[Ed: BUMPED FOR THIS IS TODAY.]

Sponsor note! Look into the eyes of your next realtor!

The housing market is currently rampant with ludicrous things. Finding the right house at the right price is becoming more difficult by the day. That is where Matt Demorest, who runs Simplified Homes with Keller Williams Domain comes in. You have heard Matt on the podcast, read the great reviews on his mortgage business, and interacted with him on the boards for years. In the meantime, he has been slowly building out a team of highly qualified residential Realtors using the same commitment to integrity and service we have come to trust. Matt and his team serve all of Michigan, even Spartans. If you are thinking about buying or selling a home he is your guy who will never leave your mind's eye.

--------------

THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#3 Michigan (22-4, 14-3 B1G) vs #13 FSU (18-6, 11-4 ACC)	just like Northwestern?
WHERE	Phil Klein Insurance Group Fieldhouse Indianapolis, IN
WHEN	5 PM Eastern Sunday, March 28th
THE LINE	Kenpom: M -4 Torvik: M –1.3
TELEVISION	CBS PBP: Jim Nantz Analyst: Hill/Raftery

THE OVERVIEW

Michigan's reached its sixth Sweet 16 in eight tournaments and faces a familiar foe: Florida State, which was the last team standing between Michigan and the 2018 Final Four. Despite the fact that only one Seminole still on the roster saw the floor that night (MJ Walker got eight minutes), this team will be extremely familiar. Giant persons? Check. Tendency to throw the ball into the stands? Check. More giant persons? Of course. Leonard Hamilton refusing to age? Certainly.

FSU had a pretty weird season that saw them limited to 15 ACC games and was punctuated by a bizarre ten-point loss to Notre Dame—probably the softest major-conference team in the nation—that cost them a regular season ACC title. They also lost to common opponent UCF by 12 and squeezed by Indiana by two in overtime. They lost to Georgia Tech in the ACC title game.

On the other hand FSU just detonated Colorado by 18 and possess double digit wins over Virginia, Clemson, and Louisville. They've got some juice.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

No changes from last time out.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

There are a couple guys who are likely to see the floor who didn't make the graphic because there are some MSU vibes from the rotation. (Not so much the post presence.)

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

THE THEM

This will be close to the exact opposite of LSU. Leonard Hamilton likes Ents and he's got the Entiest team in all the land this year, #1 in average height per Kenpom. Hamilton also likes to roll deep. No FSU player has 70%+ minutes and 11 different guys get at least 6 MPG. This is one of those irritating situation where the Kenpom page, which bolds the top five guys in terms of minutes to denote starters, has a "starter" averaging under half the game. Meanwhile the highest-usage and best player is averaging almost 60% of minutes but is technically a bench player because Hamilton doesn't start him. Bah!

So we'll start with that bench player. Scottie Barnes is one of the weirdest dudes in the nation, a 6'9" guy with a legitimate claim as a point guard because he has a top 50 assist rate. He's also the kind of massively switchable, long defender the NBA covets. This has him in the top ten of most mock drafts. Sam Vecenie on Barnes:

… “do it all but scoring” wing/forward/point … often initiates the Seminole offense … 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. … 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's defensive disruption, length and big loping strides are reminiscent of Franz Wagner. Barnes is more of a playmaker and (much) less of a shooter. He's only taken 37 threes on the season and hits 30%. Barnes gets to the rim more than Wagner; both guys are superior finishers once there, especially since both guys mostly create their own looks. It won't be surprising to see those two guys go head to head for much of the game.

you're good if Walker is doing this [Josh Duplechian/NCAA Photos via Getty Images]

Barnes is most often flanked by two near-identical guys who probably want to be called shooting guards but are more realistically wings. MJ Walker and Anthony Polite are both Not Just A Shooter types who split their attempts down the middle between twos and threes and are exceptionally dangerous outside the line. Both hit 44% from deep.

Walker is higher usage and better at the line but has an elevated TO rate; Polite is the better rebounder and more efficient inside the line largely because he's a solid midrange shooter and Walker is a poor one. Walker is more of a guard. He's FSU's leading ball screen user. Unlike Javonte Smart, if he's shooting off the dribble against drop coverage this is completely fine.

Gray is a load [Joe Robbins/NCAA Photos via Getty Images]

Power forward Raiquan Gray puts the "power" in power forward at a thunderous 260 pounds. He's at his best around the basket and gets there a bunch. Like Barnes, he puts up the very occasional three, but he's more or less exactly what you'd expect from a guy his shape and size: a rebounder and guy who will play bully ball at the basket, finishing through contact.

Synergy files Gray's shots under all kinds of different things but an oddly large number of them are spot ups—a third of his halfcourt shots—despite the fact that he's got a 42% eFG rate on them. This is not a team you want to give catch and shoot looks but Gray is the exception.

We're about to address this in the next section, but FSU plays Gray at center a fair bit and this has usually gone extremely badly.

Ol' Glider Material, they call him [Trevor Brown Jr/NCAA Photos via Getty Images]

Center Balsa Koprivica is almost exclusively a garbage man on offense, deriving the vast majority of his half-court shots from putbacks, cuts to the basket, and acting as the roll man on PNR. He does post up a bit and is miserable doing so, shooting 7/21 in those situations with a TO rate of 21. He is extremely bad once pushed outside the paint, hitting 27% on other twos. He is efficient at the rim, as befits a seven-footer who's not generating his own shots.

Despite this peripheral role on offense, Koprivica is critical to the whole Seminole enterprise largely because when he goes to the bench most of the time it's Gray moving over to the five, and that's been a fiasco:

In a word, woof.

