WTKA Roundtable 2/16/2023: I Don't Wanna Get Sports Talk Radio About This
Things discussed:
- Atrocious basketball: IU was the worst gut punch until Wisconsin. No silver lining. Every close game they've lost.
- Effort? Got crushed on the boards by a team that doesn't offensive rebound. Very hard to watch this team. Guards and wings not boxing out. Some of that's youth.
- Wisconsin ID'd Michigan's weaknesses and exploited them, and a lot of that is effort.
- Also without T-Will who's a top-500 defensive rebounder, and Tschetter is terrible at it. Tarris Reed should have been getting way more minutes at the four. Issue is the athleticism: Tschetter had those two free throws he missed because he couldn't get up for a free dunk.
- Could not match up athletically with Wisconsin when Baker/Dickinson/Tschetter out there together, and that has to be a five-alarm fire.
- Next year? Dickinson talking like he wants to return but don't think he knows yet.
- Officiating: The worst game since the 1970s.
- Will M-MSU be played? Michigan is going to let MSU decide there. It's at least nice to put the rivalry aside and remember Little Brother and Big Sister are truly siblings. We skirt the edge of what we think has to happen to have this stop happening.
- HOCKEY! Got 5/6 points from MSU despite playing without 2/3 of their best defenders and 1.5 games without the best player in hockey. Love what we saw from Nazar's return. Officiating is a major problem for this conference—we think someone came down from the league office after the first game was an embarrassment to the conference because they called a minor (not a matching minor) when the chippiness started. Then they of course screwed it up again by refusing to call an 87%ile major (the way they're called) at the end of Game 2, allowing MSU to tie.
- Given all the things they've gone through this season, they really might be special in the postseason. Unfortunately it's the worst postseason in sports.
- Take off the interim tag? MLive says his current deal has an end-of-season evaluation so that's when it's happening.
- ND won't pay for an OC—that's wild! Utah's Andy Ludwig and Kansas State's Collin Klein are good choices.
- Ohio State cancels their Washington series because USC is gonna be on the schedule. New Playoff structure needs to look at how they structure things to get schools to play good games because right now the incentive is to just play meatballs. Hopefully the middle schools in the Big XII and ACC and Pac 12 want to play Michigan more because we'd love to have a series with Arizona, Colorado, Oregon State, Wake, etc.
[Hit the JUMP for the player, and video and stuff]
You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream.
Segment two is here. You can watch the video here:
MGoBlog Roundtable https://t.co/qEbaxPVt7T
— Sam Webb (@SamWebb77) February 16, 2023
The Usual Links:
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Thank you Brian for complimenting me on my ability to communicate in English.
February 16th, 2023 at 11:23 AM ^
Ohio dropping UW so late is ridiculous. They should have to pay a much bigger fine/opt out. Hopefully, Fox put Warde on notice not to drop the Texas series when they got the teams to swap home/away dates. I'm still pissed Warde dropped UCLA.
As for the hoops team, I can't watch it anymore. It's like Charlie Brown and Lucy and we're trying to kick the FB and keep ending up on our back. Juwan gets a pass this year from me - A BIG title, Elite 8, Sweet 16 give him the benefit of a frustrating NIT year.
As for ND OC job, you get what you pay for! The Utah guy would have been a great add. Not being willing to pay a few million to spring a guy free who's had success at Utah is downright cheap! Too bad we don't play them while Williams is still HC.
February 16th, 2023 at 11:31 AM ^
The rebounding issues are not all on the youth/guards, no one is boxing out on a consistent basis, Hunter & T-Will included.
February 16th, 2023 at 12:25 PM ^
The "freshmen are too young and inexperienced to box out" take really befuddled me on my drive to work this morning. MGoBlog, rightfully, cites inexperience as a reason for a lot of the problems freshmen have, but is boxing out really one of them? I stopped playing organized basketball in 7th grade (and I sucked the whole time I played), but even by that point even I knew that when a shot goes up, you (1) identify your guy, (2) get low, (3) put your rump into him, and (4) keep him away from the basket. That's not an advanced element of basketball, and anyone who is good enough to play in the Big Ten should've figured it out before his freshman year of <i>high school</i>, not after his freshman year of college.
February 16th, 2023 at 1:12 PM ^
Some of the defensive switching and rotations in college can make it more challenging to successfully box out, especially for guards. An example is when you see a guy sprinting to cover an open shooter. Their momentum is taking them away from a good box out position and someone else needs to be covering the area of the floor that player just vacated.
