THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#9 Michigan (4-2) vs #49 North Carolina (4-2)
WHERE	Dean Smith Center Chapel Hill, NC
WHEN	9:15 PM Eastern Wednesday, 12/1
THE LINE	Kenpom: M -4 Torvik: M -1
TELEVISION	ESPN

THE OVERVIEW

Michigan seeks to run its recent streak of victories over UNC to three in an ACC/Big Ten Challenge game tonight. Roy Williams retired this offseason and UNC, like so many other schools, decided to run the Juwan Howard playbook by hiring an assistant coach who is a famous alum of the program. In this case Hubert Davis was Williams's right-hand man and widely regarded as a coach in waiting, but it's still the playbook.

Davis took over a program that was in rough shape, by UNC standards. In 2019 they imploded, going 6-14 in the ACC, and last year's recovery was only good enough to an 8-9 game against Wisconsin that they lost by 23 points. A relatively wobbly recruiting class (again by UNC standards, just a couple of guys ranked in the 60s) led to Davis hitting the portal for some bigs, and results are trending about where they were last year.

UNC has beaten four teams ranked in the 200s on Kenpom and lost to #2 Purdue by 9 and #14 Tennessee by 17, both of those on neutral courts. Michigan will be highly advised to win this winnable game lest things start looking unfathomably grim relative to preseason expectations.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

Seth notes that Hubert Davis set a Bo Ryan Index record with a stunning 0%—he is angry or upset in literally none of the first three rows of google image search photos.

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

THE THEM

probably made this one [goheels.com]

Star—uh, ish—combo guard Caleb Love was a huge part of the problem last year. Love was a five star and the #14 player in his class. He immediately stepped into the starting lineup and proceeded to chuck bricks to the tune of a 35/27/81 season, and he also had a TO rate of 25. That adds up to a cool 87 ORTG, but at least he did that on a ton of usage?

Love's draft stock plummeted because he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn:

Despite advantageous physical and athletic traits, he's been brutal finishing around the basket, both in the half court (5-of-16) and transition (13th percentile).

The bigger issue has been Love's jumper. He's missed 37 of 45 three-point attempts and struggled badly off the ball (5-of-27 catch-and-shoot, 6th percentile spot-ups) alongside RJ Davis.

Love looks relatively better pulling up (7-of-30), and his 84.4 free-throw percentage highlights enough touch to create some degree of optimism for his jump shot down the road. But 11 games in, it's tough to pinpoint any skill that appears on track to develop into an NBA-caliber strength.

There was in fact no aspect of his offensive game other than rarely-used handoff situations where he was above 37th percentile, and he was particularly miserable as a spot-up shooter (16th percentile) and in transition (14th percentile).

Love is off to a much better start this year and was okay in UNC's two games against power competition to date. He put up 18 points on 17 shot equivalents against Tennessee and 12 on 10 against Purdue. Those are reasonably efficient games and his shooting is sort of competent so far. He's also slashed his TO rate, but did have five in the two power competition games.

Love's ability to hit a jumper is a major swing question for the Tarheels.

Sophomore RJ Davis is another top 50 recruit entering his sophomore year. He's a bit of a wee fella, generously listed at 6'0", and he had a miserable time trying to translate to college. He shot 37/32/82 last year and spent a majority of his time inside the arc. Once inside the most common thing he'd two is pull up from the midrange and hit it 28% of the time. Woof. When he did get to the rim he only shot 50% once there. He also had a 22 TO rate.

Things are off to a fairly similar start this year, but he's cut down on the turnovers and shot a ton better from 3 (13/26 so far this year). He's still a mess inside the line, shooting 42% with a majority of games against cupcakes.

Small forward Leaky Black is still around and still doing a whole lot of nothin'. This is good news for Michigan and Caleb Houstan, who's struggled on defense in the early going. Black gets up about 10% of UNC shots, which is down from 12% last year when he hit 43/22/69 from the floor. Black has a high turnover rate (19) for a guy who is the opposite of aggresssive and mostly exists to be a defensive stopper and pick up a few steals. He can be sagged off of as a 26% career three point shooter.

