Michigan 105, Youngstown State 46
There's an exceedingly good chance this pass resulted in a bucket. [Eric Upchurch]
Entering this week, Michigan had three triple-doubles in program history. After Derrick Walton's ten-point, 11-rebound, 13-assist outing this evening, the Wolverines now have two in the last two games.
Walton did a masterful job picking apart Youngstown State's 2-3 zone, which the Penguins stuck with for most of the game despite giving up a parade of easy buckets. Walton's largesse benefited just about everyone donning white; four other Wolverines also finished with double-digit points—led by Caris LeVert and Aubrey Dawkins with 19 each—even though none cracked 30 minutes played.
One need look no further than Dawkins' performance to get an idea of how this game went. After playing only four minutes of garbage time in Tuesday's win over Northern Kentucky, he didn't check in until the 8:50 mark of the first half today, by which point Michigan had already run out to a 19-point lead. By halftime, Dawkins had 13 points and two Sportscenter-worthy dunks, including this savage and-one finish of a Walton lob:
The second half featured far more unlikely alley-oop combinations, most notably one from Kam Chatman to Ricky Doyle and, later, a lob lay-in by DJ Wilson—whose ankle was healthy enough for him to play six late minutes—from Andrew Dakich.
While YSU's insistence on playing zone makes it difficult to take too much away on that end, it's worth noting Michigan's quartet of big men held Penguins center Bobby Hain, who entered the evening averaging 14.7 points and 7.4 rebounds, to seven points on 3/10 FGs and a lone rebound.
Michigan has one more tune-up—Wednesday night against Bryant—before starting Big Ten play. If any conference opponents want to try out a zone defense, the Wolverines are quite ready.
Tonight's bad poetry:
Never 2-3 zone
Against a John Beilein team
Unless you want death
December 19th, 2015 at 8:20 PM ^
ESPN three to watch
No comments on post
December 20th, 2015 at 4:00 AM ^
love espn3
December 19th, 2015 at 8:13 PM ^
December 19th, 2015 at 8:31 PM ^
December 20th, 2015 at 12:34 PM ^
That immediately came to mind as well. Held us under 50 points, IIRC, and we did not look good.
December 19th, 2015 at 8:37 PM ^
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December 19th, 2015 at 8:51 PM ^
Just no. Don't ever put Beilein in the same breath of comparison to Hoke or Rich Rod. Beilein teams improve both as individual players and as a whole. Hoke and Rich Rod didn't do that.
December 20th, 2015 at 12:03 AM ^
Actually, I don't recall that many times where RichRod or Hoke's teams "smoked the bad ones like they're standing still."
December 20th, 2015 at 7:44 AM ^
I've blocked the entire RR era from my mind, but Hoke did smoke some bad teams--2012, UMass 63-13, Illinois 45-0, and 2013 CMU 59-9. What sticks in our minds is nearly losing to Akron, and getting beat by Rutgers and Maryland.
December 19th, 2015 at 9:00 PM ^
I am a bit confused about the scheduling.
With something like 300 D1 programs why do we have six of these 250 or worse type programs scheduled? I get 1-2 a year but not this. We dont have a super young team with 3 freshman starting so I dont get the logic.
I get playing easy games to offset the difficult ones but can't we find a happy medium? There has to be a host of Kenpom 100-150 type teams that we should beat handily most years but at least gives us something more than a glorified scrimmage at the IM building.
I dont see the point of so many of these blowouts scheduled; they dont pressure the team in even a minimal way like a mediocre mid major who makes the tourney once a half decade would. So you don't learn much about your team when the game is over 7 minutes in. This is basically a conditioning drill.
December 19th, 2015 at 9:07 PM ^
The non-conference schedule this year is extremely weak when it comes to the cupcakes. There's no need to schedule this many cupcakes that are sooo bad. It only hurts your non-conference SOS.
December 19th, 2015 at 9:08 PM ^
Maybe NJIT and EMU turned us off from scheduling the bad teams that could still potentially beat us
December 19th, 2015 at 9:20 PM ^
I could be wrong, but I think this was one of those Brandon elements where he wanted to get a bunch of guaranteed wins and keep people happy at home games, so all these terrible teams were scheduled. My assumption is the new AD will put this team in more competitive matchups, as it doesn't seem like a Beilein thing to purposely not challenge his teams. Could be wrong.
