2022-23 basketball preview
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MGoPodcast 14.8: The Basketball Preview Comment Count

Seth October 23rd, 2022 at 8:00 PM

2 hours and 13 minutes

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1. The Backcourt

starts at 1:00

Hoping Jaelin Llewellyn's length solves some of the guard defense because there's been a high floor for opponent possessions with the shorties. Don't know if he can translate into a point guard since he's always been more of an SG but makes good decisions and shares the ball for a #2 scorer on a good team. Won't have to be that here. Dug is a pest on defense, too small to hold up as a true freshman, but supposed to be quite the passer and can shoot. Kobe Bufkin is young and just gained a lot of poundage, is Caris-like but NOT Caris. Can shoot. At the three is Jett, and he can shoot too—defense might be a work in progress this year. Joey Baker can give you 15 minutes a game as a JAS. If Isaiah Barnes can play now he will play now.

[The rest of the writeup and the player after THE JUMP]

2. The Frontcourt

starts at 31:08

The four is going to be Terrance Williams II and we all trip over ourselves to be the first to hint, then say he was outplaying Caleb Houstan last year. Like him at the four where his agility is not as big of a deal and he adds to the spacing. Backup is murky—will Youssef Khayat be big enough to assist here as a Franz-alike by later in the year? How about Jace Howard? Go small? Tschetter's defensive liabilities for his offensive prowess? With all these shooters Hunter Dickinson gets to feast. Won't have to stretch as much this year, will get more assists just because the guys he's passing to will make the shots. Best player in the league, better at drop coverage. Tarris Reed has treetrunk legs, gets to develop behind Hunter for a year.

3. How it Fits and Around the League

starts at 58:02

Who is Juwan Howard's favorite son? The Big Ten is down as we cast about for contenders. Not buying Indiana's case of Xavier Johnson and TJD because what kind of case is that, except probably the best one in the B10 right now. Not State—they don't have a center save Mady Sissoko. Illinois? They lost as much as they brought in (lots). Purdue? No point, Brandon Newman and Zach Edey and Eric Hunter and Mason Gillis will certainly get them in the playoffs but scoring will be an issue even if Caleb Furst blows up like we think he will. Ohio State lost a ton, added transfers and freshmen—all slice and dicers save the JAS from WVU—to Zed Key and Justice Sueing. Iowa will be Iowa, replacing Keegan Murray with his literal clone Kris. Seth tries to sell us all on Rutgers because of continuity, but Geo Baker and Ron Harper Jr. are gone. Wisconsin…errrr….they'll probably have someone—not Tyler Wahl—emerge. Maryland takes a step back, will play small with Donta Scott at C as Kevin Willard takes a Year Zero. Penn State has a 6x transfer. Minnesota…isn't Nebraska. Pete Nance is gone from NWern—GO CHASE AUDIGE GO!

4. Hot Takes and Around the Big Ten With Jamie Mac

starts at 1:27:45

Takes hotter than a four year old that just discovered a piece of carrot in her ramen. Despite Ohio State winning 54-10 against Iowa, there is a lot to unpack. CJ Stroud had a typical day but Ohio State's rushing offense struggled. Iowa turned the ball over six time. Ohio State only scored one touchdown in their first ten drives. Iowa was desperate enough to bring in Padilla and it was also a disaster. Are we actually seeing the unraveling of the Ferentz era (or will it still take three years for Iowa to finally let him go?). Iowa's offensive EPA was -51 points... NEGATIVE FIFTY ONE. Michigan might actually have a reasonable enough chance to slow down Ohio State's offense enough to... win. Penn State bounces back and holds Mo Ibrahim to only 102 yards (3.4 avg). Sean Clifford played a great game. Tanner Morgan was out with a concussion and backup Athan Kaliakmanis did not look as good. Jamie has discovered an interesting stat about Minnesota coaching regimes. No Taulia Tagovailoa for Maryland against Northwestern, Northwestern's quarterback is Some Guy. This is just a totally differeny Maryland team right now. Maryland's 330 lbs center got flagged for doing a cartwheel - worth it. Need Penn State and Maryland to keep winning to help Michigan's chances of making the CFP just in case Michigan loses to Ohio State and goes 11-1 - imagine if Michigan missed the CFP because they cancelled the UCLA game. Wisconsin scores 21 points against Purdue in the first quarter and then glide paths to the finish line. This was Wisconsin's 16th straight win against Purdue. Rutgers vs Indiana - confirmed, both teams are bad. 

MUSIC:

  • "Soul Flower"—Pharcyde
  • "Leave It In My Dreams"—The Voidz
  • "I Can't Explain"—David Bowie
  • “Across 110th Street”

THE USUAL LINKS:

 

Is it time for Chase Audige to step up?

Comments

schreibee

October 23rd, 2022 at 8:46 PM ^

Obviously if Michigan takes care of its business & beats osu (& Illinois again?) then they'll be in the CFP. 

But should they finish 11-1 & miss the playoff because they greedily dropped ucla to add a body-bag home game, in honesty it'd be somewhat deserved. 

