THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#19 Michigan (11-5) vs #15 Iowa (12-5)	Hawkeye Elvis
WHERE	Carver-Hawkeye Arena Iowa City, IA
WHEN	9PM
THE LINE	Iowa –4, Michigan W 33% (KenPom) Iowa –4.6, Michigan W 33% (Torvik)
TELEVISION	FS1

THE US

Seth's graphic:

click for big

The continued absence of Isaiah Livers rather looms as Michigan prepares for their toughest game until March. We have removed Teske's sheriff badge in the hope that the act of turning it and his gun in causes him to go on a Charles Bronson-esque rampage.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the preview.]

THE THEM

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Iowa is this year's surprise team in the Big Ten, give or take Rutgers. They lost significant chunks of last year's roster and then had Jordan Bohannon first struggle and then take a redshirt due to a hip injury. Preseason we all assumed that a Bohannon injury was unsurvivable. And then the peacock flew.

"You gotta let the peacock fly!" #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/pC5sV3WcRF

— NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) March 24, 2019

Luka Garza's plumage is out. Iowa's flown up from bubble-out projections preseason (40th in Kenpom) to 15th in the country. They beat Texas Tech and Cincinnati on neutral floors, Syracuse and Iowa State away, and Minnesota and Maryland at home. Only two of those are marquee wins but there's enough meat on the bones of that resume to put Iowa on the 5-seed line on T-Ranketology.

Iowa being Iowa, they've also lost to DePaul—actually decent this year, to be fair—and Nebraska—uh… the most Icelandic team in D-I? They've also lost to Michigan despite putting up 91 points and Penn State despite putting up 86. Expect points. Hope you have more of them. Iowa basketball is the most Big 12 football program out there.

PERSONNEL

soon to appear in every commercial known to man [Campredon]

Iowa now begins with Luka "I Guess I'm Shaq Now" Garza, who's currently second in the Kenpom Player of the Year standings. Garza was a very good offensive player a year ago, hitting 61/29 from the floor on big usage with a low TO rate. This is another level though: 60/36 shooting on 30% usage with a single digit TO rate and close to no dropoff against top 100 or top 50 teams. He's also drawing 6.3 fouls per game, a problem when you can't play after 5.

But I don't have to tell you that after his 44-point outburst in Crisler: 17/29 from 2, 0/3 from three 10/13 from the line, two assists, two TOs, one foul. 45% usage. A fair chunk of this was Garza getting out in transition. Eight of his two-point attempts were in the first ten seconds of the clock. Another four were putbacks, one of which was a miss. So while this looks like Teske getting murdered once you bring it back to regular half-court offense Garza was 9/17. Pretty good, especially when you take his FTs into account. But survivable. This might show up in the keys section.

Garza's even perked up a bit as a defender. Iowa's gone from miserably bad at defending twos (299th last year) to middle of the pack. Daniel Oturu did score 22 points on 13 shot equivalents but coughed up eight turnovers to get there—probably not a Garza thing but a *cough cough* doubling the post thing—and he hasn't been exposed to many of the Big Ten's offensive juggernaut bigs, so Teske can probably get some work done again after going 7/8 from two in the first meeting.

Keeping pace means *cough cough* doubling the post.

Joe Weiskamp is the second banana and has recovered well after a scuffle to start the year. Weiskamp ORTGs against high-major teams up to Michigan: 44, 75, 75, 114, 106. Since: 147, 130, 115, 120, 96, 138, 122. He's hitting 52/42 in Big Ten play with a MAAR-level TO rate.

Weiskamp is Not Just A Shooter. He attacks closeouts well, getting to the rim for a third of his shots and converting at a solid clip once there. At 6'6" with a reasonable amount of bounce he's able to get over most of the guys checking him. He's not going to put the ball on the deck in and iso situation; Iowa gets him his usage with off-ball movement and the occasional dump down inside when he gets a mismatch. He's a lot like a less-elongated Wagner after a year of polish.

He's got a doppelganger, too. Freshman CJ Frederick has started his college career vastly outplaying recruiting expectations. He was the #242 guy on the composite; he's shooting 57/49 so far with an assist rate over 20 and a TO rate around 15. He gets to the basket a fair bit, and he's more or less maintained his performance in Iowa's 6 tier A games.

Frederick is less likely to get to the bucket than Weiskamp and relies on others to create his shots there more but has made up for it with a 47% rate in the midrange. This early that may be more fortune than anything. Other than that they're close analogues. Quite a find.

Frederick missed a couple games with an injury but returned to start and play 31 minutes in a middlingly competitive game against Northwestern, so he'll probably be full-go tonight.

Sophomore Connor McCaffrey is still a low-usage guy but he's slashed his turnover rate and gone from 21% to 34% from three—and he already has almost twice as many attempts this year as he had last year. McCaffrey came in as a 6'5" point guard but is now more of an off guard because he can check twos and threes and—unlike anyone Iowa can play at PG now—shoot a little. His assist and TO rates have both dropped significantly.

