It's been quite a stretch for Michigan, which overcame a number of COVID-19 related absences over the last three games—including star forward Leigha Brown last night against Nebraska—to go 3-0 to open conference play and move up to 11th in the NET rankings. Brown's absence was felt in the two-point win over the Huskers, which required a historic night from Naz Hillmon to pull off, but prior to that the Wolverines recorded two blowouts, including a nationally televised stomping of a then-ranked Northwestern team.

Some notable Big Ten results since the last post (home team listed second):

• Northwestern 63, Nebraska 65
• Wisconsin 49, Michigan 92
• Rutgers 84, Iowa 90
• Michigan 84, Northwestern 63
• MSU 71, Purdue 64
• Rutgers 50, Nebraska 53
• Indiana 80, Maryland 84
• Minnesota 79, Iowa 92
• Nebraska 62, Michigan 64
• Maryland 93, MSU 87

Last night's Purdue-Rutgers game was postponed because of COVID-19 issues. 

The Standings

We're working with the results-oriented RPI instead of projection-oriented KenPom/Torvik numbers, though Warren Nolan's site has predicted standings and RPI projections I'm using here despite a lack of explanation about the methodology beyond "based on this season's previous results." Per-100-possession efficiency numbers, which I've now limited to Big Ten games (small sample size caveats abound but it's more informative than including unadjusted numbers from non-conference games), are pulled from Her Hoop Stats. I've added NET rankings this week, as well.

	Record			Proj. Rec.			RPI			Ranks				Efficiency (B1G Only)
Team	Ovr.	B1G		Ovr.	B1G		Current	Proj.		AP	Coach	NET		OE	DE	EM
UMD	8-1	4-0		23-1	19-0		3rd	5th		14th	14th	12th		117.4	107.0	+10.4
U-M	8-0	3-0		20-3	15-3		14th	19th		15th	14th	11th		114.8	82.9	+32.0
OSU	6-0	2-0		19-3	15-3		32nd	10th		16th	16th	7th		100.6	77.0	+23.6
IND	6-3	4-1		19-4	17-2		50th	21st		19th	18th	15th		109.0	81.9	+27.1
IOWA	8-1	4-1		14-8	10-8		28th	100th		29th	28th	27th		120.0	101.8	+18.2
MSU	8-1	3-1		16-8	11-8		19th	87th		23rd	24th	31st		102.8	98.6	+4.1
NWern	5-2	3-2		11-10	9-10		58th	152nd		22nd	23rd	45th		103.5	88.8	+14.7
NEB	5-4	3-3		10-12	8-11		67th	177th				108th		88.2	96.5	-8.3
PUR	5-3	2-2		10-13	7-12		62nd	146th				103rd		97.7	100.0	-2.3
RUT	5-3	1-3		17-6	13-6		153rd	56th				19th		100.0	103.1	-3.1
MIN	2-5	1-4		4-17	3-16		161st	248th				234th		90.2	110.8	-20.6
PSU	3-5	0-4		8-15	5-14		126th	204th				81st		94.4	113.5	-19.1
ILL	2-5	0-4		2-20	0-18		174th	303rd				185th		80.7	111.0	-30.3
WIS	3-5	0-5		4-18	1-18		218th	274th				162nd		88.9	112.8	-23.8

Yes, Michigan has the best efficiency margin in the conference—though they've played a relatively easy schedule—and first-place Maryland has been in some surprisingly close games. (Though, again, schedule strength comes into play; the Terps had to fight off a late run against a very good Indiana team this week.)

The Wolverines are behind only Ohio State among B1G teams in the NET rankings, which have finally been introduced on the women's side to replace RPI (I might delete the RPI column next week, the projections I hoped would be useful are extremely volatile). The Buckeyes recently self-imposed an NCAA Tournament ban for possible rules infractions.

THIRTY-FIVE AND TWENTY-TWO

basically moses malone [JD Scott]

OKAY SO I MAY HAVE BURIED THE LEDE A BIT.

Naz Hillmon posted the second 30-20 game in program history last night, tying a career-high with 35 points and pulling down a career-best 22 rebounds, 13(!) of them on offense, to all but single-handedly pull Michigan past an upset-minded Nebraska squad coming off unexpected wins over Northwestern and Rutgers.

[Hit THE JUMP for a lot of Naz GIFs, how Michigan overloaded NW, and more.]

It's barely an exaggeration to say Hillmon won this game on her own. She went 15/23 from the field. The rest of the Wolverines combined to go 9/51, with only three other players even hitting a shot from the field. Hillmon played 36 of the game's 40 minutes, going +6 in a game the team won by two points. Michigan went 3/20 on three-pointers; Hillmon doesn't take those. While Hillmon's 5/10 mark from the line wasn't great by her new standard, neither was the rest of the squad going 8/14 with some critical misses down the stretch, leading to a closer-than-necessary finish after it looked like M was going to pull away.

Hillmon dominated from the jump, scoring 16 of M's 22 first-quarter points on 7/9 shooting. She had not one but two reverse finishes in the latter half of the quarter, the second while also drawing a foul:

Even though she's not a particularly big post player at 6'1, she's proving near-impossible to stop because of her motor, smarts, and technique. This post spin to the left hand is both decisive and smooth:

Even if the Huskers wanted to send a double-team, it'd have to get there as soon as the ball arrived, because Hillmon isn't staying still. She has a plan of attack before she gets the rock. That face-up spin to the left helps set up a subsequent face-up spin to the right. It should come as little surprise that Hillmon has recorded the fourth-best efficiency of anyone with at least 50 post-up possessions, per Synergy, at an astonishing 1.24 points per possession.