Sorry, jus sayin...🤷‍♂️

Joined: 11/02/2009

MGoPoints: 21143

TrueBlue2003

October 24th, 2022 at 8:00 PM ^

Of course we want to win The Game.  But not caring about anything else if we lose? Huh?  What kind of fan are you?  Absolutely, you'd want the chance for revenge on a neutral field and you know, a friggin NC.

And, and sure I would take a win over OSU over the playoff too but there is no universe in which that's even a choice. If we win that we DO go the playoff.  If we lose it, we'd still like to go the playoff if possible.

Joined: 01/05/2010

MGoPoints: 38075

bronxblue

October 24th, 2022 at 11:54 AM ^

It would suck to miss out on the playoffs because they didn't play UCLA but I'd also add that it would likely mean a bunch of things would ALSO have to happen:

  • Between 2 or 3 1-loss SEC teams.
  • TCU and Clemson going undefeated
  • Oregon running the table

That may well all happen but TCU needed the starting QB for 2 of their last 3 opponents to get hurt (while up against the Horned Frogs) in order to barely pull those games out.  They're also 3-0 in 1-score games (and barely got by KSU with 10), which doesn't feel sustainable.  

Clemson has been immensely average all year and again needed a bunch of dumb stuff to happen to barely beat Syracuse at home.  The ACC is trash so they may still go undefeated but at some point their luck might run out.

Oregon running the table is plausible but UCLA was a bit of a paper tiger and we'll see how Oregon handles Utah, the type of team that has beaten them up for a couple of years and had a week to prep.

As for the SEC, Alabama absolutely doesn't look good enough to go undefeated the rest of the year, and I'm not sold they survive the regular season undefeated let alone beating UT or Georgia in the SECCG.  And then you've got UT and UGa battling it out plus the non-zero chance that Tennessee loses a game down the stretch to UK or South Carolina beyond Georgia.

So yeah, there's a world where UM gets squeezed but if they go 11-1 and have a competitive game against OSU I'd be surprised if they get left out of the playoffs.

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 171752

TrueBlue2003

October 25th, 2022 at 1:14 AM ^

I don't agree that all this would have to happen. In fact, if all this happens, it wouldn't matter if we played UCLA.  We wouldn't get in over an undefeated TCU and Clemson.

But an SEC team is almost certainly going to make the playoff with an 11-1 record this year (ie the loser of UGA/Tenn) because they'll have played a significantly more difficult schedule than Michigan.  But with a win over UCLA, Michigan could have an argument against that SEC team.

They'd have an argument against a one loss TCU team (and they will lose) or other one-loss b12 champ.  They'd have argument against a one loss Pac12 champ (likely to happen at worst).

Four teams make it.  The SEC champ is in.  OSU is in with a win over Michigan.

That leaves two spots.  An 11-1 Michigan team with a hypothetical win over UCLA and only a loss at OSU would have a good argument over any other one loss team.  As it stands, they probably wouldn't have an argument over any other one loss team.

Joined: 01/05/2010

MGoPoints: 38075

Shop Smart Sho…

October 23rd, 2022 at 10:22 PM ^

Not sure I'm following the talk about Reed starting at C next year. If Dickinson didn't leave early after last year, and there isn't any real belief that he's going to turn into a switchable defender who can play in the NBA, where is the incentive to leave? I've got to imagine even dealing with Michigan's approach to NIL that he's making really good money. So if that's the case and he enjoys being the BMoC as much as it appears from the outside, why give that up for the G League or Europe?

Joined: 07/10/2008

MGoPoints: 9602

RAH

October 23rd, 2022 at 11:54 PM ^

Don't know if he's going to go or stay but it's not that simple. Although they don't make as much as in the NBA some international players do make very good money with nice living expenses and no taxes. An international team could offer him more than he makes NIL and get him started on his pro career sooner. 

Joined: 02/23/2018

MGoPoints: 7600

Jota09

October 24th, 2022 at 2:01 AM ^

The story being told was that Hunter was aware that he was probably not getting drafted and Europe would be his professional option.  He liked college enough that if the money he got from NIL was good enough to compensate that, then he was happy to stay.  So while the freshman were letting everyone hang in the wind making their decisions, Hunter was looking to hit an NIL goal.  Once he hit it, he was back.  I can't imagine it was hard for him and Juwan to convince some people to hook that up.  So hopefully, his mindset stays the same and he comes back next year too.  Unless he has a miraculous transformation athletically, it will probably be the same options. 

Joined: 09/24/2008

MGoPoints: 1135

Gustavo Fring

October 24th, 2022 at 10:47 AM ^

With Llewelyn being more of a scoring combo guard and Hunter’s shooting having improved, I wonder if we see them run the offense more through him at the top of the key.

Hunter isn’t Jokic and Llewelyn isn’t Jamal Murray, but would be interesting to see if Juwan can borrow from the Denver offense a bit.  Hunter’s passing vision can come in handy here too.