That said, there are far too many times every game I have watched guards and wings simply watch as a guy near them starts to crash the board, by then it is too late to get a body on them.
My biggest frustration is Hunter. There are so many times he doesn't box out thinking his height & size alone will win him the rebound. Almost everyone around him is more athletic so he loses many of the 50/50 balls which never would have been 50/50 had he put his butt on someone.
There is a part of this which is coaching also. Coach Howard prefers a high tempo team. To do this, you have to release a couple players once a shot is missed. You'll see he uses one of Kobe or Jett to crash the glass while the other and Dug get out in transition. This effectively leaves 3 people to rebound. If two of those three people are boxing out properly, it mostly works, although it still leaves you open to a team who really crashes the glass. It should be no where near what we are seeing Michigan give up. While there could be confusion as to who is supposed to be crashing vs. releasing, most of what I see is concentration and effort issues.
February 16th, 2023 at 1:34 PM ^
This is lightyears from my area of expertise, and I frankly don't watch much NBA or NCAA, but don't they switch and rotate as much (if not more) in the pros due to players often being athletic enough to guard more positions? Or is it that NBA players just don't close out as hard as NCAA players do?
February 16th, 2023 at 11:42 AM ^
Basketball:
Michigan is the youngest team in the country and gettng younger every game because of how many minutes are going to freshmen. Against Wisconsin after Baker/TWill were hurt we played four freshmen (Dug, Jett, Tschetter, Reed) and Kobe (the youngest guy on the team) pretty much all minutes that Hunter and Jace didn't play. The sport has gotten older the past few years and we're getting younger. That's a recipe for a disaster and we're seeing it in close games. This team with Llewelyn and Shannon is not just more talented, but old!
Hockey:
How do officials work in hockey? In Basketball there aren't actually "B10 refs" there are just refs that more frequently do B10 games but there isn't a specific group of them. Is that the same in hockey? Has anyone done a review to see if there are trends by refs with how majors are called or how Michigan games are called? Finally, if there is a contact information for the head of B10 officiating and MGoBlog can put out some rational, logical, talking points we should unleash a crowd sourced initiative on their office to highlight the insane way Michigan games are being called.
February 16th, 2023 at 1:28 PM ^
I really like this point about youth overall but also want to point out that the clamoring to play Reed and Dickinson together only works if Reed stays out of foul trouble. That has been a major issue as of late. If he can not stay out of foul trouble he can't play next to Dickinson because he must spell Dickinson. Once Reed relies less on his own athleticism and develops some wisdom on how to play college ball (again, with age/experience) this will more of an option.
February 16th, 2023 at 4:02 PM ^
Yeah, agree on Reed. I'm really encouraged by his play so far......but in small doses. He can't shoot at all and thus won't help with floor spacing. He's solid on defense, but is still match-up dependent. His hands are erratic and his fouls are massive. Likewise, if he gets in foul trouble playing the 4.....who subs for Hunter when he needs a break?
UMHoops has made a consistent point throughout the season. It isn't that our players are "bad" it is that we aren't set up to let them play the best version of their role. Dug is a solid freshman PG and better than most we've had for years....but he should be playing 18-20 minutes. Kobe is having a breakout year but still makes a ton of mistakes and we're asking him to do everything right now. TWill isn't who we want him to be, but as a 6th man who does a little of everything and focuses on energy for 20 minutes a game he'd be great. Brian complains about Hunter taking a step back, and he has, but he's getting the ball fed to him from a bunch of undersized freshmen and he has almost no PnR game with the PG.
February 16th, 2023 at 11:50 AM ^
We played a meh Big 12 team this year and Dong punched ourselves for 4 quarters.
Would rather play 1 really tough out of conference game or just meatballs. You win nothing for beating a meh team, but they can rise up and cost you the season.
February 16th, 2023 at 1:07 PM ^
And that's where the committee needs to change the selection and ranking criteria to incentivize playing better teams. A close loss to a top 50 team should still be worth more than obliterating a team ranked at say 90-130 and a win over someone in the mid-tier should be worth considerably more than beating a tomato can. (You'd have to find a compromise of some kind because the tomato can game payouts mean a lot to some of those terrible programs but still)
Until the committee starts valuing resumes like that, CFP hopefuls will continue cancelling tough games and will keep playing terrible teams like Michigan has been doing
February 16th, 2023 at 1:53 PM ^
"We played a meh Big 12 team this year and Dong punched ourselves for 4 quarters."
There's no argument that we played like crap for much of the Fiesta Bowl and should have won the game, but calling TCU "meh" when they were 13-1 and ranked the #3 team in the country when we played them is a bit ridiculous.
