THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#30 Michigan (14-10, 8-6 Big Ten) vs #32 Wisconsin (20-5, 11-4 Big Ten)
WHERE	Trohl Center Madison, WI
WHEN	1 PM Sunday
THE LINE	Kenpom: UW -3 Torvik: UW -3
TELEVISION	CBS

THE OVERVIEW

Michigan just got a win at a place where it seems like spooky haunting prevents them from doing basketball, and now here's the Trohl Center.

Wisconsin looked on the verge of collapse after a private conversation between last year's team and Greg Gard was released to the media. The tl;dr there was that everyone hated Gard and wanted him to fall in a hole. Then the whole team graduated and left. So of course they're 20-5 this year. Okay.

Advanced stats hate this team relative to their record, and the reason for that is always the same: this team wins buckets of close games. This year they're 8th in Kenpom's "luck" rankings because they're 15-2 in single digit games, including a four point win over #171 Georgia Tech, a three-point win over #225 Nicholl State, and a four-point win over #18 Illinois State.

On the other hand, Wisconsin's beaten Houston and St Mary's on neutral courts and has a win at Purdue. Their tourney resume is excellent, and this would be another road 1-A win for Michigan. If they can just do it at the Trohl Center.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

Terrance Williams is reputed to have a minor ankle injury and may be unavailable.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

I was not successful in my quest to get Seth to calculate the Greg Gard Index, which is the number of pictures of you in GIS that look like you're trying to sell me insurance.

THE THEM

"and I would have gotten away with it if not for you meddling kids" [Campredon]

Center Stephen Crowl was nonexistent as a freshman but has emerged into a… definite person who exists. Crowl is seven feet tall but if you thought Moe Wagner was a finesse big, let me introduce you to a seven-footer with a block rate of 1 (one) and rebounding rates that boggle the mind. His conference DREB rate of 11 is essentially on par with every guard on the Michigan roster except Devante' Jones, who beats him handily. Wisconsin makes up for it by having everyone crash the boards, but that means transition leak-outs are few and far between. He is not a meaningful OREB threat.

Meanwhile on defense we do lend a fair amount of credence to Synergy's individual post-up numbers but here the team will do: Wisconsin is 1st percentile defending the post. Crowl himself is 28th.

Crowl does have one un-finesse thing to him, which is the fact he does a fair bit of his own work on the block. He's okay, hitting 46% on post-ups with a low TO rate. He is a reasonable threat from three, hitting 33% on about 2.5 shots per game. In Big Ten play he's been efficient but low-usage and mostly exists as a roll guy or cutter. Probably not going to go at Dickinson much; the only Big Ten game here he's had more than five 2PA was against Iowa back in January. He averages 2.4 fouls drawn per 40. Hopefully this is a game where foul trouble does not impact Michigan bigs.

PF Tyler Wahl is a non-shooter who does most of his work on the block, overwhelming 4s who can't match his size at 6'9", 221 and scoring opportunistically. He's shooting 60% from two in Big Ten play and picking up a fair number of free throws that he hits at a 70% clip this year—up from 57% last year. On the flip side, despite the fact that he does well himself in the post, he's an abominable post defender—fourth percentile.

With Moussa Diabate coming off a game-winning performance against another dodgy post defender at the four this will be an obvious place for Michigan to focus a ton of attention. Wahl is nowhere near the scorer that Keegan Murray is, though, and it's possible Howard will go for a cross-match with Diabate checking Johnny Davis and living with whatever Wahl does to Caleb Houstan. If there's an obvious chess match in this game it's Michigan defending the 3 and the 4.

SF Johnny Davis erupted from a fine, if relatively unremarkable, freshman season to become a KPOY candidate and certain lottery pick. Sam Vecenie conveniently scouted him just yesterday:

Every time I bring up Johnny Davis’ name with scouts, the consistent theme seems to be this: “We’d love to have him on our team as a mid-to-late lottery guy, but we aren’t super excited about taking him in the top five.” …essentially a primary scoring guard averaging 20 points and eight rebounds in the best league in the country, creating shots with craft from all three levels. The two places teams have raised some concerns are with his jumper and his overall defensive versatility. Davis is hitting just 32 percent from 3 in Big Ten play after having been basically an entirely hesitant 3-point shooter last season. And while Davis is a plus defender at the college level against ones, twos and threes, there is some concern about whether that will translate at a genuine plus level in the NBA, because he’s probably going to come in at around 6-foot-4 1/2 with average length and non-elite NBA athleticism. His effort level will always allow him to play a role on that end, but it’s hard to be a great wing defender and not merely just a good one without elite measurements.

