Hoops Preview: Ohio State 2023-24 #2
THE ESSENTIALS
| WHAT | #119 Michigan (8-21, 3-15 B10) at #57 Ohio St (17-12, 7-11 B10) |
|
|---|---|---|
| WHERE | 42-27, 45-23, 30-24 Arena Columbus, OH |
|
| WHEN | 4PM Sunday | |
| THE LINE | Kenpom: OSU-9 Torvik: OSU-9 |
|
| TELEVISION | CBS (streaming link) |
THE OVERVIEW
The recent history of athletic directorship at Michigan and Ohio State is a study in reactivity versus proactivity. Representing the latter, and without going into the conspiracy section of this history, soon-retiring OSU AD Gene Smith was the most powerful voice in American university athletics administration for the last few decades, and used those positions to direct every NCAA and Big Ten institution from the basketball tournament to the current response to NIL.
Recently Smith voluntarily reported a suite of violations to the NCAA, along with measures taken. All were more consequential than anything Michigan's been accused of in more notorious cases--including tampering and lying to the NCAA about it to acquire the top player in the portal--but Smith knows the system he helped create, and how much it weighs whether a violation was reported by one's self to one's friends, versus by one's rival's to one's vindictive enemies.
Smith also recently, proactively, fired his heretofore pretty good basketball coach Chris Holtmann following a stretch where Holtmann's team lost 9/10 games, including one to hated, abysmal Michigan. That game was arguably an anomaly--Ohio State had better looks and possession metrics, while Michigan shot 20 points better than their average on a high volume of threes. One could say the same of some of the post-Holtmann wins.
But ADs and coaches are rarely graded on what their results should have been. In the realm of what is, Holtmann's team was well out of the Tournament, while interim basketball coach Jake Diebler already has an upset over #2 Purdue, followed a week later by an upset *AT* #21 MSU. Diebler's reinvigorated squad is coming off another authoritative win versus Nebraska despite playing Keisei Tominaga without the Buckeyes' own star point guard. They're currently the 12th team out to Heartbreak City, but it's a volatile bubble this year, with little to separate OSU from several Big East teams hanging on the 10-11 line.
Likewise, there's no way the extremely deliberative, reactionary Warde Manuel could have predicted his basketball team would have two wins since December 19th. Except to the perpetually negative, precipitory events like chasing G-League-bound "5-stars" who were mediocre one-and-dones in college (including the coach's defense-repellent son), banking on transfers who didn't have their degrees, and other warning signs about roster construction and program culture issues are only manifest in hindsight.
That's the trick with being an AD: small sample sizes don't make for any kind of surety. It could be Diebler's 3-1 start is fool's gold, that Michigan's fifth-year, first-time coach's mistakes are all behind him, and that Manuel's patient lethargy will be rewarded when Juwan Howard is the greatest coach in basketball by 2027-'28. Did we judge George Washington from his first command? Nay! It could be that the patient man will prove the more prescient, and that in the years to come Gene Smith's aggressiveness—for example in selecting TV man Tony Petitti to maximize the B10's TV revenue and playoff exposure at the cost of everything else—will come back to haunt his legacy. For the moment, Ohio State hasn't beaten Michigan in football or basketball in its last three tries. So who's to say?
[Hit THE JUMP: How did we beat these guys? Oh right.]
THE US
Me graphic [click to embiggen]:
Road game Dug is back.
THE LINEUP CARD
My graphic [click for big]:
Thornton missed last game due to a migraine but should be back for this.
THE THEM
Events at rim may not represent final score.
I refer to you the last preview so we can update. But oh there are some updates. First, some differences between this game and the last one:
- It moves to Columbus from an electric night at Crisler when The Fab Five were reunited for the first time since Chris Webber was suspended from association for doing stuff every power basketball program was doing before and after.
- Michigan had a 36-9 advantage in three-point scoring on two fewer attempts. Both teams shoot ~37% on average. The hot shooting along overcame Michigan getting outscored 44-30 on about the same number of twos, 12-7 on free throws, and committing five more turnovers.
- Michigan had Olivier Nkamhoua, a particularly problematic player for OSU's wingish frontcourt. The Michigan captain scored 20 points in that game despite shooting 2/8 from three, meaning his was probably the most repeatable performance (T-Will scoring 15 of his 18 points on five triples less so).
- OSU freshman winger Scotty Middleton only got 9 minutes in that game; since Diebler took over he's promoted Middleton to 15-21 minutes per game, and even started him at MSU.
Middleton's not a great scorer yet, but he's almost to double-digits in rebounding % in-conference, which adds a dangerous second-chance dimension to their offense give both Felix Okpara and Jamison Battle are relatively strong on the glass. Middleton's also started generating his own shots, though they're usually fallaways. They're not particularly efficient, but it's taken usage away from turnover machine Evan Mahaffrey, the starter giving up the most minutes to the youngster.
Middleton's also added spacing to what's been a packed frontcourt, allowing Jamison Battle and Roddy Gayle to drive more. That's been particularly helpful for Gayle, who's murder when he gets near the basket, and draws contact as well as anyone in basketball (his FT rate is up to 30% in Big Ten play at home).