December 19th, 2015 at 10:53 PM ^
I think Michigan just wanted to make sure that the cupcakes were truly cupcakes. We obviously got more than we bargained for in NJIT last year—they won 21 games. And it's probably not a coincidence that after losing to Eastern, we didn't schedule any in-state D-I schools.
This isn't to defend this approach, though; from a fan's standpoint, it's quite lame.
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December 20th, 2015 at 12:15 AM ^
I think Beilein has some input in the schedule, although I don't know exactly how much.
We're always going to play some bodybag games. Everyone does. We scheduled the Atlantis tournament, played in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge and completed the home-and-home with SMU. We were going to balance those out with bodybag games no matter who was doing the scheduling. The problem for fans this year was that both the Big Ten-ACC game and SMU were on the road, leaving us with no compelling home matchups. Last year we had both of those at home.
The concern people have isn't that we're playing some bad teams, but that we're playing some teams that are SO bad (RPI 300+) that they can hurt our RPI. I guess Beilein figures it ultimately doesn't really make a difference in the end, as our SOS will end up being pretty good just by virtue of being in the Big Ten and playing the aforementioned tougher non-conference games.
December 20th, 2015 at 12:44 PM ^
I think he started it out this way for rebuilding purposes and it's never gone away. 3-5 non-conf games against good to great teams and then a bunch of really, really bad opponents. It's not a smart thing to do in terms of RPI. There are a lot of teams that engineer their schedules to look good for RPI purposes and it seems like we haven't caught on, and get the scraps leftover that no one else wants to play.
December 19th, 2015 at 9:18 PM ^
Hopefully this performance helped shake off some more rust and let the team gel together better so when we start B1G play we have a chance to look better than against the 3 top 25 teams we've faced so far. Nice win, good performance, but seeings as it came against a glorified high school team (even if it IS a Tressel school), I'm not going to get overly excited about the blow out.
December 19th, 2015 at 9:29 PM ^
December 20th, 2015 at 11:48 AM ^
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December 19th, 2015 at 10:10 PM ^
Penguins don't play hoops; they would
Rather be at Yost
December 19th, 2015 at 10:39 PM ^
December 19th, 2015 at 10:52 PM ^
This really was a good day for us. Here's to a quality end to the out of conference schedule and a strong showing in conference play. Purdue and Maryland scare me because of their bigs but no one else does. Not even MSU because anything can happen in a rivalry game. Especially if someone-cough, Duncan Robinson, cough-catches fire from deep.
December 19th, 2015 at 11:02 PM ^
MSU is the best team in the conference, and they have some good bigs. They should absolutely scare you.
December 20th, 2015 at 12:51 PM ^
We only play MSU at home and I think we matchup with them pretty well, considering they're supposedly the #1 team in the county. They have decent bigs but their strength is on the wings where we actually can play some defense and have depth. We probably have a much better chance at that game than @Pur and @Mary.
December 20th, 2015 at 2:26 PM ^
And last year notwithstanding, MSU's record against Beilein in Crisler isn't too strong, either. Their Final Four-bound team escaped with a last-second win in 2010, and then they lost four straight. They often seem to lose their composure and get suckered into outside shooting contests with us - usually a bad idea.
December 19th, 2015 at 11:42 PM ^
December 20th, 2015 at 12:40 AM ^
Also, YSU was wearing Jumpman unis. How does this happen? Has Jordan already jumped the shark before M starts wearing them?
December 20th, 2015 at 7:22 AM ^
Please tell Kam Chatman never to shoot a three. Please tell Kam that if he ever shoots outside the paint he will be removed from the game immediately and never play again that game. He is shooting 6.7% from three range so it is basically a turnover. Teams know what a terrible shooter he is and leave him open intentionally in hopes that he shoots. He should never shoot unless he is going to the rim or collecting a rebound. Thank you very much.
Best regards,
BaileyB7
December 20th, 2015 at 11:46 AM ^
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December 20th, 2015 at 9:09 AM ^
December 20th, 2015 at 9:50 AM ^
December 20th, 2015 at 10:59 AM ^
can be pulled from this game. Though a couple of things I noticed. We usually pull together and handily beat poor teams. I do think it is a confidence booster and clearly the starting line-up and rotation is pretty much set. Dawkins and Robinson can fight for that starting role all year if you ask me, competition within a team only makes everyone better.
