THE ESSENTIALS

THE OVERVIEW

The two most disappointing teams in the Big Ten face off tonight. You know all about Michigan's issues, but hoo boy Maryland's got a toxic stew going themselves. They picked up two of the most-hyped transfers in the league in the form of Rhode Island point guard Fatts Russell and Georgetown center Qudus Wahab, returned some of their infinite supply of wing-type guys, and were widely projected to do pretty well.

Then they started 5-3 with a loss to George Mason and a pretty bad Louisville team and Mark Turgeon decided he was very rich and very sick of listening to Maryland fans call him a tube. He quit, Danny Manning took over, and now they're 1-5 in league play. This would be a good time to get healthy, literally and figuratively, for Michigan.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

Zeb Jackson is definitely out per Martelli and Johns/Dickinson are "game-time decisions" after contracting COVID.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

The "Penny Hardaway Index" is the percentage of photos in the first three rows of your Google image search that are of you as a player. Penny Hardaway's PHI is 77%. Juwan Howard's is 18%.

Penny Hardaway's Penny Hardaway Doll Index (ie, the number of photos in the first three rows of GIS that are of a doll of you) is 4%.

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

THE THEM

reddit beard [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Wing Eric Ayala returns and is the team's highest-usage player. For whatever reason he's backslid massively inside the line, where he was a 55% shooter last year—and 50% in Big Ten play. This year he's at 43% overall and a Brad Davison-esque 27% in Big Ten play. This is mostly because his shooting percentage at the rim has collapsed. This is odd since last year Maryland operated without an actual point guard and now they have a guy who gets in the lane a lot. But Ayala does not absorb assists inside the line. Only a fifth of his shots at the rim are assisted, both this year and last. He attacks closeouts, and you'd think that attacking closeouts would be more effective this year. Apparently not.

Ayala remains a dangerous three point shooter and takes care of the ball despite high usage.

Rhode Island transfer Fatts Russell was a hideous high-usage chucker on a team without a lot of other answers—he's a career 41/28 shooter—and is still that even after an up-transfer. He is a real point guard who maintains an assist rate in the high 20s and keeps turnovers reasonably low; he also gets to the line quite a bit and converts at a 75-80% clip.

But yeah, any reasonably contested shot from him is a win. Getting those might be trouble since Russell goes one on one a ton and Michigan's really struggled to contain isolation drives this year. You'd think this is a game where Brooks being in the right spot and just forcing tough shots would go a long way, but since this year is playing out like a message board hypothetical maybe not.

Donta Scott returns and is no longer being deployed as a small-ball 5. Like a lot of things about this Maryland team, he's gotten mysteriously worse. After shooting 44% on 109 threes last year—you probably remember the 5/5 from deep he nailed against Michigan in the first matchup of last season—he's scuffling along at 30% this year while also dropping a couple of points from his percentage inside the line. His assist rate has halved, as well, and he's not getting to the line as much.

You'd think there would be defensive offsets since Scott never seemed like much of a 5 but Maryland is 25 slots worse in Kenpom defensive efficiency this year so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hakim Hart also returns and has been extremely efficient in a limited number of opportunities. Almost literally all of his action inside the arc happens at the rim and he is finishing there at 74% while getting to the line quite a bit, taking care of the ball, and shooting okay (31%) from three. The catch: he's at 15% usage. A quick Synergy check and yup: almost everything that's not a spot-up is in transition. He is not going to generate shots himself.

Georgetown transfer Qudus Wahab is a standard back-to-the-basket center with a questionable post game—60% of his possessions are post-ups and he's averaging 0.8 PPP. He's extremely effective as a finisher but Maryland's offense doesn't get him a ton of opportunities to ruthlessly dunk on someone.

Last year he was a superb post defender statistically—91st percentile—but that was on just 41 possessions. He's already faced 39 post possessions this year (welcome to the Big Ten) and is floating along in the 60s, percentile-wise. He is a threat on the offensive boards. For whatever reason he did not start the last game and only got 14 minutes, so he must be doing some things that Manning finds frustrating.

The Maryland bench is basically one guy:

• Freshman C/PF Julian Reese got the start over Wahab in the last game. Reese was the #60 composite recruit in the most recent class but is only 6'9", 230 and was projected as a 4 by the recruiting industry. He's been a monster offensive rebounder and blocks shots at a rate you wouldn't expect from a guy his size but he's shooting 43% from two and is 2/12 outside the arc so far this year. He is a good free throw shooter.
• Old Dominion transfer Xavier Green gets 16 MPG and tries to stay out of the way as much as possible (8% usage!). My dude shot 36/30 at a CUSA school last year and had an 81 ORTG, it is frankly baffling that he up-transferred at all, let alone is getting sixth man minutes on a Big Ten team.
• Utah transfer Ian Martinez gets about 10 MPG and has yet to hit a shot in Big Ten play (he's 0/8). He had a reasonably promising freshman year at Utah with 59/32/84 shooting, albeit on limited attempts. He's shooting 32/21 so far this season.

THE TEMPO FREE

The shooting, Maryland is bad at it:

They're slightly worse at 3s than twos but it's all the same bucket. There are no notable drill-down stats, really, except maybe that Qudus Wahab did not impact Maryland's two-point D at all. They're around 50th, which is good, but that's where they were last year with their two below-the-rim 6'9" guys.

THE KEYS

Get Dickinson back. If you want any evidence this season is cursed, "played Jaron Faulds for 13 minutes against Kofi Cockburn" is pretty good. Obviously much hinges on his availability and conditioning.

Stay out of transition. Maryland is dramatically more efficient (66th percentile) in transition than in the halfcourt (38th percentile). They don't force steals or run off makes, so almost all of their opportunities come off rebounds. This might be a situation where it's wise to call the dogs off and let Maryland try to thunder-butt through your defense. Assuming Michigan's defense can stiffen against a pretty wonky offensive team, that is.

Caleb Houstan hit a shot. There appears to be no cavalry coming at the 3 and Houstan is 2 for his last 21 attempts from three. Hard to see Michigan turning any sort of corner without Houstan doing the same.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 8.