Michigan got a one seed and got put in a tournament. Let's look down the road. This post is entirely hypothetical and does not assume that Michigan wins anything. It is merely a glance through the potential matchups through the first two weekends. Begone with thy jinx assertions.

First Round

It's odd that Michigan got the winner of a play-in game since they ended up as the last one seed. Since the tourney is all in Indianapolis there's no travel reason to switch. And they seem to have gotten the easiest first round matchup, period. Mount St. Mary's and Texas Southern are the worst teams in the field, per Kenpom, checking in at #219 and #229.

The Mount—as their logo declares them to be—lost to Maryland by 18 earlier this year, largely because Maryland shot 73%(!) from two. They also lost to VCU, the other high-major-ish team they played, by 18. There it was a blizzard of turnovers and bad shooting leading them to 0.66 points per possession. They went 10-10 in NEC play. The most interesting thing about them is that they have a point guard listed at 5'8" who was the starter for his high school team as a 4'9" freshman.

Texas Southern is the SWAC representative and actually got in a fair number of games against top 100 teams. They lost to Oklahoma State by 20, St. Mary's by 12, Auburn by 17, and BYU by 16. They hung tough against Washington State, but the Cougars finished 107th in Kenpom. They have some height but not much actual size; their center rotation is mostly between a 6'9", 200 pound guy and a 6'8", 211 pound guy. Dickinson would eat those guys alive.

All due respect to the UMBCs of the world but nothing about either of these teams suggests a feisty matchup.

[After THE JUMP: more interesting teams]

Second Round

If Michigan is fortunate enough to survive the opening round they will get the winner of St. Bonaventure and LSU.

Eight seed LSU is coming off a one-point loss in the SEC championship game that has a lot of folks either bemoaning their placement—if they're Michigan fans—or looking at a somewhat adrift, Livers-less Michigan team and gesturing towards a trendy upset pick. I don't see it. The Tigers' other two games against Alabama were 30 and 18 point losses. Meanwhile LSU is incredibly dependent on their top three guys. Center Trendon Watford, PG Javonte Smart, and SG Cameron Thomas have all played more than 90% of LSU's minutes over their last five games. The Tigers have one more guy, PF Darius Days, who is a reasonable offensive player, and then you get into Andrew Dakich usage town.

Meanwhile, LSU's defense is #125 on Kenpom. That would be the worst in the Big Ten by almost fifty slots, and it looks like that might be kind. It is really uncommon to see this statistical combination:

• Extremely bad two-point defense (LSU is 240th)
• Buckets of threes allowed (330th)
• Excellent three-point D (20th)

There's nothing in Will Wade's previous three years with the Tigers to indicate that three point D—which is notoriously fickle—is real. They've finished 252nd, 134th, and 193rd in 3P% D. They have given up tons of threes each year, so that's a thing about Will Wade teams. Seeing opponents hit 30% from deep is not.

The most dangerous thing about LSU is that Smart and Thomas are fairly opponent-invariant. Smart is shooting 42% from three with more than half his makes unassisted. Both guys are 6'4" and may be able to just shoot over Michigan guards. LSU's big three all hits about 40% in the midrange, with very little assisted, and there are scenarios where Michigan shoots like crap and someone goes Rocket Watts, etc. LSU's profile doesn't make that look likely. LSU is the worst team in the SEC at forcing midrange shots and gives up 64% at the rim.

John Beilein used to stuff roll-out-the-ball coaches like Will Wade in a trashcan. A dollar says Juwan Howard continues that tradition if given the opportunity.

Nine seed St. Bonaventure went 11-4 in A-10 play. The A10 is in a band of three conferences (the WCC and AAC are the others) with about the same Kenpom rating a significant step back from the high-major six, so that's a little something. They only played two nonconference games, a 7 point win on a neutral court over Akron and an 8 point win over #188 Hofstra. They picked up four Kenpom A-tier wins over the course of their A-10 schedule, going 2-1 against 10-seed VCU, 1-1 against St. Louis, and beating Richmond on the road.

The Bonnies do have a legit big in Osun Osunniyi, who's 6'10" and top 25 in block rate. Osunniyi isn't a stretch guy and mostly exists in the dunker spot; his offense is dependent on his teammates. He's not going to back down Dickinson to pick up fouls. He is enough of a defensive presence to spot St. Bonaventure in the top 20. Meanwhile drop coverage should be fine against PG Kyle Lofton, who's middling at shots off the dribble and not much of a threat from three.

Like LSU, St. Bonaventure gives up a ton of threes (321st) and hasn't suffered the consequences (32nd at 3P% D). Unlike LSU, they do D-up on the inside so some of that may be real as teams get forced into awkward threes because they can't find good shots at the rim. If you squint and tolerate a lot of scatter teams with a lot of shotblocking do seem to do a bit better defending behind the line.

St. Bonaventure does surrounded Osunnyi and Lofton with a couple of high volume ~40% three-point shooters but when the starting lineup is out there they have a wing, Jalen Adeway, who is three-averse and can probably be tagged off of as Michigan seeks to defeat what's likely to be a bunch of pick and roll.

One thing the Bonnies are not is deep. They only play seven guys and the starters all average 82% or more of their minutes.

Sweet Sixteen

cubuffs.com

This will be the winner of the Colorado/Georgetown/FSU/Greensboro pod. I am not expecting Colorado here because of altitude effects. As Ace mentioned on the podcast, altitude Colorado is a whole different thing than regular Colorado:

• The Buffs are 11-1 at home and the #6 team in the country.
• They're 11-7 away/neutral and 33rd.

