Hoops Preview: Indiana, 2022 Big Ten Tournament
THE ESSENTIALS
| WHAT | #30 Michigan (17-13, 11-9 Big Ten) vs #44 Indiana (18-12, 9-11 Big Ten) |
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|---|---|---|
| WHERE | Signalwire Fieldhouse Indianapolis, Indiana |
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| WHEN | 11:30 AM Thursday | |
| THE LINE | Kenpom: M -2 Torvik: PK |
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| TELEVISION | BTN |
THE OVERVIEW
Michigan seems safely in no matter what happens unless you're Jerry Palm, but Jerry Palm is bad at his job. Still, Michigan has a lot to play for in the Big Ten Tournament: definitively securing a bid, making sure they're actually in the tournament proper instead of Dayton, possibly going on a run to replicate the White Collar team.
That starts against an Indiana team that went from 16-5 to 18-12 over the last couple months, going from safely in the field to desperate. Indiana's lost seven of their last nine, with wins coming against Minnesota and Maryland. They did put up a major fight in Mackey in their regular-season finale, FWIW. This still counts as a team in free-fall.
Michigan won the only regular-season matchup 80-62 in late January. That featured Hunter Dickinson and Caleb Houstan going off from range; on the other end of the floor Xavier Johnson was pretty effective against Michigan's smaller guards but Indiana got little from anyone else not named Trayce Jackson-Davis
THE US
Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:
We assume Dickinson is back after his stomach issue.
THE LINEUP CARD
Seth's graphic [click for big]:
Trey Galloway has missed five straight games; Mike Woodson does not expect him back for the Big Ten Tourney.
THE THEM
As per usual you can refer to the first preview for a holistic overview of the Indiana roster. Updates:
- Jackson-Davis ended the Big Ten season shooting 54% from the floor, which is a few points better than he did a year ago; he had the conference's highest FT rate but only hit 66% at the line. He was relatively effective against Dickinson (17 points on 16 shooting possessions, 1 TO) in the first game after getting crushed by him last year. He remains not great as a post defender (43rd percentile).
- Xavier Johnson's wild forays into the lane added up to a 38% shooting clip from two, but Indiana has few other options to generate shots so he gets a lot of usage. Like TJD he gets to the line a lot, where he converts at nearly 80%. He is bad at everything, shooting-wise, except threes.
- Indiana has a lot of guys with truly hideous two point shooting numbers. Rob Phinisee, Tamar Bates, Miller Kopp, and Parker Stewart collectively average about 35% in addition to Johnson above. The latter two are starters who are knocking down 37% and 41% from three, respectively, so the mission is clear: let anyone other than those guys shoot from three and only let those guys shoot from two.
THE TEMPO FREE
Conference numbers:
That adds up to the #1 defense and #10 offense in conference play. Indiana's shooting is brutal, 11th from two, 13th from 3, and 12th at hte line in Big Ten play; they get up very few threes. On defense they force a lot of turnovers and block more shots than anyone in the league. They give up a bunch of threes, FWIW.
Synergy has them as a 36th percentile spot-up team and 78th percentile in the post, FWIW, and they excel in transition and when dumping the ball to the roll guy.
THE KEYS
streaking [Campredon]
Can Caleb Houstan hit a shot anywhere other than Crisler? There are no more home games this season. There are also no more road games. Is Houstan's insane home/road split a crowd thing? Or a shooting background thing? Does he run entirely on BTB and slowly die any time he's out of their operational radius?
Michigan beating a tourney team while Houstan goes 0/10 is indeed possible, as Michigan just proved. Likely? No.
Power Mushroom Devante'. Devante' Jones ended the season on a tear; perhaps most importantly he started hitting some threes. If he can continue doing that, going under screens becomes less viable and things open up in the offense. Even if he's not able to punish those attempts, he's got 26 assists in his last four games and has been efficient on twos over the course of the full conference season. If Michigan can get Power Mushroom Devante' on the same court as Caleb Houstan Making Shots, they could get a stew going.
Xavier Johnson doin' stuff. Michigan's going to run drop coverage against these guys because the guys who run PNR for Indiana are hideous at generating their own offense off of it. So you're going to get a lot of Johnson/Phinisee decisions where they can pull up for a relatively open two or try to find a teammate. Johnson was irritatingly efficient against Michigan and is coming off a 7/11 from two performance against Purdue—he is streaky and Indiana lives and dies on his streakiness.
Michigan will have guards chasing over on Johnson and has to be aware that Johnson is very good at drawing FTs and those FTs are the most efficient things he does other than shoot open threes.
