Initial Thoughts On Oregon Comment Count

Brian

Oregon Ducks forward Chris Boucher (25) jumps to block the shot of Baylor Bears forward Johnathan Motley (5). The No. 25 Oregon Ducks take on the No. 20 Baylor Bears at Matthew Knight Arena on Nov. 11, 2015. (Adam Eberhardt/Emerald)

Boucher tore his ACL in the Pac-12 tournament

The absent man. Oregon post Chris Boucher is a major, major loss for the Ducks. Boucher played 20 minutes a game with excellent shooting (63/35) on high-ish usage; he has a top-ten block rate nationally; he is an excellent rebounder. In the three games since he went out, Oregon's given up

  • 1.19 PPP against Arizona, the #17 Kenpom offense,
  • 1.10 PPP against Iona, the #69 Kenpom offense, and
  • 1.13 PPP against Rhode Island,  the #59 Kenpom offense.

That looks like a major step back for a team with an adjusted D efficiency of 0.95 PPP.

In the aftermath, smallball. Oregon was already an up-and-down team playing one big, and now they are more so. 6'9" Jordan Bell is a terrific athlete who replicates most of what Boucher brings to the table except three-point shooting. With Boucher out, 6'11" Kavell Bigby-Williams is getting about 15 minutes a game as Bell's backup. Those are all the players taller than 6'7" with more than spot playing time.

This is kind of what they were doing before and now they're all-in on it. If that sounds like a recipe for more transition, you are correct. A quarter of Oregon shots come in the first ten seconds of the shot clock, which is a near-Oklahoma-State level of pushing the ball. Meanwhile their eFG% is a deadly 64%—exactly the same as Michigan. Their points are split about evenly between rim runs and three-pointers.

Stop me if you've heard this before: stopping transition is Michigan's #1 job in this game. Oregon goes from lethal from behind the arc (44%) to meh (36%) if you can just get them into the latter two thirds of the shot clock. Their eFG% plunges 11 points to 53%.

For what it's worth, Michigan could not prevent Oklahoma State from getting up a ton of transition looks—22 of their 64 shots—but held them to 48% eFG. Oklahoma State was vastly more effective in the halfcourt, ironically.

33152310870_065cb6016b_z

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Shot parity watch. Michigan can expect to win most games during which they take the same number of shots as their opponent does, and Oregon is no exception. Michigan's got a good chance to do so—better than they had in the first two games. Even with Boucher Oregon struggled to rebound in Pac-12 play, finishing 9th on the defensive boards and 7th on offense. Over the course of the season they finished 64th nationally on the offensive glass, which is good but a far cry from the two teams Michigan just beat.

It remains to be seen how much Michigan can take advantage of Oregon's middling-to-poor defensive rebounding. On the one hand, Iona(!) rebounded almost 40% of their misses and Rhode Island got 31% of theirs. On the other, Michigan will not be inclined to send extra guys to the boards given Oregon's deadly transition game. If Michigan can draw help defense they'll have an excellent shot to grab an offensive board since anyone rotating down is going to be either a bit shorter or a ton shorter than Wilson and Wagner.

Turnovers should be advantage Michigan. Oregon is good but not great at both ends. Michigan is Oregon's equal at forcing turnovers and is once again elite at preventing them.

DJ meets (hopefully) future DJ, on one end of the floor. Jordan Bell is a putback and roll-man on offense, almost exclusively. On the other end of the floor he is the same kind of versatile defender DJ Wilson is, except better. DX's scouting report on him dubs him an "enforcer," and that's about right:

If Oregon decides to switch everything it is in Michigan's best interest to go after Not Jordan Bell, who's the rare 6'9" guy who can significantly contest a Walton stepback three. Also, if Bell gets switched onto the perimeter Oregon's rim protection evaporates.

With Boucher out Bell has hamblasted the offensive boards. He had 7 against Iona and 6 against Rhode Island as Oregon rebounded about half their misses in both games. After watching Louisville bigs anticipate shots much better than Michigan's counterparts just a few days ago, it seems inevitable that Bell will get 6-10 points on putbacks. C'est la vie.