I don't think Georgetown is going to be the team to pick them off but unless FSU eats a major upset in round one I also don't expect them to provide much resistance. I do have great affection for C Evan Battey, who is one of those Oliver Miller Round Centers. Battey kind of looks like a basketball version of Reginald VelJohnson and was brave enough to play half his games in college at elevation.

The important thing about Georgetown is that they have the best names in the country. The starting lineup currently contains Qudus Wahab, Jamorko Pickett, and Chudier Bile. They are also 13-12 and made the tournament after a miraculous run through the Big East tournament.

Nothing about UNC Greensboro looks like a particularly dangerous 13 seed. They're the worst-ranked 13 at #100. They played one top-100 opponent, losing by 8 to #91 Winthrop. They're massively dependent on a six-foot point guard who sucks up 35% of their usage and doesn't shoot threes. Isaiah Miller is going to be driving into the Seminole forest and trying to maintain his 63% at the rim. They're 312th behind the line. Ain't happening.

So: Florida State. The general outlines of the Seminoles will be familiar to anyone who remembers the Elite Eight matchup in 2018. They are gigantic, #1 in effective height. Their skill level does not match their height. They try to block everything, which leads to excellent 2P% D numbers and bad defensive rebounding and FT rate allowed. This year their size is most notable at point guard, where freshman Scottie Barnes starts. Barnes is a 6'9" unicorn currently ticketed for the top ten in the NBA draft. Sam Vecenie:

… “do it all but scoring” wing/forward/point … terrific passer who sees the floor exceedingly well, making high-level reads. Defensively, he’s terrific as a help defender, although he hasn’t been quite as quick-twitch on the ball as expected. Ultimately though, he’s going to have to figure out a way to score, as his touch doesn’t seem to be all that good around the basket or from distance.

Barnes being a switchable NBA defender means they can switch 1-4 comfortably—their shortest starter, MJ Walker, is 6'5"—and blow up a lot of actions.

FSU has multiple dangerous shooters. Walker and 6'6" wing Anthony Polite are both knocking down threes at a 44% clip and they bring four different guys who are at 38%+ off the bench. C Balsa Koprivica is a miserably bad post-up player (5th percentile) with no shooting ability who gets his offense on putbacks and assisted dunks, so that's another relatively comfortable Dickinson matchup. Incredibly, Koprivica has faced a total of just 11 post-ups this year, so his D on them is an open question. He's given up just two buckets, FWIW.

Michigan's main concerns here are having their guards overwhelmed by FSU's size and athleticism, especially if Koprivica is up to the task of defending Dickinson one-on-one in the post.

Elite Eight

This is eight teams so we'll focus on a few that are the most likely and/or interesting. Alabama is the #2 in the region and has already drawn notice on this blog for Nate Oats's maniacal devotion to avoiding midrange shots. The Crimson Tide takes fewer shots in the midrange than any other team in the country—just one of eight attempts gets filed there. Here's this image again, newly relevant for both sides of the court:

This is the kind of thing you'd see from Houston's G-League affiliate. Your author has seen a couple of Alabama games and they're weird because it doesn't feel like the Tide are playing particularly well and then they're up 15.

Alabama is super fast (#1 nationally in % of shots in the first ten seconds of the clock) and heavily dependent on threes (47% of their shots) despite not being great at them. They're at 35%, which is just outside the top 100 nationally. Oats believes that 35 * 1.5 = 53% and that's frequently enough to win when the rest of your shots are at the rim. A 16-2 SEC campaign and a conference tourney title indicate that's been a good bet.

But it's not the offense that has gotten them here. Alabama currently owns the #2 defense in the country. Usually fast teams aren't great on D; Oats has broken that mold. Their pace helps out there as it's tough for opponents to send a lot of guys to the offensive boards, and also a desire to slow the game down limits opposition transition opportunities. They've also scouted the transfer market really well:

"They help with the recruiting and especially in the transfer market, because they can pull up like (Jordan) Bruner for instance," Oats said. "They send us offense leverage, defense leverage — basically, are we better when you're in the game versus when you're out? Well, last year we were 12 points better per 100 possessions on the defensive side when Herb Jones was in the game, which makes sense, he was our best defender. Everybody knew it. But Yale was 18 points better per 100 possessions when Bruner was in the game versus when he was out. So as good as Herb was for us, Bruner was 150% better for Yale."

50% better, but we'll give Mr. Analytics a pass. Alabama will be a bear.

Three-seed Texas has been invigorated by new coach John Turturro. They still play a lot like a Shaka Smart team, what with giant athletic persons in the frontcourt and a near-Amaker level of turnovers. Texas has two high level centers in Jericho Sims and Kai Jones; the latter brings just enough shooting for Texas to play the two next to each other for about half of Jones's time.

They obliterated Indiana 66-44, winning by 22 despite scoring under a point per possession because their centers were able to neutralize Trayce Jackson-Davis (17 points on 16 shooting possessions but 0 assists and 5 TO) and Indiana curls into a ball and dies if you do that. This would not be a game where Dickinson is getting doubled.

Texas shoots a bunch of threes and—unlike a lot of teams in this region—prevents the opposition from getting them up. They've got relatively big guards and even though Kenpom hates them relative to their seeding (#26 instead of 9-12) this feels like it might be a bad matchup.

The most interesting team outside of the protected seeds is Connecticut. They would have been a brutal draw in an 8/9 game since they're ranked 17th on Kenpom and 11th on Torvik despite not having star guard James Bouknight for eight of their 22 games. In the eight games since his return UConn ranks 4th on Torvik. They're a brutal draw as a 7.

But, like the 2013 tournament, having a brutal draw on the other half of the bracket is often a friendly draw for you. UConn is more likely to knock off Alabama in the second round than any other seven, it's true. They're a bad draw in round two. They're a good draw in a hypothetical elite eight game.