About last niiiiiiiight. Lights out for MSU:

Thanks to Michigan State for this fantastic content pic.twitter.com/56R2yAQqfX

— Alejandro Zúñiga (@ByAZuniga) January 29, 2021

The Spartans lost 67-37 to Rutgers last night, putting up their worst points per possession in the Kenpom era. Notable statistics:

• With more TOs than buckets, Michigan State suffered a basketball rutger against Rutgers!
• MSU turned the ball over on 32% of their possessions!
• Rutgers rebounded 43% of their misses!
• Rocket Watts is shooting 29/24 in Big Ten play!
• Rutgers had more blocked shots than FTAs allowed!
• It was Rutgers's best defensive performance in a conference game since 1982! Their opponent in that game was St Bonaventure!
• MSU is dead last in conference play in: 2P%, steals allowed, TO%, and offensive efficiency!
• There are 12 Big Ten teams in the top 100 of the NET rankings. MSU is not one!
• MSU has lost games in which their opponents shot 26%, 24%, and 13% from 3!

2021 bringing heat.

[After THE JUMP: Jeb! the AD]

Here's that logistical nightmare you ordered. Matt Norlander has a piece on the NCAA's plan for the tournament. It is going to be a tall order, to say the least. This is just a small component of the whole:

• From the NCAA's protocols document: "Each travel party will be assigned 34 rooms on an entire floor within the hotel. Individuals will be assigned their own room and will not be allowed to share rooms."
• Officials will also have a hotel to themselves. In a normal NCAA Tournament there are 100 officials assigned to 67 games. This year that number will dwindle to 60.
• All Tier 1 personnel connected to the NCAA Tournament will wear Kinexon tracking equipment to gather data that will inform contact-tracing protocols. This will be crucial when COVID-19 positives surface after Selection Sunday. More nuanced details about how this will work will be decided in the coming weeks.

I'm still baffled that the NCAA is looking at a March tournament when April looks like the inflection point where you could justify vaccinating some basketball players for entertainment's sake. There is a strong possibility the whole thing gets derailed, which would surely be more costly than having the NCAA tournament—which will dominate any sports programming opposite it—at a slightly weird time. It's not like anything important happens in May anyway.

Higher releases lead to less effective contests. There are some folks responding to this graph with objections but I think it's probably a real finding:

I linked this shooting motion data from @inpredict to five seasons of 3-pointers from the shot dashboard on the NBA site to see if there was a relationship between a shooter's release height and his shooting splits on open/wide-open vs. tight/very-tight 3PA: https://t.co/71yCE5SoIo pic.twitter.com/6YquvIEiw0

— Todd Whitehead (@CrumpledJumper) January 28, 2021

Lot of noise in there that may be randomness or indicate that deviating from the trend is a real skill.

A few years ago there was a study about NBA closeouts that found that there wasn't a distinct gap between "this is a closeout" and "this is not a closeout" but a fairly linear relation between distance from defender and eFG:

As the paper authors put it it, "it is not simply a matter of a shot being “contested” or not but ... there is significant marginal value in every foot of space between the shooter and the closest defender." I wouldn't necessarily have expected that.

I think this may be a factor in Franz Wagner's middling three point shooting, as he has more of a set shot than a Duncan-Robinson-esque shot from the top of his jump. I think I'm resigned to his ceiling from behind the arc topping out in the 34-35% range.

A lego creation. This is quite a project:

That is a 30,000+ piece lego recreation of the Diag from Adam Mael, who you might remember as @BakersAndBest on twitter.

Tennessee: projected to remain Tennessee. New UT athletic director is going the Champions of Life route:

Danny White on his request for positivity on social media: "Some of you are awesome. Some of you are failing right now. Why would we be negative?"

— David Ubben (@davidubben) January 27, 2021

Please clap. Meanwhile White hired Josh Heupel, whose resume is three years of UCF declining. White was hired away from… UCF.

Shots fired! Good God man.

10 years. Crazy. UM’s trajectory changed that day - accomplished ALMOST everything possible this past decade. Just imagine if @SpikeAlbrecht would have watched my game film and learned its ok to make a few shots in the 2nd half after coming out hot in the 1st half of a big game. https://t.co/GLRqQ37nrl

— Zack Novak (@novak3159) January 28, 2021

Ambry and Nico. Michigan's two opt-outs have a hugely important Senior Bowl coming up and have been performing in practices. Austin Meek and Nick Baumgardner have an in-depth discussion on both. On Collins:

Baumgardner: One thing Collins has to prove during the draft process — and that’ll continue once he gets to the league — is his ability to create separation underneath. That’s something he’s had issues with this week, depending on the corner he’s working against. Can you find room on intermediate routes and prove to teams that you can be more than a deep threat?

Deep threats are great. But one reason Collins is such an interesting prospect is how close he is to having it all. When he lines up against someone who can hang with him physically at the line of scrimmage, he has to really focus on his technique and make sure there is no wasted movement as he gets into his route. Because as you see here: If he separates over the top, you’re in real trouble.

On Thomas:

He’s physical enough to bang with a receiver like Surratt in tight spaces. He’s fast enough to not lose ground. But as you said: He’s got to be better about not only locating this ball faster, but also making sure his body is under control while he’s doing it. Thomas found the ball a bit late. But he still found it. His hand gets into the receiver’s chest, but he’s still in a good position without it. It’s not necessary and it really doesn’t “interfere” with the receiver’s ability to catch the ball — my opinion. But, it’s going to get called down the sideline like that in front of an official. That’s the piece about the NFL that Michigan corners who played in Don Brown’s system have to make sure they’re careful with. You cannot grab in the league. They’re going to call it. Even when they don’t need to.

I expected no less. No more? We're two months from the NCAA hockey tourney—another thing that should be delayed a month—and there has still been no indication how the hell this is going to work:

"I was on an American Hockey Coaches Association call yesterday and there was some discussion but there was no certainty on that topic from the NCAA," Berry said. "There was supposed to be somebody from the NCAA on the call but they weren't, so obviously we didn't get any clarity on that side of it.

The one thing they're dead-set on? Keeping the regionals in the same places they currently are. Because of course.

Etc.: The soccer ball that went to space on its second try. Bizarre USMNT twitter catfishing thing. D1Baseball previews the Big Ten($). Eric Bieniemy didn't get hired again.