away from home when a tangle of bodies near the basket most of the time goes the way of the home crowd? Or if putting a single hand on an opponent can be considered a foul, and when they put two on you it's not a foul?

The same thing happens at Crisler too... All of our "gritty" defensive games happen to come at home and it's obvious why that's the case. Home teams are given much more leeway for contact than away teams. For example, the Burke steal on Appling at the end of the home MSU game would most likely have been called a foul if it was at MSU. 

Nevertheless, the officiating did in fact come through for us by giving us a window of opportunity around the 10 minute mark of the 2nd half, where I believe we were the beneficiaries of three nearly consecutive blocking fouls which put us near the double bonus. If you look above on the KenPom graph, that corresponds to where the win odds came back to our side.

I dont care about that TO stat.

I want no part of the Rams. They are hell to play. It took everything and then some for IU to beat them in a 4/12 second round game a year ago. They ball, are fearless and have this craz ability to play their best in the biggest spots

stauskas as a video game character

The disappointment in the big guys is out of context, in a way. They played bad over the course of the night because Sandi Marcius owned whoever was on him for the first half and early second half. After Marcius went out, the pendulum swung in Michigan's favor and McGary was able to handle Hammons and Carroll for the most part. Marcius's injury was critical for Michigan to defend Purdue; without that Purdue could have very well scored enough to keep the game out of reach, given how well he was playing against Michigan's interior earlier.

configured that he can pause and salute the ball after shooting it, already knowing it is going in. 

Purdue was 11th in the Big Ten in Free Throw %.  They hit nearly 85% last night I think.   If they had shot their average from the line it would have been less of a game.  Our rebounding does blow however and I saw laziness in getting back on the break.  Hopefully they can cure that.

There were a few times on the Purdue break I was yelling "stop the ball!".  Also a lack of charges taken was surprising, must have been poor defensive rotation.

is pressing.  He is entirely too frenetic when he gets the ball, be it in transition or in the half court.  All of this shots and/or moves have to come RIGHT NOW.  He is not being patient with his offense.  He seems to have trouble just integrating into a game so he is doing some things out or rythem and without much rhyme or reason to try to have an impact on the game.  Even some of the positive things that he is doing on the offensive end look awkward and out of the flow of the offense.  Three years in, and THJ still does not have a good read on what kind of player he wants to be.  Frustrating player.

When we were down 52-40 I hit the DVR and went and did something else. Find out the final score and then watch it later after we win. Never watch it if we lost. Takes a lot of the aggravation out of being a fan although admittedly it is a bit anti-climactic. But after blowing it against PSU I was in no mood to see them let another opportunity to win the conference slip away.

I want nothing to do with VCU or Louisville or any pressing team. Burke would have 30 points on a bunch of layups but their traps would forced him to pass it a lot of the time as well and then we'd wind up with like 25 turnovers as the rest of the team is terrible at handling ball pressure. Hardaway and Stauskas would combine for 15-20 turnovers. Those guys are OK at straight line driving to the hoop but both have poor handles and would get eaten alive by that press. At a minimum you'd have to have either LeVert or Albrecht in the entire game just for ball handling and that hurts the offense. I guess I am in the in boil us alive group. Plus VCU is #14 in kenpom which puts them as a #4 seed in quality so no I don't want to be playing anyone that good in the second round in say a 3 vs 6 or 2 vs 7 if VCU is under-seeded. Third round would be OK, still don't like the matchup but at that point you are probably going to be playing a good team no matter what.

I just want to thank you for "the missed bunny parade."  Line of the year, in my book.  That is one of the most frustrating/unexplainable things about watching this team.

Wonder what Belein said in the under 12 timeout

I don't get the grumbling and I think Brian doesn't give Purdue enough credit.  It's a road win against a team that just handled UW at the Kohl Center -- a tall task indeed.  Terone Johnson is a stud and Purdue always plays good defense.  They've obviously gotten much better as the season progressed.  That's a top-tier Big Ten team next year with the same roster.

Sure, we could have played better, but you can say that for every game you play in conference.  

Our bigs are already at a disadvantage due to the fact they aren't actually bigs (aside from Mitch)  but I think the coaching staff puts them at more of a disadvantage with the 35 foot hedge.  Have to be the only division 1 coaches teaching this. 

I think this is a consequence of a ton of people, on this blog and elsewhere, who haven't watched a lot of basketball watching it regularly for the first time. Runs happen, they always happen. Every team goes down - most teams drop at least one game they shouldn't (Indiana to Illinois?).

I walked out with a positive feeling about this game. Purdue came out VERY physical, Terone Johnson essentially played like Dwayne Wade, Keady Court reached afterburner decibel levels, and we were down 10+ with 11 to play...and our young guys answered the bell and won the game. That's more difficult than most casual fans give them credit for.

Now we get to play for the B10 title on our home floor, where we've won 33 of our last 34. Things are good.

Unfortunately I didn't, and I started watching the game when Michigan had its peak lead early in the first half.  And to top it off, I sat down in a foul mood.

Three things that infuriated me at the time in the subsequent Purdue run.

1.  Michigan's point blank shots were pretty meek.  (Stauskas excepted.) Whatever Horford did to flip the ball towards the basket must have drawn JB's ire as he didn't see the court again (contradicting #3).

2.  Guys were jogging back on defense on Purdue's break.  Vogrich was back at the basket where he's supposed to be and then tried closing out the 3-point shooter.  That wasn't his fault.  Guys gotta sprint.  They didn't.

3.  Belein didn't punish them with the bench.  Indeed, it might be interesting to ask about the philosophy here.  JB seems a little slow with the TO, and I haven't seen him make a statement with mass substitutions.  (Maybe I just don't remember.)  Another kind of philosophical approach, but when Michigan was up, I would have jumped all over the first slippage.  In that game, Michigan needed to stomp on Purdue's throat and put it away early.  They didn't.  And I think that's what angered most people.  

Matt Vogrich: "Hello, I must be going."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6yLRmo7CjU

This team will go as far as Trey takes them.  How many more games can Trey win is the question du jour?  The team is what it is at this point.  Pretty bad defensively, inconsistent contributions on offense from Hardaway, Stauskas and Robinson.  Not your ideal recipe for success in tourney play.  But is Trey a Danny Manning, Pervis Ellison, Glen Rice type of player who can put a team on his back and win the whole thing?  He's 6'1".  The other guys mentioned are not 6'1".  I think it's a tall task (get it?) for Trey, undeniably a great player, to dominate the NCAA tournament.  Unless Hardaway starts contributing major and consistent offense, I think we're in trouble.  Still could beat IU, go deep in B1G tourney and be a #1 seed.  That's a pretty successful year at any school, let alone a school that a few short years ago was lost in the wilderness.  

On Brian's "Trey Burke steal stat" question:  The player who secures the ball gets the steal.  Trey gets a "deflection", which coaches track, but the media generally doesn't track.

"You'd think that they'd move the other direction since they're so young and hypothetically getting better faster than older teams who are closer to a full grasp of what their coach wants them to do."

Maybe not, when what your coach seems to want to do is have the bigs hedge so hard on ball screens that they end up chasing a guard 30 feet from the hoop, leading to a wide open three or a late rotation on a layup, also leading to a potential 3pts. Love Beilein, still don't get this....