Black actually plays fewer than half of UNC minutes but does start.

Brady Manek is a transfer from Oklahoma and operates as a stretch four. He has some back-to-the-basket game but not a whole lot of lift so he ends up taking a bunch of contested post shots that are only decent options. Slightly over half his twos are away from the rim and he's hitting just 33% there. He's more efficient from behind the line (38% career on over 600 attempts) and is a quality free throw shooter, though he barely ever gets there.

Manek is content to put up shots without challenging the defense directly, which leads to a very low TO rate and the aforementioned poor FT rate. Synergy stats are pretty stark: He's a 91st percentile spot up guy and 30th percentile post-up guy. Obligatory "Synergy defensive numbers are kind of suspect" warning but they hated him as a defender; he mostly ate post-up possessions and was 40th percentile. He will not play center for one minute in this game but it's possible Brandon Johns or Moussa Diabate could get some work done down low.

Manek is not much of an impact guy on the offensive boards. 

Center Armando Bacot is a traditional back-to-the-basket big and an extremely dangerous offensive rebounder. His efficiency is massively dependent on crashing the glass. Putbacks accounted for almost a quarter of his usage and he converted at a 70% clip on those. He's also a relatively efficient post scorer but between the putbacks and assists he's relatively dependent on being set up by his teammates. Once they do, he's an excellent finisher.

Synergy only has Bacot down for 26 post-ups defended last year, but part of the lack there is likely to Bacot excelling in those situations. Those 26 possessions only resulted in 14 points; extremely weak sample size here but that was 91st percentile. He will be a challenge for Dickinson.

The UNC bench goes basically two deep:

• Marquette transfer Dawson Garcia backs up at the 4 and 5 and actually plays almost 60% of UNC minutes. Garcia was a five star recruit who immediately slotted into the Golden Eagles' starting lineup last year, hitting 53/36/78 with a lot of free throws attempted. He's an okay offensive rebounder, a black hole on offense, and a total nonfactor as a rim protector. A poor man's Moe Wagner is a solid comparison.
• Kerwin Walton is the primary backcourt sub. Like Garcia he gets starter's minutes. He's Just A Shooter who hit 42% from deep.
• Michigan might see brief periods where Justin McCoy and Anthony Harris get in the game. Both guys played 6-8 MPG last year (McCoy was at Virginia and put up unremarkable stats on low usage. McCoy is a 4 without any stretch to his game; Harris is a big shooting guard. Stats on them are shruggie level due to usage.

THE TEMPO FREE

There's a lot of personnel continuity here but some important differences, and also a new coach. So here's last year:

Late Roy Williams teams were frenetically up-tempo bricklayers who pounded the offensive boards to an absurd extent. Hubert Davis hasn't changed the tempo—UNC is 15th in offensive tempo—but there's been a radical reshaping of the four factors:

Manek and Garcia bring a lot of shooting but do very little on the offensive boards; meanwhile Davis is off to an unsustainably hot start from three. That means they went from 262nd in three-point shooting last year to 12th this year. Some of that is certainly real since their 4 is now a 38% career shooter instead of Garrison Brooks.

But the defensive step back is probably real as well.

THE KEYS

Take care of the ball. Michigan's coming off a game against Tarleton State in which they turned the ball over on a third of their possessions. They're now playing a team that's close to dead last nationally at forcing turnovers. If they can't bring it down to reasonable TO levels that will bode very poorly for this game and the seasons. Devante Jones currently has a TO rate of 30… and Frankie Collins is at 42. Yikes.

Get back in transition. This is still a super fast UNC team but they were miserable in transition last year because they force the ball up no matter what the hell they're looking at on defense. They're actually faster this year, and not much more interested in shot selection.

Feed Dickinson. Michigan needs to run everything through him. Zach Edey and Trevion Williams combined to go 12/17 from the floor against Bacot and Garcia. Dickinson draws doubles, forces rotations, makes things easier on your guards, and had 21 and 24 percent usage against Seton Hall and Arizona. That's not enough.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 4.