Llewelyn’s shooting gravity should open up plenty of back door cuts to the rim and if Hunter can draw the rim protector out and hit him they can really open up some easy buckets.

Even “let Hunter shoot” isn’t an ideal solution because he can quickly eat up that space and turn it into a post up from 12 feet, and you don’t really want to give him that either

 

Joined: 09/29/2009

MGoPoints: 5175

AC1997

October 24th, 2022 at 12:15 PM ^

I only made it thru the first segment so far (stupid work....) but I wanted to thank the guys for bringing Matt on and for Matt having more to offer than his recruiting work.  With all due respect to our fearless leaders - it was pretty clear their focus has been (correctly) on football lately and not basketball.  Some things it was good to hear Matt help clear up:

  • Joey Baker is not and has never been a guard.  He's a pure wing because he's not a ball handler and can't defend the 2.  
  • Barnes did play a fair amount overseas this summer and does seem more guard shaped, but I would caution anyone who thinks he's a defensive stopper.  His HS film was actually pretty rough on defense and that was the word coming out of last year too - lots of work to do there.  Think more Aubrey Dawkins than Charles Matthews as a comp.  
  • Generally speaking, the roster has three positions - guards (Llewellyn, Dug, Kobe), bigs (Hunter, Reed), and wings (everyone else).  So as Matt said, Jett is probably going to get some time at the 2 when we go with three wings and that's more likely than anyone else.  Jace falls into the wing category, but I don't think you'd ever see him play the 3, he's a 4.  That distinction doesn't matter much for Michigan, but Jace can't shoot and most of his good examples of defense were against bigger guys, not smaller/athletic wings.  
  • Brian clearly falling victim to the Michigan Phonebooks with some of his heights.  Barnes was listed 6-6 as a recruit though Michigan says 6-7.  Kobe is pretty consistently listed 6-4 so not sure how he's a half-foot taller than Eli, but certainly more length for defense.....if he figures out how to play defense.  
  • Brian is correct that our "off the dribble defense" was bad last year, but there needs to be some context to that.  First off, those are lower percentage shots in general so you'd rather your opponents take off-the-dribble long twos.  Second, those are the shots Michigan's defensive system schemes to allow. Playing drop coverage on ball screens encourages the guard to take that shot.  As such, the volume of those shots Michigan allows is higher and skews the data somewhat.  Having more length and athleticism should help and that's important, but more important is to focus on 3pt attempts and how we're protecting the paint.  

Joined: 09/19/2008

MGoPoints: 13809

AC1997

October 25th, 2022 at 9:00 AM ^

I was pretty hard on the guys after the first segment. But I was really happy to hear them bring up the four out offense being a potential game changer compared to last year. That's essentially what we used during Hunter's freshman year and it worked very effectively. I think there's even more playmaking opportunities for Hunter out of the post now that he's more experienced.

 

I also think it was a great point about the depth at the wing this year compared to last. While I think we are going to struggle on defense quite a bit, imagine last year with this depth. If Houston is having one of his off games, you just bench him for Joey Baker and let Baker shoot up some threes.

 

My one final nitpick is that Seth still thinks Diabate was a very good defender last year. He wasn't. He certainly had his moments and I suspect he will get better in time, but he was a man stuck between positions last year where he was a bad post defender and a bad defender of smaller wings. If he got the perfect matchup of someone with similar size and skill he was pretty decent but he was certainly not elite.

Joined: 09/19/2008

MGoPoints: 13809

Koop

October 25th, 2022 at 10:40 AM ^

Appreciated this pod on a long drive. Thanks, guys. 

Two observations:

  1. All this talk about how many shooters there will be around Hunter feels a little sus. I feel like we were told Houstan would have an insane stroke, and, well—it was insane, all right. Jones adapted to the tougher competition eventually, but the first 3/4 of last season was painful. We really, really missed the outside shooting from Franz and Livers, and this feels a little Lucy with the football. Speaking of which ….
  2. What does it say that tOSU beats Iowa 54-10 and we’re taking this as a good sign? Have we jumped straight from BPONE past GPORE to BFOGE (Blue Fields of Giddy Expectations)?

Joined: 08/16/2022

MGoPoints: 2699

Koop

October 26th, 2022 at 1:41 PM ^

Only parts of it. My comment is reacting more to the pod analysis, which--to be fair, I do myself: dissect tOSU's performances in the hopes of finding some flaws. And, because it's college football, there are almost always flaws.

I'm just wondering aloud how much faith we fans can put in analysis of a game that tOSU never had a realistic chance of losing, that exceeded the spread, and that wasn't close in the second half (sounds a little like MICH-PSU in that regard). Sure, Michigan is a better team than Iowa and should give tOSU a greater challenge. I'm not sure I'm prepared to leap from the Grey Plains of Reasonable Expectations to believing that we've identified fatal flaws in tOSU's performance. I tend to think that Michigan could win that game, but it's going to take the team's best efforts against a level of competition Michigan has not yet seen this year. More than that seems to me like irrational exuberance at this stage.

Joined: 08/16/2022

MGoPoints: 2699