12/25/2020 – Michigan 80, Nebraska 69 – 7-0, 2-0 Big Ten

There are two kinds of games against Nebrasketball. The first is where you stuff Nebrasketball into a trash can. The second is like using Infinite Improbability Drive: disturbing, occasionally appalling, eventually successful at getting you where you wanted to go. This was the latter.

There's nothing like a game at Nebraska to remind you that bad shots do go in sometimes, especially when they come from the hand of a bad shot expert. Teddy Allen is Nebraska's latest 30% usage chucker to transfer in; he spent the first half hurling in increasingly improbable heat checks. For the second consecutive game a Michigan opponent hit a layup that was shot without looking at the rim.

And then it stopped, for long enough. In the second half Michigan stuck Franz Wagner on him to staunch the flow. This largely worked but Allen did pop up to bank in a heavily contested three. That came soon after two Trey McGowan triples that originated as failed attempts to draw fouls and accidentally went in. Those nine points were the only ones Nebraska had from the field for the first seven minutes of the second half.

Hoo boy let me tell you did those shots weigh heavily on my mind when it was a four point game with six minutes left. Here in the land of cool detachment the day after we can concentrate on the overall quality of Michigan shots (very good!) versus the quality of Nebraska shots (man digging for diamonds in a landfill). When you're trying not to have your Christmas sat on by a loss to Nebraska, it's a bit tougher.

But we're here now and can dismiss the vagaries of shot making. What does linger on as a concern is shot volume. Michigan continues to force a vanishingly small number of turnovers and has yet to hit last year's Zavier Simpson-led recovery of its own turnover rate, so Nebraska was +7 in shooting possessions. This comes a game after Penn State was +17.

Outracing those numbers consistently is going to be a difficult proposition.

[After THE JUMP: Certainly not the Jelly Fam]

BULLETS

BTN at its most Pravda. One could almost see the political commissar hovering over the PBP guy's zoom call when he praised the bravery of the party Big Ten for forcing a bunch of people, including himself, to work on Christmas. I assume that interlude means the league has been taking a ton of crap for that scheduling decision and it won't repeat going forward, especially because it seems like the line everyone settled on was "they can't be with their families on Christmas so they might as well get in some rad dunks."

"Can't" is quite a word given the context, in which basketball players are being treated not only as workers but essential ones who cannot risk interacting with their parents.

Dickinson revamp. Nebraska hard doubled the post on nearly every Dickinson touch. In the first half this was the usual result:

Dickinson did end up with five turnovers and will have to clean it up a bit, but for him to end up with zero assists in this game is a statistical injustice. In the second half Dickinson picked up a number of hockey assists. This was the prettiest:

He should have picked up at least a couple of assists in the first half but Michigan was 4/17 on about 15 good looks, so he did not.

In the second half Dickinson hunted his shot a little—there was that quick hook over Ouedraogo—but was still mostly content to facilitate when doubled. That's a really nice trait for a high-usage guy to have. Dickinson ended up 5/7 from the floor. One miss he rebounded and put back; the other was an unsuccessful tip. Other than the quick hook there was no point at which it felt like Dickinson was pressing because he hadn't got enough shots up, and even that one is debatable.

The switch. As mentioned above, Michigan shut off Teddy Allen when they stuck Wagner on him. Michigan started with Eli Brooks on him, which rather jumped off the screen as a mismatch on Nebraska's first bucket. Allen backed Brooks down and scored easily, because Brooks is a half-foot shorter and 40 pounds lighter.

There were a couple tougher conversions for Allen in the first half; Brooks could not meaningfully contest his shots. Wagner, on the other hand, has tremendous length and enough agility to alter perimeter shots. That bank shot is the leading example from this game:

I think that results from Allen attempting to alter the arc of his shot because he's afraid that Wagner is going to block it if he doesn't. There were a couple other Wagner contests in this game in this vein. Perimeter contests are usually more about making the opposing player uncomfortable than actually forcing the opposition to change what he's doing. Wagner contests are occasionally something more.

Meanwhile, on the other end. Wagner came out hunting shots. We've seen him decline twos when he can't get all the way to the basket; here he was putting them up with good results. He hit three runners that had a high degree of difficulty. He also made himself available of cuts for a couple of lay-ups, which is nice to see. Wagner is a giant target who finishes at the basket so any time he can create a shot off-ball you're going to have a good time.

Wagner was just 2/7 from three, which remains a sticking point. Confidence has a little something to do with that: on one attempt he popped up behind a Dickinson three and you could see that little "should I take this?" hitch before the shot. Those seemingly never go in, and this one did not.

[Campredon]

Mike Smith pulls the strings. This was not a standout game statistically from Mike Smith due to four turnovers, but he was able to find those pocket passes on pick and roll a couple of times and was able to penetrate the 2-3 zone Nebraska threw out for a few possessions for a floater. He's increasingly comfortable as the guy who unbalances the defense to start.

