THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#52 Michigan (9-7) vs #53 Northwestern (12-4)	It's cute, they let Arf the Barking Wildcat call timeouts and stuff.
WHERE	Crisler Arena Ann Arbor, MI
WHEN	Sunday at noon
THE LINE	Kenpom: UM-3 Torvik: UM-3
TELEVISION	BTN

THE OVERVIEW

Northwestern and Michigan meet in a battle of existentialism. Would you rather be the team that believes it can turn its season around but knows it's too late, or the one that believes it's on track to make the Tournament but knows it can't keep up the façade? Welcome to the bubble battle zone, where the victor gets to extend the pleasant fantasy that this will lead to a run, and the loser gets a taste of their impending doom. Except Michigan probably can stay in the Top-75 to give the Wildcats a Q1 win, while the Wolverines can only avoid humiliation.

Michigan is coming off a cursed road swing when their excellent defense wasn't enough to overcome terrible shooting at MSU, then their excellent shooting wasn't enough to overcome some late sloppiness by Hunter Dickinson and their first real bout all season when bad officiating was a major factor at Iowa. From a tournament perspective, Northwestern's done all the things you're supposed to if your goal is to earn an at-large bid with the worst possible basketball season, including repeating this service to America.

Michigan has done the opposite, padding their losses with close defeats to big names, blowing out three Big Ten opponents at home, blowing two Quad 1 victories on the road, eating a Quad 4 loss to offset any sympathy for a team in the 300s in KP's luck metric, and flirting with a few more of them.

Northwestern followed the Maryland/Penn State "maybe they're better?" route to mediocrity, vs the MSU/Iowa/Michigan "they should be better" road. In the Wildcats' case, they did it by retaining four starters from last year, though none of them was Pete Nance—we saw him earlier this year, remember? In Nance's stead they picked up a scrappy guy from UTEP, and when that wasn't working they promoted a 7-foot rim protector. This had the effect of turning a mediocre defense with a major defect into the best two-point defense in the league that can't defend a three.

It did little to hurt the offense, which was already guards taking late clock shots no matter the actual clock situation. Possessions alternate between Chase Audige throwing the ball at the net and Boo Buie chucking stepbacks or throwing the ball at people, each to variant effect. If that all sounds like unwatchable basketball to you, well, how are your watchable team's Tournament hopes? Northwestern's 12-4 baby!

THE US

My graphic [click to embiggen]:

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No changes.

THE LINEUP CARD

My graphic [click for big]:

Hunger is out for the year but he is a freshman grow-a-stretch and wasn’t expected to contribute much.

The Chris Collins Index is how many images in the first three rows of your GIS are of you on all fours barking like a dog. Chris Collins's Chris Collins Index is 14%. All other D-1 coaches are at 0%.

[After THE JUMP: These guys again.]

THE THEM

Center Matthew Nicholson is a defensively oriented rim-protector who usually didn't get on the court in his first two seasons. Then the portal carried away both Nance (UNC) and back-to-the-basket backup Ryan Young (Duke), spit out a transfer who wasn't working, and Nicholson was thrust into starting. He can swat with the best, and has displayed a remarkable ability for a guy with a block rate near 9% to reciprocate only a third of that number in fouls. Offensively he gets most of his stuff on putbacks and assists; he's a sub-50% free throw shooter.

The rest of these guys are the same they've always been, give or take a young season's shot luck. Copy-pasting from Brian last year...

Stretch four Robbie Beran is more or less who he was last year: a middling shooter who gets a lot his usage opportunistically. He's efficient in transition and on putbacks and not so hot at everything else. Last year Michigan put Dickinson on Beran and lived with the consequences; those were 14 points on 10 shooting possessions, so there was a cost there. It was one Michigan was happy to play in order to shut Nance off. Beran also fouled out in 20 minutes.

Beran does not usually force the issue and remains a peripheral part of the Northwestern offense at all times; this results in good efficiency because his TO rate is rock bottom but asking him to up his output is a difficult proposition.

Beran's no longer asked to play the five as often, and that's allowed him to stay on the court and try some other twos for a change. From the results, he should probably stick to just-a-shooting and being a long defensive nuisance for wings.

Small forward Chase Audige is a volume scorer whose presence on historical all-conference lists demonstrated the laziness thereof. He is one of the guys we invented the "Disaster Factory" badge for, because he will take any shot. Brian gets mad at announcers because they find 0.88 points per possession endearing when Audige's more audacious shots go in.

Brian also gets mad at me when I deploy the Wile E Coyote rocket for anyone with offensive rating over 90. Audige's is over the 100 line this season because his contested jacks are going in more often. Audige already has 9 more made threes on six fewer attempts than all of last season to get his shooting totals to 42/36, up from 39/25. He's still getting just over half of his threes off assists.