Davis is not amazingly efficient at 48/33 shooting but he keeps his turnovers low, like everyone on Wisconsin, and draws a ton of fouls. A disproportionate number of these are non-shooting fouls, but he's still drawing 6.5 per 40—which would be a reason not to put Diabate on him for the whole game.

Davis takes a ton of pull-up jumpers—144 on the year—that he's mediocre at (0.77 PPP) and is Wisconsin's primary pick and roll initiator. As Vecenie mentions, he is not an electric athlete like Jaden Ivey and does not do a whole lot in iso situations, but he's probably going to be too much for Caleb Houstan to handle.

this guy again [Campredon]

Brad Davison is still around because of course he is. The nation's least likeable player has recovered from his miraculously bad shooting (23% from two in Big Ten play last year) to be more or less what he's been since he nut-punched his way onto the national stage a few years ago. That's a reasonably efficient Not Just A Shooter type with a rock-bottom TO rate, good shooting from deep, an inability to get to the rim, and solid pull-up game in the midrange. He's not good inside the line but his 42% on other twos is a nice floor for a Wisconsin possession.

He will try to take charges on grandmothers crossing the street. It is gauche to wish ill on college basketball players but we can make an exception for this one.

Freshman Chucky Hepburn is the nominal point guard. Wisconsin spreads the playmaking around and their swing offense has never been particularly reliant on a point guard—or at least it's able to work around not having a guy who can reliably break a defense down—so the fact that Hepburn has a higher TO rate than assist rate is merely annoying instead of fatal. Hepburn's shooting 46/32 with 15% usage; unusually for a guy with low usage he is generating almost all of his shots himself. Half his threes are unassisted and almost nothing inside the line is.

Hepburn needs to be kept away from the rim, where he's hitting 67%, and forced into ugly floaters and short jumpers he cans at a 29% clip. He takes a lot of pull-ups but is not particularly good at them.

The Wisconsin bench does not make a ton of impact. The Badgers are in the 300s in bench minutes. Those guys:

• Cincinnati transfer Chris Vogt backs up at the 5. He is much more of a center-y center than Crowl, with a huge OREB rate and decent block rate, but he has no back-to-the-basket game and is strictly a garbageman on offense. Defensively he's actually worse than Crowl in the post.
• Freshman Lorne Bowman backs up at the point. He's shooting 29/40/48, so don't let him get a look from three and you're good. 
• Wake Forest transfer Jacobi Neath has missed a ton of time with various injuries and illnesses. At Wake he was a guy with ORTGs in the 70s and 80s and doesn't look like that's likely to change in the Big Ten with his 26/30 shooting.
• Sophomore Ben Carlson is shooting 46/6—not a typo and hasn't taken a shot in Wisconsin's last two games. If he gets a basket it'll be on wacky stuff.

THE TEMPO FREE

How far can turnover avoidance get you?

Notably the Badgers are second nationally in TO%, not just second in the Big Ten. Unusually, the Badgers are dead last in three point shooting in league play and are 11th in A/FGM. This is a post-heavy offense that relies on off the dribble jumpers for a lot of their output.

THE KEYS

[Campredon]

Reach out and crush face. Wisconsin is 1st percentile defending the post. Their worst post defenders are the guys playing the 4. Moussa Diabate is coming off a 12/14 night against Iowa. The dots, they are not hard to connect. Michigan should be initiating every offensive possession through the post.

FWIW, Wisconsin does not want to post double. They've done it on only about a fifth of post possessions, and they focus on preventing good looks from three. I think that might change if Wisconsin's getting hammered on the interior.

Figure out something to do against Davis. Michigan's 2-3 zone is surviving pretty well even against a number of teams that feature a lot of three point shooting. Wisconsin does not. Only Davison has a track record as a plus three-point shooter and they'll have one non-shooter at all times at the 4; they don't get much from the 5, either. So it seems like throwing either the zone at him or the Jaden Ivey PNR trap will buy minutes where someone else has to get buckets and Davis isn't racking up fouls against key personnel.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HIT A SHOT. 4/20 shooting from three got it done against Iowa because the Hawkeyes were 4/18 from three and 1/4 on dunks. These shots, they were mostly very good shots. I think Michigan should hit the good shots.

Trohl Center/officials issues. Juwan Howard picked up another tech in the Iowa game and frankly I was surprised it took him until the end of the first half to get it. We've left the halcyon world where an offensive player initiating contact against a defender is a no-call, and Michigan has suffered some absurd block/charge decisions. Will this happen in Madison, Wisconsin? Absolutely.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Wisconsin by 3.