One on one post defense. Michigan won't help on TJD and TJD isn't likely to make Michigan pay for that decision given previous Dickinson/TJD matchups. Things might get trickier if there's early foul trouble, but Michigan can comfortably switch Dickinson onto Race Thompson and his peripheral offense.
On the other end, Indiana hard doubles about 2% of the time, so Dickinson will have time to go to work. In the last game he was on fire from the perimeter; that's unlikely to be the case again here. Dickinson has maybe settled a bit too much late in the season but was aggressive against MSU and is hopefully more inclined to work for a dunk instead of taking that short hook all the time.
THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES
Michigan by 2.
Unless you know something ominous about tomorrow's game, our card should list our record as 17-13.
That was an accident but leaving it in hopes it breaks the every other game curse.
Exhausting, grinding season. Time for some tournament fun. Welcome back, Coach Howard. Go Blue!
Exhausting, grinding but kinda fun watching the development.
Obviously, the development of individuals and the team isn't linear, as gratifyingly clear and always upward path.
But players and the team keep working through things, success and setbacks are part of the path.
Go Blue.
home game for IU, kind of.
juwan's 'bo ryan' index can't be at 4% any longer. its well into the double digits....
I saw somewhere that Indiana is 13-23 all-time in the BTT. Amazing, considering it's played in Indianapolis most of the time.
interesting. made me curious so i went and found michigan (and everybody else's) BTT record here:
Big Ten Tournament Team Records Team Wins Losses Pct. Titles Second Years
Ohio State 34 18 65.4%
Michigan State 32 17
Illinois 31 20
Michigan 29 20 59.2% 3 2 1998*, 2017, 2018 three titles, two second place finishes
Wisconsin 26 20
Minnesota 20 23
Iowa 18 21
Penn State 15 23
Purdue 14 22
Indiana 13 23
Northwestern 9 24
Nebraska 5 10
Rutgers 4 6
Maryland 3 6
also found this: • Michigan has won tournament titles in 1998*, 2017 and 2018, however, the 1998 inaugural title was vacated due to NCAA sanctions. The Wolverines became the third team to win back-to-back titles -- joining Michigan State (1999, 2000) and Ohio State (2010, 2011) • The 2020 tournament was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. In the fi rst game of session 2 (March 12, 2020), U-M and Rutgers were called off the fl oor during pregame warm-ups as the event was canceled • Michigan has earned the No. 1 seed, twice -- 2014 & 2021 • Michigan has had eight straight tournament byes • Michigan has won 14 straight opening tournament games • Michigan holds record for consecutive wins with 10 (2017-19); winning titles - 2017 & 2018 • Michigan was the lowest seed to win the Big Ten Tournament (#8 in 2017) • Michigan has won four games in four days, twice -- guiding the Wolverines to back-to-back titles (2017 & 2018); Iowa is the only other Big Ten team to win four straight games (4-0; 2001)
I'm replying to XM just because I can.
A good reason.
show off.
but i guess for a dude who's naked and running around that should make sense.
Wonder how many MGoBloggers saw that the REPLY button was working again and reacted like Navin R. Johnson when the new phonebooks came out.
There will be a lot of UM fans there as well. IU will have a slight advantage, but I don't think it will be huge.
What Naked Bootlegger said.
(I do wonder if "Naked Bootlegger" is the polite version of a more explicit name.)
I am tiring a bit of 11:30 on Thursday and noon on Friday. At some point I would not mind Michigan being a night game at the BTT. We were even going to be the 11:30 game in the tournament that was cancelled.
I would agree that a night game would be better, but this is what work from home was made for.
No thank you. I prefer the day games.
I like the work distraction...it's like a warmup for the following week.
Hometown Houstan has actually been pretty good in the state of Indiana. @Indiana he went 5/7 from three, and @Purdue he was 2/6 from three, drew a couple fouls, and had three assists. Maybe he’s bad at US geography and thinks Indiana is part of Michigan?
Power Mushroom + Making Shots = Sky Clearing?
Jerry Palm is an interesting follow. He is very rigid about a few things. For Michigan, he can't get past the have to be 4 games over .500 thing, so in his mind Michigan is out if they lose to Indiana. My theory is that he got famous by being all about RPI and hasn't really gotten over the fact that it's no longer a thing that matters.
He's not even consistent on that front, as last year he has MSU a 10 seed despite only being 3 games above .500. I agree RPI being cast aside has clearly left him unmoored but he also just seems like a cranky guy who isn't great at his job anymore.
I went back to watch some of last years game after that comment about TJD "getting crushed by [Dickinson]" last year because it seems to be a theme that Hunter held up defensively a lot better last year than this year.
