Maverick Prophecy
3/09/2017 – Michigan 75, Illinois 55 – 21-11, 10-8 Big Ten
3/10/2017 – Michigan 74, Purdue 70 (OT) – 22-11, 10-8 Big Ten
3/11/2017 – Michigan 84, Minnesota 77 – 23-11, 10-8 Big Ten
3/12/2017 – Michigan 71, Wisconsin 56 – 24-11, 10-8 Big Ten, BTT Champs
[Paul Sherman]
Over the course of thousands of years of human history since the invention of writing, many people have written—or chiseled or typed or uh is there a calligraphy verb—unwise things. Incorrect things. Silly, stupid, terribly wrong things. Some of these were supported by the best available evidence available at the time. Some of these had rather a lot of backing.
Nonetheless, diseases are not cured by bleeding out-of-balance humours from the body. No matter what NBA players may tell you, the earth is not flat. And virtually everything written about the Michigan basketball team during the first five weeks of 2017 should be taken to the largest conveniently-located landfill or event horizon and disposed of, never to be revisited. For example, take this festering twit from the depths of the internet reacting to Michigan's trip to East Lansing:
gonna be hard for Irvin to erase this from the top line of his Michigan legacy
— mgoblog (@mgoblog) January 29, 2017
That was either in late January (by ordinal time) or the Cretaceous (by subjective time). There was rather a lot of data backing that up, as Michigan trundled towards the NIT with a defense that at one point had sunk as low as #184 in the country on Kenpom.
Even by then, though, things were fitting into place. That was their fourth straight game of decent to good defense, and Irvin quietly spearheaded it. Future lottery pick Miles Bridges scuffled to 15 points on 17 shots and chipped in couple of turnovers en route to a 94 ORTG. In the return game things would only get worse for him, with 5 turnovers sinking his game ORTG even lower.
Michigan is fighting in the post and closing out like crazy and every single guy on the team has bought in. Only Irvin had to do that while simultaneously coming to grips with his role on the team, and how it wasn't what he wanted it to be. Walton's gotten the headlines and the hosannahs, but in a way it's much harder to fade into the background gracefully than become the lip-curled alpha dog. In that hamblasting of Michigan State at Crisler he had three points on 8% usage. Zak Irvin's learned something about humility this year. Hopefully so have festering twits from the internet*.
*[Spoiler: they have not.]
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[Sherman]
Irvin is an emblem of a Michigan renaissance unmatched since the Aneurysm of Leadership. Since The White Collar Incident, Michigan is 13-5 and one of the top ten teams in the country.
Also emblems: Derrick Walton, about whom the Trey Burke whispers are getting louder. Duncan Robinson, the world's unlikeliest candidate for defensive stopper and also a gentleman who would have gotten Michigan to overtime against Northwestern if not for Julia Louis-Drefyus's heavenly intervention. DJ Wilson, who can apparently play center now and guard 1-5 and go bucket for bucket with Purdue bigs. Mo Wagner, who firebombed Isaac Haas off the floor and has developed a stick-and-move hedge game that turns late clock in to very late clock. Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman, who nobody even notices anymore because he's just as efficient as everyone else. Maverick Morgan, whose sick burn made Walton so angry he turned into the Hulk.
That's everyone with a usage above "limited roles" and a guy who plays for Illinois.
The improvement is comprehensive and near-unprecedented, and it stretches back half the season now. This isn't a fluke. It hasn't been inconsistent. Michigan has won a bunch of blowouts during that stretch and aside from that inexplicable OSU game all their losses were on narrow, on the road, against tournament teams. They had a plane crash; they arrived at the Big Ten tournament barely over an hour before their scheduled start time; Illinois was more shell-shocked than Michigan was, trailing by 11 by the first break.
I can't explain it. I feel like Robert Hooke looking through a microscope and finding out life was impossibly smaller and bigger than it seemed, simultaneously. I feel like I've just watched a month long Rocky training montage that has turned this Poindexter of a team into... well, still that but a murder hobo version of it. We were given many pieces of evidence and this team has improbably, wonderfully overturned them all.
Bullets
Mind the gap. Three point launch margin over the course of the tourney: +10, +6, +10, +8. An increasingly tired Michigan outfit wasn't as efficient on theirs as they usually are, and it's no surprise to find out that a Beilein team takes a lot of threes.
But the three avoidance is real, and it's spectacular: Wisconsin's first shot in the championship game was a late-clock long two forced by an aggressive MAAR closeout. This is a beautiful place to force an off the dribble shot from:
Once again, barely more than a quarter of an opponent's FGAs were from behind the arc. Michigan moved up a spot in 3PA prevention after the BTT. They're still 308th in 3PA% allowed.
In Soviet Smiths Album, DJ hangs you. In the championship game Mark Donnal was limited to a few brief cameos and avoided a trillion only because he picked up a personal foul; Mo Wagner also played just 24 minutes. Michigan papered over the gap with DJ Wilson at the 5, and this worked brilliantly.