Our defense is getting better though it still isn't very good. We're holding teams to 60 points a game, good for 16th in all of D-1 which is actually impressive. The not so impressive part is that average is good because of all the bad teams we play. Take from it what you want.
I hope everyday in practice the bigs are fighting each other like MadMaxx. That is what is going to hurt us during conference play. We can shoot and play ball like anyone else in the BIG except when it comes to bigs. They need to get better and more fisty. Big Dripper is actually pretty big but he isn't the best at D or laying it in. I still think he can post up some and give us some nice hook shots even though this doesn't work in our motion system. We're going to have to do A LOT of doubling down low. I wouldn't be surprised if Beilein plays two bigs at some points during the season
December 20th, 2015 at 12:56 PM ^
As of this morning, Michigan is actually 20th in the country in points allowed per game, at 60.8 -- but that just goes to show why traditional stats don't show the whole story. it's not (just) that these stats aren't opponent-adjusted. They're also not adjusted for pace. Per KenPom.com, Michigan is 320th in the country in (raw*) average possessions per game, at 66.1. That's 60.8 points in 66.1 possessions, or about 0.92 points per possession. If you give them the NCAA average number of possessions -- 70.1 -- you add an additonal 3.7 points per game, which would put them somewhere around #50.
Michigan's defense is nowhere near the 20th best in the country. (KemPom has them as #88 defensively, adjusting for both pace and opponent). They did play an excellent game defensively against YSU -- they generated a significant number of points off of turnovers and did an excellent job on the defensive glass, and YSU looked confused all night -- but it remains to be seen whether or not they can keep up that level of defense against better teams. The nice thing about Beilein-coached teams is that they tend to improve as the season goes along.
If this team could reach, say, the top 30 in defensive efficiency, it could be Elite 8 caliber, because the offense has started to gel. They don't need to lead the nation in defense. They just need to be good enough to keep from digging a big hole during the offense's droughts.
December 20th, 2015 at 2:32 PM ^
I don't know if we can make it up to the top 30 in defensive efficiency, but if Walton continues to develop as a distributor and Irvin finds his stroke, we could have another top 5-ranked offense. We're currently #17 despite having played without Walton for several games and some others slowly returning from injury.
December 20th, 2015 at 10:59 AM ^
can be pulled from this game. Though a couple of things I noticed. We usually pull together and handily beat poor teams. I do think it is a confidence booster and clearly the starting line-up and rotation is pretty much set. Dawkins and Robinson can fight for that starting role all year if you ask me, competition within a team only makes everyone better.
Our defense is getting better though it still isn't very good. We're holding teams to 60 points a game, good for 16th in all of D-1 which is actually impressive. The not so impressive part is that average is good because of all the bad teams we play. Take from it what you want.
I hope everyday in practice the bigs are fighting each other like MadMaxx. That is what is going to hurt us during conference play. We can shoot and play ball like anyone else in the BIG except when it comes to bigs. They need to get better and more fisty. Big Dripper is actually pretty big but he isn't the best at D or laying it in. I still think he can post up some and give us some nice hook shots even though this doesn't work in our motion system. We're going to have to do A LOT of doubling down low. I wouldn't be surprised if Beilein plays two bigs at some points during the season
December 20th, 2015 at 11:45 AM ^
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December 20th, 2015 at 11:10 AM ^
How good of a shooter is Duncan Robinson? He's shot at least 50% from 3-point range in 10 of our 12 games. The two exceptions? Northern Michigan, when he was 0-1, and the UConn game (1-6), which was our first game played in that dim ballroom in Atlantis. So basically, whenever he's played in a normal basketball venue, he's not had a bad shooting night from downtown.
December 21st, 2015 at 4:10 PM ^
4/7 on 3's against YSU brought his average down a bit. I haven't tried to keep track, but he's also had a few attempts that were forced by shot clock or otherwise not by choice. In the national Div. I 3-point shooting percentage stats he has more attempts than anyone above him.
One could argue that probably anyone shooting around 60% on 3's should be taking more (presumably somewhat harder) attempts. This team is going to be able to spread out opposing defenses remarkably well. The only questions are whether the shots are falling on a particular night and whether our defense can do enough to keep us in the game.
Last year before LeVert's injury he was putting the team on his back way too often. Maybe he had to because no one else had developed to the point they could carry some of the load, but it made the team way too one-dimensional. The scouting report for opposing defenses is a lot longer this year.
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