We're just about at the halfway point of basketball's regular season and it's time for a re-evaluation. First: our preseason takes. These were not designed to be hot but some inevitably are.

What were your best and worst preseason (Part 1/Part 2) takes?

Brian: We collectively undersold the league, especially the back half. We dismissed Penn State fairly quickly, Minnesota extremely quickly and literally did not mention Rutgers. I was the most optimistic about the state of the league and even I backed off my projection of an Iowa bid after Ace pointed out Jordan Bohannon's injury.

I completely get why this happened. The Big Ten is having an unprojectable, unprecedented knife-fight of a season. Projecting this Big Ten before the year would have been dumb.

Seth: I predicted Myreon Jones would be our next Isaiah Washington; instead his three-point shooting is up to 40% and his assist rate doubled. In a weird, roundabout way we have Ohio State properly ranked, though if you told us Kaleb Wesson was now a Keto spokesman I think we would have revised those opinions.

Ace: I went to bat hard for Wesson in that post, which I feel pretty good about even though he’s fallen off a bit—mostly on defense—in conference play.

Ace: Unfortunately I think my most on-point prediction was regarding Bohannon’s hip:

Prediction: This is gonna go like Spike’s first senior year. Bohannon’s recent quotes have basically been “I’m gonna give it a shot, i guess.”

We had Wisconsin correctly pegged as a team that’d be on the fringe of the tournament discussion until Micah Potter started turning their season around. They nearly lost a game they’d controlled last night against Maryland because Greg Gard insisted on sticking with Nate Reuvers when Potter was carrying the offense, including hitting multiple threes. Now I get why they were fighting so hard for that waiver.

Seth: Speaking of Maryland I think I have swung back to the opinion Turgeon is not a very good coach.

Ace: I’m still on my preseason take: not the best in-game coach, very good recruiter, and Maryland is consistently good under him. I’m not gonna ding him for a loss in the Kohl Center that featured its fair share of Brad Davison shenanigans.

The huge collective miss: we didn’t even bother to discuss Rutgers.

Brian: I was very wrong about Ohio State and then Ace and Alex were very wrong about Ohio State and now... eh? About right as a unit?

Uh... everyone except me had Teske as their all-D center.

Seth: Welp.

[After THE JUMP: Nobody guessed 12 teams would make the tournament]

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Seth: Endless Motor made a point about Teske: he is the same defender he was last year but the competition has been elite and he just isn't.

Michigan Film Review: Teske Post D v Oturu in 2019/20

2019-Oturu backs Teske down w/2 dribbles but doesn’t get near a full revolution w/his nonpivot foot on the dropstep, isn’t able to seal Teske to mitigate his contest

2020-Oturu gets near full revolution, seals Teske, easy 2 pic.twitter.com/tBTFYiiEdd

— LAbound (@LAbound2) January 13, 2020

Ace: I’d like to point out that I got roasted by Brian for shoehorning Tillman and Teske into my All-B1G first team, then Brian put out a Winston/Simpson backcourt.

Brian: You could play Winston and Simpson together a lot more easily than Teske and Tillman. But also none of us saw Luka Garza being Shaq, I guess?

Ace: Indeed. It’s still fair to be skeptical of his defense, too, but his offense is just overwhelming right now.

Seth: See: Poor Damn Teske

Brian: He puts up a third of Iowa shots when he's on the floor. He is 6'11". His TO rate is 9.1. What the absolute blue hell. And he has almost no dropoff against top 50 opponents.

Ace: We generally underrated big men—Wesson, Garza, and Daniel Oturu stand out—while overrating wings who looked poised for breakouts. Joe Wieskamp didn’t take a huge leap. Gabe Kalscheur is the same guy. Ditto Ayo Dosunmu.

Brian: Barely mentioned Cockburn.

Seth: The funny thing is we all liked Oturu a lot last year. Until I was putting the chart together for Minnesota I forgot my take from last year which is this guy's going to blow up.

This matchup couldn't have developed worse. [Marc-Grégor Campredon]

Brian: A large chunk of this also falls into the "too bizarre to project" bin. We have the last 20 years of basketball pushing everything into ball screens and the gradual, then sudden decline of post play. And now we're in the 1980s Big East and everything is Ralph Sampson vs Patrick Ewing.

Seth: Replacing John Beilein with Juwan Howard, conference edition.

Ace: Your 2-4 seeds right now are Wisconsin, Illinois, and Rutgers. Anyone who predicted this is a witch.

Brian: It is appropriate that we picked 4 different guys for All Big Ten C... none of whom were Garza or Oturu.

Ace: And only one of us picked Wesson.

