THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#23 Michigan (1-0) vs #312 EMU (1-0)	[Upchurch]
WHERE	Little Caesar's Arena Detroit, MI
WHEN	9:00 PM for some reason
THE LINE	Kenpom: M -18 Torvik: M -18
TELEVISION	ESPNU

THE OVERVIEW

EMU is a bad MAC program heavily reliant on their one returning starter, guard Noah Farrakhan, to drive its offense. The PG and C are true freshmen, the wings are all transfers, and the only other returning contributor from the #316 team on Kenpom last year is a Just-a-Shooter who shot 32% from the arc.

Unfortunately nobody is watching/going to this to see how Michigan's new backcourt handles a challenge like Farrakhan. That's because at long last Ypsilanti legend Emoni Bates gets to play a game for Michigan at Michigan in Washtenaw County against a team from Michigan somewhere in the State of Michigan. Guessing when they scheduled this game for Detroit it wasn't expected to intersect with the object of local recruiting fascination. I can't explain the 9PM start either. Was this meant to be a doubleheader with MSU before they scheduled Gonzaga on an aircraft carrier or something? Weird. Anyway: Bates!

Getting Bates to the Bates Show was a near run thing after an arrest this fall. He was held out of their opener versus Wayne State for a "coach's decision" but did play in the exhibition vs GVSU. Finally of draftable age next spring, and with few other future pros on EMU's schedule, this game is being billed as the last chance for the onetime "Next Kevin Durant" to convince an NBA team he's worth a lottery pick. This site finds that doubtful.

Michigan got some eye-popping offense and vein-opening defense from Jett Howard in its opener. Jett could get see a lot of time on Bates, since putting a wing on him seemed to be the play when he was at Memphis. If you're able to focus on the best basketball players on the court instead of that, well, your basketball purity is greater than mine.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

Notes: I'm combining last year's stats (where available) until there's enough sample from this year to make those charts useful. Usage is now the black circles you see, with a big circle meaning… yep, a lot of usage. Until the season's old enough to have its own stats we're going to denote transfers in other colors, indicating where the player's stats came from.

THE LINEUP CARD

My graphic [click for big]:

Same deal: I used last year's stats where available and denoted transfers with their old team's colors.

THE THEM

[Marc-Grégor Campredon]

The basketball player Michigan actually spent the most time this week concerned about is guard Noah Farrakhan, a school-year junior who played the COVID season at East Carolina before transferring to EMU and finishing second in the MAC in usage and assist rate. He's got great size for the position, and he's an excellent finisher at the rim, but most of his game is built around an excellent step-back.

Farrakhan's unassisted threes go in at the same clip as his unassisted twos (about 40%) so running him off the line is key. That seems doable—Tier B+ opponents forced 63% of his usage into two-point land, where he shot 6/36 and turned it over on a quarter of his possessions. MSU established the procedure, holding Farrakhan to eight 2PJs and forcing six turnovers to just three shots from deep (he made two). Drives are mostly dangerous because you're focused on the fallaways. Just run him off the line and this should be fine, which Jaelin Llewellyn and Kobe Bufkin should be well-suited for. One of those guys should be on the court at all times.

That brings us to Emoni Bates. He's not quite the 6-10 he was advertised, but 6-9, long, athletic, and able to score from anywhere will get you noticed. That's actually the problem, since the Bates story is not so much an indictment on the kid as a cautionary tale about the state of the basketball talent industry. Bates was becoming a household name before he was a teen. He rose to the #1 recruit in this year's class, reclassified to last year's class, and spent a year committed to Michigan State when State fans online would cut you for saying he wasn't actually going there. During COVID Emoni's father pulled him out of school to start an academy in the back of an Ypsi elementary school (the school's parents were not pleased), and Bates's rankings plummeted. Vox's Ricky O'Donnell:

Instead of competing in a more structured environment playing with other great players and getting proper coaching, Bates was the center of everything his teams did. There was less accountability and instruction on shot selection, defense, and playing a winning brand of basketball. The only mission of those teams was to boost the star-power of Emoni Bates, and it sure feels like it was to his long-term determent.