It's also letting Gayle take a breather, which has somewhat improved OSU's worst-in-conference perimeter defense, since Middleton's length does more than Gayle's doggedness can.
THE TEMPO FREE
OSU has climbed out of the conference bottom in generating turnovers. They're still not a great offensive team, and won't become one, but they've been sustained by a lot of free throws because they crash the basket, and this conference rewards teams that play that way.
THE KEYS
Shoot like you did last time. Ohio State's three point defense still isn't great. Nebraska (30%), MSU (27%), and Purdue (33%) all shot well below their averages from the arc in those upsets.
Don't turn it over like you've been doing. The Buckeyes have been thriving on generating turnovers since Holtmann departed—14 vs Purdue, 11 on Minnesota, 10 on MSU, and 8 takeaways from Nebraska. That wasn't an emphasis for Holtmann, but has emerged as an issue for Tarris Reed in particular, and Nimari Burnett and T-Will have always had ball control issues that have gotten worse with increased roles.
Avoid the Lost Season Ughs. Michigan's last surge of try-hard didn't get them any wins, but it made the MSU, Northwestern, and even Purdue games mildly watchable. I didn't think it was possible to play worse than they did down at Nebraska, but Thursday's 30-point loss at Rutgers passes the game Donnie Wahl was playing with a broken arm for worst I've ever seen male humans in Michigan basketball uniforms play.
Find a reason to keep Juwan Howard I guess. I am resigned to Warde Manuel keeping him another year. I can't seem to convince myself that Beilein's players remaining themselves was really thanks to their new coach, and that means I'm out of reasons to think that keeping Howard around will do anything but delay the full rebuild by another year. "Just beat Ohio State" doesn't really mean "beat JUST Ohio State" but it'd be something.
THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES
Ohio State by 9.
Seth turning into Ace is something.
I'm not a betting man, thank goodness, as my predictions versus actual outcomes are frequently way off the mark. However, if I were a gambler...is it not a guarantee that Michigan, on the road- with nothing to play for- with recent history to point to-- will lose by double or triple the point spread?
We are truly in a sad basketball moment in time. Thank God for football!
I approve of the arena name change
Are the Sklars here all week?
Should have just posted the football game recap since that is MUCH more enjoyable
George Washington's first command blundered England into the French/Indian War. And the implementation of taxes on the American colonies to pay for the blundering. Hopefully it goes better for George Washington III.
Washington certainly blundered, but wouldn't the Seven Years' War have come to North America anyway? The French and the English both had claims to western "Virginia." They would have started fighting eventually, no?
And in a time the French knew something other than retreat. Kind of like Beilein days vs our team today. The French certainly had the players at the beginning of WW1 and WW2 but their coach knew how to snatch defeat from the arms of victory . We do not even have the players .
WWI? France fought that one to the bitter end and paid a terrible price for it - six million casualties, out of a population of 40 million - a whole generation of men - not to mention being left with a swath of destruction across its entire northeastern border, where the trenches had been.
To put that into perspective, this would be like the United States today suffering 50 million casualties in four years and having the whole northern or southern border zone in ruins. The scale of carnage of that war is hard to comprehend.
Thank you. The whole cowardly French thing is lazy cliche uttered by people who haven't really studied history. The French folded quickly in WWII for two reasons: one is that, after WWI, no European country wanted a repeat of that experience. The German people and the military command didn't. That was Hitler's obsession and he dragged Germany into it on the winds of their early success. In the aftermath, Europeans referred to WWI as the War to End All Wars. That war left devastation, shattered economies, disabled vets begging in the streets, a worldwide pandemic. Britain didn't want a repeat of that either, hence Chamberlain's response. America only declared war on Germany after the attack at Pearl Harbor, which was two years after Germany invaded Poland. Many, many people in America opposed going to war until Pearl Harbor. France wasn't prepared to fight a war because, like every country but Germany, Japan, and Italy, they'd rejected militarism.
That brings us to reason number two. In the aftermath of WWII, everybody rightly acknowledged that Hitler and his henchmen were monsters who did monstrous things. Prior to WWII, in the last elections before they were invaded, France's fascist party won 42% of the vote. There were more than enough fascist sympathizers after the invasion to participate in the Vichy French government which happily collaborated in Nazi war crimes. Britain had a fascist party that won 18% of the vote. Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh traveled to Germany before the war, took tours sponsored by the Nazis, and declared Hitler's program a success. Hitler kept a picture of Ford in his office. IBM had no problem selling tabulating equipment to the SS for their death camps. Eugenics was taken as scientific fact until the Holocaust revealed the sickness of it.
France didn’t fold in WW2 out of collective PTSD. For having “rejected militarism” they made a hell of a defensive line — the Maginot Line. It was impressive and expensive. The Nazis never tested it; they invaded France through Belgium.
You build defensive systems to avoid being attacked and fighting the war though, not to encourage it.
It is true that the French political class (like much of the British political class, aside from Churchill) in 1939 was not enthusiastic about war, with the memory of the previous bloodbath still fresh, as well as that significant factions on the two political extremes did not even support the Third Republic as it was. This was in stark contrast to 1914, when all of the major parties rallied behind the war effort.