Now it's time to discuss the 13(!!!) offensive rebounds. Hillmon now ranks third in the country among players who've tallied 150+ minutes with a 19.4% offensive rebound rate, which would be a solid defensive rebound rate for most anyone—it is, in fact, four tenths of a point higher than her DR%, according to Her Hoops Stats. Her motor seemingly never runs out of gas. She's at the free throw line when this shot goes up:

Yes, that's also a beautiful pass from Amy Dilk.

Hillmon is fourth in the country in points on putbacks with 41 on 31 possessions, per Synergy. The three players in front of her all have at least 40 such possessions and only one is in her league in terms of efficiency (though Texas's Charli Collier is ahead with an absurd 66 points on 40 possessions). Here she goes from way out of area to get an and-one when nobody puts a body on her:

You should probably put a body on her.

Hillmon's final offensive rebound was the most important. It came as M clung to a two-point lead in the final minute:

Hillmon was also all over the offensive glass in the Northwestern win.

As if all of that weren't enough, she recorded a mean on-ball block that knocked over her matchup:

Unleash the "nazilla destroys tokyo" tag. Opponents are just 15/55 from the field against Hillmon's on-ball defense this year.

Overloading Northwestern (And Nebraska)

overloading one side of a zone has created open shooters [JD Scott]

Michigan has faced zones on about 40% of their possessions this season—zone is deployed much more often in the women's game—and they've taken a torch to those defense, ranking in the 93rd percentile with 1.03 PPP on a 56.0 eFG%, per Synergy.

Northwestern came into last weekend's matchup with one of the best zone defenses in the country. The Wolverines blew it to pieces. They did a lot of their damage because of a smart coaching move by Kim Barnes Arico, who called for a lot of overload sets—putting, for example, four players on one side of the court against a 2-3 zone—that helped take advantage of Hillmon's post gravity and pulled the NW defense totally out of shape.

M's first bucket of the game started with all five on the same side of the floor and ended with a Hillmon bucket after two passes reversed the floor—look at how much NW's defenders shift:

Michigan started in another overload before these next two screenshots, which illustrate the attention Hillmon draws. Dilk and Hillmon ran a pick-and-roll on the far (overload) side while Akienreh Johnson (#14) cut to the near corner. When NW's defense moves back into shape, two defenders stick to Hillmon, leaving zero weakside help unless they want to allow a layup to Hailey Brown (#15, posting up in the headband):

So instead they allow a corner three off an easy skip pass:

Johnson drained this uncontested shot. While Hillmon normally has a lot of gravity, bringing the defense way over to her side to open a possession adds to it. 

On this one, Michigan overloads the near side of the court, Hillmon again draws extra attention in the post, and Johnson is again wide open for a three-pointer off a skip pass, this time from Leigha Brown:

Same deal, other side of the court, this time with Hailey Brown hitting the three. Finally, here's another set from last night, this time with Hillmon getting a post touch and moving it to Maddie Nolan on the weak side, where she finds Johnson before the defense is able to get back to their spots:

Unfortunately for M's opponents, the other option is playing man-to-man and having a more difficult time providing help on Hillmon. Good luck with that.

What Can Brown Do Fo-- [Pulled Off Stage With Comically Large Hook]

Leigha Brown (foreground) is a coaches' player [Scott]

As you may have already gleaned from the above, Michigan really missed Leigha Brown's all-around presence against Nebraska. She's second on the team at 19.7 points per game, second in assists at 3.7, second in steals at 1.1, and second in three-point makes (10/18 from beyond the arc).

There's more to the passing we see on the overload plays. Brown is making great entry passes. She makes this one, which forced a Northwestern foul, look way easier than it is:

Knowing Hillmon is almost certain to catch anything in range helps; that's still a difficult over-the-top pass. This, meanwhile?

Sheesh.

Brown can also be an end-of-clock option. Having the defense bent out of shape opens room for this pullup jumper but it's still not a shot everyone has in the bag. She pairs that with knockdown spot-up shooting.

She's also great on defense. Northwestern tried early to put her in on-ball pick-and-roll situations to no avail:

This isn't working:

They stopped trying.

Hopefully Brown is healthy and ready to play soon. She really ties the room together. Thankfully, Michigan's next game is against bottom-feeder Illinois, so they should be able to weather another game without her. They're starting to get previously absent players like Nolan and Emily Kiser back into the rotation, too. This team still hasn't played at full strength.

Games of the Week

All times Eastern. Just highlights, not comprehensive. I'm guessing most of these untelevised games are on BTN-Plus if you've got the league-wide subscription.

Saturday: Iowa at Northwestern (7 pm)
Sunday: Purdue at Maryland (noon), Illinois at Michigan (1, BTN+), Nebraska at MSU (3)
Wednesday: OSU at Iowa (4)
Thursday: Michigan at Wisconsin (8, BTN), Indiana at Purdue (TBD), Northwestern at Rutgers (TBD)
Saturday: OSU at Nebraska (TBD)