THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#30 Michigan (18-14, 11-9 Big Ten) vs #6 Tennessee (27-7, 14-4 SEC)
WHERE	Prentice 4-M Fieldhouse Indianapolis, Indiana
WHEN	5:15 PM Saturday
THE LINE	Kenpom: UT -6 Torvik: UT -5
TELEVISION	CBS

THE OVERVIEW

Michigan's into the second round of the tournament for the fifth straight time and draws kinda-sorta tourney rival Tennessee, who they've beaten twice since John Beilein resurrected the program. The first was the famous Stu Douglass dunk game, a thirty-point romp in a 2011 8-9 game. The second was the Jordan Morgan salt game in the 2014 Sweet 16.

Those games were both evenly matched, per Kenpom; this one is not. There was generalized outrage on Selection Sunday when Duke got a two-seed over this Tennessee team, which sports an electric freshman five-star point guard and one of the country's best defenses. UT stomped a UNC team that in turned stomped Michigan; they also beat Arizona at home by four. On the flipside they had nonconference losses to Villanova, Texas, and Texas Tech, but when the worst thing on your resume is neutral-or-away losses to teams that easily made the tournament you're pretty good.

In SEC play Tennessee finished second in the regular season and then won the SEC tournament; their first-round matchup against Longwood was never competitive.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

Frankie has Jace Howard's glasses. Devante' Jones is in Indianapolis and is practicing with Michigan so we assume he is available.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

Uros Plavsic technically starts at C but Fulkerson gets more minutes. The two barely play together. Tennessee is down Finnish PF Olivier Nkahouma, who was injured midseason. They didn't miss a beat without him, obviously. 

THE THEM

Chandler is the alpha [Fuller]

Tennessee is one of those irritating teams that have a couple starters who are indeed on the floor to start games but don't actually play starter's minutes. Their most common lineup in the last five games actually has not one but two guys who are not technically starters. Bear with us as we attempt to figure things out.

At center we have a platoon that defies expectations. Serbian seven-footer Uros Plavsic starts but rarely gets up to 20 MPG. He is Just A Stiff in the post, with zero jumpers on the year and an offense derived entirely from cuts, offensive rebounds, acting as the roll guy, and post-ups that are averaging 0.65 PPP. So he's out there for defense? Well, he's an 18th percentile post defender (on just 26 possessions, admittedly) and has an Austin-Davis-esque block rate.

Plavsic does have an excellent OREB rate and gets to the line a lot, but that latter is offset by the fact that he's shooting 53% at the free throw line. Plavsic minutes look like a gift from the heavens since he neither looks like he will test Dickinson nor defend him well.

John Fulkerson gets more minutes than Plavsic but comes off the bench. He gets a few minutes at the four every game but usually when another Tennessee big gets in; he and Plavsic have averaged about four possessions a game together. Here's the bit that defies expectations: despite being listed at 6'9", 219, Fulkerson has allowed just 5 buckets on 22 post FGAs this year; he grades out in the 99th percentile as a post defender. If that's a real thing, it's probably curtains for Michigan. If it's an artifact of not playing Dickinson-esque guys much and having Plavsic suck up minutes when that happens, we'll see. FWIW, Oscar Tshiebwe had a couple of off games against Tennessee. Ominous. Possibly sample size.

Offensively, Fulkerson is a mediocre post-up guy, poor finisher and poor spot-up guy; he does his best work as a cutter—and he gets a huge number of cut opportunities because he's very good at making his runs. Think Race Thompson.

Brandon Huntley-Hatfield starts at the four—I guess. He is functionally another center, albeit one who does try the occasional jumper. These don't go well; he shooting 49/15/59 on the season. He's extremely bad at everything Synergy tracks except putbacks, offensively, and he has a 22 TO rate. Defensively it's pretty much a wash based on on/off splits except for a big boost in opponent two point shooting when he's on the floor. That may be because of a correlation with Plavsic and not something Huntley-Hatfield is directly responsible for.

Huntley-Hatfield emerged into a starter in February and has averaged about 20 MPG since, so he'll be matching up with Diabate for big chunks of the game. Michigan might hide Dickinson on him if he picks up an early foul.

[Fuller]

Junior wing Josiah Jordan-James (that's my name too) is Just A Shooter, but he will attack closeouts to get two-point pull-ups. He's shooting 47/34/80 on the season, but his two point shooting drops to 41% against top 100 opponents because he goes from "doesn't really get to the rim" to "never gets to the rim."

He is a major factor in Tennessee's superb defense, which is why he was a potential late first-round pick before this year despite pedestrian offensive stats. He has massive block and steal rates for a 6'6" wing; he's absurdly athletic and is worth a whopping 5 points per 100 possession based on on/off splits.

Obvious recent Michigan comparable: Charles Matthews, but a couple notches better as a shooter.

Uruguayan combo guard Santiago Vescovi is Not Just A Shooter because he's been a playmaker for his teammates during his three years in Knoxville; when not setting up his teammates he's one of those guys who you desperately want to force inside the line because his two-point and three-point shooting lines are just about identical. Over his career he's a 40/39 shooter in Kenpom top 100 games. Shutting down Vescovi outside the line is difficult because he is proficient at pulling up from three, both off of PNR initiation and as a Sasha-Stefanovic-esque guy who sprints off screens.

Vescovi leveled up by offseason by cutting down on far-too-frequent turnovers and increasing his usage; he is also a pickpocket of some note.