Brian: On the good side of things our rough order of MSU (#7 in Kenpom), OSU (#10), Maryland (#11), Purdue(#17), Michigan (#21), Illinois(#29), Wisconsin(#22) was almost exactly right. Main problem is that Garza-is-Now-Shaq propels Iowa to #16. Other than that: not bad!

Ace: Alex alluded to the possibility in our initial post: a lot of the Illinois skepticism came from the way Brad Underwood styled their defense, and then he went out and totally changed his system, and now the defense is carrying them.

Brian: And their rebounding.

Seth: And Cockburn. If one of our preseason questions was which team is most likely to cold clock a ref on the head Illinois would have been my 14th pick.

Ace: Our main issue was in not expecting the conference to have 12—TWELVE—viable tournament contenders. Which, yeah, not gonna blame us too much there.

Seth: We are literally paid to have hot takes every week. Someone could have come up with that one.

Ace: Hey, I already covered “Rutgers should be in the Big Ten,” which looks okay in this very limited instance. Purdue is the team I still can’t figure out. I believe in Matt Painter and their big men. Everything else made them appear headed for Bubble Out territory and then they went and hamblasted MSU. They definitely miss Carsen Edwards, though.

Seth: The runaway conference champion nobody predicted is home teams. And don't tell me this is a ref thing unless the officials can teach the Boilermaker backcourt to shoot. (Sasha excluded).

Ace: I don’t think it’s all refs, either. The margins are insanely slim in the conference this year. You’ve got MSU on one end, Northwestern and Nebraska on another, and everything between is a neutral-court coin flip. Everything that goes into a home court advantage—which, yes, refs, but also travel, routine, etc.—matters that much more this year.

Stock most up, team edition?

Pikiell has done the improbable. [Bryan Fuller]

Seth: Welcome to the Big Ten, Rutgers.

Ace: It’s hard to pick anyone else. Steve Pikiell has done a remarkable job coaching that program. That roster looked to be in dire straits when Eugene Omoruyi transferred out of nowhere. They’re even winning when Geo Baker is hurt.

Brian: The other prime candidate is Iowa, which 3/4 of us had out of the tourney and is now a 4-seed on T-Ranketology and by Kenpom ranking.

Ace: Yeah, I didn’t see the #4 offense in the country happening.

Seth: Can I double down on Iowa falling back to the pack? CJ Fredrick is a good shooter, not a .500 shooter. Garza is a good offensive player, not the Naismith. They've played three Big Ten road games: the Michigan one, a closer than it should be against Northwestern, and a loss to Nebraska.

Brian: Also [gestures to teams 8-12]

Ace: You could make an argument for Indiana even though most Hoosiers fans still want to strangle Archie Miller.

Brian: Is anyone's stock down enough to qualify for a stock down, team edition?

Ace: If you believed the preseason projections, Purdue. But since those didn’t seem to account for Edwards leaving nearly enough—they had the Boilers as a top-ten preseason offense—it feels a little unfair to put them here.

Brian: Yeah I'd say Purdue is approximately what I expected, insofar as a team that can lose 63-37 to Illinois and then boatrace MSU can be said to have any valid expectations.

Ace: Ohio State is probably most in danger here? It’s not a great sign that they gave out one-game “get your shit together” suspensions to Luther Muhammad and Duane Washington this week.

Brian: I don't know. Are we talking relative to preseason expectations? I'd say they're still in the ballpark. If they pull the 2019 Indiana then yeah. (Please do this.)

Ace: Their defense is 11th in adjusted efficiency overall on KenPom and ninth in efficiency in Big Ten games. It seems possible. I’m also running out of ideas because most of the teams I’d think to put here have thus far surpassed my expectations.

Brian: Honestly MSU is probably in this discussion. They were preseason #1 both in the polls and Kenpom and is probably headed for a three seed tops. They might be a little puffed up right now because they've had two Big Ten road games: Northwestern and Purdue, which boatraced them.

MSU's biggest win: the Livers injury [Campredon]

Seth: /raises hand: Michigan? Specifically I did not expect Michigan to hire Juwan Howard, return Jon Teske, replace Iggy Brazdeikis with Isaiah Livers/Brandon Johns, and drop to the 300s in post defense.

Ace: Again, depends if we’re going with preseason or post-Trident expectations.

Brian: They couldn't afford to lose Livers. Also preseason expectations were "please stay off the bubble". We're reaching for both M and MSU. Moving on.

Ace: I hate to say it but I feel like MSU is starting to figure it out.

Stock up, individual edition, other than Garza.