Smith did have a couple of defensive issues, primarily that one time he collapsed in the paint just after Nebraska inserted Trevor Lakes. Trevor Lakes has an Iron And Wine beard and transferred from D-II. Of course he's a shooter.

Depth: questionable. Michigan was in a game the whole way and with Austin Davis out there was just one reserve to get double-digit minutes: Chaundee Brown. Terrance Williams missed three shots in nine minutes; Brandon Johns had a six trillion.

Early returns on my "Johns should be the full-time backup 5" takes aren't very good, as Johns has really struggled to have any offensive impact as a small-ball 5. Getting Davis back and having Johns return to the four for his minutes might help in that regard.

[Campredon]

Let's play Some Guys Ranked Ahead Of Hunter Dickinson. This space is not likely to shut up about this any time soon, no. Various members of the 2020 class who slid in ahead of Hunter Dickinson, the #42 player on the composite. Going to keep this mostly to centers and Big Ten players:

• #22 Walker Kessler, UNC: 8 MPG, 22% usage, 11/13 from the floor. UNC brought in a second five-star C who is the ~20 MPG starter.
• #27 Kristian Lander, IU: 3 and 2 minutes in IU's two most recent games. Shooting 14%/28% from floor.
• #28 Mark Williams, Duke: 8 MPG; notably still got 8 minutes despite starting C Jalen Johnson missing the ND game.
• #30 Isaiah Jackson, UK: 22 MPG for 1-5 Kentucky, 93 ORTG. Does have an off the charts block rate.
• #31 Earl Timberlake, Miami: 4 MPG for Miami. This one is especially jarring because Timberlake was Dickinson's teammate last year. I watched various DeMatha games and thought "huh that Timberlake guy is probably a high-major player" but it never occurred to me he might end up higher ranked than the team engine.
• #40 Mady Cissoko, MSU: 3 MPG on a team currently checking in with a sixth-percentile post defense.

Evan Mobley, the #1 C in the class, is doing extremely well for himself—Kenpom MVP of 4 of USC's 5 games—and probably deserves his ranking but also Dickinson put up 28 on Mobley in three quarters so maybe they should have been a wee bit closer.

Who will join the Disaster Factory*? Terrible news: Rutgers's Jacob Young has matured into a reasonably efficient starting option for Rutgers, a legitimately good basketball team. He is no longer the Big Ten's premiere disaster artist.

This space started talking about the Big Ten's most irrationally optimistic players a few years ago when Minnesota point guard Isaiah Washington was running around sabotaging Minnesota with 42/24 and 36/21 lines in consecutive years. He moved on to Iona (and is now at Long Beach State), but Young was a spectacular fill-in last year. Now we're in search of the next member of the Disaster Factory.

Criteria:

• Must have above-average usage and a significant role. They must be on the court for a fair number of meaningful possessions, and must be one of the foremost members of the team when on it. Washington played about a third of Minnesota's minutes as a sophomore. We're setting a 10 MPG, 20% usage floor.
• The lower the ORTG, the better. Bonus points for absurdly elevated turnover rates and a large number of three-pointers taken at absurdly low conversion rates.
• This is not merely a statistical award. The statistics create a watch list, but the experience of watching a player sabotage his own team with bravado and derring-do is foremost. The ideal candidate will be bad and wildly entertaining.

We're far enough into the season to establish a DFPOY top five:

1. Chase Audige, Northwestern. Audige is a William & Mary uptransfer who has landed in the Big Ten and sees this as an opportunity to nearly double his usage(!!!), going from an 18.5 guy in the Colonial to a 32.4 guy at Northwestern. Currently splitting shots evenly between twos and threes he hits at a 23% rate, checking in with a 93 ORTG. In-person viewing reveals a Leeroy Jenkins vibe critical to the enterprise.
2. Both Gach, Minnesota. Currently a hair below our usage cutoff but off to a 14%/33% shooting start in Minnesota's 3 games against KP top 100 opponents. Has some qualifying defensive moments.
3. Aaron Henry, Michigan State. Ah, yup. Henry is MSU's top usage player and is shooting 48/14 with a 23 TO rate. His usage has spiked ten points after Cassius Winston's departure and the results so far have been not great. He was just a 49% guy from two last year so he's unlikely to get a ton better inside the line.
4. Zach Edey, Purdue. An unlikely contender based on overall stats, but Edey is 3/11 from the floor in three Big Ten games and has a 70 ORTG in those games. Giant human makes Luka Garza look like a rando from the street playing against Luka Garza. 
5. Trey McGowens, Nebraska. McGowens scores style points because he flails around on every shot trying to draw a call; shooting a cool 36% inside the line with a TO rate double his assist rate. Hot shooting from three despite the flailing is keeping his ORTG in the 90s. If that cools off, look out. 

I'm projecting that Lander's lack of minutes eliminates him down the road but if he pops back up into a rotation player he'll be a contender.

*[Ed: I was originally going to call this the Jelly Fam but Isaiah Washington trademarked it and is no doubt eager to sue sports bloggers on a pro se basis]