Basketball Snowflakes

I wish the incessantly negative people would just shut the fuck up for one night. Yes, that loss was very irritating, but when you’re breaking in two freshman and a transfer, it’s going to be a bumpy ride for a while. Losing to a top-30 team on some tough luck isn’t a “terrible loss.” Not even close, asshole.

Michigan has a top ten football, basketball, and hockey program, yet all we see are complaints.

An overlooked problem with the offense in the second half was not being able to get Hunter the ball with a chance to do something with it. 0 shots in the final 14 minutes except when he rebounded Johns's miss late. If they're going to struggle this much at shooting from 3, they need to be able to get him the ball under the basket.

You really didn't think it would be that easy, did you?

Basketball is a long season but there is a lot to work on. Learn from the loss and move on to Vegas 

People had ridiculous expectations for the early season for this team and also seemingly already forgot we went to overtime against Oakland at home last year. This team is replacing a ton of talent and has nobody at the guard position who can consistently create their own shot. On top of that the 3 pt shooting is just a massive question mark overall.

Teams don’t just replace 3 nba players in a rotation no problem, even with high level freshman. You can point to plenty of examples of early season Kentucky, Kansas, duke teams struggling, especially on the offensive end.

This season is going to be a grind and this offense is going to look really ugly in some games. It’s also going to get better throughout the season. But if we can’t come up with a better end of game option to get points than putting the ball Eli’s hands this team is more sweet 16 than final four 

Davante  Jones is not Mike Smith.  And we have no one to replace Livers.  Houstan is a perfect Franz comp IMO, but we lose A LOT with Jones vs Smith.  Eli needs to have the ball in his hands and I think we’ll be ok, but depth is iffy the way 5, 12, and 23, are playing right now.

Give it a little time. Does anyone remember that in game 2 last year UM went to overtime with Oakland? I didn't, most likely because they won and we forgot about it. This stuff happens. In that game Mike Smith scored 2 points and had 3 turnovers in 18 minutes. Honestly going to OT with the #312 kenpom team is way worse than losing by 2 to the #35 kenpom team, so let's have some perspective and give it a little time. 

There are obviously issues to figure out, but I am still confident that all the pieces are there and Howard and company are smart enough to figure it out. 

One of the best things about CBB is watching a team grow, especially a team with young contributing players. Sit back and enjoy it.

We lost four very strong players. 

I agree with You about BJJ. Dude hasn’t really gotten better in 2 years and he can’t finish at the rim. Solid defensively and rebounding so he seems like a bench player to me. Rather see TWill and Diabate out there instead. 
 

Houstan is so young, you need to give him time. But 39mins of time when he’s playing that poorly?  play small or put diabate in there and play big for a few? iDK

Jones is very concerning as a 5th year dude. No situational awareness. 10sec bio? Foul 30ft from the hoop with less than 50sec left in the double bonus? Too many TOS and fouls. Rather see another 10mins for Bufkin. 
 

not a terrible loss if this is the only OoC loss. Long way to go before B10 play starts. 
 

Almost every season in bball we feel doomed in November/December then they gel. Not to worried atm.

On a side note at least we're not #12 Oregon. Down 29 to BYU in the freaking PHIL KNIGHT INVITATIONAL. That stings.

+ I'm very concerned about this team's lack of consistent/reliable/elite perimeter shooting.

My platonic ideal for a national championship caliber college team is 2018 Villanova / 2021 Baylor with a bit more defense. If we don't find some answers from mid-range and deep, this season will be a grind.

+ At least 3 of Seton Hall's 9 made 3s were from blown/busted switches.

> To this point, Caleb Houstan's defense is quite concerning. He's adequate in iso/1v1 defense but he struggles to handle screens and switches. (Don't think so? Rewatch the game. You'll see that Seton Hall identified Houstan's lack of defense and attacked him repeatedly. Future opponents will notice this.)

> Right now, Houstan's offense simply isn't effective enough to compensate for his defensive breakdowns.

+ For all the talk about DeVante Jones as an established scorer (re: see his impressive stats against high major competition at Coast Carolina) and a NBA prospect, he has not impressed me.