So is Audige just good now? The eye test says there's a ton of luck in there, and the drill-down stats show he's still pretty mediocre--32% on uncontested jumpers--and his improvement at the rim is filled with competition bias. ORtgs vs P5 (not Georgetown) competition haven't been exceptionally bad, just high-volume okay (100 is medium):

• Indiana: 110, 19 points on 19 shot equivalents, 2 TO
• Rutgers: 106, 12 points on 13 SE, 1 TO
• Illinois: 105, 21 points on 18 SE, 2 TO
• Michigan State: 104, 15 points on 13 SE, 2 TO
• Ohio State: 89, 16 points on 19 SE, 1 TO
• Pitt: 87, 14 points on 14 SE, 3 TO
• Auburn: 69, 10 points on 15 SE, 1 TO

But there is an argument that he is now finally  a mediocre offense unto himself rather than a drag on one. Stick around with a shooter's mentality long enough and you start to earn things like foul shots (FTRate is up to 29.2 from 17.4). His 2PJs are still some of the worst shots in the Big Ten, so the goal remains the same: run him off the line, wave him away from the rim, and cringe when BTN announcers laud the 32% of them that go in. The usage is still insane, and the defense is legit, with a high steal rate. Chase Audige: on your television doing stuff!

Shooting guard Ty Berry was just-a-shooter last year but is getting into brick territory with a 46/30 line after shooting 38% on threes last year. There's some context to that: They're having him shoot off turnarounds and ball screens a lot more this season, which still look like assists when they go in but are more difficult shots to line up. But he's also canning just 22% of his unguarded threes, versus 50% (14/28) on dribble jumpers he creates for himself! Maybe he just needs to not think about it? Anyway, don't give him open looks.

Finally, point guard Boo Buie has finally dropped his offensive rating low enough that stat-head idiots like me won't consider drafting him in Draftageddon, but more than a few suggested seeing if he's amenable to a transfer. He's happy to pull up anywhere behind the arc, and he's got a floater that he'll unleash if you let him squiggle into the lane, but he's not that great at actually converting at the rim and his shooting has fallen back to historic lows. If you're worried about the guy who kept sinking those pull-ups in their almost-upset last year, then 1) How has your brain not allowed you to forget that yet? and 2) That was his best offensive performance in three years.

The Bench:

Northwestern only rolls three, but they're all out there a fair amount.

• Guard Julian Roper is a pull-up threat who's hitting his threes and free throws at almost the same rate (45% vs 43%) this year. His stat block is high but his usage when he's out there is more like that of an opportunist. He doesn't take many catch-and-shoots—he'd rather drive it—but most of the time he pulls up the drive and lets someone else do the thing.
• The transfer big I mentioned earlier is Tydus Verhoeven, who transferred from UTEP, started through mid-December, and has been coming off the bench for 12 MPG since. His offensive game has translated from ConfUSA, you could argue, but that's only because he's still making fewer than half of his shots, with a high turnover rate and little else to contribute. They were hoping he'd recapture his COVID year form, but even then his stats versus real competition were abominable. He doesn't shoot threes.
• Winger Brooks Barnhizer's second year has seen his defensive stats blossom (2.9 block rate, 2.7% steal rate, 17% defensive rebound rate) but his offense is a major work in progress. Assists in garbage time and a ton of free throws are hiding a 47/27 shooting line, but he managed to score 8 in 22 minutes versus Illinois with just one field goal, so there may be some ick to his game that you can't avoid.

Northwestern's freshman class was a developmental stretch (Hunger) and walk-ons so that's really it.

THE TEMPO FREE

That's quite a Northwestern Four Factors you've got there. That eFG% could be worse than it looks unless Audige really did find his final form as a contested three-point shooter. This team remains one of the worst in college basketball at shooting twos, and gets a ton more of them blocked. While that's pushed plenty of usage outside of the arc, that just means stuff like Buie pullups from the logo, Ty Berry turnaround jumpers off screens, and Audige doing Audige things. If those are going in, maybe your season's cursed.

The defense seems to hinge on whether your preferred method of scoring goes through Nicholson. They are #1 in the country against 2's. Auburn is heavily reliant on 5'11" point guard Wendell Green getting to the line, and they won a hilariously awful 43-42 game in Mexico earlier this season (fun fact: if Northwestern can get back in the NET top 50 that's a Tier 1 victory for Auburn!). They also gave up just 57 to Ohio State, another offense that gets a majority of their scoring inside of the arc. Teams capable of bombing them have bombed them.

THE KEYS

No, Jon Crispin, you do not in fact have to spread it around. The announcers in the Iowa game couldn't comprehend letting the guy who was 5/5 on threes shoot another. This would be a good night to stay hot. Northwestern has no answer for that.

No, Dug, you do not in fact have to drive it into the lane. Just take those threes or give it to Jett. Drives the lane against Nicholson are just asking to get your shot blocked, especially if you're 5'10".

Tarris Reed. It would be nice to get Dickinson on Beran like they did last year, but Northwestern is going to try to match bigs as much as possible. That leaves the UTEP guy and the stretch four for Hunter's understudy.

Make threes. Northwestern doesn't allow twos.

Do not have Chase Audige and Boo Buie sinking crap shots. Northwestern is top-50 in luck because sometimes guys who take lots of bad shots make lots of bad shots. If one goes off, the rest of the offense is bad enough to survive. If both guys do, well, maybe it is cursed.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 3.