Bell's offensive game remains rudimentary. As of a month ago, when that DX video went up, he had attempted just 10 two-point jumpers all season. DX's summary of his post game consisted of a couple of tough fadeaways hit over larger personnel. This isn't a bad defensive matchup for Wagner, but Wilson has been occasionally rough when he tries to defend P&R from the five spot, and Bell is not a guy who's easy to recover on if you find yourself out of position.

DJ meets kinda-DJ on the other. Oregon 4 Dylan Brooks is a 6'7" dude with a smooth three-point stroke and the straight line drives that result from guys biting on pull-up three fakes.

That video shows a lot of Brooks exploiting traditional posts or guards who get matched up on him; he's a good player but one who seems like he might be susceptible to the things Wilson is good at right now. Wilson's length gives him the ability to bother pull-up threes without opening up lanes to the basket.

Brooks is also the kind of guy who Zak Irvin has been giving fits for about half the season. (See: Edwards, Vincent and Bridges, Miles.) Brooks will get his; if he does so by taking 20 shots to get 15 points Michigan is in good shape.

Guards! Guards! Sam Vimes veritably infests the roster. The rest of Oregon's rotation ranges from 6'2" to 6'4". Wilson no doubt remembers PG Dylan Ennis:

Wilson went to the bench with an injury after that game and ended up taking a redshirt. Since then circumstances have changed radically for both players. For one, you'll note that Ennis is playing for Villanova in that clip.

At Oregon he's nondescript statistically, with decent outside shooting (37%) propping up an otherwise meh profile. He gets to the rim a lot, where he's bad—52%—but there's a bunch of Jordan Bell Kobe assist potential lurking in those shots.

Tyler Dorsey is Oregon's second best scorer behind Brooks, a 41% three point shooter on excellent volume, who's reasonably effective at the rim. Payton Prichard and Casey Benson, the only reserve, are basically the same player: low usage Just A Shooters who occasionally decide to attack closeouts with middling-at-best results. Both guys assist at a reasonable rate but have TO rates uncomfortably high for gentlemen of their persuasion. Neither is particularly effective inside the arc.

Oregon is a catch and shoot team. Nobody has an appreciable number of unassisted threes other than Dillon, who's hit 15. The rest of the roster collectively has 25—8 fewer than Derrick Walton. This should mean that closeout-mad Michigan can restrict their deep attempts. When Oregon runs pick and roll they are not looking to rise up from any range (only Brooks is 40%+ on two point Js) so Michigan can hedge soft and recover.

Difficult to resist force versus not very moveable object. When Oregon is on offense this is a matchup between the team that takes the fewest two-point jumpers amongst major conference schools and the team that forces the second most*. 19% of Oregon's shots are two point jumpers, because everyone except Brooks is very bad at them. 45% of Michigan's ceded shots are two point jumpers.

Any time an Oregon guy gets run off the three point line and has to pull up that's a win.

*[Baylor passed Michigan this week. /shakes fist.]

Comments

Wolvie3758

March 22nd, 2017 at 12:50 PM ^

Anyone else still in SHOCK that MICHIGAN is playing in the Sweet 16...Ive rewatched the Louisville game 3 times and the outcome is still the same!

M_Born M_Believer

March 22nd, 2017 at 1:29 PM ^

It's called Direct TV DVR.  I have the last 4 games all saved on my DVR and I just keep playing them over and over again.......

 

As for this match up, the more I read about it and the more I look at the data.  I feel really good about this match up.  We have the people to match up with their players.  As for Oregon trying to match up with our Offense, I just don't see that happening.  Too many mismatches, particularly when we run our motion and P&R offense.  If Oregon tries to switch, that will just lead to bad match ups for them.

GO BLUE!!!

jmblue

March 22nd, 2017 at 3:46 PM ^

Not shocked; we've been playing at a very high level since the OSU game.  I thought we had a solid chance against Louisville.

I will say that I wasn't feeling great at halftime of the game, though.

