THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#2 Michigan (2-0) vs #35 Seton Hall (2-0)
WHERE	Crisler Arena Ann Arbor MI
WHEN	9:00 PM Eastern Tuesday, 11/16
THE LINE	Kenpom: M -11 Torvik: M -7
TELEVISION	FS1

THE OVERVIEW

Michigan draws ancient foe Seton Hall in this year's Gavitt Games. After an extended ramp-up period—credit to the AD here for being patient—The Hall has been consistently good under Kevin Willard but never great. Before a 14-13 record last year he'd taken the Pirates to four straight tournaments that would have been five if the 2020 tourney happened, but he's only been out of the first round once and has not notched a Sweet 16. Seton Hall did share a Big East title in 2020, and Kenpom thought they'd be a three seed.

Last year's team scuffled to a game above .500 but the good news is that the Hall returns most of their contributors and is a veteran outfit. The bad news is that star C Sandro Mamulkeashvili has departed and there's no obvious candidate to step up.

That hasn't slowed Seton Hall down thus far; their opening two games have been 44 and 36 point beatdowns, the second against a Yale program that's consistently one of the better ones in the Ivy League. The Pirates are feeling good about themselves and will be gunning for a signature road win.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

Frankie Collins played the first two games after missing the exhibition. Zeb Jackson has still been MIA.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

Rhoden missed the first game and came off the bench for about 20 minutes in game #2; we are projecting he starts, pushing Kadary Richmond to the bench.

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

THE THEM

Cale is a sweet-shooting wing [shupirates.com]

It's hard to tell what the Seton Hall rotation is going to look like against opponents who are not getting blown out by 40, but one thing it's going to be is big. The Hall has four guys who are more or less post players, and two have been on the floor for all 80 minutes so far. Both C and PF spots have been split about down the middle; we project one of those situations to continue and one to resolve into a starter and a backup.

At center, FSU transfer Ike Obiagu and Canadian Tyrese Samuel vie for minutes and will likely continue splitting duties. You may remember Obiagu's memorable cameo appearance in Michigan's Elite Eight matchup against FSU in 2018. The 7'2" Obiagu's seven minutes featured three blocks, two fouls, and no other stats. Yeah, that guy. Archetype: Mr. Jumpy Guy. Strengths: blocking shots, dunking. Weaknesses: everything else. Obiagu's freshman block rate of 21 would have led the country by a full six points if he'd gotten 16 MPG instead of ten.

Obiagu transferred to Seton Hall the next year, sat out, and then had a limited role in 2020. Last year he broke out in the COVID season, playing a hair over 20 MPG, finishing 4th in the country in block rate(13.9) and hitting 70% from the floor. Unfortunately for Seton Hall that efficiency was on just 8% of Pirate shots—he has not really developed at all from the freshman FSU version. He gets putbacks and dunks set up by his teammates and has no back-to-the-basket game. His DREB rate is also very low for a monster post, because he tries to block everything.

Samuel is more polished on the block, generating about half of his buckets at the rim without an assist. He also has a bit of three point range; he's hitting 32% on 93 career attempts. But he's nowhere near the rim protector Obiagu is (2.1 block rate last year) and has been hideous on free throws (43% career); he's 7/9 early this year but it seems pretty far-fetched that will continue.

He was a 210-bound beanpole as a recruit and while he's bulked up some he is going to give up a ton of size to Hunter Dickinson if and when the two get matched up.

At PF USF transfer Alexis Yetna seems to have the edge. Yetna was a starter for the Bulls as a freshman, missed all of 2019, and returned last year, starting all games except six he was injured for. He shot 58/29 from the floor with about half of his shots from distance, but he was much better from deep as a freshman (37%) and has started off this year 4/7. Yetna was also a dominant rebounder with double-digit OREB and 20+ DREB rates in his two years, and that was when he was playing next to a couple of seven-footers.

Yetna does have some back-to-the-basket game, at least on the AAC level, but about 2/3rds of his makes at the rim were either please-dunk-this-for-me assists or putbacks. He's more dangerous as a guy who finishes plays than starts them.

In the backcourt Seton Hall returns two starters from last year's team. 6'6 wing Jared Rhoden was second banana to Sandro Mamukelashvil last year, hitting 51/30/83 from the floor and cleaning up the defensive glass. This year he projects as the top option. He's a capable three-level scorer who does not excel at any particular distance but is solid everywhere. He also got to the line a bunch and avoided turnovers very well for a guy who goes to the rim frequently.