McCaffrey is still very bad from two and a possession that ends in him taking a jumper or contested shot at the rim is a good one regardless of result.

The main difference between Iowa of a month ago and Iowa now is the absence of point guard Jordan Bohannon, who was playing through a hip injury and shut his season down just in time to get a medical redshirt. Bohannon was struggling with his shot and wasn't particularly efficient in the first game (8 points on 11 shot equivalents, 3 assists, one TO).

Iowa still misses him when usage moves somewhere other than Garza. One of Joe Toussaint and Bakari Evelyn is on the court at almost all times now. Toussaint is a meep-meep freshman who has promise if he ever learns to shoot, but about that: he's hitting 52% of his shots at the rim and 19% anywhere else. He had a couple of frustrating transition makes in the first game and didn't do a whole lot else.

Toussaint's been starting post-Bohannon but in Iowa's last two games it's Evelyn getting starters minutes while Toussaint gets fifteen to eighteen. Evelyn is a grad transfer from Valpo who shot 36/31 in the Horizon league last year; moving to the Big Ten has seen his usage plummet and his TO rate spike to an incredible 35%. One of his Kenpom comparables is Andrew Dakich's year at OSU, and that about sums it up. He must be a good defender?

McCaffrey probably feels about injuries the same way he feels about refs [Campredon]

Injuries to Bohannon and Jack Nunge plus Patrick McCaffrey still suffering from the aftermath of cancer (in remission) mean that Iowa's bench has a hard stop at eight players. Evelyn is one of the three bench guys. The others should be familiar.

Cordell Pemsl looks and plays like a football player. Historically he's been pretty efficient inside he arc (58% for his career) but is scuffling at 36% this year for no apparent reason. Sample size is so low he's probably just snakebit. Garza has cratered his usage; he's just a rebounder and defender at the moment.

Ryan Kriener remains one of the more underrated guys in the league, a 6'10" three-level-ish scorer who backs up the 4 and 5 and is a solid rebounder. He doesn't create a ton for himself but is a good enough cutter and finisher to have a decent usage level and sky-high efficiency—61% from two on his career, 68%(!) this year. He does seem to have a hard stop against top-end bigs.

THE RELEVANT NUMBERS

Iowa factors:

left: offense, right: defense

Those offensive factors don't look incredible individually but add up to the #4 offense in the country. The combination of a top 50 turnover rate with a top 50 OREB rate is rare and gives you a ton of shots that Iowa tends to put down. Iowa is also the highest-tempo offense in the league, as Michigan found out in the first matchup.

The thing that jumps out from the drill-down numbers is that Iowa gives up a lot of threes and opponents have not been good at putting them down. This is characteristic of zone defense, which Iowa does play about half the time. Given Iowa's defensive struggles since forever, that's probably more luck than skill and Iowa's defensive progress from 111th last year to 75th this year may be largely illusion. Iowa has had an uptick in defensive rebounding that might be more sustainable.

THE KEYS

Shot volume. Michigan is the worst shot volume defense in the Big Ten, going up against the above. The conference numbers are horrendous. Michigan is 12th in forcing TOs and 13th on the defensive boards. While they're actually the #1 team in TO rate themselves they have a typically Beilein OREB rate—10th. Michigan was able to overcome a deficit against the Hawkeyes last time, that is a much taller task on the road and without the guy who hits 50% of his threes.

Get back in transition. The numbers in the first game weren't quite as bad as they felt at the time but Iowa had a huge quantity of early FGAs—28!—and a 7% eFG gap between transition and half-court shots. That only adds up to a bucket over the course of the game but that's half of what Iowa is favored to win by.

Also it may understate the case since OREBs are more common when Garza can staple you under the basket in transition. Unfortunately we don't have any data on secondary transition from Synergy, which appears to have a very strict definition.

Double the post? Minus Bohannon, Iowa is another team that has a giant shooting hole on the court at all times. In this case it's Toussaint/Evelyn. When Pemsl is on the court he's a second non-shooter. Garza meanwhile does not have a ton of playmaking in his game. Watching Purdue over the last few weeks you come to appreciate Trevion Williams's work as a passer—he has an 18% assist rate. Garza is at half that.

The question mark is because Teske did a solid job on Garza on initial shots in the half court. I still think doubling the post is the move. Garza had 38 shot equivalents in the previous game and zero turnovers. Iowa had 7 turnovers for the game. Refusing to double at all is increasingly the cause for Michigan's inability to force TOs. Oturu had one; Williams had zero. No giant-usage guard is going to escape a game with that few turnovers.

Make Garza work on defense. Teske was 7/8 from two in the last game and Garza can't really afford foul trouble. Hopefully the gameplan is a lot of Teske post touches and cuts off those touches like we saw a couple times against Minnesota. Brooks got some easy buckets off those.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Iowa by 4.

Worth noting that Carver Hawkeye has been a den of iniquity for Michigan of late, and the fancystats aren't accounting for Livers's absence. As Ace noted in his mailbag that is a giant issue. Gonna be rough.