Once it was clear (in June 1940) that Paris could not be defended, a majority of the parliament decided to followed the advice of Pétain (himself a former WWI commander) who called for an armistice.
Probably not. The American colonists themselves were the people pushing for expansion across the Appalachians. The Crown actively worked to prevent this to avoid the war that happened--note that the French/Indian War expanded into into a larger conflict that caused a cold war between France and Britain to blow up into a world war. Colonists (Britain) and allies (France) dragged both in a conflict neither was looking to fight, as both countries were engaged in empire-building and had bigger fish to fry.
Thanks for the link to Heartbreak City, Seth! And yeah, OSU has indeed made quite the push back up to bubble relevancy. 3 Quad-1A wins is a good start, and they've clawed their way back to a .500 record in Quads 1-3, which still isn't good enough, but if they win another 3-4 games before Selection Sunday, they've got a real shot. Hopefully Michigan can play spoiler this afternoon and knock them out of contention.
I can't seem to convince myself that Beilein's players remaining themselves was really thanks to their new coach,
We may note that Juwan took over a program that had gone 33-8 and 30-7 the two previous years and then went 19-12 (10-10 B1G) in his first season. That team started out 7-0 and then played .500 ball the rest of the season. Even with a team of Beilein players, we weren't that successful.
The only 20-win season we've had under Juwan was in 2020-21, when a kid from Germany whose older brother played here - not a very replicable recruiting event - blew up.
I will be there. I’m not sure why.
At least they've fixed one of their big problems this season. They're 2-1 in games decided by less than ten points since the Maryland loss back in early January dropped them to 1-8. Of course, their solution to that problem was less than ideal.
Juwan Howard has a chance to do the funniest thing ...
9-22, 4-15 B1G, 2-0 against OSU
I know this isn't the point of the post but the comment about Smith smartly self-reporting violations isn't any different than what UM did regarding Burgergate; what got them was Harbaugh lying about the whole situation when the investigator came to ask. Now, I agree that your average failson who woks in NCAA compliance should jump in the Huron River but this isn't an example of Smith being some wily AD.
Assuming Harbaugh lied is, to say the least, ungenerous, at worst,
regurgitating unsubstantiated NCAA leaks.
Possible scenario: NCAA ?: did you buy meals for on campus recruits in Covid off period?
JH A: No
NCAA: AHAAAAAAA!!! We have receipts from the Jug! !!!!
JH A: I did not remember that but, yes.
NCAA: Liar, Liar, pants on fire!!! Sign your confession here.
JH: !@#$%^&*( off
That's a perfectly fine reading of the situation but I sort of doubt that Jim Harbaugh, who remembers specific plays for decades ago and generally seems to be pretty knowledgeable about the goings on of his program, didn't remember that interaction at the Brown Jug. Maybe it did go as you said, that he both forgot about the breakfast and then kindly admitted continued ignorance after the receipt was shown. I've not seen the formal allegations and I don't believe they've been made public so it's all speculation. But I also have seen and read enough about Harbaugh to believe that he probably wasn't particularly helpful and likely confrontational toward the toadie sent by the NCAA, and no matter how much I agree with the sentiment that you should tell the NCAA to fuck right off the fact remains that when confronted with 3-4 violations the worst tact to take is to be confrontational unless you are ready to go all the way with it. Harbaugh, I guess to his credit, was ready to fight the NCAA because he probably knew he'd be taking an NFL job at some point. But Michigan was going to cooperate because doing so would have meant a slap on the wrist but instead they wound up sitting their HC for 4 games and the coordinators for a game as well. That was my larger point here - UM's AD did exactly what every other AD generally did in this situation and yet Harbaugh's actions led to the escalation. I'm fine if people want to neg the shit out of that opinion but it remains true that for all of Harbaugh's strengths he absolutely seems like a pain in the ass employee to deal with and one who can lead to unnecessary headaches for his bosses.
I appreciate the brutal honesty of this post. I'd also really love to see OSU exposed for everything that they are (and have been). Get on it, Bacon.
Re: Howard, I'm not sure that I've seen a coach rebound after having teams (I include last year's squad) play with so little pride. Schemes can be tweaked. Roster holes can be filled. But it seems like a coach can motivate players or--at least in the near future--he can't.
I love nitpicking!
" electric night at Crisler when The Fab Five were reunited for the first time"
It was a noon game on MLK Day.
This trivial correction serves to highlight the overall accuracy of Seth's work.
I left and it was dark out.
I know people are doom and glooming, but I'm here to tell y'all that there IS something to look forward to:
Late at the end of the game when we are playing out the string in another desultory double digit loss where we trip over our collective dongs and have more turnovers than made 3's, the home crowd won't be taunting them with "Just like foot-ball 👏👏 👏-👏-👏"
So there's that, at least.
I went on Draft Kings to place a wager on Ohio St because I suck at picking winners. Michigan will now upset that team down south. My work is done here……..
I used to like basketball so much. I would like to feel that way again.
Comments