Rhoden is only average as a spot-up guy; he's most dangerous in transition, where he's by far Seton Hall's best returning option. He'll be a challenge for whoever Michigan sticks on him, especially if it's Caleb Houston.

Super-senior Myles Cale is another 6'6" wing/SG type, a significantly more dangerous shooter than Rhoden but very much a guy who's going to absorb shots and not create them. He's been wobbly over the course of his career, shooting 28%, 38%, 28%, and 37% from three over the past four years. If he's due for another down season it hasn't shown in his start; he's 3/6 from deep in the early going.

When Cale ventures inside the line he's attacking a closeout and going to the rim most of the time. 80% of his shots inside the line are at the rim, and his conversion rate there is poor (55%). This did not translate to many FTAs a year ago for whatever reason. Cale's historically been a guy with an assist rate hovering close to nonexistent, so if dude puts his head down he's going up with it and weakside help can get after it.

Finally, point guard Jamir Harris transferred in from the Patriot League's AMERICAN EAGLES, which is not a thing I just made up. As an AMERICAN EAGLE dude was a sniper first before evolving into a point-type substance as a junior. He's hitting 40% from deep for his career and has gone from 35 to 40 to 44 percent over the last three years on somewhat reasonable volume. Harris has significant pull-up game and will be an early test for Michigan's hedging.

The rest of Harris's game is an open question against higher-level comp. He's played one career game against a Kenpom top 100 foe, that 2019's Georgetown squad that finished 38th. You would expect a low-major uptransfer to see his usage decline and move more towards the three-point line; early returns indicate that is the case. Crowd him and see if he can do anything other than snipe, which he definitely can.

The bench:

• Whichever of the two Cs you want to designate as a backup.
• Mizzou transfer Tray Jackson is the primary backup at the 4. Jackson, a native Detroiter, was a top 100 recruit in the class of 2019 but got about 6 MPG for Mizzou as a freshman and then was buried on the Seton Hall bench last year. He has almost no statistical record to point to. He believes he can shoot threes but so far cannot.
• Harvard transfer Bryce Aiken backs up at point. He's another guy who has neither the recruiting profile nor much in the way of recent meaningful statistics to go on. This is mostly because he's constantly injured. He's missed at least half of the last four seasons. If you want to go way back and add it up he's a 46/35/86 shooter with turnover issues who struggled considerably (37/27 shooting) after moving up to the Big East level last year.
• Syracuse transfer Kadary Richmond is the other available backcourt option. Richmond played half of Syracuse's minutes last year; Richmond hit 48/33/72 from the floor with a PG-esque assist rate but far too many turnovers.

THE TEMPO-FREE

Last year's four factors:

With the exception of free throws those and some weakness on the defensive glass those stats are so average they should be beige. Obiagu helped them to a block rate and two-point D just outside the top 50; their main weakness on D was getting lit up on a relatively slim number of threes, which may be bad luck or may be Seton Hall's tendency to play super big and give up some perimeter agility.

THE KEYS

Mix and match. Obiagu is a pretty good post defender, around 70th percentile per Synergy, but that's on just 34 possessions last year so anything could be true there. What seems likely is that Samuel is going to get about 20 minutes and that Hunter Dickinson can stuff that guy in a locker. Meanwhile a hypothetical Diabate/Obiagu defensive matchup doesn't bother Michigan because Obiagu is strictly a dunk/putback guy. Therefore trying to get as many Dickinson minutes against Samuel as possible seems like a winning idea.

Stay in front. Seton Hall's going to have a big size advantage when one of their wings takes on Eli Brooks, but neither guy is particularly effective at shooting over guys so that'll probably be fine. Caleb Houstan is a different matter; he'll likely be at an agility deficit but has more size. Either way Seton Hall figures to have some trouble generating good looks if their two star wings aren't collapsing the defense, probably in isolation sets since neither guy ran much PNR a year ago.

Keep it contained. Seton Hall has made a concerted effort to go up-tempo this year, with over a quarter of their shots in the first two games getting filed as transition by Synergy. They've been excellent at converting those, and since their PG is a Patriot League uptransfer and theey don't have a lot of playmaking from the wings the Pirates will probably struggle generating good looks in the halfcourt.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 11.