He was able to effectively front Happ most of the time and use his length to bother him when he did get a catch; Happ ended up shooting 6 of 16 from the floor with 3 TOs. With Irvin capable of checking the perimeter-oriented Hayes and Wagner having a rough day on offense, Michigan simply chose to ride with their small lineup in crunch time.
Short turnover Beilein time. So Michigan's two-point shooting was scorching over the course of the four days: 68%, 54%. 68%, 68%. All the more impressive since there were periods in the second half of all four games where Michigan looked too exhausted to run their offense and settled for some heroball.
Minnesota in particular was diced into a fine mist by the Michigan offense. Discombobulated by the lack of Reggie Lynch on the interior—the nation's leading shotblocker had zero as he tried to check Wagner on the perimter—the Gophers fell prey to a half-dozen back cuts in the first ten minutes and fell behind so badly that Michigan's dead-legs period in the second half only got them back to a tie, and from there Walton took over.
That's Michigan's offense going to work when the three point shooting was iffy.
One note of praise for referees. The championship game was downright perfect. I was a little irritated from time to time when Michigan didn't get a particular call but since they were letting various minor bumps go on both ends I soon settled down into a mode where—get this—I was not surprised when fouls happened or what direction they went.
The golden age of offense. Big Ten players who played at least 40% of the time and had a usage rate of at least 16%, ranked by ORTG:
- Duncan Robinson, 126
- Derrick Walton, 125
- James Blackmon, IU, 123
- DJ Wilson, 123
- Juwan Morgan, IU, 122
- Vincent Edwards, PU, 119
- Mo Wagner, 118
- Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman, 116
- Bronson Koenig, UW, 116
- Trevor Thompson, OSU, 115
Only Zak Irvin(103) has the requisite minutes to qualify and is not on this list. This the second-best offense Beilein's ever had at Michigan, slotting in a hair behind the Stauskas/Levert-led Elite 8 team.
A bit on the draw. More on Michigan's first and (potential) second round opponents later in the week. At first blush this is a rough one. Oklahoma State is the #1 offense in the country and a team that, like Michigan, had a mid-season turnaround that has seen them thump a lot of teams and lose narrowly when they do in fact lose. If I had to pick one stat I do not want to see an opponent bring to a matchup with Michigan it's a bucket of OREBs, and Okie State is 6th nationally in that department.
On the other hand, their defense is miserable, like Michigan-before-Maverick miserable, and the only thing they're actually good at in that department is forcing turnovers. This could be a game where Duncan Robinson is 7/11 from 3, that sort of thing.
It should be good for neutrals. Thrill quotient type calculations that prioritize high scoring, close games have Michigan-Okie State as the best game of the first round.
A hypothetical second round matchup against (almost certainly Louisville) is not ideal, but at least the pod also features Kentucky so the crowd in Indy is likely to be relatively split. This version of UL has the usual jumping jacks in the middle that give them a ton of OREBs and swat/alter a ton of shots. Their shooting is only middling; they hang their hat on D and on the glass.
Seeding complaints are real. Maybe not for Michigan, but you know you screwed up as a committee when you've done this:
10-seed Wichita St. opened as a 6.5-point favorite over 7-seed Dayton. On what planet is that fair to the Flyers as a reward for a good yr?
— Mike James (@ivybball) March 13, 2017
That line is the best available guess from people with many dollars riding on accurate projections and just about matches Kenpom's 7-point projected margin. That corresponds to a 75% shot at a Wichita win. Congrats, Dayton. Here's a 25% shot at a first round game as a 7 seed.
I don't think Wichita should have been given a two like a world that seeds exclusively by Kenpom would, but does anyone blink if the Shockers are a 6? No. The team testing out the theory that Wichita State is actually good despite a loss to 3-9 19-14 Michigan State would be one of the last at-larges in the field and thus just happy to be here.
Don't even get me started on the Big Ten. The committee talked a big game about finally modernizing their approach, and that was all balderdash.
Once again, everybody who thought the Selection Committee had gotten off their RPI addiction looks like a fool.
— Jeff (BPredict) (@BPredict) March 12, 2017
When the committee chair is Mark Hollis I don't know why anyone expected better except for blind optimism.
Well, poop. They've been found. Chad Ford didn't have anyone from Michigan on his draft radar this season, but that's changed. He's got a list of the top guys to watch in the NCAA tournament; Wilson and Wagner check in towards the tail end of the list:
25. D.J. Wilson
Wilson is an athletic forward who can both stretch the floor and protect the rim. He has a rare combination of explosiveness and skill. His inconsistency and soft play (despite his size he doesn't really like contact in the paint) concern NBA scouts.
He's on the first-round bubble, but a big NCAA tournament could change things for him. He was outstanding in the Big 10 tourney for Michigan with 26 points, eight boards and three blocks against Purdue and 17 points, six boards, three assists and two steals against Wisconsin to lead Michigan to the title.