Finally flexing [Campredon]

Ace: It’s been too long since we mentioned Michigan in a positive light, so it’s worth noting David DeJulius has absolutely surpassed expectations and looks like he’s earned more playing time.

Walking bucket, that kid.

Brian: The guy saving Wisconsin's season is Kobe King. On a team with zero driving ability outside of him he's 63% at the rim and 48% in the midrange with 70% of the shots at the rim unassisted. Maybe the midrange stuff is a mirage but on a team that desperately needs a tough bucket guy he's performing.

Ace: Yeah, he was one of the next couple players up for me. When you watch him, it looks legit. We’ve mentioned him already, but man, Daniel Oturu is really good. He’s putting up 23 and 13 in Big Ten games on huge usage and excellent efficiency, plus he’s tough to work around on defense.

Brian: Yes. Top 50-ish in OREBs, DREBs, blocks, and 2P%. NBA draft types haven't caught up yet but I don't see how he's not playing himself into the first round.

Ace: The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie had him high in round two in his latest mock. Oturu’s moving up.

I feel obligated to mention the other guy saving Wisconsin’s season, Micah Potter. He added a smooth-looking perimeter element to some very efficient post play during his transfer season.

Seth: Relative to preseason expectations: Eli Brooks. I too want DeJulius to take most of his minutes, but even the huge comedown from the Three-li Brooks of the nonconference portion is a good defender who recently added a slick back cut...and finished! By tournament time if Brooks is all that off the bench plus a cameo once a game in the small lineup, that's a lot more than I was hoping for.

Ace:
Eli Brooks ORTG against top-50 teams, 2018-19 (19 games): 92.1
Eli Brooks ORTG against top-50 teams, 2019-20 (8 games): 76.5

Seth: Bench/Starter. But yeah, uch, he's got to can the open threes.

Brian: Yeah man I think we're back in the heart of Eli Brooks expectations, unfortunately.

Brian: I don't want to ask this, but…

Stock down, individual edition?

Flailing, fouling, getting a fair shake? [Campredon]

Ace: So, yeah, based on our predictions, Jon Teske’s defense has been a huge disappointment. Though, on the plus side, he’s taken on quite a bit of extra usage and been an effective offensive player.

Brian: Overall I'd rather have last year's version. Just had a frustrating edition of WTKA where a couple people said stuff like "Jon Teske is a bad post defender" like that had always been the case. Michigan had the #2 defense in the country last year and never doubled the post. This is a massive regression that outstrips the offensive progress.

Ace: Agreed. I can’t totally explain the dropoff even with a more rigid scheme and the improvement in Big Ten centers. Taking on more offense is part of it, surely, but it doesn’t cover the whole gap.

Seth: As I said before, I think he just hit a not entirely surprising ceiling and has gone up against guys nobody can guard without help. Oturu, Garza, Cockburn, Trevion Williams: Michigan gave them career highs but these guys are still lighting it up.

Brian: It does feel like Michigan is allowing deep post position way more often this year. A lot more work is being done before the catch, which seems like an endurance thing.

Ace: In other rare stock downs for Big Ten big men, Nate Reuvers has been solid on defense but he’s not knocking down shots and seems like he should probably lose his starting spot to Potter. I think we unanimously had Reuvers as a breakout player this year.

Brian: I dunno, Reuvers is suddenly a near-30% usage guy. I don't think he's suited for that kind of role but someone's got to take UW's shots. I think we were both pretty high on Aaron Wheeler, who is now cursed. Shooting 24/22.

Ace: Indeed. That’s a sad situation. I expected more out of Gabe Kalscheur, too. Every once in a while he shows leading scorer ability but he still fades into the background and plays Just A Shooter most of the time.

Brian: Similarly, Ayo Dosunmu is also the same guy he was last year.

Seth: Ayo is the answer. He probably should have gone pro.

Brian: Wrapping up:

How satisfied are you with the first 0.5 seasons of Juwan Howard?

So far real good [Campredon]

Seth: If the answer to "If Cleveland offered to trade Beilein back for Juwan right now would you take it?" isn't immediately "Yes!" we are way beyond the wildest dreams.

Ace: Pants off. The recruiting is the main indicator that we’re in for real good times, but Howard has also coaxed improvement (and increased confidence) out of several players, fit a solid offensive scheme around some personnel difficulties, and seems like he’ll only get better at this. It’s hard to imagine that hire going better.

Seth: If he gets Christopher even the highest hopes for his recruiting are a notch above. I was saying "he needs to get a Fab Five" and now we're looking at alliterations for six or seven.