Brian mentioned Dickinson potentially being hurt a couple podcasts ago and it kind of seems that way because how did an elite defense like Michigan's last year, ranked 4th in CBB, turn into the 80th best in the country and 11th best in the conference when their (starting) guards are essentially the same and the center is the same.
Couple of observations based on a somewhat limited edit (by Matthew Loves Basketball on YouTube) of the first half:
- Dickinson played fewer minutes last year. We tend to forget this, but he played fewer than 2/3 of Michigan minutes. Davis came in and spelled him for about 5 minutes in the first half.
- Michigan had Wagner or Livers guarding TJD on several possessions with Hunter/Davis on Race Thompson like this play. What was interesting about this particular play is that during the deadball right before this play, Juwan called Hunter over and told him to switch with Franz knowing the PnR was coming:
- Livers, Wagner and Brown were phenomenal help defenders. Man, it's just such a huge difference than what Michigan's wings are able to do this year. On this play, TJD drives on Hunter:
And Livers is waiting to wall up and force the miss (and it appears Dickinson's vertical was just as limited last year, ha):
So two big differences in general:
1) Michigan's wings enabled them to mix and match to de-leverage the impact the guards and centers had on the opponents best players.
2) Michigan's wings were excellent help defenders for when the guards and centers did get beat.
This year, it's the wings (Houstan especially) that Michigan de-leverages and that means Hunter and guards who aren't great defenders have much tougher assignments with less help.
For instance, against OSU Houstan guarded Ahrens, who is the easiest defensive assignment since he's so extremely Just A Shooter that he scored his FIRST (!!!!!!) and only two point basket of the entire season on Michigan Sunday (on Twill on a drive...ugh), and Eli had to guard Branham who is four inches taller and a borderline first round pick. Last year, it would have been Livers or Franz on Branham most likely.
Anyway, part of me is having bad feelings about this game, like I did ahead of Iowa 2 because Michigan got lucky in the first meeting (like they did at Iowa).
That said, Michigan still won that by 18 and IU's offense is so bad that I think Michigan wins in a close-ish grinder. The key is protecting the basketball. Transition is IU's best hope so Michigan has to limit steals.
TB2003 you have had a load of very good basketball commentary, stats, etc. these last few weeks. thanks for that.
Thanks, XM. It's March! Best time of the year. With fans and full festivities back for the first time in three years.
Good to have you back.
We lost our 2 best perimeter defenders, who happen to be 2 of the best perimeter defenders in the country, and one of the replacements is below average defensively. I think it's as simple as that. Chaundee alone makes us significantly better this year IMO, defense and spot up shooting. Shame he left early to go undrafted.
Yes, but that's not intuitive when you compare how Hunter has (supposedly done) this year compared to last year which on the surface seems like he was a lot better last year.
It's been interesting that our pick and roll defense which theoretically wouldn't involve those wings (much) last year has been completely blown up this year despite still involving essentially the same guards and center.
So it was instructive to go back and look how involved those wings may have been in the pick and roll game last year.
Also, at one point last year Ace said teams were running fewer pick and rolls against Michigan than any other team which is surprising to me (i don't have the data). I suspect that has flipped this year as teams put as much pressure on Hunter and our guards as possible.
Also, the make up of the league has changed significantly. Last year it was big / post oriented, which Hunter is solid at defending.
This year, there are a ton of elite / 1st round wings / guards with Keegan, Davis, McGowens, Ivey, Branham, etc. The exact kind of players we need elite wings to guard or rim protectors to help on...but which we don't have.
There’s no way Juwans index is still 4%
Sounds like its not 100% that Hunter plays tomorrow. Today was his first practice back and they are still monitoring his health.
Sheesh, dude must be out of his mind with diarrhea to potentially miss 2 massive games like that.
Juwan said in his press conference that today was Hunter’s first practice. That doesn’t sound great to me.
Well, he’s not injured. He’s just been sick. If he’s well enough to practice, I think he plays tomorrow.
Yep, seems like he'll definitely play. At this point conditioning / fitness might be the only question mark.
Plus they were off on Monday as a team so he basically missed 1 practice.
He will play tomorrow.
Jumping off a point JUB made on WTKA, I think winning a couple games in the tourney would be nice in getting back to normal after the suspension. The commentary on the first game back is likely to be wall to wall Juwan suspension talk and every game after will see a reduction (I hope)
Does he run entirely on BTB and slowly die any time he's out of their operational radius?
This explains a lot about a lot of people, including myself.
Doesn't BTB have locations in other BT towns?
Kinda feel sad for Miller Kopp - transferred from NW for his senior season...only to have a NW-type finish at Indiana!
(fingers crossed this won't jinx us)
This will not be 10-win-diana. They will be 9-win-NITiana.
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