February 16th, 2023 at 12:02 PM ^
If they cancel that Texas game I riot. I am looking forward to that game.
Two iconic programs and informs. Arch Manning first road test at the Big House.
This is what college football is all about.
February 16th, 2023 at 12:24 PM ^
I was disappointed that they flipped the 2024 game from Austin to Ann Arbor. My buddy and I had been looking forward to putting together a trip for that game for years now. Guess we gotta wait until 2027 now. With @Oklahoma in 2025 and @UDub in 2028, fans will have 3 excellent road trip options for iconic game day experiences over just a 3 year period. I hope they find a way to structure the expanded playoff to incentivize teams to playing these games. 2022 nonconference got very boring as a season ticket holder and 2023 looks to be the same.
February 16th, 2023 at 12:15 PM ^
One point on why Reed doesn’t play as much with Hunter that was not discussed: spacing. Sure, it’s college basketball and you don’t need 4 shooters on the floor at all times, but the base offense Michigan tries to run essentially requires 4 shooters (in theory) around Hunter. As bad a shooter as Twill and Tschetter have been, at least they put up 3s. Reed does not shoot at all. Just a little food for thought there. Also to answer why Reed didn’t play the last 4 minutes; he had been in the game for like 8 minutes straight up to that point. Now you don’t have to agree with the thinking that he needed a blow on the sideline, but that’s why he came out.
February 16th, 2023 at 12:35 PM ^
Seth Davis with The Atlantic came out with an interesting article today, that discussed an anonymous Big Ten coach's thoughts on why things haven't gone well for Michigan basketball this year.
“Man, I don’t know what to think about Michigan, they have good talent, but they’re not all on the same page. They have two dominant scorers in Hunter Dickinson and Jett Howard, but they don’t play off each other very well. Sometimes Dickinson has really low field-goal attempts, which makes no sense. You can take him out of the game by doubling him because he’s such a willing passer. Losing Jaelin Llewelyn really hurt them. They miss having that older veteran as a point guard. They’re not getting much out of the four spot right now with Terrance Williams II. They throw some fake zone at you to keep you off balance. Jett’s really good offensively, but he’s either not a capable defender or he’s not willing, so you can take advantage of that.”
Not sure I'd disagree with a single thing mentioned.
February 17th, 2023 at 10:56 AM ^
That article is a couple of weeks old.
February 16th, 2023 at 12:41 PM ^
Trying to assess individual psyches on a basketball team is about as far from careful analysis as it's possible to get ...
BUT on offense at least, I keep seeing lack of confidence on faces.
February 16th, 2023 at 1:23 PM ^
I'm not done with the basketball season; I'm still excited to see what costumes the basketball players are wearing before the next game. Will they dress up like Western Bandits? Will Jett Howard have a Free Kanye shirt? Maybe they'll all have two person costumes for different large animals, like zebras. Who knows, but you'll want to tune in to find out.
February 16th, 2023 at 1:32 PM ^
Saturday night will hopefully be all class.
Hopefully.
February 16th, 2023 at 1:49 PM ^
"Take off the interim tag? MLive says his current deal has an end-of-season evaluation so that's when it's happening."
There's nothing preventing Manuel from deciding that he doesn't need to wait until the end of the season to make his "evaluation."
February 16th, 2023 at 2:42 PM ^
Why are most of our guys in bball limited in athleticism?
February 16th, 2023 at 3:22 PM ^
Not sure about the rest of them, but HD’s athleticism would improve if he spent less time at Skeeps and more time in the gym
February 17th, 2023 at 7:35 AM ^
I want to follow up on Brian's comments around Hunter. It is true and a valid point that Hunters efficiency has dropped in the post. That is a part of the problem. But I think it overstates that problem and neglects bigger issue. As Craig said, Hunter was 3-7 and last year he gets 4-7 or 5-7....we still lose.
The problem is the other four positions on the floor. We replaced an NBA PF with a bunch of guys who should be on the bench. Seth's ranting about Tschetter but we were without TWill or Baker. We can talk about Jett being an NBA guy but what no one has mentioned is that he's a terrible finisher. His B10 numbers at the rim are awful and worse than Houstan.
Then we have the guards. Two young guys who are full of mistakes. Last year we had two seniors. So who is getting the ball to Hunter on the PnR?? Who is spacing the floor for Hunters post moves when we have 2.5 non shooters around him?
Hunter needs to be better.....but the real problem is being the youngest team in the country with three wings who make a ton of mistakes and no PF who should be starting on a B10 contender.
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