3/24/2022 – Michigan 55, Villanova 63 – 19-15, 11-9 Big Ten, Season Over

This is not going to be a romantic post about the end of a season. Last year, yes, romance abounds. This year it's time to say good job making the best out of a bad situation and start speculating about the future. Because, well, sometimes the bear eats you:

Tonight was Michigan's worst 2-point field-goal percentage (34.9 percent) since Feb. 4, 2020 in a loss to Ohio State. Michigan played 70 games between the two performances.

— Zach Shaw (@_ZachShaw) March 25, 2022

The other stat floating around out there was Michigan going 12/29 on dunks and layups. This kind of thing has happened before, but for it to happen against a team with no real shotblocking (and to a team that was 28th in shooting at the rim nationally) is boggling. Much like the early going of the Colorado State game, it felt like every weighted coin flip came out the wrong way. Michigan would put up a shot that rolled around on the rim and faded out; Villanova would do the same and the ball would eventually decide to go in.

There are other things you can point to, of course—a silly foul by Dickinson at the end of the first half that blunted momentum, an inexplicable no call when Devante' Jones got obliterated, a banked-in three—but while those are all factors the lingering bad taste in everyone's mouth will always be about a bunch of bunnies that did not go down.

At least this feels like a spiritually appropriate way to end the season? I included a Shot Quality graph in the preview that indicated Michigan got a ton of open threes and gave up relatively few, and here's a bookend for that:

Some of that is trying to check Johnny Davis with Eli Brooks because you don't have any 6'5" guys but some of that is just shrug-worthy. Michigan finished the season as a 7th percentile team defending pull-ups, and this was an improvement from that point midseason when they were 1st percentile. The whole damn season was getting good shots and losing to bad shots.

Maybe "bad" should get scare quotes in the previous sentence, because this season forces you to reconsider previous fatwas against mid-range jumpers and the role of athleticism in contesting shots. Since you can get a pull-up on just about every possession having an opposition floor that high is devastating, particularly when you're still in the deep 300s when it comes to forcing turnovers. On the other hand, that hideous performance on pull-ups is 0.9 PPP, ie, still not great. Michigan is getting teams to shoot from the right places; they just needed to have a legion of 6'5"-6'9" NBA wing types to maximize their results. Like, you know, last year.

In the end this was a team with significant flaws we glossed over because of the expectation Caleb Houstan would play like a top 10 overall prospect. This was wrong not only because Houstan played like a typical freshman but because it ignored that we weren't just replacing Isaiah Livers but also Franz Wagner and Chaundee Brown. Those guys got replaced by nothing resembling an NBA wing, and since the schedule was stacked back to front with productive wing types the defense went off a cliff.

Even so they improved over the course of the year, battled through the third-toughest schedule in America, made the tourney, made the Sweet 16, and set the table for next season, give or take a lot of knife-edge NBA decisions. Michigan got great shots and forced bad ones, further confirming that Juwan Howard is "that dude," as the children say. Hit the portal and acquire the most Chaundee-like thing you can find and further success beckons.

BULLETS

Bear ate us. I don't have a ton of other takes on this game, so let's focus on the future in this section.

Scholarship status. Brooks is done. Nunez has a COVID year but if he takes it, it won't be in Ann Arbor. Zeb Jackson is in the portal. Michigan has four guys in the recruiting class, so there needs to be one departure from potential returners to fit those, and a third to hit the portal. Realistically, Brandon Johns and Devante' Jones are not likely to return, so one additional departure opens up the portal.

questions abound [Barron]

Stay or go. Michigan has five contributors who may or may not be back next year:

• Devante' Jones has a COVID year if he wants it. He just tweeted out "Michigan… THANK YOU," which implies he's headed to the pros. Some possibility he could go through the process, find out he's ticketed for the G-League or overseas, and Michigan NIL means that's the most sense for him next year. Doubtful.
• Hunter Dickinson explicitly stated he was back for one more year at the beginning of the season. When asked about his future plans after the game he said "the only thing I can think of is how I let my team down." Andrew Kahn talked to a "former high-level executive for an NBA team" that said he can't play in the NBA because of his lateral agility, but longtime skeptic Sam Vecenie did crack a little bit after the first weekend, saying "Dickinson is lethal enough on offense to where he’s raised his esteem in my eyes" but hammering his defense ("non-negotiable for him to clean this up … needs to be able to not get absolutely obliterated outside"). I continue to maintain that if Dickinson is not back next year it's time to start panicking about Michigan's weak NIL game. If there is a place in the world where Hunter Dickinson can make more money playing basketball next year than Ann Arbor, it's a failure.
• Rumors around Moussa Diabate suggest he was planning to be a one-and-done. He obviously has more NBA potential than anyone on the roster but has been stuck in the mid-second round on the few mock drafts that have bothered to include him. John Hollinger's take after taking in the first weekend in Indianapolis is that he (and Houstan) "would get destroyed in an NBA game right now, and probably even in the G League, but I can’t rule out teams swinging on them in the second round if they enter the draft." NIL might be more complicated here because he is not a US citizen, but Kentucky apparently figured it out for Oscar Tshiebwe so maybe it's possible. (Tshiebwe is older and thus has been a resident longer, so it's also possible that Tshiebwe is eligible while Diabate is not.) This seems like a situation where it would be beneficial for a high-potential player who's clearly not a first rounder to go through Camp Sanderson and blow up in year two, but sometimes guys just want to go.
• Caleb Houstan was also a potential one and done but while Diabate and Dickinson are at least on NBA radars consistently, the only recent mention of Houstan was in the Hollinger article above. It took draft analysts a long time to drop Houstan all the way off their boards but once he was gone he was gone. He is the most likely player to return, because he did not produce like an NBA three point specialist and does not have the obvious defensive upside that Diabate does.
• Brandon Johns has a COVID year if he wants it. Johns may want to go do something boring in a place where no one is looking at him all the time, or possibly transfer to a lower level where he could just jump over everyone all the time. I'd be surprised if it wasn't time for a fresh start for him, but he is a Big Ten level athlete with a lot of experience who just played 17 minutes in a Sweet 16 game so it's worth mentioning.

No Michigan players made ESPN's mock draft after the first round, FWIW.

plz learn shoot [Barron]

The Frankie conundrum. There will be questions about whether Michigan really needs Jones back after Frankie had a bit of a breakout in the tournament. The answer to that is "yes." After a rough start Jones hit his stride in Big Ten play, where he had a 112 ORTG on 24 percent usage—barely a drop from his Coastal Carolina days. If you can get that back you get that back.

Unfortunately, I don't see how the two guys can play next to each other unless one or both gets a consistent outside shot. Since Jones is 24 already and Frankie is a million miles away, I don't see that happening.

I do think that if Jones returns you would see a much more even split between the two, as Collins should improve more quickly and brings some things Jones does not.

Portal targets. One dude currently in the portal jumps out as a high priority target: WVU's Jalen Bridges. Relatively low usage but a career 56/36/79 shooter. He's 6'7" and played in WVU's frenetic defense and is thus likely to be a plus defender. And his numbers are absolutely battle-tested in the B12; WVU had the nation's #2 SOS. He'd have two years to play.

Utah Valley C Fardaws Aimaq is planning to meet with Michigan. At Utah Valley he was a 30% usage C with giant rebound rates who shot 48/44/71 from the floor; not much rim protection to speak of. Also that 3 point number is on 45 attempts and may be optimistic. The WAC is about on par with the Sun Belt, where Jones transferred from, FWIW.

Michigan has been in contact with St. Joe's stretch four Taylor Funk, who Phil Martelli recruited and coached. Career 56/35/81 shooter with a low TO rate, 6'8", seems to replicate the same stuff that Caleb Houstan does. Seems very unlikely he'd be an athletic plus.

Michigan has also apparently been in contact with PSU transfer Sam Sessoms, to which I say "eh." Sessoms has been wildly variable in his shooting so I don't know if the spike in his three pointers this year is at all sustainable. He's been turnover prone and bad inside the arc when not roasting Kobe Bufkin. I'm dubious he'd add much.

And, uh, Patrick Baldwin Jr may hit the portal after his dad got fired from UWM. Baldwin is still being listed in many mock draft first rounds even after an injury-wracked season in which he went 42/27 against mostly low-major competition, so this is a believe-it-when-you-see-it situation. People are Talking, however.

Scenarios. An optimistic scenario:

• PG: Collins/McDaniel
• SG: Bufkin/Portal
• SF: Houstan/Jett
• PF: Diabate/Williams
• C: Dickinson/Reed

A less optimistic one:

• PG: Collins/McDaniel
• SG: Bufkin/Portal
• SF: Jett/Barnes
• PF: Houstan/Williams
• C: Portal/Reed

Either way it looks like Michigan really needs Bufkin to hit starting next year.