26. Moritz Wagner
Wagner might be the biggest sleeper on this list. The native of Germany brings many of the things that Lauri Markkanen brings to the table and is just six months older, such as size, agility, a terrific 3-point stroke and a high basketball IQ.
Like Markkannen, he isn't a great rebounder or shot blocker, but you don't find many players with his size and skill set in the draft.
He's still got both in the 30-50 range—ie, the second round—and FWIW, I've heard that both are planning to return next year. I wouldn't count on year four from either.
March 14th, 2017 at 10:54 AM ^
Exactly. I teared up when Walton and Beilein were being interviewed after the game. To think, Thursday morning they could have forfeited the entire tournament, and no one would have cared. We would have supported that decision. To walk away with a banner Sunday was inspirational.
"An increasingly tired Michigan outfit wasn't as efficient on theirs as they usually are"
We shot 10-23 against Wisconsin, good for 43.5 percent - well above our season percent and a mark better than any team shot over the course of the season. We were highly efficient. Even against Minnesota we were 35 percent on the same number of attempts. Not bad at all.
We did not lose our shooting legs in the third and fourth games of this tourney - contrary to the narratives going around. Zak elevating on that dagger with about two minutes left at the shot clock buzzer was a thing of beauty. We maintained blistering shot splits from 2/3/FT in those two games.
They went 10-23 from 3 because of a flurry of 3's in the first half.
At the end of the first, Michigan was 7-13 from 3. They were 3-10 the rest of the way. I guess that could be considered regression to the mean, but many of them were open 3's being left short.
Against Minnesota, Michigan was 4-11 from 3 in the second half after starting the game 4-6, but would have been much worse if not for the heroics of Derrick Walton going 3-3 in a 4 minute stretch in the most crucial part of the game.
Against Purdue, the offense literally stopped because of fatigue late in the game.
why do the flurry of threes in the first half not count? We shot very efficiently in the Wisconsin game. 43.5 percent. That is a fact. No way any team could reasonably expect to keep shooting over 50 percent and 3/10 in the second half isn't that bad. One more of those falls and we're over our season average. To confuse noise with the effects of fatigue is not the right analysis. To assume a short shot is definitively a result of fatigue is lazy.
Why does Walton Jr's 3/3 stretch - which occured in the second half against Minnesota - not count? He would have been as tired as anyone given the minutes he played. 4/11 is 36+ percent. Right about on our season average. We shot consistently well, without a single half worse than 30 percent in those two games. Our shooting was great in the third and fourth games in a row. Fact.
And I'm not arguing that over the course of the game, we didn't get tired like you would in any game. But the claim that we didn't shoot with our normal efficiency over the full course of consecutive games is not supported by the data, and patently false. Our 3pt percentages from both games combined are right on our season averages. Our 2pt shooting was far better.
this is a great article. honestly, who's got better blogging than us? NOBODY.
particular highlights:
- eating crow about irvin and doing so with class
- dropping a 3-9 in there about MSU
- discussion of the ridiculous NCAA seeding
what a beautiful summary of the thing we just saw.
In the month of March, Michigan is #2, behind only Villanova. Since Feb. 1; #5.
Didn't he redshirt, so technically next year is his 4th year?
DJ will be a RS Junior next year, Moritz true Junior
this year. He has two years of eligibility remaining.
I never fully gave up on the team, but count me in the group of people who thought it was kaput earlier in the conference slate. And in particular, I was a total asshole about Irvin, and I am happy to be proven wrong in his current role.
The seeding is rough, but honestly, that's basketball sometimes. If Michigan is going to go far, they're going to have to beat good teams, and while it wuld have been nice to have an easier draw early on, they'll have to persevere.
I do wonder if Izzo's tourney streak will ever end before he retires. At this point, it seems almost impossible simply because Hollis and co. won't allow it unless barred by the rules. And even then, a 15-17 MSU club probably gets a First Four bid as an at-large 16 seed.
They are a fun bunch to watch when its all clicking. As long as they keep the D-up and don't have to win shoot-outs from beyond the arc, this could be a beautiful tourny run.
Go Blue!
came up with, it looks like they could have just showed up on Sunday morning and thrown this thing together.
Maybe Hollis was too busy putting out fires on the home front.
Only an MSU AD could screw up the selection and seeding this badly. When I saw MSU as a #9 seed I started laughing hysterically. This was a half ass job by Hollis and the selection committee this year. Hopefully, Mark is not on this committee again next year.
Good looks on Robinson's defense. I think a special mention for Zak Irvin's post defense is in order as well. He guarded Swainigan really well forthe times he was switched on him. As well as Hayes.
March 13th, 2017 at 10:47 PM ^
Mentioned this elsewhere, but man, Jon Sanderson must be a good S&C coach, because we seemed to have more energy than all four of our BTT opponents, despite always seemingly having had less rest.
would I trade the Wisconsin win for a sweet 16? Absolutely. The first three wins were a lot of fun. Would I rather lose to ILL, end up on the 10 line and upset our way to the sweet 16? Eh, I'd take the BTT if I knew were weren't going any further than the sweet 16.
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