Are we a "defense school"?
Early this March, mgoblog user "BTB Grad" commented on a thread about spring football practice and declared:
We're not a football school. We're not a basketball school.
We're a DEFENSE school. Gotta love Yaklich and Don Brown
For whatever reason, that comment stuck with me -- and time has proven BTB Grad correct.
As it stands today, Michigan has the S&P+ #5 defense in football, and Kenpom's AdjD #1 defense in basketball. Needless to say, we're the only school in the top five of both rankings.
So, because it's finals season in grad school and I should surely be doing other things, I figured I'd try posting my first ever thread here to answer a question -- is there such a thing as a "defense school"?
After aggregating the data from S&P and kenpom (and cleaning it up to make "Miami-FL" match "Miami FL" and so on), here are the results:
Is there such a thing? Kinda! According to my memory of stats from my undergrad days in the basement of East Hall at Michigan, this R-squared means that a school's defensive ability in football explains ~10% of the variation of their defensive ability in basketball. Not a lot, but not nothing!
And, because I know you'll ask, the correlation between football and basketball defense is stronger than that of offense. GRAPH:
Still a positive correlation, but a weaker one.
The verdict: we are certainly a defense school. Everyone else is still figuring out how to match our sustained excellence in both sports.
November 29th, 2018 at 5:20 PM ^
Well I look forward to Michigan State hanging 134 on us in the Big Ten Championship game in March now.
November 29th, 2018 at 5:23 PM ^
Take it back!
November 29th, 2018 at 5:29 PM ^
yup, right after their stud Matt Mcqaid wins B10 player of the year
November 29th, 2018 at 5:30 PM ^
Matt Mcpoyle*
November 29th, 2018 at 5:32 PM ^
I can see it
November 29th, 2018 at 5:31 PM ^
Amazing how no one really considered a D coord. for hoops before.
November 29th, 2018 at 5:55 PM ^
"No one" meaning no one close to John Beilein that could suggest he hire an assistant to focus on defense?
Because it's pretty common in basketball for assistants to focus on a position group or one side of the ball. It was probably more unusual that JB was so controlling of both sides of the ball and didn't have a guy for defense. He was like RichRod insisting that GERG run a 3-3-5 instead of just letting his assistant do what he does.
JB finally delegated more of what he admittedly didn't even pay attention to and made a dynamite hire in Yaklich after a decent hire in Donlon.
Tom Thibideau as the "d coordinator" for Doc River's Championship Celtics teams is the most famous example, but almost every HC is more of an offense or defense guy himself and a lot of them have an assistant who is stronger on the other side of the ball to help out or take the lead there.
November 29th, 2018 at 5:41 PM ^
What's the R^2 of having Pep as OC and losing to Ohio State?
November 29th, 2018 at 6:17 PM ^
Literally 0. We were 0-5 in the five years before he got here. We are 0-2 since.
November 30th, 2018 at 1:47 AM ^
Michigan has only played OSU seven times? Young rivalry to already be the greatest in college football!
November 29th, 2018 at 6:02 PM ^
How much fun it must be for guys like Don Brown and Luke Yaklich to get this type of raw athletic material... At Illinois State, Yaklich was turning defensive Ford Tauruses into Mercedes Benzes. At Michigan he is turning defensive Mercedes Benzes into Maseratis and Ferraris.
November 29th, 2018 at 6:17 PM ^
Now if only we could learn how to defend against the bagmen...
November 29th, 2018 at 6:20 PM ^
Yes...but we took the day off on 11/24
November 29th, 2018 at 8:31 PM ^
Helluva day to take off. #stillpissedoff
November 29th, 2018 at 6:39 PM ^
Good work. You also realize that there is zero correlation between Football and Basketball defense and offense, right?
http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
November 29th, 2018 at 7:33 PM ^
Your link is about the difference between causation and correlation. It does not make the case at all that there is no correlation.
November 30th, 2018 at 1:01 PM ^
It doesn't. And that's my original point. There is no correlation, just because the R^2.
November 30th, 2018 at 1:11 PM ^
The whole point of the website link you provided is that correlations exist for many unrelated/spurious events, but that does not mean there is CAUSATION.
November 29th, 2018 at 6:41 PM ^
Michigan's penchant for focusing on defense in both sports seems to be a conference-wide thing (with a few exceptions), FWIW.
November 29th, 2018 at 6:50 PM ^
Let's just hope Yaklich doesn't forget how to generate pressure.
November 29th, 2018 at 6:55 PM ^
Hopefully Yaklich doesn’t shit the bed in the most important game of his life this year. Not that I know any defensive coaches that have done that.
November 29th, 2018 at 7:00 PM ^
Michigan Footballs defense feasts on bad teams. We struggled against ND and were thrashed against OSU.
Please dont give me that garbage about how UM shut down ND in the second half. They dialed it back and also had a TD called back. We lose 1v1 battles against good teams and get out coached. So no, we are not a D school.
Neg away slappies
November 29th, 2018 at 7:30 PM ^
Well, like Brian said, basketball is our only revenue sport. So we are a basketball school.
I’ll take all the credit for good defense but none of the blame for 11/24.
November 29th, 2018 at 7:35 PM ^
The interesting thing about this is not that there is correlation, because of course there is. The teams that are good in basketball and football on either side of the ball are more likely to be big schools with big budgets to pay the best coaches, i.e. P5 schools vs. G5.
So yes, those teams that are bad at defense (or offense) in basketball are probably Sun Belt and MAC teams, etc. that are also likely to be bad at defense (or offense) in football. As such, I would assume that cause of the correlation is the AD budget which impacts a schools ability to be relatively good at both sports (or bad at both sports in the case of a low budget).
The interesting thing to me is that defense seems to be more highly predicted by defensive success in the other sport. Assuming that it's merely a proxy variable for AD budget, that might confirm the old adage that defense is more reliant on talent and athleticism (and hence recruiting that big schools will inevitably win at) and that offenses can more easily be schemed to be good.
You can be a service academy and run an exotic triple option with success on offense and force defenses to prepare and react to it. Scheme is somewhat an equalizer on offense.
But for defense in football at least, it's not really like that. You kind of have to have big, quick guys that can rush a passer or fast cover corners, etc to be good. There aren't as many tricks on defense. A defense tends to be more about its weak links because the offense can attach them (too soon?), whereas an offense can be leveraged to get the most out of its playmakers (which is exactly what a spread to run does with a mobile QB).
So the bigger schools that can recruit the better players are probably more likely to be good at defense in football, but offense is a bit more scattershot.
November 29th, 2018 at 7:37 PM ^
I just read Michigan contested 58 of North Carolina's 66 shots........... WHAT!? What is an average number of contested shots in a game? That seems insane. And I love it.
November 29th, 2018 at 7:47 PM ^
I am not sure what is an average but I do agree that that seems like an extremely high percentage.
November 29th, 2018 at 8:59 PM ^
umm you must've missed Donny get bent by Day/Meyer.
No.
November 29th, 2018 at 9:24 PM ^
How many standard deviants on this board?
November 29th, 2018 at 10:46 PM ^
Good luck on your finals
November 30th, 2018 at 12:41 AM ^
Defense travels well most of the time.
November 30th, 2018 at 1:33 AM ^
Undoubtedly