Five-star freshman Kennedy Chandler is headed towards being one-and-done but has slipped down draft boards over the course of the season to the point where he's generally regarded as a late-first rounder. Sam Vecenie:

His speed is a genuinely awesome skill. He can attack and get into the paint at a high level. I also really love his defensive ability at the point of attack. He fights. The problem is that I don’t think he has great feel out of ball screens in terms of changing speeds, and he can’t shoot. We’ve seen this story before with a better player last year in Sharife Cooper, who ended up going in the 40s on draft night. It’s just exceptionally difficult to be a 6-foot, 170-pound guard in the NBA because of the size and length of the players involved, especially when you struggle with the finished product.

"Can't shoot" is… uh… relative? Chandler's shooting 50/38 on the season, so there's definitely some ability there, but 60% from the line and a distinct lack of pull-up/midrange game is real. Anything other than a catch-and-shoot three is questionable for him, but having a C+S three is a pretty nice skill. (Attn: Frankie Collins.) Chandler is Tennessee's primary PNR initiator and is… like, fine at it.

Chandler is a nightmare at the point of attack for opposing guards and will threaten to overwhelm Eli Brooks and Devante' Jones with his smothering defense. Expect top-locking all game because Chandler can recover on back-cuts; his steal percentage was 30th nationally and that did not come with much in the way of fouls.

Aside from the center rotation Tennessee's bench is one guy and some spare parts:

• Zakai Ziegler is the one guy. Zeigler is tiny, listed at 5'9", and has the kind of stats you'd expect a hyper-rabbit freshman point guard to have. He's shooting 39/36/84 on the season with an assist rate of 23 and a TO rate just over 20; his stand-out trait is astoundingly quick hands. He was the SEC's number one steal artist and 13th nationally. He is not a pull-up threat (hooray!) but threatens to zip past Michigan's not-particularly-quick guards. Frankie Collins could be an antidote if necessary.
• Center Jonas Aidoo had a stretch of serious minutes in SEC play that has petered out to about 4 MPG in the post-season. He's yet another long guy who's a major offensive rebounder and questionable elsewhere. He's shooting 33% on the season and has not taken a three.
• Wing Justin Powell had some extensive playing time early in the season but has barely played in a month. He's a low-usage guy shooting 41/38/73 and should probably be regarded as Just A Shooter if and when he does get in.
• Shooting guard Victor Bailey was also marginalized in-season after starting a year ago and getting significant minutes through the nonconference. In SEC play he only got 6 MPG and barely got shots up. He's a career 35% three-point shooter currently languishing at 22% and provides little else statistically except ugly two-point shooting against high-major opponents.

THE TEMPO FREE

Keep your valuables on lockdown:

That combination of hugely elevated opponent TO rate and excellent FG% adds up to the #2 defense in the country. On offense Tennessee is considerably wonkier; they're 233rd at shooting twos and 229th at getting the ball stolen. They were dead last at shooting twos in SEC play. They're highly dependent on assists for their buckets, which is not a great thing against a Michigan team that forces a lot of unassisted buckets.

Tennessee has infamously—amongst a small cadre of analytics-oriented basketball bloggers, at least—been far too reliant on midrange jumpers under Rick Barnes but they've reined that in this year and are middle of the pack nationally. This may be because they're extremely bad at them—they're 315th on other twos. So drop coverage should be all right against this team.

THE KEYS

Frankie may be key again [Fuller]

Endure ball pressure. Hey, remember when Indiana turned up the pressure on Michigan's guards in the Big Ten Tournament and Michigan turned into Eddie-Jordan-era Rutgers? I bet you do! Tennessee is going to do this from the drop. Feels bad.

Michigan can combat this by running more of the high-low action that they haven't done a ton of this year but removes the guards from the playmaking equation, by feeding Dickinson in the post from guys like Diabate or Houstan—particularly the latter, since Houstan will have a huge size advantage over Vescovi when Tennessee's three-guard lineup is on the floor—, or turning to Frankie Collins.

Collins is coming off the best game of his Michigan career and looks like the guy theoretically most capable of dealing with the athletic Tennessee guards… unless he's the guy most likely to turn the ball over.

There are multiple options here and a tight turn-around that may prevent coaching ripostes from coming to the forefront, but Juwan Howard usually has some things up his sleeve.

Dickinson vs Fulkerson. Fulkerson's post-up defense stats are incredible, both in the sense that they are very good and the sense that I literally do not believe them. My man is 220 and 6'9". We've seen pterodactyl men like Marcus Bingham give Dickinson trouble, and burly humans that can wall up and contest. Fulkerson isn't either. He should get put under the basket. If he does not, Michigan's going to get stomped.

Third guard vs Houstan. Tennessee's likely to spend most of this game with a 6'3" guy playing nominal small forward. This is an obvious advantage for Houstan shooting over this guy… and also fairly alarming since Houstan's going to have to fight over a bunch of screens to keep up with a 40% three point shooter (Vescovi) with significant pull-up game.

I think you have to live with that, because…

Drop, drop, drop, drop. This is the #315 team in the country in the midrange and they do not have the size at guard to overwhelm Michigan's guys as the Johnny Davises of the world have this year, especially when Ziegler is in the game. Runners? Nope. Don't do it. Pack the paint, fight over the top, and dare them to win this game in the midrange. I KNOW THIS SOUNDS INSANE BECAUSE THEY WILL JUST WIN THE GAME IN THE MIDRANGE I'M SORRY.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Tennessee by 6.