Part of this is Koprivica been a legitimately game-changing defender. He's got a top 50 block rate and the above 2P% numbers speak for themselves. But that block rate comes with a cost. Koprivica tries to block everything, which leads to an elevated foul rate (5.6 per 40) and a number of Kobe assists. Koprivica fouled out in 11 minutes against Colorado and was limited to 24 and 26 minutes in FSU's previous two outings because he picked up four fouls in both games. Meanwhile, I think something's off with Hoop Lens's coloring on the rebounding line, because FSU is 296th nationally in cleaning up their own glass. They yield a 31.8% OREB rate; that 31.7 is Very Bad Actually.

How does Koprivica do against post ups? I don't know and nobody else does either. He's faced a total of 13 this year. It is notable that Trayce Jackson-Davis roasted FSU in a 69-67 OT win for the Seminoles. TJD had 25 points on 21 shooting possessions and seven offensive rebounds. If anyone else had done anything for Indiana—a recurring theme for the Hoosiers—they would have won. Meanwhile the only team that does anything in the post in the ACC is North Carolina's broke-ass offense, and they have a bunch of guys grading out at around 50th percentile. Dickinson and Davis are around 90th percentile.

The Florida State bench is extensive:

• Senior SG RayQuan Evans technically starts but is a low-usage gent under 20 MPG so he's slotted here. Evans is the worst offensive player FSU has. His strategy is to bull his way towards the rim no matter what and try to draw fouls. He does draw a lot of fouls; he hits 42% at the rim, which seems impossible.
• Backup C Tanor Ngom transferred in from the Canadian equivalent of the NCAA—not sure I've ever seen that before—because Hamilton wasn't full up on seven footers. He's 7'2" and gets 6 MPG. Giant block rate, 30+ TO rate, zero assists on the year, almost never dribbles, you get the idea. Ngom only got seven minutes against Colorado despite Koprivica fouling out in 11, so he's got a hard cap on PT and it'll Gray, mostly, when Koprivica is out.
• Junior PF Malik Osborne crashes the glass, gets to the line, and hits 84% once there. He's got a little three point shooting as well. Like Calhoun, he's a black hole.
• 6'6" wing Sardaar Calhoun is a JUCO transfer who's best as a shooter (40% from three) but does have some ability to get to the basket himself. He's a bit of a black hole.
• Junior stretch four Wyatt Wilkes is just a shooter hitting 38% from deep.
• So is SG Nathaniel Jack.

THE TEMPO-FREE

Left defense, right offense:

FSU's very good at threes (16th nationally) but doesn't take many because they have a limited number of shooters. They punt the ball OOB a lot because Barnes isn't really truly a point guard and their secondary playmaker, Walker, is a bit of a butterfingers. Obligatory Florida State stuff: OREBs because they're massive, blocks (11th) because they're massive, poor DREBs and FTAs allowed because they aggressively contest everything.

Like LSU, LSU has a combination of lots of threes allowed and good three point D. The disparity isn't nearly as big as LSU's and there is a mechanism that makes you think that those numbers could be real. Excellent two point defense (10th) can lead to more and worse looks from three.

FSU is tenth nationally at defending the rim, FWIW.

THE KEYS

do not close out on these please [Campredon]

No clean looks. Synergy coughed up an incredible disparity here. Florida State is 99th percentile(!) on catch and shoot jumpers, averaging 1.26 PPP on them. That is 339 possessions—extremely robust. They are 2nd percentile(!) on jumpers off the dribble, averaging 0.59 PPP. That will likely be the game.

There is good news here for Michigan, which does a very good job at preventing catch and shoot opportunities (14th nationally) and forces a ton of dribble jumpers (12th nationally). This is not a game where FSU's ability to shoot over Michigan's guards when drives get cut off is going to be relevant like it was against LSU. The imperative is clear: close out like maniacs on Polite and Walker (and the bench shooters) and use help defense to force guys to put it up before they can get to the rack.

This is a perfect fit for Michigan's drop coverage.

Test Koprivica. Koprivica has literally not seen anyone like Hunter Dickinson this year. He is foul prone and FSU's gone off a cliff when they've played Gray at center. FSU's team numbers against post-ups are scanty but encouraging for M: 7th percentile in 82 posts ups + pass out situations, and 16th percentile on the 28 possessions where there's been a hard double team. Michigan goes to the post early quite a bit and should be going out of its way to get Dickinson going, for multiple reasons.

Related:

Punish switches. FSU loves to switch everything one through five. This explains why Koprivica has faced under 20% of opponent post-ups. Koprivica has surprising agility on the outside and often forces heavily contested threes on his switch, so here too it looks like the gameplan should be dumping it to Dickinson. That'll likely create post doubles and rotations and open threes. Hopefully there's a contrast here between this Michigan team and the ones that faced Xavier Tillman-era MSU.

Know your personnel. FSU will be fielding two non-shooters most of the game and sometimes three. Meanwhile the guys who can shoot vary from very good to deadly. Michigan can do a lot of work by sagging off guys, particularly an excellent passer but iffy shooter like Barnes, but have to keep their heads straight if they're going to be switching on screens lest Polite and Walker get open looks.

Think about zones? Ace pointed out that the ACC championship game against Georgia Tech featured 25 FSU turnovers as the Seminoles struggled with GT's weird matchup zone:

On a season-long basis there's not much difference between FSU's performance versus man or zone, and Michigan hasn't put as much practice time in as GT has. But if things are going badly, or Dickinson's in foul trouble, or Austin Davis is in the game, it might be worth seeing if the matchup zone can stall FSU out and maybe induce some more of those dribble jumpers.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 4.