Brian: I am slightly worried by the rigidity Michigan's playing with. IE: not doubling the post even a month getting hammered one-on-one. I think Howard's still in an NBA mode where he assumes basic competence from anyone who's on the floor. The case for not doubling the Pistons in the post is much stronger than the case for not doubling Purdue.

I think he'll adapt and it'll be fine. I still wish it had already happened.

Ace: I addressed this in the mailbag, but I think we’re currently in a recency bias moment that’s going to look rather silly next year. He’ll adjust, he’s a first-year head coach learning on the job who’s used to NBA players.

Brian: That's my belief too but I'm a little frustrated at the moment.

Seth: The doubling in the post thing is a problem that's been going on, what, a few weeks? We could literally see it disappear tomorrow.

Ace: I’m much more focused on him having the team in this position while dealing with injuries to Wagner and then Livers. He’s found some interesting solutions to unexpected problems, including turning Brandon Johns into a somewhat functional center.

Brian: Yeah the Livers thing is just so devastating. Michigan has no way to paper over that.

Ace: Wagner getting a late start really hurt, too. It’s so hard to get your footing when you’re thrown in without a ramp-up.

Seth: Hiring Phil Martelli was promising both for this year and the future. Most coaches, especially first-timers, don't have room in their egos to make a move like that.

Ace: Yeah, I’m mostly focused on big picture stuff. The team loves him, he has an offensive scheme that makes sense, he’s recruiting his ass off, and he’s seemingly made good hires.

Brian: I mean the main thing is the recruiting. Howard was thrown into the deep end and has not only put Michigan in play for the top end guys but gotten one and leads for a second. He's also filled out the class with guys who are going to be around 3 or 4 years. It is literally ideal.

Ace: Yeah. There may some tradeoff in pure strategic acumen against Beilein but I expect that gap to close over time and the talent level is going to be higher, even when accounting for Beilein’s absurd talent development.

Brian: The thing where Howard flew out to NYC to take in Josh Christopher's game there after the Oregon game was a "this guy is gonna work until it works" moment.

Seth: My belief is there are other holes in his coaching that will reveal themselves over time.

Ace: I mean, yeah, he’s a coach. Coach K has holes.

Brian: Some of the rotation stuff is a little weird, mostly Nunez playing scattered minutes over DDJ and Bajema. Holding on to Eli a little bit too long as well. But holding on to guys too long is a universal coaching trait.

Seth: If you look at Howard himself, guard development, especially in comparison to Beilein, looked like the potential issue. But if the plan is to have Howard Eisley around forever, well, that's not so bad. And the returns on DDJ so far are promising.

Biggest complaint: letting Nunez play through it. [Campredon]

Ace: I don’t mind giving players a chance to play through it, too. For every Nunez, there’s a DDJ. Or Johns, which might be a better example.

Brian: Heck that turnover rate problem went away already.

Ace: Yeah. I have a really hard time fretting about micro issues (or hypothetical ones) when the macro is so promising.

Seth: Can we find any macro issue to worry about?

Ace: I started thinking about it for more than a minute, so no.

Brian: The defensive regression is not just limited to the post. Michigan is worse in all four factors. The lockdown feel of last year's defense is not there. I do think there are some issues there that may be transition costs but also may be more permanent. This analysis requires the idea that Yaklich is a butterfly so I'll note that Texas has the #35 D in the country with one starter over 6'5" and that is a 6'9 C with a 5% block rate. His team's main issue on D is defensive rebounding that follows from all the guards.

Ace: Alright: Howard’s reliance on a certain level of talent and athleticism, which I think is at the root of most of the defensive issues—those that can’t be chalked up to injuries and turnover on the perimeter—could be a macro problem. I suspect he’s going to solve it with recruiting and some minor tweaks, or perhaps the right assistant hire if there’s turnover.

Seth: He could also solve it a little bit by going a week with all of his starters. The transition thing popped up for a couple games and went away. The rebounding and help defense popped up as soon as Livers went out because Castleton gets bodied and they have been playing three guards.

Brian: FWIW I am mostly playing devil's advocate in this section because otherwise it would be nothing but sunshine.

Ace: FINAL FOUR NEXT YEAR

BOOK YOUR TICKETS

JUWAN 2020

Brian: I mean it's not crazy:

• DDJ/Brooks
• Christopher(?)/Bajema
• Livers/Wagner
• Todd/Johns
• Castleton/Dickinson... and probably some Todd

Ace: That doesn’t even include Zeb. It’s gonna be a good year.

Brian: Or Terrance Williams.

Ace: A very good year.

Brian: This year should have some fun moments in between all the asking whether Rutgers is going to stab us

Ace: It’s already provided a few and we haven’t really seen them at full strength. Stupid stabby Rutgers.