 

 

Michigan4Life

March 22nd, 2017 at 12:55 PM ^

I expect Michigan offense to be efficient. What Oregon is good is what Michigan is good at preventing aka 3 pt attempt and transition offense. Without Boucher roaming in the paint, it put Michigan in a bigger advantage on exploiting their weakness on defense especially if Oregon decides to switch just like Oklahoma State.

Michigan is the favorite as they should be.

KennyHiggins

March 22nd, 2017 at 1:17 PM ^

I think Michigan would be a 6-8 point favorite, based on the body of work over the last 15 games.  Not that we should be overconfident (and I'm sure we won't be), but if we play our game, and execute against their transition O attempts, I feel really good about our chances.

Maybe we'll be able to exhale during this game for a change

dragonchild

March 22nd, 2017 at 2:35 PM ^

To be extremely generous though, that isn't saying nothing.  If one team is clearly superior, they can play like trash and still beat an inferior team, which (flipping it around) would have to play out of their minds just to get to parity.  Or in the case of say me vs. Walton, it really won't matter how good of a day I'm having.  At the time, it wasn't established that Michigan was better; they were essentially tied in B1G play.  So logically, whoever played better was going to win.

Not to say it's great analysis but both teams were playing like garbage so there wasn't much else to say.

Yard Dog

March 22nd, 2017 at 1:35 PM ^

that we cannot compete with left in the tournament.  Even Kansas, Kentucky, UNC and UCLA don't really bother me.  Can we beat any of them?  We certainly can in a winner take all scenario.  Beilein has patiently created a team of scoring threats which no one else really has.  Very excited to see what happens Thursday night and beyond.

Rabbit21

March 22nd, 2017 at 3:38 PM ^

Guards! Guards! is the first novel about Sam Vimes and the Ankh Morpork City Watch.  Thus the Sam Vimes reference.  Everyone has their own favorite discworld novels but the City Watch ones are my personal favorites, despite my signature being stolen from Interesting Times.

TrueBlue2003

March 22nd, 2017 at 2:29 PM ^

for the defense on Bridges but DJ guarded him the majority of both games and was responsible for holding him to inefficient outings both times at under 100 Ortg.

This team matchup on the defensive end is going to be a lot like MSU except Ward is a better post player than Bell (which is good for Wagner chance of surviving on that end), Brooks is very similar to Bridges, Dorsey is better than anyone on MSU so that'll be a good matchup for Irvin, and Oregon in general takes care of the ball a lot better.

This Oregon team is going to be like MSU on offense except more experienced and less sloppy.

TrueBlue2003

March 22nd, 2017 at 4:41 PM ^

he guarded Bridges for 19 of thsoe 22 minutes, including 11.5 of the actually consequential minutes in the first half.  Against DJ, Bridges was 3-7 with 3 TOs, against others he was 3-5 with 2 TOs and 2-2 FTs (those FTs were against Hibbets in garbage time though).

In the first game, DJ and Bridges played 36 minutes each and DJ guarded him nearly the entire time. He held Bridges to 15 points on 17 shots (7/17 FGs) with two TOs.  An inefficient 94 Ortg. He did more than enough on Bridges to win that game. If Ward hadn't gone 6/6 (!!!), Winston hadn't scored 16 on 10 shots or McQuaid hadn't scored 9 on 5 shots, we would have won the game.

I'm not taking anything away from Irvin. He's our best defender.  But he didn't guard Bridges much.  He'll have a very important matchup against Dorsey tomorrow and he'll get shots at Brooks when we go small.

Asquaredroot

March 22nd, 2017 at 3:20 PM ^

I'm just reading that book now and so wonder if I've missed this or countless other Discworld references over the years.
No wonder I like the writing here.
Please add some Patrick O'brian homages as well.

WorldwideTJRob

March 22nd, 2017 at 4:18 PM ^

Dillon Brooks will be the best player we've faced so far in this tournament. He can get buckets, just curious on who we have defending him. I would go with Irvin and stick DJ on Ennis.