+ Eli Brooks passed up a game-tying layup which was strange. Also, I think he should've used the glass on his floater attempt.

+ Defensive rebounding was an issue but refs kept calling fouls when our guys tried to body up Seton Hall's players on the glass.

+ Brandon Johns Jr. hasn't shown the improvement I hoped he would showcase this year. Last season, he seemed to play much better when Livers went down and Johns knew it was his time to make up the difference. He hasn't take the step in his mid-range game that I badly wanted to see. Here's his shooting stats through 3 games:
1-3 / 0-2 from 3
1-2 / 0-1
3-9 / 0-1

So through 3 games, he's shooting 5/14 (35.7%) from the field and 0-4 (0%) from 3. Ouch.

It just burns me when the refs put their thumb on the scale. I can take a loss. UCLA last year. Texas Tech in '19. The Big Ten Tourney in '19 to MSU. All were legit losses. The team played hard and just didn't play well enough to win. But this fucking bullshit tonight where the refs swallowed the whistles on our end and called some bullshit fouls ON us on the defensive end??? That's infuriating! Of course, Michigan could have played better. But, how much of that was the refs giving possessions to the opponent? I don't expect the team to play perfectly every game. I don't expect the refs to officiate perfectly, either. But, this shit was blatantly, egregiously one-sided for Seton Hall. Those had to be fucking Big East refs!

Seton Hall was pretty tenacious on D and they made hard cuts and drives the basket most of the game. It didn’t hurt that their guys could create their own shot, and did so on numerous possessions. 
 

For as good as M defense was / is, they lost dudes all night on rotations. 
 

Not to bag on Johns, but he’s been very underwhelming- doesn’t look to shoot, doesn’t finish, and doesn’t really rebound. Rotations got pretty slim at end and Jones will need to be much better. 

1. Jones played a great game -- got screwed by the refs in my opinion.  See his 4th foul.  At any rate, he's a cool customer and will be back to lead us to many victories.
2. We might want to burn a redshirt (Barnes or Tschetter) to get some better shooters involved.
3. Bufkin played another good game, as did Diabate.
4. Johns and Williams are fine.  But perhaps neither is as good as Diabate.  
5. Houstan looks good for a freshman playing in his first games.  He should be fine once the team chemistry gets set.
6. Brooks is NBA caliber -- played great.
7. Dickinson is 1st round NBA caliber -- our best player.

I think we have a great team with a deep bench, and some exciting young playmakers who are going to be fantastic once they settle in. These guys don't really know each other yet and I think they deserve some time to do that before people start declaring them not good enough to win championships.  

Tough loss, especially since it looked like Michigan had a comfortable lead most of the night.

I'm not sure what we can learn from it.  Basketball can be unpredictable with unlucky bounces, especially early in the season.  Seton Hall's a good team.  It's just one game.

I don't agree with the OP regarding Johns in this game.  He's still not very reliable offensively but his stats were a little better than T. Williams in this game.  And he can also shoot the three.

It was an off night for the two star freshmen, Houstan and Diabate, who were a combined 1-10 from the field.  And the team overall shot poorly from the 3 point line.  Bufkin, on the other hand, showed his potential.

It's a learning process.  They are still developing chemistry.  I suspect they will improve defensively and offensively, especially the younger players.   

Our defense was excellent.  The refs let everything go the first half and the better team led at halftime.  After Michigan got the double digit lead, they started calling all sorts of ticky-tak fouls/infractions, and we lost because of it. That's college b-ball. Michigan will learn that they need to improve and move forward as a better team, IMO.

My snowflake is just a reminder that reading people's basketball thoughts (not necessarily yours, OP) in non-conference season is insufferable when the board is still infected with football brain.

No, losing to a nearly Kenpom top-30 team isn't "terrible" or as shameful as the other post made it out to be. No, we shouldn't be wanting the backup freshman PG to get starters minutes like the  backup QB infatuation. No, we shouldn't discard Johns or Jones after 3 games. No, a bench forward not making 2 game tying free throws with 0:00 on the clock isn't the end of the world, or probably even unexpected.

The whole board needs to stop smashing our keyboards and remember Basketball ≠ Football and is a sport with a lot more statistical variance.