Meanwhile, the media placed the weight of the world on his shoulders. Bates famously graced the cover of Sports Illustrated as a 15-year-old alongside the phrase “Born For This.” They wrote in the piece that he “often resembles a 6’ 9” Stephen Curry.” ESPN wrote “it was hard not to liken him to a young Kevin Durant” while scouting him at the 2018 USA Basketball mini-camp. Rivals said he was “perhaps the best prospect regardless of class.”

Bates ultimately went to Memphis, but was held out until crunch time then underwhelmed when he was inserted for the tourney. The reported interest in Michigan last summer was coming almost entirely from the Bates camp, hence winding up at EMU. He still looks like a major basketball prospect, and if Bates is ever going to have a game in college that impresses the scouts it more or less has to be this one, so he'll be motivated.

However Bates was just as motivated in last year's tournament, when his 12 minutes and five inadvisable jacks were the margin in Memphis blowing a chance to upset Gonzaga. Scoring with the ball in his hands is pretty much his entire game, and college teams know how to make one-dimensional players inefficient (let's not even get started on the NBA). Bates doesn't see his teammates, is a surprisingly bad finisher, and his size hasn't translated to rebounds or blocks either. In his presser this week Juwan Howard said they have to make Bates "work for his shots," a bit of coach speak that basketball people interpreted to say volumes.

If Bates goes off, it's probably more because of Michigan's defensive issues. With Diabate in the NBA, and given Dickinson and Williams aren't really built to be perimeter defenders, we assume Bates is going  to draw Jett Howard, whose defense was miserable in the opener vs IPFW (thread). But the reality is Bates is young, skinny, and criminally undeveloped, IE not that good of a basketball player. If footage from tonight makes a 30 for 30, it's infinitely more likely to be about the world of youth basketball than the origins of an NBA legend.

Michigan should have a major advantage everywhere else. Third guard Tyson Acuff (Cass Tech) had extremely low usage during his two years at Duquesne. He's a good shooter if you leave him alone (42% despite finishing last year on a 1-for-13 slump), but his shot takes awhile to get off, and he also tends to wander into the lane without a plan (think 6-4 Caleb Houstan). The true freshmen are hard to gauge since neither of EMU's games were broadcast and neither were touted enough to warrant scouting services' attentions. G Orlando Lovejoy is supposed to grow into a big point down the road and had an impressive game against Wayne State. C Legend Geeter has the impressive name and a wrister but isn't going to hold up to Hunter Dickinson without help.

The bench:

• Forward Jalin Billingsly had a rough freshman campaign at Georgetown. He was supposed to be a thicc three-and-D player but didn't have the three (3/13 on the season) and wound up turning the ball over while trying to act the Big. The defense is still there; he's tough to move off the block and an effective rebounder.
• PG Luka Savicevic is the only other returning player in the lineup but he was a disaster as EMU's backup point last year. Brian's always on about me for using the brick icon too often but a 41.7 eFG% should qualify. He also coughed up 3 turnovers in 18 minutes against Wayne State last week.
• Wing Colin Golson and backup big Javantae Randle (redshirt) are freshmen I know next to nothing about.

THE TEMPO FREE

Last year's four factors:

They've replaced 4/5 starters and all but one bench player but we're still looking at Farrakhan surrounded by MAC talent and the same coach. You are permitted to ignore and watch Bates.

THE KEYS

Run Farrakhan off the line. Llewellin and Bufkin are 6-2 and 6-4 respectively so Michigan shouldn't be as susceptible as past versions to a guard who just shoots over them. Please put Dug on someone else.

Make Bates play basketball. His name made the national consciousness by scoring 30 ppg against high school defenders. Gonna need Jett to bring his college game.

Get it in, kick it out, put it to bed. You have Hunter Dickinson and shooters. They have teenagers and transfers, and the tallest guy on the team is 190 pounds and is only here to show NBA people he can can threes at 6-9. You know the drill.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 18.